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.