Moose Everywhere!

I was having to dig deep into the chest freezer before I struck any meat and my poor truck was looking sad and neglected, nearly rusted in half. Could it make the 1500km journey? I just had to get out for a moose hunt before heading off on another ski training camp. I topped up the oils (as per every tank of gas), checked my tires, and hoped that it’d make it. My friend Logan and I were going to the opposite side of the territory, north. I was leaving next week so this was my only chance. I headed north because it was early in the [hunting] season and the moose rut earlier up north. I use Google Earth tirelessly as well as Yukon Mining Lands Viewer to plan hunting trips. I’ve been thinking about hunting this particular river for a while now. 

When I’m looking for places to hunt I rule out an area if I think that someone can drive an off road vehicle, motorboat or even land a float plane nearby. This river was perfect because I could tell from the satellite imagery that it was a shallow creek with rapids, not a river. I love exploring new areas, but we were really taking a gamble on this one as I’d never heard of anyone running this river. We didn’t know if there was a good put-in or if there was, how to get to it. It wouldn’t be my first time running creek-like rivers and I knew that one of the biggest concerns is always log jams. I didn’t make out any sure signs through the grainy satellite imagery. We were going for it.

I estimated it to be four long days. We’d be hunting moose by canoe and pack raft. We didn’t have a rifle; just my bow for hunting and a 12 gauge for bear protection. I’d arrowed a dall sheep last month so I figured a moose would be no problem with a bow.

We found what we hoped was the right dirt road, which we hoped would at least get us close to the river, which we hoped was runnable. I had high hopes. It went on and on for over 20km. “Maybe around the next corner” we’d tell ourselves. We had almost given up a few times until finally the river came into view. The put in was good, and the river looked shallow. I was also happy to see the river flowing at a reasonable speed. By looking at topo maps I could only make a rough estimate on river speed.

Here's our gear for the hunt!

 We unloaded our gear from the truck and tossed it in the canoe. We’d only inflate the pack raft if we had to. We dinged some under-the-surface rocks right off the bat. Before long I was seriously regretting not bringing any sort of epoxy/fiberglass repair kit. This river was SHA-LLOW. The moose country looked unreal though. We’d float down, call, and fish while we waited. If only the moose were as easy to catch as the grayling in the river! We set up camp on a small beach and began to cook dinner. I put out a cow call and returned to making dinner, going back to the river every 20 minutes or so to call. Just as we were starting to loose light I did one more call: "MOOOoo" – I was cut short when I glanced to my left and there was a giant bull moose standing in the middle of the river, 90 yards away. It was no wonder we didn’t hear him coming, we had the MSR Dragonfly stove going full blast and the swift current in the shallow water was the only other sound we could hear. I grabbed my bow and ranged the moose, which was now walking away from our bright orange tent and yellow canoe. With a rifle, this hunt was over but 90 yards was too far with my bow. Even my most illustrious cow call could not lull him back towards us. He was spooked. It was getting dark anyways so we returned to our dinner of grouse curry and went to bed. I was frustrated but happy that the rut had for sure started. It was only Sept 13.

The moose is hiding right behind those big spruce trees

 We hadn't floated downstream a kilometre the next morning before we pulled over on a nice gravel bar. I thought the moose from last night would still be in the area. When I inspected the gravel bar I immediately smelled moose. There was a fresh "piss hole", moose scent was in the air and I just knew that something would come in here if we called and waited long enough. We called and waited for almost two hours; nothing. We crossed the river to get a view on a high esker. We had a good view but didn’t see anything. We were just about scamper back down when we heard grunting coming towards us, fast. Logan stayed lookout as I hurried back down to the river and paddled across to where I was calling before. Logan was giving me hand signals from atop the hill. Some of Logan’s signals were hard to interpret. We definitely should have debriefed before parting ways. I couldn’t hear or see the moose, but it was apparent Logan could. He was pointing into the bush and doing the ol' hands-above-the-head-antler-signal. I couldn’t figure out why no moose had shown up yet. I’d call and look back at Logan through my range finder. By this point we’re getting better at hand signals and I understood the moose was just standing in the bush but didn’t care for my cow calls. I tried a bull grunt and still nothing.

