It gets curiouser and curiouser

When the moose ran out across the slash, it took Ike totally by surprise.
But he gathered his wits, brought up the rifle, and opened up on it.
The last shot knocked it down just as it was disappearing into the bush.
The other thing that was disappearing at the same time was the last of the light, foretelling of a pitch black night with no moon.
Ike hurried across the slash to where the moose had dropped. He was in luck. There it lay.
But suddenly it lunged to its feet. Ike whipped up his trusty rifle, took a quick sight, and squeezed the trigger.
“Click!” The pin dropped on an empty chamber.
By the time Ike had reloaded from the 100 odd spare rounds he was carrying on his bandolier (Ike likes to come prepared), the moose was out of sight but could be heard moving around in the heavy brush not many yards off.
Ike decided it was time to go for help.
Back at camp, the post-hunt party was underway when Ike trooped in all despondent and broke the news about the chore that lay ahead. The snake-bite remedy was set aside and the crew saddled up for a drive back to scene of the crime.
A hasty conference at the roadside decided firearms should be left encased in the truck as it was now long past the legal hunting hour and the moose probably had expired by this point anyway.
“I’ll bring an axe along just in case we need to finish it off,” suggested Scrounger, ever ready to improvise in a thrifty manner.
“I used to poll axe cattle all the time back on the farm when we butchered. This can’t be much different,” he offered to his skeptical hunting companions.
The crew headed across the slash liberally armed with flashlights. Scrounger led the way—axe at the ready.
Reaching the last known point of contact, a hushed crew listened intently and decided they could hear the moose still moving a bit.
“Must be his death throes. We’ll move up easy,” directed Pickle, pointing to the liberal blood spoor leading off through the bush.
“When we sight him, we mesmerize him with our flashlights and Scrounger can whack him with the axe,” he added.
Scrounger took the lead, axe at the ready, with Pickle making a light for his footsteps. Sure enough, not 50 yards on, they came to a small clearing where the stricken moose lay moving but obviously weakly.
Scrounger approached the rear of the moose softly and cautiously. All eight flashlights focused on the moose’s head in an attempt to blind it.
Suddenly the moose lunged straight up and swung on its attackers.
Every flashlight turned in the opposite direction as Pickle screamed, “Run for your lives!”
Scrounger, now completely in the dark, shrieked, “Hey, shine your lights back here! I can’t see to hit it with the axe.”
The lights swung back just in time to see the moose knock Scrounger sprawling into brush and itself struggle away into the darkness.
Hot Relish, Pickle’s younger brother, departed for the truck to retrieve his 30-06 with some comment about people bringing axes to a gunfight.
The moose eventually was dispatched and hauled back to camp, and no one was arrested.
At the debating table at the Bakery in Drizzle Creek as the tale concluded, Moose simply turned to me and sagely commented, “Now you can understand why I hide in the basement during the hunting season.”