In it for the long haul

Sheep hunting checks a lot of boxes for me. To start, it's difficult, in a couple of ways. Most tangibly, it's hard physical work. Sheep live at high elevations in remote places, and are distributed patchily enough that, even after you've managed to climb up mountain A with all your gear, they're reasonably likely to be on mountain B (or C, or impossibly distant specks way over on K), and the only course of action is to make your way over there. Perhaps less immediately obvious, though, is how difficult it is to make enough correct decisions in a row to get into the place and time where you get to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. As a product of where they live, and how perceptive they are, sheep demand an exceptionally long series of good choices to get into position on. The choices we've all struggled with - the 'should I stay or should I go' kind of moments - pile up in ways I haven't experienced on other kinds of hunts. There will be ducks tomorrow morning if the weather's cooler. Call convincingly in willowy lowlands, and a moose will come by sooner or later. The next cutblock might well have some deer. But sheep - well, you've got to be thinking short-, medium- and long-term strategy, at multiple spatial scales, and you're probably not going to bring one home this time.

Balanced against this less-than-promising promise of success are the kind of places sheep live. Remote and high is an addictive combination, and combining those conditions with hunting's intensity of focus and attention to detail creates a kind of experience that I think would be hard to otherwise replicate. I've been sheep hunting every year since my initial SS&S sheep post in 2012, and every single trip has left me with unshakeably beautiful memories, and a conviction to do it again, and for longer. I can't think of better conditions under which to come home with an empty pack.

So, as a recap, beautiful scenery, and an exceptionally long series of correct decisions in order to fill a tag. In my case, that series lasts four calendar years, and 21 total days of sheep hunting over five trips.

This year's planning didn't begin with a familiar spot to return to. I've been exploring a lot these past few years, and have yet to find somewhere that I'd return to with high confidence in getting a sheep (in an over-the-counter zone, that is; I drew a tag in 2013 for a good spot that I'll return to if I draw again). My explorations even extended to a fly-in hunt last year, with Kieran, but a combination of bad weather and distance between the lake the plane could access and the spot we eventually found rams meant I wasn't sold on returning there this year. My general approach, in choosing a spot for any kind of hunting, is to do the work to get places where there won't be other people, and this year's final choice was no different. The mountain block I had in mind had an approach that was ~13 km from the road, though some cautious inquiry and an initial scouting trip confirmed a passable horse trail for the first 10 km. Discussion with the territorial sheep biologist suggested that sheep were present in the general area, but at lowish density - as having the range to myself was my priority, that sounded about right.

As a contribution to getting a long way in (and then back out again) on one trip, I designed and built a trail cart, with the aim of increasing my maximum payload over what I could carry in a pack alone. While I'd make a few small improvements, I'm pleased with how this worked.

New cart loaded for the trip in (Piia Kortsalo photo)

At this point, you should meet Piia. I expect she'll feature in coming posts, too. Piia's got an impressive resume of ultralight, long-distance mountain travel, but is new to the hunting side of things (though a few ptarmigan last year might beg to differ). We divided preparation accordingly; while I sighted in and calculated windage, Piia tallied total daily caloric intakes and populated spreadsheets with the weight of everything.

Leaving the car - still feels like a hiking trip so far
(my photo; it will become quickly obvious that they're the least impressive ones)

Sheep season starts the first of August, but work commitments (and a general disinclination to be part of an opener rush) meant we'd wait until the 18th. Not wanting to feel hurried, we'd booked eight days this year. Under that much food and gear, we left the car and headed in.

Still in the lowlands (my photo)

All was well, and having the cart along the trail made for efficient travel. Once we left the trail (and the cart), though, a combination of slowly-building rain, willow/dwarf birch thickets and sudden temperature drop meant we were drenched and shivering before we'd even thought to pull on rain gear. 

Wetter and colder than it looks (Piia Kortsalo photo)

Conditions worsened as we began our climb up the toe of the mountain, and by the time we were halfway up our planned 1000 m ascent, we'd hit a point where we were both ready to acknowledge it'd be dangerous to continue. At the next flattish, tent-sized spot we haphazardly flung up the tent with stumpish hands, and spent the next half-hour slowly regaining functionality in our sleeping bag. As the rain petered out, we put up a clothes line and dried our soggy gear, and glassed mountain faces for sheep. A ewe and lamb materialized in a high meadow on a mountain we'd passed on the way in, but no rams. Darkness fell.

Prayer flags to the evaporation gods (Piia Kortsalo photo)

Morning rain, and clouds shrouding everything above us. To travel in cloud means the risk of being pinned out in the open by sheep when it clears, so we waited impatiently for the ceiling to lift. By mid-morning, there were enough openings to make a move, and we headed up. At 1650 m, we came on a room-sized flat spot on an otherwise sloping west face, slightly sheltered by boulder piles on either side, and with a spring trickle flowing along one side. Camp.

Morning clouds lifting (Piia Kortsalo photo)

High camp, back in the clouds (my photo)

After setting up, we were eager to head as high as we could, to a vantage point to spend a few hours glassing surrounding mountainsides and building a sense of where we'd be spending the next days. We topped the north-south ridge that defined the mountain block we were camped on, and set up on the northern end to see what we could see on the slopes below us and the mountains to the north. Weather, though, meant we alternated between bright sunlight, thick rolling fog, and huddling under a tarp in pelting rain/slush. In clear moments, we watched two ewes feeding across a distant hillside. Sheep were here, but in the low densities we'd been promised. We headed south along the ridge, to see what new vantages held.

Heading up (Piia Kortsalo photo)

Ridgetop glassing (Piia Kortsalo photo)

Descending slightly to the eastern face of the ridge, I caught a quick glimpse of two sheep darting down and behind a shallow rise to the steeper face below us, at about 500 m. Rams, but small - not close to full curl (the legal minimum here). Still, the last few years' experiences have suggested that you don't always see the whole group right away (for example, one lone sublegal ram last year eventually turned into a group of twelve, with at least four legal rams). So, suddenly on full alert, but not sure how to proceed. Having bumped them before we'd seen them was bad, and there was no knowing how far they'd run, but the value in knowing whether there were legal rams with the two was high, and potentially worth the risk of pushing them further by advancing for a better look. We went with that. As we slowly descended, trying to catch a glimpse of white downhill over the rise, the two rams plus another appeared behind us, having circled around us below. They stopped, briefly, at 350 m as they headed for the ridgetop - enough time to get binoculars on the new ram and get a nearly-confident glimpse of legal horns, the tips clearing not just the legal line between the bottom of the eye and the nostril, but continuing on up past the line of the nose for what looked like an inch or two. They were on the move again and over the top before I was ready to make the call definitively, but it certainly looked promising.

