It was one of the funniest trips I’ve ever taken. We were driving back from St Louise, Missouri with a giant moose head mount in our pickup truck. My truck isn’t very big anyway and the antlers hanging out of the back made it look even smaller.
I’ve been looking for a moose head mount for literally years. I have several items that feature moose on them that I keep in my office at home. I even have not one, but two moose head Christmas ornaments that we faithfully hang on the tree every year. I wouldn’t say that I was obsessed with finding a moose head but I did look on eBay and Craige’s list quite a bit. I tried to keep my eyes open for something local also, but no luck.
Moose heads are very expensive. It costs a lot to hunt them because you have to go where they are, pay for travel and lodging, and buy a license. Then, after you get one you have to pay to get it taxedermied which adds up to several thousand dollars.
Just get on eBay and look at the prices. They are very expensive.
I saw this moose with an opening bid that I could afford but to be honest, I didn’t think I would get it. I made the opening bid which I had done many times before expecting someone and usually several someone’s to out bid me. I kept checking back and to my surprise no one was bidding but I felt like someone else would soon bid and the usual thing would happen, I would have to continue my search. But, I got an email from eBay that I had won the moose head. It was great!
I told my wife that I got the moose head and she said where is it? I told her that it was over by St Louise. She was excited for me because she knew how long I had waited for this. We made plans to travel the six and a half hours to get it and left at 6:00 am on a Saturday morning. It was an uneventful trip to the antique/second hand store that housed the mount. The curator’s name was Paul, a very nice man whom I had much in common with. We shared some small talk for a few minutes and he said, let’s get the work done. “I’ll go get him and bring him out.
Paul brought him out on a furniture moving cart. He was enormous. I didn’t think he would be that big. I was immediately concerned that we couldn’t get him in the bed of my truck but you could tell that Paul had done this kind of stuff before. We put him in and strapped him down with his antlers hanging out the back. He is an Alaskan moose which antlers are bigger that their domestic counterparts.
Paul told me that he bought him and several other mounts from a collection of over 200 mounts at an estate sale in central Missouri. I was so proud to have him. Exactly what I wanted.
I noticed a lot of looks from people when we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch. I had a few questions about him, you couldn’t help but notice. We enjoyed our lunch and took off again.
Just a few minutes into the drive home I noticed people pulling out their phones and taking pictures of him. People would speed up and take pictures then fall back into traffic. But the coolest thing was when we stopped a at a road side rest to stretch our legs and go to the bathroom. People came out of the woodwork asking if they could touch it, if their children could see it up close and if they could take pictures of it. I really didn’t think it would cause that much commotion.
All the way home it was that way. Lots of finger pointing and picture taking. I felt like a celebrity even though they weren’t pointing at me. It was exciting.
I took it to Cabin Fever the next day after church and with the help of one of my grandsons thought we could just hang him on the wall. We could carry him in fairly easily by his antlers but when we tried to hang him up we simply couldn’t get the leverage needed to hoist him up with enough accuracy to get the large screw I had in the slot on the mount.
We sat him back down on the floor and I called my oldest son to see if he had left church yet. He had just pulled out of the parking lot and said he would come and help us. He arrived in just a few minutes. But with all three of us pushing and pulling with all out might, we still couldn’t get hin hung on the wall. Luckily, one of my employees happened to walk in at exactly the right time and I said, “Dude, help us hang this thing.” He put his hands on it and with the strength of four guys, we finally got him up on the wall.
He is on your right as you walk through the front door of our shop. I have been proudly pointing him out to anyone I can. He’s magnificent. Another thing off my bucket list.
