Moose Hunt 2011

There is a tremendous amount to catch, but this hunt was probably the most epic and incredible adventure for me in all of 2011. My hopes are that I can remember the details well enough still to blog it and then keep my memory of this hunt for a long time to come. A good many others have made sure I am well aware that even long time Alaskans have hunted for years and not had the chance to take a moose like this.

The area we hunt is in a remote location that has been hunted by my father in law, Chuck, and his family for  50 years or somewhere there abouts. It is only accessible by float plane, so it is well removed from anyone or anything. We truck all of the gear to Lake Louise and then fly it in from that much closer location to camp. The evening that we drove to the Lake Louise cabin for the night there was enough light that Chuck said he could get one person flown into moose camp if anyone wanted to go by themselves for the night. The only other guys in our hunt party were James, my brother in law from Hawaii and Kimball who had also never been up in that area, so I was the only one that really could get in there by myself and know the surroundings.  I don't know exactly the time we left Lake Louise with my gear, but it is starting to get a little darker this time of year, so Chuck was limited on time to get me dropped off up in the mountains and then himself back to the cabin safely before dark. When we flew into Moose Lake there were five or six moose on the lake already and it seemed that they were all over the mountains as well. Chuck and I off loaded my gear, we turned the plane around and he was  immediately in the air headed back to the cabin where James and Kimball waited.  Once I could no longer hear the airplane, everything around me became extremely quiet and it took a while to sink how alone I really was, I know there would be no chance of seeing anyone until the following day. It was a bit spooky to me thinking about that, so I tried to keep myself busy by setting up camp and getting ready for the night.

Once I had my tent, bag and belongings in place there was not much else to do, so I turned my thoughts to food.  I soon discovered that my camp stove and cooking supplies were all great and dandy, except that the fuel for the stove was not in the container I thought it was, so I had no way of cooking the food.   I planned on making a quick meal out of what I had available (Mountain House needs boiling water), and by this time it was dark and starting to get FREEZING cold. I don't think that I have ever seen it get so cold so fast like it did this night; by 9:00 or 9:30 there was frost on the tent, canopy and the brush all around.  My toes were freezing and I was not in the mood to tromp around trying to find fire wood.  All I wanted was to cook something hot to eat quick and then get in my mummy bag.  Lucky for me the previous occupants of the camp site were slobs and I found among their trash a canister of fuel and was able to use it to boil water for my dinner.

I was so incredibly cold that night! All I could do was crash into my sleeping bag and try to get warm and a little bit of shut eye. Unfortunately TRY is about all I did in the sleep department. The main problem when camping in a tent by yourself in the middle of the Alaska wilderness is that every sound heard absolutely must be a beastly bear coming into camp and I am going to have to sleep with my rifle in hand to save my own life.  I did take some comfort in the fact that there were several moose still in the lake next to me that were sloshing around eating greenery off the bottom, I figured they would be on edge and maybe even leave the area if a grizzly was around. One the other hand they were so noisy that I could not hear much else and my brain was still going crazy trying to figure out what every sound was.  I estimate that a total of three hours of sleep were had that night, that estimate comes from constantly glancing at my phone to see how much longer I had to endure the brutal cold, darkness and noises.

That morning I did catch a few more zzz's feeling more comfortable now that I could see. 

I finally got out of my sleeping bag I could hardly get ready fast enough.  There were already several moose in the lake and it was a beautiful clear day. Prior to the actual hunt I was able to purchase my very first hunting rifle along with a nice set of optics for glassing and a sweet scabbard day pack. My new binoculars were fantastic in scoping out the lake and being able to see the moose so well.  I checked out the lake for a while, but only saw a few cows and a couple small bulls, so I decided to head up behind camp a ways where Chuck had flown a couple weeks earlier and spotted a big bull.  I did not really think a bull like that would still be in the same area from that long ago, but I wanted to check it out anyway. Making my way up a ridge I found a nice nook to stand and glass for a while.  I was able to see down to the lake and other areas quite well.  Being very still and quiet, I remained on this ridge for about half of an hour and saw a few other moose, but nothing of any significant size. It seemed as though the moose and other wildlife in the area were undisturbed and unaware of my presence. It was almost perfect even a little surreal being the only hunter around for miles.  Listening to the various sounds of the Alaska wild, one thing I could hear almost the entire time I was on this hill was what sounded like a grunting moose or something just over the next ridge.  I finally decided to go check out the noise that I had been hearing for some time now and as I turned to go over the next ridge I immediately spotted two gigantic, white palm spreads of a bull moose barley over the brush. "Oh $^%*" is all that popped into my head and I stopped in my tracks, he was looking right at me. I think he was having a hard time making making out what I was and I could not really see his body, so I snuck up the ridge a little further to get some height and for what I prayed could be good shot. When I did this he moved up and towards me seeming to try and get a better view of me as well. Unfortunately for him this gave me a perfect view of his body standing broadside at me and I simply wrapped my arm around the sling to balance my new Weatherby 300 Mag. and squeezed one off... I knew it hit him immediately, but as he flinched and took off I was nervous that the shot was not a kill shot, so I pulled the trigger again in haste and just missed in front of him, but before I could get my cross hairs on him again he stopped and paused for a moment before crashing down like a huge redwood tree. His legs didn't buckle and it was as if in slow motion that he began tilting to one side and with legs straight as can be, the best way I can describe it was like a tree falling... starts off slow. It was spectacular!!!! This was my first moose taken with my very own gun and I knew he was a big bull.