Terrain the rams descended into, before doubling back and crossing the ridge behind (Piia Kortsalo photo)

Fleeing rams, though, meant that I'd already been making wrong decisions. My first year, I'd watched spooked rams run at least 3 km, then up and over a ridge and out of sight. I hoped, given how far in we were, that these particular rams hadn't experienced as much pressure as those sheep in a zone closer to town. As they were now out of sight, though, I couldn't be sure. What I did know is that there were (or, had been) rams on the same mountain as camp, and that we had six days left. All of this spelled a cautious approach to me, so we headed some distance away before topping the ridge ourselves, hoping to catch sight of the sheep, but from a great distance, more to see what they were doing than to actively pursue them. Clouds, though, piled in on top of us, and the rest of the afternoon we spent under a makeshift tarp shelter against a car-sized boulder, hiding from driving rain and sleet. We capitalized on a brief break by beelining back to camp, where after a quick supper the rain came again, and we called it a night.

Break enough in the rain to take a picture of the rain (Piia Kortsalo photo)

Early morning departure plans, so eagerly anticipated now that we'd seen what looked like a legal sheep, dissolved in wind and steady, hard rain. The not unenjoyable second choice, a weather-day sleep-in, came and went. By noon, we were playing guess-what-song-I'm-humming in a tent that was smelling more and more lived-in. Mid-afternoon, and the wind switched to the north, bringing snow instead of rain. 

As always on sheep hunting trips, I got older

Just as we began pondering what it would be like to spend 36 continuous hours together within a 120 x 210 cm space, the snow stopped, the clouds parted, and we emerged, squinting and grublike, into what looked to be a clear, sunny evening. More to do anything other than lie in the tent than to actually hunt, we headed south along the lower slopes of the north-south ridge, with the intent of getting quickly to the southern tip before climbing to the top and returning north, with our faces into the wind.

Finally, fresh air (Piia Kortsalo photo)

While our idea was to move relatively quickly along the lower slope, to get to the southern end of the high ridge with enough time to hunt our way back before dark, we were still moving slowly enough to scan all new terrain thoroughly as it came visible to us. Yesterday's mistake, of letting sheep see us before we saw them, was sitting heavy with me. Even so, less than 2 km from camp, three sheep appeared on the hillside above and behind us, at ~700 m. Having obviously seen us, they alternated between staring in our direction and climbing up and away. Shit. We dropped to the ground behind our packs and watched. Pinned out in the open, there was nothing much else to do.

I slowly pulled out the spotting scope, and laid it out on the top of my pack. While this wasn't at all the situation I was hoping for, the view was perfect; they were the three rams from the day before, and the big one was definitely legal. As we watched them, they slowed, and then stopped. They grazed and watched us, and then bedded down, one by one. Perhaps we didn't seem as much of a threat as I'd feared. I conferred with Piia, and planned for her to stay there with the bags to keep their attention on her, while I slowly backed out, got out of sight over the convexity of the hillside, and then took the long route around and over the mountain to come at the sheep from above, the only approach that looked even vaguely possible.

Keeping Piia and the bags between me and the sheep, I crawled backward down and along the slope, trying to search out enough of a rise to hide me. What looked like a 50 m shuffle to get behind a talus slide ended up being 300 m of exposed crawling, until I managed to find a rise big enough to hide me. Semi-upright, and moving faster now, I continued sidehilling until I was certain I could ascend out of sight. The terrain the sheep were bedded in was a much better vantage than I'd originally guessed, and by the time I could climb in earnest, I was nearly 2 km from where I'd started. Now that they were out of sight, every process felt too slow; I imagined them moving while I couldn't see them, and my whole stalk coming to naught if I took too long. Panting, sweaty and feeling far too late, I finally made the ridgetop. Remaining out of sight, I headed back in the direction of the rams on the far side of the ridge until I reached the point closest to where I'd estimated them to be. By this point, it was two hours from when I'd left Piia, and one hour to sunset.

Trading fast, covering-ground pace for a quiet final stalk, I stayed low as I came over the ridge, and crept down to a ledge of boulders I'd seen above the sheep when we first spotted them. The loose jumble of big rocks made for good cover, and as I came up to them and peered over, I could see two, then all three sheep in the mix of meadow and rock patches below me. Some kind of luck meant that I couldn't have come over the ridge in a better spot - they were directly below my nest of rocks. They were, however, impossibly distant for a shot, and a quick scan showed nowhere else closer that wouldn't put me in plain sight. Checking their distance with the rangefinder, though, showed that they weren't so far after all. 375 m; still too far for a shot I'm comfortable with, but not as far as I'd initially estimated. I settled in to watch, and see if anything changed.

Over the course of the next few minutes, watching the sheep, it became clear that they were slowly moving between bouts of grazing, to the left and slightly uphill. Towards me. What had looked like an impossible situation was steadily changing into a good chance. I gave myself criteria for considering taking a shot; the ram needed to be broadside and stationary at 300 m or less, and there had to be no wind. I practice out to 300 m, with consistent results, but not further.

The next half hour inched by, as the rams continued their slow progress. I'd ranged a finger of small rocks at 300 m, and the small ram in the lead reached and passed it, then the big ram behind him. He was in range. Focus on the sheep then switched to setting up for a shot, and I realized that none of the boulders around me were suitable for a rest; I was too hemmed in to get into shooting position. The only option was a truck-sized boulder ahead of me, that formed the outer edge of the pile before the slope dropped away to where the rams were feeding. Getting up and over to that rock meant I'd be entirely exposed, briefly, to the rams. Waiting until all had their heads down at once, I hopped up and over without being seen.

Seeing the ram through the scope for the first time was to feel the weight of the past four years' work. Nearly all of the decisions had been made, and the last few - wait for a lull in the breeze, pick a spot, adjust for bullet drop, deep breath and half-way out, slow squeeze of the trigger - seemed automatic. As the echo of the shot rolled down the valley, I watched through the scope as the ram wheeled around once, stumbled, and dropped.

Piia had heard the shot, but the sheep had moved out of her view over the time I was away. I went down to give her the all-clear sign, and we came up to the ram. Some photos in the last of the light, and then to quartering as darkness fell. by 1 am, we were back in camp with the meat.

The next day was bright, breezy and cool, and as I dealt with the head and hide that we'd left at the kill site for the night, Piia moved our camp down ~400 m in elevation, to the edge of the shrubline, in anticipation of a big pack-out day to follow. By early evening, everything was moved down the mountain, just in time for the returning wind and rain. We spent a sleepless night in deafening wind hoping the tent wouldn't fail, and that bears in the valley wouldn't catch the scent of sheep.

