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To be Osmo's guest at the Wolverine hunting area
Oulu is a university town in north Finland with approx. 150,000 inhabitants. Largest city in the north of Europe.
For more informations click to 'Oulu'.
At the first weekend of Octobre the hunting saison for moose will start in north Finland. The whole country is looking forward to this date. Even the radio is broadcasting about this event, because the moose hunt is an important meat supply for everyone. Everywhere in north Europe moose meat is very popular, therefore you can't buy it often.
Allready two years ago my friend Osmo invited me to go with him and hunt moose.
I took a Finnair flight from Frankfurt to Helsinki and a connection flight to Oulu. Flighttime is about 2 hours from Frankfurt to Helsinki and another 50 minutes to Oulu.
Osmo picked me up at the airport and we drove towards Kajaani until we got to his hunting area called "Wolverine".
My visit time there was also high season for mushrooms especially the very tasty boletus. Also the cowberry or mountain cranberry could be gathered at this time of the year. Unfortunately the year 2006 was much to dry, the cranberrys were very small and the mushrooms were not growing. Unlike two years ago when I was lucky and could bring back home with me about 20 pounds of boletus and allmost 20 pounds of cranberries.
By the way, cranberries together with thin sliced carrots and some honey is a very tasty kind of salad.
Despite the dry weather I could eat enough berries during the hunting and walking time.
Hunting moose with a single dog means, that the master of the dog does not have to say anything, he is not master of the hunt, but the dog is. The master lets him run in the vastness of the forrest, and he will run and search at first in small circles and then the circles get wider and wider. If he finds a moose, he will track the moose. He tries to get close to the moose and he barks at him. By running very fast around the moose, the dog tries to stop the moose from running away. The constantly barking and circling makes the moose to stop and watch the dog and dry to get rid of the dog.
That can take many miles and many hours. After Rakki had run many miles and barked 3 hours without any break, we knew that he had found and stopped a moose. We decided to try to get close to them, which is not very easy in a hardly walkable forrest. Very often the moose will win the hunt, because he can see and smell very good, and mostly the hunters will see only the back of the moose, when he runs away...
This time I was very lucky, and together with the hard work of Rakki and his master Osmo, I could shoot a moose. But when I thought, that the hard work was done by then, I was wrong. To bring back home the more than 400 pounds of animal was not easy.
Many big birds are living in the forrests of Finland. Here you can see a black cock sitting on the tip of a scotch pine.
We have seen also many wood grouse or mountain cocks (tetrao urogallus) and ptarmigans.
© 2005 by Bernd Schröder • Waldhorn@gmx.de