We had now wasted half the day and only paddled one kilometre of river. This moose obviously wasn’t coming to me so I figured I might as well try going to him. I know enough to know that you can’t walk up to a moose without it hearing you. Those big radar ears can hear a call from miles away. It’s not often a cow would just walk up to a bull so I opted to bull grunt as I walked towards where Logan was pointing. I had just started into the bush and I stumbled on a pile of bones from a moose long past, likely wolf killed. I picked up an old sun bleached shoulder blade and rubbed it gently on some willows as I slowly walked into the bush. After hours of watching Logan’s hand signals, finally I saw the moose for myself, his huge antlers towering above the brush. It would be hard to fling an arrow through the bush. The moose was standing on the edge of a more open muskeg meadow so I decided to walk right out in the open meadow. I held the shoulder blade above my head and slowly tilted it side to side with every step while grunting. Finally when I was 50 yards from the beast he started displaying. He was just standing there snorting air and huffing, not really grunting. He really didn’t want to get out of his little swamp in the bush but he knew he had to fight now. He started raking trees and angling towards me. He was still in the bush at 40 yards and I almost shot when there was about a foot opening between two trees. I thought he would come closer, so I waited. At one point he started angling away and I thought he was going to back out of this fight. Then he turned again and walked right out into the opening. I had the shoulder blade over my head in one hand and my rangefinder in the other. For ten seconds I experienced what I imagine to be Parkinson's disease and couldn’t get a reading with the rangefinder. Finally I got it: 30 yards. He was broadside but he was looking right at me. I didn’t want to just drop the shoulder blade to grab the bow because he might know that something’s up. I waited until he turned his head a bit then dropped my “antler” and knocked an arrow. I put one right through the bottom of his rib cage, behind his shoulder. He spun around in a circle and I shot another one through both lungs. He only took a couple steps and fell down against a tree, coughing up lung. That’s when I saw a cow emerge from behind the willows. That explains it: no wonder he wasn’t coming into my calls, I can’t compete with a real cow moose. “WE GOT HIM!” I yelled back to Logan who was scrambling down the bank. The 1200lb moose was lying about 400 yards from the riverbank. He fell against a log and the two of us were unable to even push him over on his side so we had no choice but to skin him as he lay. A few hours later we had it field dressed and all the meat in game bags. We stupidly did not bring any pack frame so we ended up putting a pole between the two of us to carry the quarters. We only had to use headlamps for the last couple trips. When we had all the meat back at the river we lit a huge bon fire, took off our blood soaked clothes, and went for a swim.

The moose! Meat for the winter. 56" wide, well over the Pope and Young minimum 

 The next morning we were heading back to the kill site to retrieve the antlers when we heard more grunting. I did a quiet cow call just for fun. 15 minutes later when we just finished sawing off the antlers, another huge moose appeared out of the morning fog. I picked up the antlers and gave a grunt. I immediately regretted my foolish behaviour when the giant animal came stomping towards us like a raging bull. I threw down the antlers and picked up the shotgun loaded with 5 slugs and we backed away shouting at the moose. He sure didn’t like the fact that we were two assholes and not a cow moose. We had to back off and wait some time before he finally wandered off and we could collect our antlers.

We had about 700lbs of moose, 100lbs of gear and 170lbs of me in the canoe. The rest of the gear and Logan were in the pack raft. We had made it less than a quarter of our way down the river. I knew that it would be faster to line our way back upriver to the truck, but Logan and I both agreed that would be lame. We went downstream. We would paddle until dark. I say paddle but I probably ended up lining the canoe down half the river. We were running aground before, now we had three times the weight in our boat. Paddling the canoe solo was like trying to steer a barge with a soupspoon. My fiberglass canoe has four “ribs” that help it keep its structure. Before the end of the day I’d splintered two of them. More swear words came out of my mouth that day than ever before. The current would pick up before a 90-degree corner riddled with sweepers. “OHHH FUUUCCCKK” I pried on my paddle until I was sure it’d break under the force. I slammed a few sweepers and went over and under some other ones. Logan was having an easier time in the pack raft but was probably getting tired of listening to my bitching. The boat sprung a slow leak so I was bailing as I paddled. When I was lining the canoe downriver the bow of the canoe would sometimes run aground and the entire force of the river’s current would try to whip the stern around. If I beached it sideways in the river, the current would surely just flow over the gunwales and swamp the boat.

