Trophy Spotlight:

Bloomfield Moose
Vermont’s best game animal ever!

By Brad Hanson

Nestled in the Bloomfield area of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom in the late 1990s was a bull moose like few other moose that have ever lived. The bull was quite possibly the largest bull moose to ever send a grunt through the early morning mist of a secluded beaver flowage in the Green Mountain State. In fact, this bull could have very well been one of the largest Canada moose on the planet at the time of his prime. Giving a cartoonish name to such a proud and regal animal would not be right. We are just going to refer to him as the Bloomfield Bull. 

Roger Irwin, a gifted professional wildlife photographer from Bloomfield, Vt., knew this moose well. “He was by far the largest bull I have ever seen,” Roger relayed to me when I interviewed him for this column. “He was tending a cow in a brushy field fairly close to the road and I was able to get quite a few photos of him. This was about a week before moose season in 1998 and as far as we know, nobody ever killed him. Not only was his rack huge, body-wise I would estimate him to have weighed well over 1,200 pounds.” To put that into perspective, the current state record for a Vermont moose’s dressed weight is 1,040 pounds.

When the bull didn’t turn up at the Island Pond moose check station during the annual moose hunt, it was apparent he had survived hunting season. Shed antler hunting was beginning to become a popular pastime in the Northeast Kingdom and many shed hunters were hoping to have the task of having to haul the Bloomfield Bull’s crown out of the woods.

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