Big game hunting is not easy. Doing it with a compound bow is even harder. And not many women are up to the task. That is, unless you’re Tammy Miller, who recently took down a record bull moose in Vermont.
Miller got the gigantic bull moose when she was out hunting with a compound bow with her husband Eric in Vermont’s Northeast. The gigantic animal weighed 931 pounds and carried a remarkable antler spread of 53 and 3/4 inches, according to a press release.
The giant bull easily eclipsed the current archery record, which was a 919-pound animal taken by hunter Kevin Rice last year. Miller called the kill, “the experience of a lifetime,” and explained she and her husband worked hard to ultimately take the animal.
“Five weekends of hard scouting enabled us to be hunting in an area with good moose trails and scrapes,” she told Vermont officials.
After spending some time in the area on Friday morning, Miller said they heard the bull raking branches nearby, but it seemed to be moving away. When Eric raked some nearby branches with a moose scapula and called by mouth to imitate another bull moose, the pair were on their way to getting it. Fifteen minutes later the bull appeared. Miller said it was about 15 yards away.
Miller is something of a celebrity in archery hunting circles for now, and we can be certain that her record will be beat in the future. In the meantime, here’s to her shot, and her moose.
The skill, stealth and accuracy required to successfully take large game such as moose with a bow is impressive, and in a place like the Vermont wilderness, where getting a coveted moose tag is rare, hunting the beast alone is a great opportunity. Moose hunts in Vermont are managed through a permit lottery system and only about half of the hunters who receive a permit will harvest a moose. Vermont officials estimate that there are between 3,000 to 5,000 moose in the state.
Bagging one, and let alone a record setting animal, is altogether different. But Vermont Fish and Wildlife announced on Tuesday a woman there has set a new archery record for bagging a massive moose in northeastern Vermont.
Photo credit: Eric Miller
