Pierre was driving his 1992 Ford van, a vehicle converted with hand controls and a wheelchair lift.

An orange tag dangled from the rearview mirror indicating that, because of Pierre's condition, he was allowed to hunt and fire from his vehicle.

In four previous expeditions, Pierre had come up empty.

"It was pretty desolate the whole time," he said. "The whole time, all we'd seen in five days was one cow."

On the drive north, they stopped at a U.S. Forrest Service office in Ashton and later visited with cowboys wrangling stray cattle along a dirt road. Both sources mentioned eyeing a bull moose inside Pierre's unit.

After driving the unit most of the afternoon, Pierre and Mike began to give up. A light snow covered the ground, and the rutted dirt roads were giving Pierre's van all it could handle. Mike turned to Pierre.

"About five minutes, we better turn and head for home," Pierre remembered Mike saying.

It didn't take two minutes.

"Right there, out of the windshield at 80 yards stood a moose in some sagebrush," Pierre said.

There was a problem, though.

The animal was on the passenger side of the vehicle and Pierre was in the driver's seat. It seemed Pierre might miss a chance that an able-bodied hunter could cash in by hopping out of the vehicle and positioning himself accordingly.

Don't worry, maybe he'd be back tomorrow, Mike was beginning to say. There were about 20 minutes of daylight left.

"He has an area where he can rest his forearm on the window sill and it gives him about a 10-degree or 15-degree arc outside the window," Mike explained. "Any other person like you or I could just rotate around 360 degrees to shoot, but Pierre's got 10 or 15. It all comes down to the orientation of the road."

Mike handed Pierre the rifle anyway, and the day improved. The moose crossed the road, lumbered around a bit and stopped just inside Pierre's arc.

"That's what we're after," Pierre said.

Mike covered his ears and eyes as Pierre squeezed off a single shot.

When he opened his eyes, the moose wasn't in view. It was on the ground 83 paces from the vehicle. Pierre had sunk a shot into the animal's lungs.

Standing broadside over the wheezing animal, Mike made sure the moose was dead and wouldn't suffer through the end. It was just getting dark when Kym Savkranz got on the phone with her dad. It was dad's familiar opener to a conversation.

"I used to joke around, and I'd call and say I got a moose," Pierre said.

"And I'd never believe him," Kim interrupted.

This time was different.

"I just kept saying, 'No I really did, I really got one,"' Pierre said.