Piia heading down to lower camp with the last load (my photo)

The only calamity revealed by morning was continued rain. We waited out the worst of it, then loaded up with full meat-and-gear packs for the first time. I'd heard of this experience from other sheep hunters, but hadn't before lived it myself. While I never did weigh the whole load, it felt very much like giving an adult a piggyback. Coupled with a set of horns sticking out from the top of the pack, which were adept at hooking just about everything, we smashed through bog and willow thickets back to the trail. Sheer weight of our packs meant that impeding branches that would have stopped us on the way up would now simply smash. We were unstoppable wrecking balls - the only redeeming quality of our loads. After about as much bushwhacking as we cared for, we reached the trail and the cart. Some lunch, and redistribution of the load to include a cart payload, and we were back to the car by late afternoon.

Piia mentally preparing for the pack out (my photo)

Willow, dwarf birch and water (Piia Kortsalo photo)

More or less done, both geographically and physically (Piia Kortsalo photo)

Compared to a moose, there's surprisingly little to a sheep; butchering was quick. They differ from other game I've dealt with, too, in that there's plenty of fat, and it's very edible - none of the tallowy, lip-coating quality of deer or moose fat at all. After testing some by rendering it in a pan, we decided to keep it as an outer layer on steaks and roasts, and incorporate it into our ground. Subsequent edibility trials have shown this to be a good decision; I'm not sure I've eaten better wild meat (or, meat at all) than this. Greenwing teal, you might well have been bumped down a position.

So, four years, five hunts, one sheep. I'm satisfied; sheep hunting without success is just that good - as long as there remains at least a possibility, that with enough good decisions in a row, you just might find yourself with one on your back, headed down the mountain. Might not happen again for a while for me, but I'm already looking forward to next year.

SS&S Book Club: American Buffalo

Scene: you’re completely alone, a few miles above a remote Alaskan river, and you’ve just shot a bison. Your hunting partners had to leave for the week to go to their jobs, and are returning with the raft the following weekend to pick you up. It’s just you, several miles away from the rendezvous point, standing over 1000 kg of dead bison. And just to make things interesting, there are grizzly tracks everywhere. What now?

And that’s the cold open to Steve Rinella’s American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon. It’s a fantastic read – a piece of narrative non-fiction, in which he traces two linked stories: that of his own bison hunt on Alaska’s Copper River, intertwined with the history of bison in North America. In addition to the story of the hunt itself, Rinella recounts his personal history of just how he came to be standing over that dead bison in the first place, starting with his chance discovery of a centuries-old bison skull on top of a Montana mountain range. His travels take him all across North America, covering topics including the evolutionary history and biogeography of bison, their relationship with first humans to inhabit North America following the last ice age, all the way through to their near-extinction in the late 1800s and subsequent recovery efforts.

The hunt itself is a once-in-a-lifetime lottery tag for a herd of introduced animals on the Copper River; the herd was introduced decades ago, and recently has been able to support a limited hunt. These parts of the book are probably what you’d imagine – a play-by-play of finding a hunting spot, the logistics of actually getting in there by raft and on foot, searching for the herd, and disassembling and packing out a giant carcass, all of which is interspersed with troubleshooting private land permissions, avoiding grizzly bears, bad weather, and the impending winter freeze-up. Amplifying all of this is the remoteness of the location, along with the sheer size of the beast itself. Even if the subject matter is what you’d expect from a hunting story, the pacing and writing keep it riveting. He also provides enough geographic detail that I was able to get my nerd on and roughly follow his route on Google Earth.

It’s not a perfect book; towards the end, I found the historical parts to drag a bit – “In the year X, in place Y, Z happened.” But a handful of pages that read like a dry high school history text book are greatly outweighed by the rest of the book. Biology, conservation, history, adventure, all rolled up into a brisk, well-written package. I’ll give it an A-.

***

I haven’t posted a thing since last fall, so even though I currently have no dead animals to report, I felt the need to write up something. I’ve been following Steve Rinella’s work a lot lately. If you don’t follow his stuff, he’s got a hunting show and podcast, both called Meateater, along with several books. The show is probably more reflective than your typical hunting show (well, as reflective as you can be with a 21-minute time limit). It’s as much an outdoor-adventure/nature show as it is a hunting show - half of the time he doesn’t actually shoot anything. And he goes on some pretty rad hunts in incredible country: goats, sheep, elk, moose, bear, ducks, turkey, you name it. Oh, and for all you UFC fans out there, he brings Joe Rogan on a bunch of his hunts, including getting him his first deer.

The podcast can be a bit hit-and-miss; sometimes it’s just a bunch of guys shooting the shit, which can be pretty rambling and often not great. Other episodes are more focussed, and I’ve found those to be the better ones. A couple that stand out for me are one on hunting optics where they talk to a guy from Vortex, and one where he interviews an environmental historian on the philosophy, politics, and history of hunting. All in all, I think his work is worth checking out – maybe start with a podcast episode or two, and go from there if you like what you hear.

So, what else should I put on my reading list?

Dry hopping in the basement with Eric.

I've been brewing beer with Eric Epp since last summer. If you don't do this already you should; it is way harder to fuck up than I expected - I accidentally spat in the first batch and it was just fine.

The second to last batch we made was right on the money in terms of what I like in a beer. Simcoe hops added at 60 minutes, 30 minutes, 10 minutes and flame out. Then dry-hopped in the secondary. If you don't know what this means there is a good tutorial here. That is pretty much our method, changing the recipe around slightly, or using different hop varieties. 

I'm now in the early stages of putting together a kegerator for my lab in the museum. I've heard kegging is even easier than bottling. 

Genomics: more questions than answers

I have been meaning to do a post for a while. Dustin - in a front-runner for post of the year - wrote about our Lapland trip, which meant my SS&S material was restricted to a few grainy shots of mushrooms already used on instagram. But I can't resist, it was a great year for mushrooms in Sweden:

I thought I would tell all you a bit about my research, or rather what I think of my field of research.

Generally I use genetic information to learn something about the ecology or evolutionary history of a species. To publish my research it gets framed as hypothesis-driven but it is just as much curiosity-based. My career goal is to provide tools or methods or information [or anything really] that can be used to conserve biodiversity. I had some success with this at the U of A, and by success meaning I got the attention of mountain goat managers (in Alaska). My research and outreach in part resulted in this delay and likely ACEC designation for an area in southeast Alaska, something I am quite proud of.

Fast-forward to Uppsala and my genomics era. Again, I am doing the same thing, but instead of using genETic information it is now genOMic. The difference made by these two letters is huge.

Practically speaking it means my desktop is all but useless (everything gets done on a massive computer cluster), most lab-work is outsourced, I rely heavily on government-funded bioinformaticians (it is Sweden after all), R turns out to be too slow for my needs, and I uncover patterns for which there are no clear (but often opposing) interpretations on what it means.

