The first and last time I saw a moose was this past summer (1998) when I went on a boat ride to Kwik with Roy, Gail, Aaron, Scott, Art, Ardiss, Gerilyn and Myron. We were out boatriding for about three hours, and it was really boring because the only animal we saw was a beaver. We weren't out hunting because we had no gun, and, since we had our fishing rods and reels, we parked the boat a little inside Kwik and began fishing. We stayed at one spot for maybe 20-30 minutes, but when nobody caught anything we decided to take a little boat ride deeper into the slough, then go home.

We were all being lively, not thinking about anything, when Gail said, "Hey, right there!" in a really excited voice. Everyone became silent and looked toward where her finger was pointing. We didn't see anything because we were too slow. After that everyone was quiet as Roy started moving slowly into the slough.

About 10 minutes later we saw a young bull and cow moose eating leaves. I only saw the young bull's head because the grass was so tall, but I was still excited because that was the first time I had ever seen a moose. No one in the boat wanted to sit down after that, so we were all standing up as we quietly looked around for more moose.

While going in further, Roy couldn't see which way he was going, and our heads almost got knocked off by a tree that was hanging really low from the bank. I think it was Aaron or Gail who looked up at the last moment and saw the tree. They shouted, "Hey watch out for that tree!" Roy quickly looked ahead, turned really fast, and everyone ducked down. Roy turned so quickly in the narrow slough that I almost fell down.

We didn't see anything else going in, so everyone was sitting down while we were on our way out. We didn't think we were going to see anything else when suddenly we heard Gail say, "Right there!" again. Everyone was quiet and looked to the right of the boat. Lying in the grass on the bank was a calf. It looked like it had just gotten out of the water and was resting. After a few seconds though, it got up and took off.

I felt really good that evening because I finally saw a live moose. Now I can better understand all the stories people tell me about moose hunting and moose sightings. It was really exciting to see them.