Handling a 1200lb dead  by yourself is not very easily done. I used some rope and nearby trees to adjust the legs so that I could begin skinning this beast. This is really the first big game that I have taken by myself and it was a bit daunting trying to remember what it was Chuck had shown me the year before on the moose we took not but a couple hundred yards from where this moose now was laying. It was a very slow and arduous task, and I finally got some help about 1:00 in the afternoon. Chuck dropped off James and told him to come find me and help, because they did see that I had a moose down when they flew in. James however, got turned around a bit and headed off in the wrong direction. Luckily I spotted him headed over some ridges a long ways away and was able to whistle and get him turned around.

This bull ended up being a 62" spread on his rack, which 50 inches was all I needed to be legal, so he was plenty big enough. The right palm has a really cool fold or buckle in it that you can see in the photos and it give some character to the rack. I plan on mounting it myself, which most of that process is already done now. I have boiled down the skull, and now mainly need to degrease and bleach it and it will be ready to hang. Though there is no where that Amy is going to let me put the darn thing.

Anyway, my buddy Kimball also shot a nice bull on this trip as well. We had only seen one shootable bull all the next three or four days and Kimball was able to get close enough, but a cow and calf were between him and the bull, so he never got a good enough shot to take. Finally though on the last day we had spotted a bull about a mile away in the woods and it is really cool, almost spooky seeing those moose from so far away, because all that can be seen is the white from their antlers every now and again, so it is quite elusive to track one down. We were able to stalk it and James and I put Kimball up on the ridge and had a good plan of attack because after about a half of an hour from splitting up he dropped it with one shot. Although Kimball says it was a skilled shot, we know he is full of Bologna, because he was aiming for the vitals and barely hit him in the back of the neck, shattering his spine, so it dropped like a rock... lucky!

Camping on Weiner Lake

This Memorial Day weekend we did get a little camping in. What started as a horrible decision to camp in a State camp site that would have cost $20 and been surrounded with other bonehead campers not fifteen feet away on all sides actually turned out to be an awesome camp trip. Rather than pitch our tents amidst the neighbors, we called a friend that has some property north of Palmer about 40 miles. It is actually the site of his home way out in the woods that burned down this last year or so. I believe that it caught fire due to his cooking a turkey in one of those deep fryers. That would suck!

Anyway, we ended up having about 70 acres all to ourselves with some sweet fire pits, and a beautiful lake with fish, beavers, and swans. We pitched out tents down by this lake and had great tinfoil dinners that Amy had made for us, hung out by the fire and chilled with our friends, Bryce and Tara.

The night was kind of crazy! Sometime in the middle of the night Tara had to get up with their little girl and go home. I think it may have been too cold for the little one. Dane and Ty handled it okay, we had been sure to put both of them in the 5 Degree bags and Amy and I took some less than stellar bags for ourselves. I have never had to endure such a cold night in such a crappy sleeping bag. At one point I was cold enough to get out of the bag and put as much clothing on as I could find and shoot back into my bag as fast as I could. Amy got cold enough that she woke Ty up and put him in her bag to help warm her up. So we need to get some sleeping bags that are made for Alaska. They may have worked fine for Utah, but they are not going to cut it here.

One cool thing about being awake, freezing to death is that I could hear a pack of wolves howling all night. They sounded to be fairly close to where we were camping and kind of scared me at first, I have never been camping in a tent when I can listen to the wolves at night. The closest thing to that would be sleeping in a hammock in Island Park Idaho and hearing the coyote's around camp, but that is not as cool as the wolves.

We headed home that morning fairly early, because our friends had pretty much left in the cover of darkness and we were just chillin now. The boys had fun though and we came home and got to go flying in Grandpa Chucks airplane, which the boys loved. They crammed in the back seat together and had a lot of fun. There are a few perks about living in Alaska and having a Father in Law with a lot of great toys.





































































This ugly thing was hanging in the tree where we had our dinner, sadly we did not notice it until after we had started eating. Pretty Gnarly!

Horses in the High Uintahs

I was recently invited to go on a camping and fishing trip with my friend, Kirk and his father in law. They were headed into the Uintah mountains, a place that I had never been, but heard much about being the location of the tallest mountain in Utah, King's Peak.

