Phillip Rumpf had what he called a “heart-racing” experience while hunting this week.
While out “blind hunting” in Emigration Canyon (hunting from a blind tent), Rumpf spotted a bull moose. The moose slowly approached Rumpf, going as far as to sniff and stick its nose into Rumpf’s tent blind.
“I had the privilege of meeting this bull moose close up,” he wrote on YouTube. “Heart-racing to say the least, having a 1,000 pound wild animal 10 inches away.”
Rumpf said he was sitting in the blind — which he had set up over an elk watering hole — when he heard clicks and branches snapping. He noticed the bull walking up the ridge.
The bull walked slowly down the meadow, appearing from the forest.
“I got really excited. I love seeing all kinds of wildlife, and it is fascinating to watch them mind their own business,” he said in an email to the Deseret News. “I have seen moose and deer on many occasions. When he was feeding and looking for cows. … I just was really excited.”
But then moose turned toward him, and that “got my heart racing,” Rumpf said.
The moose came right up to Rumpf’s blind and began to sniff around.
“All I could think is ‘don’t move, don’t move,’” Rumpf said. “My heart was pounding and I had a hard time (staying) calm. I am sure I will have many more moose encounters, but nothing this close and nothing that will scare me like this. The thought ran through my mind that if he sees me, he might go crazy and I could get really hurt.”
Philip Rumpf's wireless trail camera from the spot where he saw the bull moose. This time, he says, a cougar shows up on the bottom right. | Courtesy Philip Rumpf
Rumpf said he sees animals often when he’s out hunting. A moose and a calf appeared about 20 yards from him "a few weeks ago," he said.
And today, as he wrote to the Deseret News, he said he spotted a cougar near where he saw the bull moose.
He has a wireless camera set up at that blind and will often see creatures walk by.
"Every once in a while there is a hunter coming through," he said, "but mostly (it takes) cool animal pictures."