Lately

I haven't been up to too much lately. Just cutting up a few deadfall trees for firewood, teaching, and walking the five mile loop. We did get quite a bit more snow as of late, so I pulled the Ski-Doo Skandic Tundra 550 out of the bus barn. I had to do some preseason maintenance on it, but its still running like a top. I greased up the front end and the rear suspension, and checked the belt, air filter, and spark plugs. Everything checked out just fine. She started up on the first pull. We don't have a real good base yet, so you do hit a few rocks here and there, but I'm limiting my driving of it until we get more snow. I still have my four wheeler "on the road", so I've been driving that most of the time. Its more fun than the snowmachine at this time of the year. Its not super cold yet (between 10 and 20 degrees), so I don't need a windshield just yet. And I can do donuts to my hearts content on the slippery roads and other open areas.
In other news, I am burning wood exclusively this year. Even though the school district pays all my utility bills (including heat), I prefer burning wood. First of all, the heat is much more radiant. I don't even know if that is the right word, but anyone who has burned wood knows what I'm talking about. It seems to be a more complete type of heat than any other type. Secondly, it keeps me busy and in shape. Even with the addition this year of a chainsaw, making wood is still a grueling task. I split all the wood by hand. I burn spruce and birch. Most of the birch is driftwood pulled out of the Yukon. Every spring time at break up the ice pulls a bunch of trees into the river. The ice grinds them up, strips off the bark and branches, and the river delivers them right to the front door of villages along the Yukon. Many people think you can't burn spruce due to high creosote build up, but you can. The key is to make sure the wood is seasoned. It is not the sap or pitch in spruce or any other coniferous tree that causes creasote build up. It is the water in the pitch that causes it.
With our dry climate here in Interior Alaska, wood seasons pretty quickly. Some people at the University of Alaska Fairbanks did an experiment with wood to illustrate this. They cut some green birch at the beginning of summer to length and split it. They then stacked it and put a board on top of the pile to shield from rain. The birch was down to 15-20% water content by the end of summer. That is perfect water content for burning. So basically it takes 6 months or less to dry here in Interior region. Of course you have to cut it to stove length first.
So between burning seasoned wood, cleaning the chimney a minimum of once per year (more during the heating season), using creosote destroyer additive on every third fire, and making a nice hot fire once in a while, I don't have to worry about creosote build up in my chimney. I'll post some wood burning pictures in a later post.

I enjoyed some nice moose summer sausage the other night. Scotty had some summer sausage spices and casings. I cooked it in the oven on 170 degrees for two hours, and then on 200 degrees for another hour. It turned out delicious.

This is a shout out to my buddy Nick. He saved my behind. We didn't have a September inservice in Fairbanks this year, so I never got a chance to buy Halloween candy. I could have bought some candy when I was in Fairbanks in August, but it would have never lasted until now. I would have eaten it up. I am posing with the loot. Nick hooked me up big time, with a whole box full of candy from Fred Meyer. The trick or treaters that come to my house won't leave disappointed.

You might be a redneck if................

 You plow out your driveway with your four wheeler that doesn't have a plow on it. Doing donuts was always one of my favorite techniques for beating on four wheelers. Now that I have my own, my dad doesn't have to harp on me about it.

A pizza I baked a while back. It is homemade whole wheat crust with moose sausage, cheddar cheese, green peppers, and pizza sauce(extra sauce, of course). Overall, a pretty healthy pizza. And it was delicious too.

Side profile of my pizza. The crust was super thick, which is just my style. I've totally cut out the bleached white flour in my diet, and I don't even notice a difference. I use whole wheat flour for baking deserts, bread, and pizza crust. Now when I have white flour it almost tastes bad to me. I still am working on my portion control though. That remains an ongoing battle.

Hunting, fishing, and what not

Beautiful sunset near Ruby. Reminded me of the old saying, "Red sky at night, sailor's delight, red sky in morning, sailor take warning." It didn't turn out to be true, as evidenced by the next picture. Of course it wasn't near Lake Superior though.

First snow of the season on September 30th. It was wet and sloppy and great for doing donuts with my four wheeler.

