Tanner Thomassen bagged the first moose of the season, hauling it out of his boat at Reliance Harbor last Friday. His son, Wyatt, joined him in the hunting party.
Last Thursday afternoon, Tanner Thomassen, 27, shot Wrangell's first moose of the season on Andrew Island in the Stikine River. The moose is also Thomassen's first - he has been trying to bag one since the fifth grade, and after 15 years of effort, he was finally in the right place at the right time.
"I was in a tree and I saw a calf," he said. "I thought that was all there was, so we were ready to crawl down the tree and go down to another spot." Thankfully for Thomassen, he stayed put long enough to see some bushes rustling and an antler emerge. He grunted at the moose to get it to turn, and inspected its antlers to ensure that the shot was legal. "I knew it was right then or he was going to turn his head and I was never going to see him again."
Thomassen's dad, Steve, and his son, Wyatt, were also part of the hunting party. Steve Thomassen recalled his son saying that the shot was pure reflex and that he "didn't even feel (himself) pull the trigger."
It took about six hours for the family to get the moose back to their house. They used a chainsaw winch to drag the animal approximately 2,000 yards to their boat for the run back to town.
Thomassen is relieved that he successfully completed his moose hunt. "Now we can enjoy the rest of the season and go trout fishing," he said. "We were going to do that anyway, but there's a lot less pressure now."
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