“Getting a moose is an easy thing to do. All you have to do is apply for 32 years in a row and pretty soon here comes the license,” Robert Baumann said in his strong Wisconsin accent.

Bob continued, “I had to use my preference points, because I had fear that soon we wouldn’t have any moose. There is no recruitment for little moose—the wolves are eating them. I had to apply and use my points.”

Bob took preference points for the last ten years. He maximized his chances of winning a moose tag last year when he cashed them in. Even with points, he only had a 30-percent chance of drawing a tag. Without them, his chances of winning a tag were slim to none.

Bob and his son, Chad scouted in an area where Bob saw moose 30 years ago. “We found several bull moose,” Bob said, “I shot the moose with a Remington 7mm Magnum. It does a pretty good job, but not as good as I thought it would. I shot the moose right through the chest cavity. He stood there and looked at me. So I raised the rifle up, shot him and broke his neck,” Bob said. “That’s all there was too it. It was great.”

He paused and said, “The best part of the hunt was having my son and two friends [Bill Eichmann and Jerry Doebert] from Wisconsin with me. When you can harvest a moose and they will stand on the top of the hill and cheer when you knock him over—that’s the best part of it—being with friends.”

Another best part of best friends was not carrying the moose out alone. “It took us seven backpacking trips to get it up the hill. We filleted it out. The heaviest part was the cape and the horns,” Bob said.

“I don’t expect to get another one,” Bob said. “The one I got was a very respectable moose.” The antler spread was 40 inches and were mounted on a board. He donated the cape to his taxidermist, Dan Horath.

“Moose is good eating,” Bob said. “It is a little courser-grained meat that tastes like beef. We butcher our own meat. You can make roasts, or burgers or steaks out of it. You can have them tenderized. I shared the meat with my friendsand my son. It’s almost all gone.” There is a year’s worth of meat on a moose. Bob hopes to fill his freezer with a cow elk this fall.

After Bob packed the moose into the freezer, he went after his first love, trapping. “I would rather go trapping than hunting. It is more challenge over a longer period of time.” He traps around his home up against the Owl Creek Mountains, north of Shoshoni. He rides his 4-wheeler on a 12-mile circuit each day from October to March.

Bob traps coyotes, badgers, foxes, bobcats. “The fur market seems to be good.” He gave the skulls to Dan Horath to boil out and sell to the tourists. Sometimes he sells whole animals and lesser quality pelts to Dan for mounts or wall hangings. “I make my expenses, that’s about it.”

Bob says he is not a trophy hunter. “I’d still like to harvest that ugly-horned, old mule deer. I want one with horns sticking out all over the place.” He has enough preference points to hunt a bighorn sheep. At 62 years old, he says he doesn’t want to wait much longer. “I may not be able to crawl around in the rocks.”

Chad Baumann loves to hunt mule deer. “If you are willing to do your homework and hold off until the big one comes along, you can harvest a big deer on a regular basis. But, it’s getting tougher. The mule deer don’t grow very old where we live.”

The mule deer winter in mountain lion habitat. The lions live in the rocks and gullies of the foothills where it can hide and stalk successfully. Lions eat a deer a week and Bob says four lions live in the foothills. “I’m always lion hunting; I’ve got a license. Some day I will come around a corner and harvest one. All I want is one. I’m going to carry it over my shoulder and show my wife, Elaine,” Bob said.

Bob reflected, “Hunting is part of my culture. My father, grandfather and uncles all have hunted. I hunt with my son. It means something to be able to go out with the family, whether it was my dad, my brother or son. It is being out there with friends in nature. You don’t have to kill something. You are fortunate to harvest wild game and we only harvest something that we can use.”

Hunting brought Bob to Wyoming 35 years ago. “My brother called me and said ‘let’s go to Wyoming—deer hunting.’ We came out in his private aircraft and crashed over at the Lander Airport. He totaled the airplane. The people took such good care of us that nine months later I moved out here.” The brothers gave away their deer and the Greyhound bus lines lost half their camping gear. “It was a bad experience that we made the best of,” Bob said, “Riverton was a good community to raise my family.”

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