Scotty and I went camping up the Melozi river last weekend. We bear hunted but had no luck. We did see a bunch of decaying salmon and skeletons littering the bank. We figured we'd see bears for sure but who knows, they might be starting to hibernate already.

Self portrait near our campsite. Note the greasy hair. That's what'll happen when you get all sweaty hiking around and you don't shower for three days straight.

See the dragonfly? I snapped a picture of him along the riverbank. I think they might just freeze solid for the winter. Maybe they just die every fall when it freezes up? I don't know. I just know that it made a cool picture.

Scotty holding up a nice grayling. We had no luck bear hunting, but caught a bunch of these. It was a nice consolation prize. We ended up keeping a bunch and having a fish fry at Scotty's house when we got back from camping. They are a beautiful and tasty fish. We were catching them almost every cast using number one spinners.

An old cabin we found along the Ruby-Poorman road. It was built into a hill.

Our take from chicken hunting today. They are spruce grouse and are very similar to the partridge of the U.P. They are also very dumb birds, as we got within 10 yards of many of these birds before we shot them. I cooked them up today, and they were delicious.

The story of my first moose

            The season for moose started back at the end of August. We get a special subsistence hunt before the regular season open s from September 5^th-25^th. Scotty and I had been hunting hard all during the first season and during the beginning of the regular season. We were doing 100 mile round trips in his boat, going up different tributaries of the Yukon. And we would stop where there were ponds near the rivers and hike into them. Some of them would be a mile or so off the river. And there were no trails into them. We had to bushwhack our way in. It was exhausting work. And the best part was, we saw exactly zero moose and zero bear. I think it was too hot, and none of the animals were moving.

            But it all paid off in the end. We took Scotty’s truck out on the Ruby-Poorman road, which goes about 40 miles into the wilderness south of Ruby to some old gold mines. We left Ruby at about 6 AM on Saturday, September 11^th. We cruised out on the road and slowly drove our way out towards the end. Our plan was to go hike into some ponds and look for moose, and then hike over to some hilltops that were devoid of trees, due to forest fires, to look for bears. We were going to take the first moose or bear that we saw.

            As we were driving along, we saw about a hundred grouse and one lynx. That was pretty cool. There were some times where we could have taken five or six in one shot. They were busy eating gravel in the early morning sun on the road. I almost hit a few out of the air with my hand as we were driving. Then we lucked out.

            We saw a big brown thing on the side of the road about 300 yards away. We thought it was a big bush at first, but then I saw the antlers. The adrenaline surged through my bloodstream. I crept out of the truck and used other bushes as concealment and Scotty did the same as we snuck towards the moose. We got about 100 yards or so away from it and it was still stupidly looking at us. I don’t believe those animals are too smart when they are in the rut. Not too many animals are very smart when they chase members of the opposite sex, humans included.

By this time Scotty ran back to the truck to grab his rifle, which he had forgotten. I continued to watch the moose. He was still just staring at me. Then he turned and started slowly walking directly away from me. I had not shot at him. Maybe the back of his head/neck, but I didn’t want to risk such a shot. So I just grunted. He turned a little and looked back. Then he started to quarter away from me. I shot him with my 30-06 using 220-grain bullets. He continued to walk slowly. So I shot again. Then he turned broadside and started trotting for the tree line, which was about 20 yards away. By this time Scotty had gotten his .375 rifle and was beside me. He shot twice and I shot twice more as well. We saw him go down right at the tree line, and a big cloud of steam rose from his body. We went forward and he was still alive. So Scotty put a bullet from his.454 Casull revolver into his neck. He kicked his legs in his final death throes, and then was still. All told, he had five bullet holes in him, two from my rifle, two from Scotty's rifle, and one from Scotty's pistol. But he didn't make the treeline, and we were able to back Scotty's truck right up to the moose. Talk about an easy pack out. We had to haul it all of ten feet. We lucked out big time. But I figured we deserved it since we had been hunting so hard with so little luck earlier in the season.