I kept thinking as we made it further down stream, more tributaries would flow in and add more water to the river. The streams didn’t seem to help the water volume though. Finally it was getting dark, we were exhausted, and everything was soaking wet, especially Logan’s clothes which were in a not so dry dry-bag. We chopped wood with our remaining daylight, lit a big fire, and made a drying rack to hang out wet clothes. We sat around the fire tending the clothes and practicing our moose calls- apparently we’re pretty good. It was pitch dark when we heard grunting right behind our tent. We were camped on a really small island and there was obviously a moose on the island with us. He passed right by our huge fire at no more than 20 yards. We shone our dim LED headlamps and we could see the reflective eyes of a huge bull walking right through our camp. I wasn’t about to pretend to be another moose this time. The shotgun was now designated as moose protection, not bear protection. He crossed over to the other side of the river and was thrashing the alders like crazy. Before long, there was more grunting, but on the opposite side of the river from the moose thrashing the willows! We were definitely in moose country.

Drying our clothes before the moose walked through the camp

 I was glad we were not trampled in the night. Yesterday left me sore all over and it was hard to imagine that we had another estimated two days of this. We repacked the canoe with the meat we’d taken out to air. I made more of an effort to distribute the weight better this time. Right off the start I could feel it was a hundred times easier to steer. I felt stupid for not taking the time to rearrange the weight yesterday. It was still a bitch to steer though and the river was still shallow as all hell. We'd be completely screwed if anything happened to either of the boats. There were a couple rapids where we should have taken all 800 pounds of stuff out of the boat and portaged, but we lined instead and just about paid for it a few times. I was glad to have brought my chest waders so I could jump out of the boat at the first sight of a boulder field and line the canoe down. There were a couple small logjams that we managed to just squeak through in a narrow channel. All in all it was an easier day than the previous one and by the end of the day there was starting to be more water in the river! We knew we were home free when we started seeing a couple cabins on the river. The first signs of man in three days! By nightfall we made it to the confluence of a larger river. We floated down a few kilometres and found a nice island to camp at. When we were unloading the boats another great big bull moose stepped off the island and started swimming across the river! We hadn’t even called this one. We heard him thrashing in the bushes across the river and could hear wolves howling. We howled back and they’d respond right away. We didn’t want them to come eat our moose meat though so we stopped the foolishness.

Not a lot of freeboard left on that canoe!

Deeper water!

 The next day was a huge relief. Finally there was enough water in the river that we didn’t have to worry about rocks and sweepers. My boat was on its last legs. I bailed it as we floated down, eating what was left of our food supplies: prunes dipped in peanut butter. Yum? We saw a nice black bear eating berries on the hillside. By mid afternoon we reached the take-out. Now, the plan was for one of us to guard the meat while the other hitchhiked on the deserted road to the 4x4 trail where we had stashed a mountain bike. It only took an hour to snag a ride, not bad considering I was the dirtiest, looking bushman in the north. The mountain bike ride was further than I remembered but I was happy to collect a few game birds along the way: a few grouse and some ptarmigan- 3 of them in one shot! I made it to the truck. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the big bull moose standing 200 yards from the vehicle! I sat and watched him for a while and decided that I’d poked fun at enough moose and didn’t need to get him any closer. It was an hour and a half drive back to Logan and the moose meat.

We celebrated with a couple of my home brews and a jar of olives Logan had saved. The drive home would be too much that night so we spent one more night.

The next morning I shot a spruce grouse with my slingshot and we ate it for breakfast with some cranberries berries we found around camp (besides moose meat we were literally out of food). We stopped at the corner store to buy a Dr Pepper. I’d been craving sugar for days and the prunes dipped in peanut butter just didn't do it for me. We were less than 2 hours from home when we saw a work truck parked on the shoulder of the road. The driver was on his cell phone, looking at a bull moose, no doubt calling his buddy to come quick with a rifle! That concluded seeing moose everyday of the trip!

Now I had two days to hang the meat and two days to butcher the entire thing before leaving to California for an altitude ski training camp. We finished butchering and packaging at 2am. I had five hours to pack my gear for my three week trip and be at the airport.