My idea of hunting season is Robert getting vacation from work for approximately two weeks from the end of August until about the 10th of September. Dad, Robert, and Little Robert usually head up to the Denali Highway (between Paxson and Cantwell) around August 30th, set up camp, and start hunting September 1st. Well, this year it turned out a little different.
Robert drew a caribou permit for the Tier I hunt. This was his first time to draw a permit so we were excited to get a chance for some yummy caribou meat. Caribou season opened August 10th and stays open for a while so we knew he had plenty of time to hunt for caribou when moose season opened September 1st.
A friend of my dad's came up to the house around August 16th and let dad in on a not-too-well-known secret. A judge had ordered Fish and Game to open up a special moose hunt from August 15-25. During normal hunting season it's legal to kill a moose with four brow tines, or a spike/fork, or one that has antlers wider than 50 inches. This hunt, however, was changed to three brow tines instead of four. So Dad decided he just had to go. Robert couldn't get off any earlier and there wasn't too many other people who could go on a moment's notice, so Yours Truly was the chosen one. Now, as much as I used to love hunting and still love the outdoors and fishing, I have become comfortable with the idea that I stay at home now and let the boys go out and do the killing. They hunt it; I cook it. I'm not sure if Dad would have gone alone. He says he wouldn't have, but he would have been really disappointed letting that hunt pass him by. So we left August 17th and headed up to Clearwater Creek. I drove the motorhome (a feat in itself), and Dad drove his truck and pulled the trailer with the four-wheelers. Just past Paxson we spotted a cow mooose, stopped to look at it, and saw some Ptarmigan. Ptarmigan are Alaska's state bird. They are pretty dumb chicken-like birds and just stood there while Little Robert got his .22 rifle out and shot three of them. He was so proud of himself and the picture I took of him shows it.
We hunted every morning from about 7 am until noon when it started getting really hot and the moose were bedding down for the day. We saw lots of caribou, but we didn't have Robert's permit (anyone in the family can shoot it), and Robert still wanted to come up during his time off to hunt. We saw a couple of bull moose but we weren't sure if they were legal. Finally, we saw three bull moose on Friday around noon. They were a ways away and we lost sight of them after watching them for a few minutes. We decided later that night to go back and just see how long it would take us to get to that spot so we could get up early Saturday and find them again. We ended up seeing one of them and just couldn't pass up the opportunity to shoot it since we saw it was legal. After Dad shot it he and Robert headed down to the spot where it was down and I looked behind me and saw another bull moose. It was so difficult to resist shooting it too - I could tell I had the "fever" right then!
The next couple of hours can only be described as traumatizing. LOL! We had to get the moose gutted since we would have to leave it at the kill sight overnight. My dad was on some new medicine that (we later found out) makes his heart rate slow down. He became really tired early on and so I had to do the gutting. Let me tell you that I have seen caribou dressed out, but never a moose. They are HUGE!! Waay bigger than caribou! I followed my dad's instructions and was so tired that, at one point when I accidentally poked a hole in the stomach and green stuff spewed all over my face and hair, I either had to laugh or sit down and cry. So we all laughed. Neither my dad nor my son can hear very well so I was very worried about bears this whole time too. It's difficult to gut/skin a moose while trying to listen for movement in the bushes at the same time.
The next morning we went back and it took us almost four hours to get the moose packed up. It was a lot of hard work, but a very good time with my dad.
When we got back to Anchorage my mom was very tired from having watched Cheyenne for five days. I said, "I don't even want to hear it...I've been inside of a moose!"
Robert, Little Robert, and Dad were able to go back up there the beginning of September and get a caribou. Right after they shot it they were approached by a AK State Trooper from Glennallen. He had a film crew with him from National Geographic. Turns out it was the same Trooper from a couple years ago when my Dad was fined after he shot from the road at a dummy moose that the Troopers had set up near Paxson. A good laugh was had by all and National Geographic interviewed them for a documentary they are doing which will be aired sometime in March. I'll post when we hear exactly when that will be shown. The Trooper tried to get Robert to join...who knows at this point? We're keeping our options open.
So that is our hunting story for this year. There's always more to the story, but that's all I'll share this year. Haha!! :)