We celebrated with a high five. Talk about an adrenaline rush. I was shaking like I had just gotten in a fight. When you hear athletes talk about an adrenaline dump, which is exactly what I experienced. It was awesome.

Now the real work started. Out here in Ruby, there is no butcher that we can go drop off our moose at. We have to process it ourselves. So I shot it at about 8:30 or so AM. We had it in pieces and back in town (we were about 30 miles out of town) to Scotty’s house by about 2:30. We immediately got to work cutting it up. Another teacher at the school was nice enough to help us cut it up. Thanks Tami! We put up the backstraps and loins first. Then we cut out countless roasts and steaks. Remember, one quarter of the moose is as big as a big deer (about 150-200 pounds). Then we ground up a bunch of the moose into burger. Some we left as plain sausage burger, while some we made into Italian, maple, and Cajun sausage. There was plenty of fat on the moose to put into the sausage so it wasn’t too lean. We took about an hour break to eat at around 11 PM. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast at 5:30 AM. We cooked some of the ribs in Scotty’s oven. It was probably the best meal I have ever eaten. There was some fat on the ribs, and Scotty made a homemade barbeque sauce. Tami ate properly but Scotty and especially me ate with our hands like cave men to our hearts content. What an awesome feeling. You take an animal and bust your butt butchering it, and then get to reap the fruits of your labor. We worked on the meat until 4:00 AM, then pretty much collapsed from exhaustion.

We finished cutting up the rest of the meat on Sunday. All told, Scotty and I butchered that moose for about 28 hours total, while Tami did about 24 hours of work on it. But it was all worth it. We have full freezers and meat for the rest of the year. The fun lasted all of ten minutes or so when we shot it and then took some pictures. After that it was work. But it was fulfilling work and I would do it all again in heartbeat if I had freezer space for another moose. 

 Notice how the moose only has two legs? We skinned once side of it, then cut off the front and rear quarters, neck meat, and all the other meat we could. Then we gutted it, rolled it over onto the hide, and butchered the other side of it. A pretty clean method. You can also see how the rack is knocked off on the right hand side. We used the rope for leverage as we were cutting off the legs.





All packed up in Scotty's truck and ready to go. I am covered in a mixture of sweat and blood.

 

600 pounds of meat......

Saturday morning, around 8:15 AM, I got my first moose. Here are a few pictures. I don't have time to write the story now. I gotta write lesson plans for this week. Since I (and Scottie) shot the moose, we've been working around the clock to process it. Here are a few pictures. I'll tell the story in a later post.

Some of the meat which we ground into sausage and burger. Notice the sagging of the racks. I will have meat for the rest of the school year.

Me with the moose. These animals are huge. One hindquarter is bigger than most deer.We lucked out. Scotty was able to back his truck right up to the moose. Had to pack it all of 30 feet.

Here is Scotty with a better view of the rack. You can see the left had side is pretty nice but the thick part of the right hand side broke off at some point.

38 hours after shooting the moose, and it is almost fully processed. A guy here in town took the head meat and what not and gave me back this. Not a bad deal.

Making wood

Here is a picture of my wood stove and half of my wood. The district bought me a half a cord of wood for the winter. As soon as it was delivered, I got down to business with my new chainsaw and cut it up. Then I split it and stacked it inside. It sure feels good being able to accomplish something that you can see.

This is the other half of my wood. I finished it off tonight. I've grown to love splitting wood, especially nice seasoned birch and spruce. You pop it once with a good splitting maul and they just explode. I'm showing off my splitting ability like a fisherman showing off his catch. Note the Rubbermaid plastic tote that serves as my wood box. I also scrounged the sawhorse from the dump. It works perfect for cutting wood with my chainsaw.

Here is my custom maul. Note the extra reinforcements welded on. This sucker is heavy duty, which is perfect for splitting wood in this neck of the woods. I don't have to worry about breaking handle or the head coming loose. And its heavy enough to make the wood explode after 1 or 2 swings.

The tools of my trade. Notice the custom steel tube handle, complete with electrical tape handgrip. I got it from my friend Max. By the way, my chainsaw allows me to cut wood approximately 100 times faster than with a bow saw, which I was doing last year. It's still a workout though, just ask a logger.

