A Reddit user said his closest call while hunting came because he was doing exactly what moose hunters do to bring animals in close. According to his comment in the thread, he was using female moose calls and had sprayed cow-in-heat urine in the area. That setup is meant to draw interest, but in his case it brought in the wrong kind of attention. Instead of pulling in a manageable shot opportunity and ending there, it pulled in a female moose that apparently decided he was competition.
He wrote that the cow came in angry and committed. At first he tried the obvious things people always say to do when a big animal starts crowding you. He yelled. He waved. He tried to make it clear he was not another moose and not something she needed to run over. According to the post, none of it worked. She kept coming anyway. He made it sound like there was no gradual backing off or hesitant bluff in there. She was coming on hard enough that he had to stop thinking in terms of “maybe she’ll turn” and start thinking about how much ground was left between them.
That was when he fired a shot into the ground between them.
He said that was what finally stopped the charge. Not the yelling. Not the waving. The shot. And even that did not send her racing off into the timber and solve the whole thing in one clean second. According to his comment, she broke the charge at about 15 feet. That is the kind of distance that does not leave much room for being wrong. A cow moose at 15 feet is not a “good thing she stopped when she did” kind of detail you forget later. It is the sort of distance that tells you just how close the whole encounter got to becoming a stomp instead of a story.
And the story still was not over.
He wrote that after stopping the charge, the cow did not simply turn around and leave. Instead, she escorted him out of the area. In his words, she followed him for about half a mile, holding roughly the same distance the entire time. That part is what makes the whole thing feel especially ugly. He was not dealing with one short burst of danger followed by relief. He was stuck in a long forced retreat with an angry moose shadowing him the whole way, making sure he got the message and stayed moving.
He also added one detail that gives the whole scene an extra kick: females were not legal that year. So the very animal that nearly got him killed was not even one he could have taken if the situation had somehow gone differently. He was out there calling and scenting for moose, and instead of a clean hunt, he got a furious cow that read the whole setup as a rival female and came in ready to settle it.
The story he told was pretty straightforward. He used female calls and cow-in-heat urine, drew in a female moose that thought he was competition, yelled and waved to try to stop her, and finally had to put a shot into the ground when she kept coming. She stopped at about 15 feet, then followed him out of the area for roughly half a mile like a bouncer escorting him off her turf. No bear mauling, no shootout, no cliff fall — just one giant angry moose deciding he had absolutely overstayed his welcome.
What do you think — if yelling and waving didn’t stop a charging cow moose and she still came to within 15 feet, would you trust a warning shot into the ground, or feel like you were already out of options?
Original Reddit post: What was your closest to death experience while hunting?
