On Aug. 5, a 95-year-old Michigan man will pack up a moose head the size of a recliner and make one last trip to the Canadian bush. Edward A. Hall, a lifelong resident of Eaton Rapids, is returning his record-book bull, affectionately named Old Ugly, to the place it was shot more than half a century ago.
It was the fall of 1970, long before GPS and satellite tags, and Ed Hall was flying into the wilds of Ontario. He had one goal: to kill a moose worthy of hanging on the living room wall.
Hall has never been one to do things halfway. Born in 1930, he grew up on a farm just down the road from where he still lives. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, surviving the 1953 Battle of Pork Chop Hill after volunteering for a forward observation post.
Hall had been hunting moose since 1962, but he was looking for a new area to hunt, and he knew what moose country looked like. He was flying over a remote, nearly untouched stretch of the Nameigos River on his way to hunt another lake when he found what he was looking for.
“I immediately recognized it as prime moose country,” Hall tells Hook & Barrel. “I was all over the back of the plane looking, trying to figure out how to get down there. I knew it wasn’t being hunted, so I set about trying to figure out how to get in.”
The spot was 28 miles northeast of White River, Ontario. There didn’t seem to be any way to get in there other than bushwhacking, so the following season, Hall and his buddy, Jack Harmon, canoed their way up into that valley. They spent two days in there, but while they saw plenty of humongous moose tracks, and even spooked a big bull that went thrashing through the timber with its antlers clunking against the trees like cast-iron pans, they both went home empty-handed.
The following season, Hall went back. This time with a new hunting partner, Hank Colstock, whom he recruited while getting a haircut.
“I told my barber about the trip. He finished cutting my hair and said, ‘Ed, I’ll go hunting with you,’” Hall says.
Big Bull Energy
The third week of the season, the pair flew into a lake that hadn’t been touched by other hunters, shaved off a portage, and headed back into the wilderness.
“We had to canoe upstream, portage a mile with no trail, and cut our own path through that valley. I said to Hank, ‘I’m not going to shoot a moose unless I can hang it on the wall.’”
It wasn’t just talk. Hall and his wife Doris had built their Eaton Rapids home the year before, in 1969, and installed a 12-foot vaulted ceiling in the family room. It would be the perfect place to hang a big bull.
That chance came early on their second morning in the valley.
“We’d only paddled a few minutes that morning when I stood up in the front of the canoe to look over the willow brush and marsh grass,” Hall remembers.
“There was a big bull just standing there with its head down. The wind was blowing straight from him to us. He couldn’t smell us. Hank put me on shore,” Hall recalls. “I raised my rifle. He was a hundred yards away. Down he went.”
But this wasn’t just any moose. When Hall and Colstock skinned the animal, they found he’d been badly injured in a fight with another bull.
“He was bruised all over. He’d been gored in the stomach and was full of infection. That moose wouldn’t have lasted a few more days.”
Measuring Up
Hall hauled the rack home and took it to his long-time taxidermist, Franklin Salts, who knew he hunted in Ontario, having mounted several animals for Hall before.
“He took one look at it and said, ‘That’s not an Ontario bull. Where’ve you been? British Columbia?’ I told him if that wasn’t an Ontario moose, he had an awful long walk.”
Curious to see how Old Ugly measured up, Hall contacted a local Boone and Crockett Club measurer Bob Jones.
“He got real excited just looking at the antlers. Turned out to be 219 7/8 points. Number one in Ontario at the time. Number seven in all of Canada.”
For 55 years, Old Ugly watched over the Hall family from his spot on the wall, a centerpiece in the home where he and Doris raised three children. He even carried a photo of himself with the bull in his wallet for decades.
“My wife and kids decided he wasn’t the most beautiful creature they’d ever seen,” Ed laughs. “They dubbed him Old Ugly.”
But what Old Ugly lacked in looks, he made up for in presence.
“For as long as I can remember, he was right there on the living room wall, and my grandparents’ house was the central place for family gatherings,” says granddaughter Rachel Hall Beecroft. “At Christmastime, I remember tinsel and ornaments hanging off of Old Ugly. When I heard that he was taking it back up to Ontario, I didn’t even hesitate. I wanted to be part of it.”
The Return of Old Ugly
Last October, with a stretch of beautiful driving weather ahead of him, Hall decided he would take a trip to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in Wawa. He walked in and told them he wanted to bring Old Ugly home. The Ministry gladly accepted.
“They told me they would be delighted to have my moose back in Ontario,” Hall says.
The plan is to put the mount on public display at a visitor center, where future generations can appreciate the size of the animal and the story behind it.
“I wrestled for years with what to do with him,” Hall says. “But I finally figured out he needs to go back where he came from. That’s where he belongs.”
Taking Old Ugly down, however, wasn’t easy.
“The antlers alone weigh 50 pounds. It took four of us and a 10-foot steel tower to get him off the wall safely,” Hall says. “He was hanging on the head of a quarter-inch lag bolt. That thing held for 55 years.”
Now, Hall’s moose is once again on the move. On Aug. 5, 2025, Hall and four generations of his family, including Rachel, her mother, and her 4-year-old daughter, will make the trip together to deliver the moose back to the Canadian bush.
For Hall and his family, the trip isn’t just about returning a set of antlers. It’s about closing a loop that started more than half a century ago.
“He was only American for 55 years,” Ed chuckles. “Now he’s going home.”
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