Our trip began much different than I had anticipated and I knew I was in for one stupendous weekend when we finally headed up the trail with only a couple of hours of light left in the day. Getting ourselves and the horses ready was a lot of work. Once on the trail we only had some real fun things happen. The pack horse had a panic attack throwing and trampling all of our gear until it was scattered all over in the woods. In all of the chaos and panic the lead horse took off on its own down the trail, leaving Kirk and I chasing after it on our own out of control horses. We did finally make it to a respectable camp spot for the night after repacking the horses and building up our courage again to get going again. Kirk and I both are quite far from horse folk.

The rest of the weekend went much better than the first day of adventures. We were able to catch many Brook trout in the high alpine lakes and even enjoyed some fine dining while roughing it in the outdoors.

The Uintah mountains are extremely pretty and full of great scenery that is unique from other mountains in and around the Utah area. I was taken back by the beauty that I had lived so close to for most of my life, but had never enjoyed until this weekend. I look forward to returning to this high mountain trails, though I hope to experience them in a much more foot to trail way, rather than hoof to trail.

Backpacking the Worlds Steepest Mountain Range

Yes, actually I have conquered the steepest mountain range in the world. Many, upon hearing that might not believe me or have some picture in their heads of this grandeur mountain like Everest or K2, but both assumptions would be inaccurate.

The valley where I grew up has at its western edge a mountain range called the Wellsvilles. As a kid growing up in Cache Valley this mountain range does in fact seem to be the tallest mountains ever. To make sense of that for you let me briefly explain. You see what it actually means is steepest not tallest. The vertical incline from the base of the mountains to the very peak has the steepest average. So its not that they are so awe inspiring to compare them to the Himalayas or any other great mountains, its just that from the very bottom to the very top the angle as a whole is steeper than any other range. It also pertains to the range in its entirety, not just comparing one mountain to another.

It has been about twenty years that I have lived under the shadows of the Wellsvilles. As a kid I would day dream about one day climbing them or maybe even skiing down the face of Wellsville Cone. This last weekend at the age of 27, I finally made my trek to the top. It was not just a trek either, it was a full backpacking excursion.

My buddy Kirk had planned a backpacking trip to the top of the mountains this summer and invited me to come along. We planned and anticipated the trip for about six weeks and left Thursday, August 30th at lunch time and began our 4,000 foot climb. The plan was to hike to the top and camp in between the two most prominent peaks, Box Elder Peak and the Wellsville Cone. There is a nice bowl between the two and we had been told there is a spring as well, so this was our destination for our camp site over the next two nights.

The Summit of Box Elder Peak seemed to be forever away and took around five hours for us to reach. I didn't think that was too bad considering the 50lb packs we were carrying. Well, Kirk had 52lbs and I had only 38lbs in my pack. I knew that if I carried as much as Kirk I would be left behind or be carried most of the way. I carried about ten pounds less water than Kirk, which was a gamble on the spring having water. If there was nothing but dirt and gravel I would be a sad little man, but I would have dug into Kirks supply when he was asleep if infact I was running low on water, so I took the lighter load for sure.

Once on top we beheld the most amazing views. I have never seen the Valley from such perspectives before. We could peer down one side into Cache Valley and on the other into Brigham City and even towards the Salt Lake valley. Towards the southeast we could see the Uintah mountains, which we have a trip planned there soon as well.

From the summit we made our way down into the valley to set up camp and found that the spring we hoped for did still have water flowing. This was a major relief for me, meaning I would not having to ration water so heavily. We set up our camp, made some dinner, and then being exhausted from the hike, got ready for a great night sleep. My thoughts were heading to the sleeping bag that I have never hiked so hard in my life and I am going to sleep very well, however I was horribly mistaken. That night was absolutely the most horrific, unbearable, wishing for death kind of night that I have ever had. The overcast kept the night very warm and muggy. It was too warm in fact to even be in the sleeping bag, but if any part of your body was out of the bag the swarming mosquito's would bite all night long. It wasn't just the biting that kept you awake, it was them buzzing your head and face constantly, sometimes even flying into a nostril or ear allowing near zero sleep the entire night.

Our camp location proved to be popular that night as well. We set up just down the ridge from the spring which is probably some of the only water on the mountain. There were a few times that we had animals tromping by as they made there way to and from the spring. None were more exciting than the very large and loud animal that grunted at Kirk and I. There was a stand off for quite some time as we knew he was just out of our view in the pitch black night and he clearly knew where we were as each of us tried to out listen the other. Eventually we got so brave that we tossed rocks towards the animal and screamed to hopefully scare it away.

The night was very eventful and exciting, however none of the events included any sleep whatsoever. The next day we made ourselves a makeshift debris hut and scouted around a bit. We gathered grasses together to make a soft be in the hut to ensure a better nights sleep for our second go around. That night things went much better for myself, as for Kirk he ended up moving out of the hut, deciding to sleep elsewhere away from my snoring.



The trip as a whole was quite the adventure. I am glad to have been up there and can look up from the valley below and now know exactly what is up there and have a much different perspective of the mountain range they call The Wellsvilles.