Here is a fillet of one of Scottie's monster pike. I don't know if you can see the ruler, but the fillet is around 22 inches long, even though it is kind of scrunched up and has been in my ice cold fridge for the past 24 hours.

This one shows the thickness of the fillet. I haven't cut out the Y-bones yet. And I also have sausage fingers, so you can tell in this picture how thick it really is.

Hunting and what not....

I just got back home from cutting fish with my friend Scottie. He caught a bunch of fish in his net. They included silver salmon, whitefish, and pike. The two pike that he caught were monsters, measuring 42 and 43 inches respectively, while both tipping the scales at over 30 pounds. They are the type of fish that makes you question whether you want to go swimming anymore. I wish I had pictures of them but I don't. I'll try to get Scottie's pictures of them or maybe I'll just take a picture of the fillet for everyone to see. 

This is me and my four wheeler after fighting a losing battle with the Yukon river mud. Now this is not your ordinary, everyday mud. This is the big leagues of mud. I tried hot dogging it with my four wheeler and got too close to the river. As most everyone knows, the Yukon river is a very silty river, and the banks are usually muddy, especially as the water level drops throughout the summer. So I got too close and the mud sucked me in. At first I wasn't stuck too bad, but then I tried rocking it back and forth while gunning the engine. That only made it stuck worse. Pretty soon the mud was to the top of the tires. And it was like a giant suction cup keeping the four wheeler in the mud. I tried prying it under the frame and axles using some pieces of driftwood for a lever and a fulcrum, but I couldn't budge it. Then a guy ended up stopping by and tried pulling me out with his winch on his four wheeler. That didn't work either. So then I started walking up to Scotties to get some help. I was going to see if he had a come along to yank it out, but I ran into another guy along the route. He had a winch on his four wheeler. I had had a lot of time to think on my walk, and formulated a new plan to get it unstuck. We decided to go try it. We ended up hooking his winch up to the back rack and pulling the four wheeler onto its side with the combination of his winch pulling and me prying. Next we hooked up to the footpeg and rolling it onto the seat, and then hooked up to the opposite side footpeg and rolled it the rest of the way over. We basically winched it into a barrel roll to get it on more solid ground. The whole time I was scrambling around in the mud, sometimes up to mid thigh in it. She was totally covered in Yukon river muck. You couldn't even tell it was a red Honda. I ended up going over to Scottie's and washing it off with his hose. I wish I had my camera down there but I didn't. So I had to settle for this picture of my clean four wheeler with me still all muddy.

I got to go town this past weekend for some teacher union training. I pay my dues every year, and I wasn't about to pass up a free trip to town courtesy of them. I ended up going caribou hunting with my buddy Nick while I was in town. It was awesome. We were hunting the Fortymile herd north of Fairbanks in the White Mountains. The scenery was breathtaking when the clouds cleared, and we got a heck of a workout tromping up and down the mountains.

Here are Nick and I taking a much deserved rest after climbing up the side of this mountain. We ended up parking our tired behinds right in the middle of a huge blueberry patch, and we proceeded to scarf down as many as we could find. They were the best blueberries I've ever eaten, probably because we were working so hard climbing and they just hit the spot. We glassed for caribou all around us, but we had no luck.

Here is Nick sitting on a mountain peak that we climbed. It was quite a view up there, with 360 degree view of the whole area. It was awesome too when some clouds rolled in and we were above the clouds. I imagined it must look like that up on top of Mt. Everest. The mountains make distances seem so small when you are up on top, but when you start hiking towards a certain landmark and a half hour later it doesn't seem any closer, you realize that they really trick you and make it look like things are closer than they appear. We had no luck hunting, but all in all it was a blast.

Me with some new stuff I purchased in town this weekend. A new Husqvarna 455 Rancher chainsaw, and nice helmet for my four wheeler/snowmachine. So no one has to worry about me riding now.

This is a nice whitefish that my friend Martha gave me. My hand is in the picture for scale. The fish didn't fit in the sink. And it cooked up delicious. I gotta run. Have a good week everyone!