Academically, this is great - I am in the middle of a real transition and I can contribute to the development and maturation of the field. For example, I just ran simulations for half a year to figure out what demographic parameters can and cannot be estimated with a new type genomic data. Turns out we can't estimate effective population size worth shit. In the hypothetical two-population scenarios below, A and B are easy to resolve, C and D are not:

Who cares right? Well, C and D focus on changes in effective population size over time, and this can be an extremely valuable parameter for conservation and management. Did a population just crash or has it always been small kind of stuff. Yet with one of the most touted types of genomic data, it is essentially impossible to estimate - and this hits me where it hurts (remember my career goal).

For a while now there have been essays and reviews written about genomics and conservation, largely discussing how genomics will revolutionize the conservation sciences - I have counted almost 20 of these articles (bizarrely, there are few case-studies). The pervasive opinion of a panacea didn't seem to gel with my above work, nor the understanding of such data here at Uppsala (a world leader in non-model organism genomics - my boss just published this in Science).

This frustration lead me to organize a workshop titled: Conservation Genomics: Academic exercise or transition with real-world applications where I hoped we would discuss these issues among others. The workshop started off with this image (higher quality of course):

The Galapagos sea lion - one of my main study species at the moment - is endangered. The culprit(s): dogs and El Niño. Poaching doesn't help the matter.

Translation:

i) Genomics will have little to do with species conservation in this case.

Opinion:

ii) This is probably the norm for species conservation.

Resulting question:

iii) How and when can genomics inform conservation?

I am still developing my views on the matter, but I think genomic data can play a role in conservation planning, the extent of that role has yet to be determined. Monitoring and inbreeding estimates are clear beneficiaries of genomics - but getting that info into conservation action is another matter. And at the very least there are some chinks in the armour (see simulations above) that researchers need to be aware of. The field is incredibly young and we are still figuring things out.

I definitely found some like-minded folk at the workshop. Others clearly had different views - the best analogy being that if they caught a glimpse of an off-colored black bear they would argue it is locally adapted and should be preserved at all costs. Of course, egos played a big role at the meeting, and many simply refused to acknowledge their research isn't as important [for applied conservation] as they think it is. Time will tell as to how it all plays out, but I managed to put together an article on the subject that will be published soon in TREE - keep an eye out for it.

Local Flavour

As the lone SS&S member still living in Edmonton, I feel a certain responsibility to keep the dream alive in the blog’s ancestral motherland. Unless the dream is a buck, of course.

Dustin turned me on to a ½ section about an hour outside of town, right along the river, with the tip that the deer tended to stay on the river-side of the property, moving through the many draws in and out of the valley. On opening weekend, I brought Josh and Jess out for a day in the field, hoping to connect on a deer and, in the process, continue the tradition of bringing more department people into the hunting fold. Unfortunately for them, I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing. Despite getting a deer in each of the last 3 years, my entire strategy consisted of driving to Pincher and walking around with Jesse until we saw something to shoot, often flushing several deer in the process. Ah, high ungulate density. As ecologically sketchy as it is freezer-fillingly satisfying.

In any event, I had the first part of our process nailed down – 3 separate deer groups, all flushed. Rats. The last of which was about an hour before sunset, when we set up facing downslope near a draw that had some sign nearby, expecting to catch a deer coming up out of the valley to feed in the fields behind us. Comfortably leaning back on trees, we had a good 180 degree view, with decent sight lines through relatively open conifers. After a few minutes of sitting, I detected footsteps, in a distinctive deer-y cadence. “Excellent – it’s all falling into place” is what I would have said, except the deer were right. Fucking. Behind us. By the time I heard the doe-fawn pair, they were maybe 15 yards away, directly upslope from us, but there was no way to turn around without getting busted. On top of that, out of the corner of my eye, I could see they were facing us head-on, not giving much chance for a good shot, especially given that any opportunity would have to be extremely quick. So I just sat there like an idiot, hoping they’d somehow walk right between the 3 of us without detecting us, which of course worked out about as well as you’d expect. Oh well - at least now I knew which damn way to face. Better luck next time.

Next time being yesterday, when I headed back to the same spot with a different crew (Todd & his buddy Miles), both of whom also had tags. We spent time in the same general area where we’d seen critters the previous weekend, but despite a layer of fresh snow, we saw almost exclusively coyote tracks.

Aside – if you ever want to shoot a coyote, apparently fawn distress calls are your friend. About 2 minutes after blowing the call, a coyote burst out of the trees 20 yards away and stopped along the trail I was looking down. We had a nice staring contest. I waved. He ran off and barked. Good times were had by all.

At the same time as my coyote encounter, Todd happened across some fresh buck tracks nearby, plus a scrape and a rub. Nice. Unfortunately, they led into the thick stuff, so following stealthily was not in the cards. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around aimlessly in search of (as it turned out) very few tracks, but upon our return to the area of the coyote encounter and nearby buck tracks we found 3 sets of tracks on top of our boot prints – it looked like the buck was chasing 2 separate does. We set up in the area for the last hour of light, each a few hundred metres apart, each facing a likely place to intercept the buck or one of the does moving downslope. This also happened to be within spitting distance of our almost-opportunity the previous week.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. The sound was coming from my 4 o’clock. I slowly turned my head and spotted a snout, then a couple of legs, then a full body and set of antlers emerge from the trees. By the time he was completely in view, he was no more than 25 yards away, fully broadside. Undetected, I turned to level my rifle, and even in the half-second between the click of the safety and the shot, he was still unaware that anything was amiss. One through the heart, and he rather determinedly trotted forward, clearly worse for wear. He stopped another 30 yards on, and I could just barely make out his rump between the trees in the rapidly dwindling light. I watched him for several minutes, neither of us moving an inch, until he slowly collapsed on his side.

The elation at my first buck quickly faded with the realization of how big he was, and how far (and uphill) the road was. We dragged in shifts, two of us on the deer, with the odd man out holding the rifles. After several hundred metres of slow and exhausting progress, Todd ran back to the truck to fetch his secret, high-tech friction-reducing device: a crazy carpet. Glorious. I was never a fan as a kid – always being partial to flying saucers – but damn if I don’t appreciate them now. Finish the drag, get him into the back of the car, zip back home to hang him in my garage, and sit back for a quick bowl of Hank Shaw’s chili I’d made the day before with the last of my 2013 deer. Just in time.

Moose Bulgogi

It has been a while since I put up a food post, but it has also been a while since I had a bunch of wild meat in the freezer.

