There are moose and then there are moose. The bull that Robert Houle and his brother William shot on the opening morning of New Hampshire’s 2011 season might be considered a moose with a capital “M.”

“I happened to be working the check station when that one came in,” said state Fish and Game wildlife biologist Mark Ellingwood, who oversaw the weighing of some 50 moose on opening weekend. “Anything over 800 pounds is a big animal; a 900-pound animal definitely catches everybody’s attention. It’s extraordinary.”

Extraordinary, indeed.

With 22-point antlers that measured almost 6 feet across and an estimated live weight of 1,300 pounds – 900 pounds is dressed weight, after most inedible parts are removed but before the meat is processed – the Houles’ moose was the biggest of the 111 animals checked in throughout New Hampshire on Saturday and Sunday.

It won’t be a surprise if it is the biggest of the entire nine-day season, which ends Oct. 23, since it’s only about 100 pounds short of the live weight of the all-time biggest bull moose taken in New Hampshire.

Robert Houle, 78, of Nashua said getting that moose was lucky for them in more ways than one. He and William, 77, who have hunted for their whole adult lives, spotted it “probably 10 minutes after the legal shooting time began on the first day.”

They followed the moose several hundred yards up a steep hill about 40 miles north of Berlin, part of a hunting region that New Hampshire Fish and Game knows as C-2.

The brothers, each carrying a .338 Winchester Magnum (a rifle that’s “a bit much for deer, but good for moose”), developed a plan.

“We said, we’ll both shoot him at the same time – but he shot first and shot through brush, and the bullet broke up on the brush,” said Robert. “(The bull) didn’t go down, so I shot him and he went down … hit him high on the back, I saw the hair fly. Then he got up, so I shot him again.”

The moose appeared dead but William put a bullet through its brain to make sure.

Then came the really hard part: getting the carcass out of the woods. The bull weighed almost as much as a Smart car, and motorized vehicles like ATVs aren’t allowed in those woods, Houle said. It was rough going, too.

“It was steep up there, very steep, very rough. I thought it would be easier coming down but it wasn’t,” said Robert Houle.

You can’t drag a half-ton animal even when conditions are good. So they hired a crew, one of many available for opening day, which had an electric winch attached to a removable pickup truck bedliner.

The crew carried the bedliner into the woods, winched the moose onto it, and then dragged the bedliner a couple of hundred yards to the road using the winch, hooking its 100 feet of Kevlar line to various trees as support.

The whole process took over an hour. They drove the carcass to the local fish hatchery where the nearest game processing station was established, so it could be weighed and registered, as required by law.

“There was a hullaballoo,” said Robert Houle. “They called people on their cell phones, and everybody ganged up to see it.”

The North Country takes its hunting seriously, but moose season can be festive because of its unusual nature.

The modern season started in 1988, as the moose population rebounded from the low point resulting from excess hunting and destruction of forests, but the number of hunters remains carefully controlled as part of long-term efforts to restore the population of New England’s premier game species.

Only 395 permits were issued in New Hampshire this year, and almost 14,000 people entered the lottery to win one.

As a result, there are a lot of people who are interested in moose hunting but can’t participate, so some come to the check stations as a kind of substitute.

Ellingwood said people bring lawn chairs and make a day of it, watching the animals as they come in.

“There’s always a crowd at these North Country check stations. There’s a lot of public interest above and beyond the hunting community,” he said.

Once the bull moose was reduced to steaks, ribs, sausage, hamburger and other edibles, each brother got about 300 pounds of processed meat. William will have the head mounted, partly because Robert isn’t sure his house has anywhere big enough to display the enormous trophy.

Robert didn’t have much time to talk about it Tuesday, because he and brother were buying freezers to hold all the meat.

He didn’t think he’d have any problem using it all, however. “I’ve got plenty of relatives,” he added.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-5831 or dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com.