It was 1999 and my first winter out on the trapline
Paul’s first moose at camp. It was late in the fall, October 2, 1999. And it happened as follows: I was working away in the guest cabin, making it livable, as it was mainly used as a storage room. He was sawing and hammering away, building bunk beds for eventual, future guests. My dog at the time, Max, a Bernese Mountain dog, was with me and oversaw my doings. As Paul was discussing his work with the dog, he hears a grunt! That must be a moose and needs to be investigated. Stepping out of the cabin, about 100 metres away from us, I see a big bull moose who calls and comes towards the camp. Being on my own out there, I thought : “This is THE opportunity”! “That would be an easy hunt, providing us meat for the whole winter into the spring”. I didn’t have a moose yet – I realized it might not be as easy to get a moose in the huge Yukon Territory. I didn’t know much about the moose’s rut behaviours nor times the cows are in heat.
Not wanting to have this bull get away, I quickly went to the main cabin to get my Drilling, a rifle.
What is a drilling rifle?
Drillings (“drilling” being German for “triplet”) normally consist of two matching smoothbore barrels and a rifled barrel (German: Normaldrilling, common drilling), but may cover a much broader range of shapes and configurations.
I walked towards the outhouse which is about 30 metres from the main cabin, and in that moment the moose comes around a few young spruce and came to stand without anything (tree, bush, building) in front of it. We stood about 30 steps apart. I was able to place a really good shot onto its neck – the moose went down on the spot and died instantly. This is what a hunter wants – a quick death for any game. Both my dog and I looked at each other speechlessly, then realized how lucky we were: securing meat for the winter close to camp.
The real work starts after you fire the bullet
The minute I went to open up and butcher the animal, that’s when it started to snow heavily . Once I was done and was looking at the 8 separate meat pieces (neck, 2 hind quarters, 2 front quarters, backstraps, and 2 ribs. Additionally there is the heart, the liver and the kidneys), I was surrounded by 10 centimetres of snow. I thought that this development was convenient, because then I went to grab the toboggan, loaded the meat in it and pulled it back to the main cabin. On the north side of the cabin I installed hooks where I hung up all the meat, under the roof’s eaves. After all this work I was pretty tired and went to sleep early.
Where are the wolves?
Sometime in the middle of the night, very loud wolves’ howling tore me out of my deep, exhausted sleep. They were not far off, sitting somewhere behind the cabin up on the hillside. My dog Max became very nervous and started pacing around the cabin. I got up and quietly walked to the window to look outside. Lo and behold, a wolf stood ON the front porch!
It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be
Virgil
That wolf pack thought it had found an easy feast – but they were wrong. I was ready to defend my spoils! I tore open the cabin door (opens to the outside) and started screaming at the wolf. I then went back inside and put on my clothes, only to go outside right away again. That was when I put a tarp around the meat so that the wolves won’t get at the meat that easily. One would also want the trap over and around the meat so that birds like Grey Jays and others can’t get to it. Grey Jays and ravens seem to have an amazing nose, or it is the shot they hear, but minutes later they’re there, waiting for you to hand something over!
I shot into the night 2 or 3 times towards where I thought the wolves hang out. They seemed to have moved further away, but only about a hundred meters. There in the forest they were howling all night long. Once it started to become daylight they wolves were not heard nor seen anymore.
Check out the current Yukon Hunting Regulations here.
What is your exciting story about a moose hunt?