I've been on a bit of a kimchi binge, so am pretty much constantly looking for things to eat with it. I remember some pretty lavish bulgogi meals in Edmonton, so thought I would give that a shot. I found this recipe, and followed it. I used a few bottom round steaks which I sliced thinly while they were still a bit frozen. Asian pears were hard to find, so I substituted another nameless variety. It seemed to work. I also added toasted sesame seeds because they are delicious. 

The meat marinated for a couple of hours in the fridge, then was seared hot and fast. Those of us with opposable thumbs made lettuce wraps with kimchi, enoki mushrooms, pickled vegetables and cucumber. They were very good. I think next time I would make some kind of Korean spicy mayo too, if that is a thing. I am not yet at the point where I am making my own kimchi, but will get there soon. Anyone got a good kimchi recipe to let me in on?

Equinox Alces

Make coffee, get a beer, assemble a snack. I decided to write this one up properly. Oliver will occasionally add his voice here too - in blue - because you can never trust the narrator.

~~~

The plan to go up to the Yukon for a moose hunt was hatched a while back. I can’t recall the precise conversation, but the idea definitely floated around. I eventually got the email from Oliver that it was time to put in for his once-in-three-years hunter host permit. He needed a name to go with it. I was in.

I signed some paperwork, did some faxing, and started to look into flights. Mark and Alana joined on at some point, so there would be a good crew. Months passed and then quite suddenly it was time to pack my gear. I found the most absurd combination of flights to get me to Whitehorse, so after something like sixteen hours of travel I got to Oliver’s in time to down a beer and immediately go to bed. Thanks to jetlag I was up again at 4 am.

The next day involved getting myself licensed to shoot and/or hook most fauna in the territory. In reality the only large game tag I walk out with is for bull moose. There is no cow harvest in the Yukon. I was immediately offered a choice: fish in the Yukon River for grayling or go into the mountains behind town and look for grouse and ptarmigan. I opted for the latter, though we saw no grouse or ptarmigan. What we did see was a rusty old car and Arctic ground squirrels. Delicious Arctic ground squirrels. First wild game meal of the trip.

I’d call them a mild cross between spruce grouse and mallard, with the merest hint of what I can only describe as squirrel. Would eat again.

Another 24 hours passed in a blur of target practice, picking up the raft, making gear piles, sleeping at some point, packing the truck, then heading to the river where we would meet Mark and Alana, driving from Smithers.

A note on the plan: Oliver has discussed his river floats for moose before. There was no reason to deviate from his thus far 100% successful formula: float down a river, call in moose, shoot and field dress, then float them out. The plan also includes a semi-elaborate hitchhiking, biking, and shuttle system to retrieve the truck at the end.

Oliver and I camped by the roadside, and Mark and Alana showed up the next morning. Shortly thereafter Alana left for Whitehorse to continue her work in bringing baby Clong into the world. Fine. But I did think longingly of that toffee dessert thing she made us on that one hunt back in Alberta... and while sighting in the second rifle before she departed we missed the opportunity to get a photo of pregnant Alana shooting a .22 in a gravel pit. 

Not losing momentum, we hid a bike in the woods and Oliver, Mark and myself made our way down the road to the launch, where we got our first glimpse of the river. Fast, clear, cold. Incidentally we arrived there with a couple of grouse that were blocking a portion of the road; we were forced to coax them off with the .22.

The raft was fast to inflate, rig up, and get floating. Or at least it seems fast in retrospect. It probably took a while. The centerpiece of the whole outfit, in my mind, was the large marine cooler. It served as food storage but also a seat and lunch counter. Always bring a large marine cooler.

At last we are floating, and begin to intently scan the riverbank. The hunt is everything from that point until there is a moose in the raft. We pull off the river at a likely looking place to do some calling; no responses. Lots of moose sign. This stop serves to get me settled in a bit, comfortable moving through the woods in a way that is very particular to hunting. And then we are back in the raft again, pushing off. It is notably quiet for the first time of the trip, with the exception of the rushing of water and the splash as oars dip into the river, pushing or pulling as the raft is guided through each bend. 

The thing about floating a river is that every place you leave you can never go back to.

We eventually make camp on a small gravel bar downstream of a much longer bar. On the long bar there are driftwood piles behind which to hide and call, which we do across a small channel to the forest. No moose. I stare hard and try to manifest a bull.

This is the first real deviation from my usual pattern; this stop is before my traditional first-night camp, but as it looks somewhat promising (and I’m in the business of providing Yukon bush time, in addition to looking for a moose), we settle in here on the first night.

Mostly we are cow calling, and by we I mean Oliver and Mark. As we walk through the forest they also occasionally bull grunt. I am always walking in front, which is an odd role to take, given my relative unfamiliarity with the surroundings. That oddness fades with time. We hunt the gravel bar again the next morning, and when we return to camp we see fresh moose tracks that have passed within metres of our tents while we were upriver. Probably a cow and calf. Probably. We set up a tarp downstream on the gravel bar and sit out the heavy rain while calling, and burning holes in the forest edge with our eyes. As a consolation we grill some grouse. 

Moving through the landscape, nearly every gravel bar we see has wolf and moose tracks crisscrossing, coming from all directions. Old sign and new, sometimes interlaced, hinting at the temporal rhythm of use. Many of the moose tracks look like cows traveling with calves.

Eventually we work our way downriver again, stopping once to walk a clearcut that is riddled with torn-apart stumps. Bears eating ants. There is some fresh sign, but eventually we decide to move on again, knowing there is a lot of river below us still. In the late afternoon we set up on another big bar, separated from the forest by a small channel. Camp is made in a small clearing in the center of the willows. We’re close to a series of old clearcuts, and spend the last hours of light walking through them, following an old haul road. There is sign of bull moose everywhere, we see broken branches, smell urine, find a wallow. No moose materialize that night and as we walk the 800 metres or so back to camp in the near dark I am begrudgingly grateful that we are not carrying 500 pounds of meat. We drink a few slugs of rye, eat dinner, and go to bed – setting an alarm for sometime before six again.

In the morning we are up and across the channel to the edge of the cuts, calling again in the rain. Nothing for the first hour, so we walk again up the road, and settle in to call near the wallow, thinking a bull could be nearby. A few cow calls, and then we hear a tremendous crash somewhere out in the forest. My heart begins to race, and it becomes suddenly very clear that I have few options for a shooting lane. We wait and then a couple more cow calls, quieter this time. Nothing. More waiting. I am not so happy about where I am positioned, and probably should have thought that through a bit more before I hunkered down. Eventually we decide to walk the old haul road to the back of the cut blocks again. We stop in a large uncut block, settle down, call again. No indication anything is nearby. There are no moose. Anywhere. Ever. They are a made-up thing.

When reason returns, we discuss how the crash could have been a cow spooking and leaving the area, or a bull who was decidedly not looking for any action. 

We head back to pack up camp, planning the next move. Our sights are set to make that night’s camp on a gravel bar that is a few hours of river travel away, a place that has produced a moose every time Oliver has spent the night there. Of course it has never taken until the third night on the river to do this. We’re in uncharted territory

We float. Hope ebbs and flows. I am thinking about how long it’s been since I was last looking through a riflescope at an animal. Years. But the moment of choosing a shot feels especially distant, because we have yet to even see a moose. One cannot justify bringing a cooler full of Arctic ground squirrel back across the country. I remind myself that not getting an animal is a distinct possibility, and that this trip – even mooseless – is something extraordinary. The contrast of the yellow aspen and dark green spruce, floating a river that is actively carving its way through a wide valley in the Yukon. This is a wild and remote place, and even in these moments we are only ever rubbing up against the edges.

“Moose”

It is Mark who first spots the animal, near a root clump on river left. It is a miniature moose, dwarfed by the trees. The smallest moose in the world. A child’s plastic toy. We soon realize it is a calf. At this point Oliver is quietly but somewhat urgently commanding “get the gun, now”. Where there’s a calf there’s a cow, and where there’s a cow there’s a bull. We hope. I slowly begin pulling the rifle from its dry bag. Slowly being the operative word.

My suggestion that he get the rifle out now has the pent-up intensity of a guide who’s beginning to realize his odds of getting a tip are evaporating like upstream river miles.

We keep our eyes fixed on the shore where the calf has now scrambled up the bank into a thicket of trees. In a small opening we see the cow. Mark is the only one with his binoculars, and again is the first to realize “that’s a bull, I see spikes”. A young bull, no doubt. We float by quietly, urgently looking for a place to pull the raft off the river. They see us and appear to spook, as they quickly withdraw back into the thicket.

A note on the lay of the land: This is a very active river, with new channels being carved each year, and logjams forming and blowing out, to the point that a two year hiatus from floating it means Oliver is seeing some very different morphology in places. The high freshet flows create large gravel bars, strewn with debris – whole trees, root masses and all – sometimes cutting around clumps of standing trees that are left intact as the river flows to either side.

The thicket into which these moose just retreated was one such “island”, although only separated from the forest edge by a dry gravel bar.

Oliver maneuvers the raft to shore just at the downstream end of the trees. I drop my life jacket, string my binoculars, and shoulder the rifle – a cartridge chambered moments earlier. “We’ll wait in the raft” is all that is said as I climb ashore.

Wait we did. There’s an odd kind of urgent uselessness to this, when the best thing is to stay put, do nothing and wonder if there’ll be a bang.

I make for the inside edge of the island and see that there is a small muddy depression just at the edge of the trees (probably the last channel of water as the river level dropped in the summer), which travels up to what looks like the upstream end of the thicket where we saw the bull. If they haven’t already made for the main forest, across the open gravel bar, then I suspect they are still at the top of the island. The muddy depression lets me move quietly and quickly, and I stop midway where I have a tree trunk for a rifle rest, and can see clearly up and down the forest edge. No sign, no sounds. Maybe they didn’t spook as hard as we thought. That is, if they didn’t make a break for it.

I wait a few minutes, listening. It becomes apparent to me that this is the first moment I have been alone and out of sight, no longer making each decision by consensus as is often necessitated by this style of hunt.

I decide to keep going, creeping slowly, silently, towards the top end. As I round the corner ever so slightly I see movement. It is the calf, 80 yards away, browsing on willow and seeming wholly unconcerned. I freeze. There is quite a bit of foliage between the calf and me, and if the bull is right there I don’t have a good shot or a stable rest. My best move, I think, is to crawl under some branches ahead of me, through a muddy hole, and come up behind a root mass directly in line with the calf. I get half way through this move when it becomes apparent my assumption of where the bull was hiding is false. He spooks at a distance of maybe 50 yards, between the calf and me, trots out onto the gravel bar, changes his mind, and returns to the thicket.

Shit. I blew it.

But they might be on the move back through the trees, thinking about crossing the gravel bar lower down. I return quickly to my log rest at the mid-point of the island, and scan both directions for emerging moose. None materialize. I don’t want to enter the trees, in case the only view of the bull that presents itself is in the direction of raft, where I know Oliver and Mark are still waiting. I have never listened more intently. Are those falling leaves, or hoofsteps? Time passes and I start to wonder if they moved much at all, as they hadn’t really done so initially. Back to the muddy hole at the top end - and there is the calf, staring right in my direction. But this time I am in a better position to get behind the root mass where the view will be unobstructed, so I move there, lift the rifle up in the roots first, then slowly raise my head until I can see the calf again. The bull is there too now, and they both look directly toward me. Their decision is made; they are making for the tree line across the gravel bar. The bull moves first, and starts walking out in the open, angling a little towards me. I have him lined up in the scope and take the shot as he pauses for a moment. When the world comes back into focus I see him turn, start in the direction of the river. But the bull is moving slowly, his movement laboured. I now have the chance to take a second shot, this time as he quarters away. Stories of putting two, three, maybe more shots into a moose to keep them from moving too far after the initial fatal hit are at the forefront of my mind. I take the second shot. Another noticeable change in speed, but still moving in the direction of the river.  I don’t get another chance, and he disappears over the bank.

“RIVER” I yell, in the hopes that will be enough to get Oliver and Mark’s eyes on the water, in case there is a moose floating by. It turns out they didn’t hear a thing, just the shots.

One shot, then two, and our restless wait is over. Quiet, hopeful celebration (I recall us both looking at each other and putting a hand up in the air, then not immediately knowing what to do with it), tempered with intense curiousity – what did the two shots mean? We quickly pack up all the equipment a dead moose requires, and set out round the island of trees to find Dustin, but on coming out to the gravel bar, we see only the calf, fleeing for the forest edge. No bull. No Dustin. We back out the way we came, to the river-edge raft.

I am keenly aware that I do not want to spook the bull further into the river if it is standing at the edge, but decide to get up to the bank so I can see if it has tried to cross the river, or has fallen short. I sneak up slowly, keeping low, and soon see that the bank drops down not to the main channel but a shallow backwater. In the middle is the bull, dead, in metre-deep frigid water. Textbook Northrup Hydro-cooling (Northrup and Shafer, 2008). The moose is small for a bull – but this is still a big animal.

A note on deciding which animal to shoot: We had this discussion early, because the timing of when you take an animal can have major implications for the remainder of this particular trip. So can the size of the animal. The previous year a bull was taken on the evening of the drive down to the river, and so the raft never saw water. We decided this was not an outcome we wanted, as the river itself was an anticipated part of the trip. But what if we saw a moose around the first bend, near the launching point? We could theoretically haul the raft back upstream, repack the truck, and be back in Whitehorse that day. Also not an outcome we wanted. Minimum two river bends, and then we would have no choice but to complete the float. The next point was size. What if it was small? Or enormous? Would I pass on a particularly young or old bull? I was there for a few reasons, but a Boone and Crockett rack was not one of them. There are also flavour and physical labour implications of taking an enormous bull. But could I pass on an animal not knowing what the rest of the hunt held? We decided to take the first bull we saw and had a reasonable chance at (after the aforementioned buffer distance), regardless of size.

Anyways, the moose is in the water and not going anywhere, although it takes a few minutes for the calf to decide to disappear back into the woods. I’m unsure what that calf was doing with the young bull; they were clearly different age classes.

I decide to head through the tree thicket for the first time as I make my way back down to the raft, passing on the way a lot of fresh sign (makes sense…) and an enormous shed moose antler. I wonder where that guy is now. Oliver and Mark are already unloading our packs, and are relieved to hear 1) we have a moose, and 2) it is in a backwater to which we can drag the raft upstream. This is a great idea, and works perfectly until we reach the protruding root wad that takes some serious engineering and brute force to maneuver the raft around. But we do it, and Oliver romantically paddles the raft up the back channel like it is a rowboat on an English country lake. The sky is clearing as we reach the moose, and it looks to be a nice evening. 

I’ll spare the gory details here, but after moving (floating) the moose to a gravel bar, we quartered it. I think Oliver posted his technique back in 2011, and we made a minor modification by gutting first. I don't think I'd gut first again, even in the water. Moose are much easier to skin and quarter guts-in, rather than out.

We were losing light as we butchered. Knowing that we were going to be leaving some bones and a hide on the gravel bar, we had hopes of moving some distance downriver with the meat we were packing out. This idea seemed even better when we heard the first wolf howl.

My optimistic assessment of “guys, I think it’s just a plane” was met first with mockery, nervous laughter, then a chorus of additional howls. To bring some comfort to the situation, Oliver noted “wolves - quiet and close”. He fired off the rifle, which did absolutely nothing to stop their choir. Yelling and sounding as human as possible seemed to work better, if only temporarily. After a while the location of howls changed, but they were not much farther away. Perhaps the pack was split, or had moved. We may have increased the pace of butchering at this point.

Wolves, in my experience, are as much a part of this river as the moose are. This is the second year in a row where a pack’s come in close when there’s dead moose to be had. It sounds wild and exciting (and it is), but mostly in retrospect. As a current event, it’s not that much fun – I’ve never felt personally threatened, but spending a whole night keeping watch over a moose isn’t the first thing I want to do after a day spent disassembling and moving it. I had, though, suggested wolves might well make an appearance, and so tucked into the stress of having to deal with them was the warm thought of having been right. Feeling smug is underrated.

By 10:30, in a moonless dark, we had loaded the raft with game bags: four quarters, a side of ribs, the spinal column with backstraps intact, and the smaller cuts for the grinder. Also the head and heart.

The plan was to put some distance between us and the butchering site. Time to change out the headlamp batteries. "Mine are good I think" says Mark. "You're changing them" responds Oliver. Ok. Oliver still seems quite confident this is doable. (Perhaps Oliver figures things will go best if he puts on the appearance that he is confident this is doable). He recalls a bend a ways downstream that may have some faster water, but none of us remember anything in the immediate downstream stretch of river that we should be wary of. In hindsight we were pretty focused on the moose. 

We push off. It is dark, and the air temperature has dropped enough that there is now a mist coming off the surface of the river. This made it exceptionally hard to see anything that wasn't very close to us.  

A note on traveling the river in a raft: It takes a whole lot to flip you. You’ll bounce, spin, maybe get wedged up against something that will be hard to push off of, but the river is considerably safer in a raft than in a canoe (which could put you in a really bad situation if you find yourself unexpectedly in a logjam). I tested this a couple years ago in Kamloops when I was put at the helm of a raft on a fairly narrow, loggy river, lacking any experience. My signature move was to bounce and spin off nearly every corner. Never close to flipping. What you do need when piloting a raft is enough lead-time to make decisions about how to navigate obstacles so that you can be correctly positioned in the current.

So back to night rafting. Immediately it seems like a bad idea, which becomes more apparent when we make it to the main current, and shortly thereafter bump the shore on the opposite side of where we thought it to be. “I wasn’t expecting that,” says Oliver, at which point any illusion that we can make it downriver evaporates. Across. We just had to get across now. Oliver is rowing hard, and we make headway, although we’re still moving downstream at a reasonable clip. The logjam starts to make its entrance at the periphery of our headlamp aura. But so does the steep gravel bank of the far shore, which we reach before the tangle of timber downstream. Both Mark and I jump to the bank simultaneously, and pull the raft in broadside. There’s nothing to actually pull it up on, so we run long ropes up to a large log and tie it off. It’ll hold until morning.

We’ve crossed the river. Not that wolves can’t also cross rivers. But we don’t hear them anymore, and figure they might be at least temporarily satisfied with the bits we left on the far shore. We get to work making a rack of driftwood on which to place the game bags, which keeps them off the sand and lets the exterior dry to protect the meat. It was starting to cloud over and maybe even drizzle a little, so we tented the rack with a tarp as well. Tarps: MVPs of the trip. Unless that should go to the raft. Tents were set up, chili was heated, a fire was started, and as much driftwood as could be collected was piled next to it. The plan was to stoke the fire in shifts until morning to keep meat-hungry wildlife from getting ideas. In the end, Mark and I covered off a substantial portion of both our shifts at once, sitting next to the fire, putting a dent in the rye, and watching the aurora borealis paint ephemeral green streaks. When we set the alarm for Oliver’s first watch there wasn’t a whole lot of night left.

5:30, and my alarm sounds. I’m impressed with M and D’s staying power, and emerge from the tent into a mix of swirling green aurora and the beginning of dawn light. I stoke the fire, and return to my sleeping bag. Over the next half-hour, I hear the wolves again - more distant, but on our side of the river. With dawn coming, though, I’m less concerned, and don’t wake Mark and Dustin.

The next morning gave a better view of what was awaiting us downstream. Being pulled into the logjam probably wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but certainly a less-than-ideal situation in the dark. We were slow to get moving, but felt like we earned the relaxation. Just a few hours of river travel until we would meet the larger, slower river that would take us to the pull out. There was even discussion of making it all the way to the pull out in a single day. When we did push off we had to first pull the raft upstream a good hundred metres so we could make the turn.

First daylight view of our previous day's work

We stopped to fish. A couple of times. Landed a few grayling. Enjoyed the sun and the fact that we could relax the intensity of scanning the forest edge as we floated by. In the distance a rain cloud or two missed us. We passed the fabled gravel bar that has never failed to produce a moose. The river began to change as the grade lowered. There were more aspen on the banks. The river level also seemed to be rising, backing up into the forest in a few places. I got nervous. Oliver had warned us of a previous year’s float that required a portage around a gnarly logjam on the final river bend. But we were well upstream of that still. 

We rounded a corner and a logjam loomed in front of us. But this one was navigated fairly easily in the raft. And yet the river level remained high. Another bend and the true source of the backwatering became clear. The river split at the top of an island, and a massive logjam entirely blocked one of the forks. The other fork was a smooth-surfaced, deep channel, with a serious volume of water moving through it. That’s the one to take, we figure, because at least there was still water. Given the way the river was flooding the forest it was just a matter of time before we met the end of that road too, however. The final logjam came in the form of a long berm of logs; water running through everywhere, but no open channel. A portage nearly certain.

We spent a good hour looking for the most reasonable path around (or through) the jam. A walk and wade showed us that the river eventually came back together downstream, below a sand bar that was tracked up with more than a few sets of enormous wolf tracks. Camping there for the night was not in the cards. A couple of options were explored, but, in the end Mark and Oliver are able to pinpoint the shortest route from above the logjam to a narrow channel, eventually feeding unobstructed into the main river. Just 50 or so metres of forest to get through (the first half of which was dense, flooded alder) with the gear, moose and raft. Sawing commences, at first to make a path just wide enough to carry packs. Oliver uses a pack frame to string up one of the quarters for the portage, but then Mark just starts heaving them up on his shoulder and crashing through the bush like Fred Flintstone. We pile the meat on a tarp, get the gear moved, and then tackle the raft. There are a couple of options: remove the rowing frame, deflate the raft, carry the pieces, reinflate and reassemble it all on the other side. Or cut a raft-sized swath through the forest. We opted for the latter. If you ever need the ideal saw for live alder, talk to Mark about whatever kind he has.

We did get the raft through. It was not easy. And then we loaded everything back up and were on the water like nothing had happened. Except my hand was now home to many, many thorns.

After the logjam I developed a better understanding of the river, and its ability to take hours from us at any moment. We no longer felt like stopping to fish, and had yet to pass the location of the logjam of years past - another potential portage. I kept my eyes on the water level, fearing signs of disappearing banks. Every visible gravel bar was an indication that things were as they should be. Even as we approached the final bend and saw the looming stacks of tree trunks, the river level was still low. A quick scout showed that the feared bend could be navigated without leaving the raft. And in another instant we passed the confluence and were on a wide, sinuous river flowing towards (relative) civilization. The water was shallow, often only a metre or two deep, but fast. While it was often hard to tell the raft was moving at all, rocks below were nearly a blur and the GPS clocked us in at around eight kilometres per hour. Before nightfall we pulled off the river and made camp on an endless gravel bar. Throw together a meat rack, pitch tents, collect firewood. Another night of fire-stoking shiftwork. 

The tracks of a couple of young black bears that Oliver saw on a fruitless grouse hunt gave us reason to stay vigilant. One fire was made up by the tents and one down by the waters edge with the raft and the moose. This was the quietest place we had been in days; the river was smooth, and lay some distance from where we set up our tents. In the calm it was easy to imagine any sound as a wolf or bear following its nose. 

We grilled a piece of tenderloin for dessert. Again the night was moonless, but clear. The aurora started as it had the night before, a band across the sky. And then grew more intense. To camp on a gravel bar is to give yourself a near 360 degree theatre of the sky. Spirals, curtains, greens and pinks. It took effort to finally make my way into the tent and set the alarm for an hour and a half later, the rifle lying placidly between two sleeping bags. We rotated through the night, keeping both fires going, kind of.

There were still some hours of travel between us and the pull out, so in the morning we broke camp at a slightly more hurried pace than the previous day. Though nowhere near the crack of dawn. On a wide, flat river the current does all the work. We reclined. We ate lunch. A few times. 

And then we rounded one last bend and saw the bridge. 

We pulled the raft in just above it and began the process of getting the truck to where we were, meaning Oliver disappeared to thumb a ride, which culminated in a classic Yukon biathlon.

Compared to a river trip, the two hitchhiked rides to the highway junction with the original logging road, followed by retrieving the stashed bike and getting back to the truck, isn’t much of an adventure. My Yukon biathlon participant badge, though, was merited by conducting the bike ride (and hitchhike – oh, Yukon…) while armed with the .22, and using it to try to budge a spruce grouse blocking my way.

Mark and I remained at the river’s edge, and set to work cleaning and deflating the raft while chatting with a cast of locals coming down to fish. One group hauled out a reasonably sized bull trout from just off the boat launch. We made coffee. We waited. I walked up onto the bridge past a truck and trailer where there rested a moose head that so large I considered it might be a different species than ours. Oliver eventually returned, and we packed up the truck as the sun was setting. A bankside beer was drank, a stop at a restaurant got us good and sleepy for the drive to Whitehorse, and we were off. I think I was drifting in and out of consciousness at this point, but came-to long enough to catch a glimpse of a lynx crossing the road.

We were at Oliver’s door after midnight, and literally threw everything from his shed onto the lawn so we could air it out overnight before hanging the meat. Around then the aurora started to do crazy things. A crescendo of fast, transforming light, the entire sky bright with orange and green and pink. I questioned whether I had unknowingly eaten hallucinogenic flora at some point earlier in the day.

Living up here, I’m privy to reasonable aurora on a semi-regular basis. This, though, was pretty good, even for the aurora-jaded.

Alana rejoined us the next morning, and the four of us set to work disassembling enough of the moose such that I could fill a cooler with wrapped cuts before my flight the next day. Butchering on a porch in the sun with coffee - eventually beer - and good company. Kieran and Meghan passed through – more of the U of A contingent. At the end of the day my hand did not require stitches, making this entire trip a notable success. It should be mentioned that while I had a ticket to skip town, the butchering was far from over. I pulled a classic meat and run. 

A note on how easy the logistics of a trip like this are (specifically for me): Oliver did a shit ton of work to get this thing well in motion before I showed up. Having done it once or twice before was helpful I’m sure. The role of guide and outfitter suits him. Oliver, Mark and Alana also made sure I had what I needed up there, saving the excess baggage fees for my return trip. Truck, raft, dry bags, and a periwinkle blue PFD with space for my bosom - ideal for trail mix and a map. I’m putting in for a special guide license down south, and will return the favour during the winter poutine migration.

By the time I was unpacking the cooler into the freezer in my Montreal apartment it felt as though I was waking from a vivid, though already distant dream. Time to charge my phone and check the music listings I guess. 

Right?

~~~