Riley could only moose hunt with me last Sunday, despite a very fancy tag in an area very close to town. Saturday evening a friend flew me out of Lake Hood to see if we could find the right starting place for a good bull.
We circled the 20-Mile drainage twice without seeing a single moose, one loop inside the other. Daunted, we did the same in the Placer valley and all we spotted was a brown bear tucked up next to the side of the valley.
On the third pass through Placer we found a smallish bull thrashing willows in earnest. A lower pass to better judge him... 600 feet and 90 knots showed him to be about 36" or so, but also caused a herd of ten cows and a much bigger bull to stand up.
Another low pass and I put him at almost 55", marked his location and we flew home. The extra time required to find them put us in danger time for our flight plan which I had filed with OlBlue... saving a step in case someone needed to come looking for us.
At 5:30Pm as we were heading back out of Turnagain Arm I texted him to not send rescue crews yet, we were just running late. With the September tides we had a great view of a substantial
bore tide ripping up the Arm.
Sunday morning's high
tide was at 9:47 in Anchorage and an hour is what we usually give for the
tide to reach the head of the Arm. By 8:30 we were at the launch ramp waiting with another boat... and they had a cow tag.
With a little side-stepping and skirting of the issue we determined we had the same destination picked out. They were headed there because of a previous positive experience.
We launched about the same time and headed upriver. Before long we were having issues with too little water, despite the fact it was mixed rain and snow falling heavily until it decided to add sleet to the menu.
We were leap-frogging the other party as different conditions favored each boat differently. About a mile or so upriver the going was getting very tough and we needed to get five miles up there.
That was about the time the
bore tide arrived. A small standing wave perhaps two inches high hit us and started carrying us upstream far faster than we had been going dragging the boat. In no time we were in sight of the row of trees marking the moose meadow.
I sent Riley and Eben ahead to look for the herd while I brought up the boat. They were just out of sight when the
tide turned and almost immediately the boat was high and dry, 75 yards from the nearest flowing water.
The other party Jay and Pete had caught up to us just about the time the water abandoned us and they were also high and almost dry. They were however, at least a hundred yards downstream.
I started digging a channel in the gravel with a 5-gallon bucket; and dammed all side tributaries to the trickle I was stuck in to help divert all possible water to floating the boat. A weathered railroad tie washed up on the bank was a huge help in raising the boat to help level the riverbed under the boat.
The boat is an 18' MonArk welded aluminum hull with a 75hp Johnson and a jet unit, about a thousand pounds dry. The non-removable 27 gallon fuel tank was not looking like such a good idea, either.
Riley and Eben showed up just about the time Jay, from across the river started waving his arms and motioning "Big Bull" and waving "come here" fast. They were going to let us shoot the bull before they shot a cow as they would most likely mill around for quite a while after the bull went down.
It seems the son had climbed a tree and started calling across the meadow and dragged the bull away from where I had seen him the night before and brought him right to the stranded boats.
The 80gr TTSX from the 25-06 performed about as expected at about 75 yards... The first shot was almost head on but took out the bull's right lung while headed for the left hind quarter. It stopped in the guts somewhere.
The bull turned broadside and the second shot went through the shoulder, breaking the nearside scapula close to the joint, and left. The bull remained standing. A neck shot dropped him on his nose. He continued to struggle, so another shot to the ribs was needed.
I confessed to OlBlue that the little pill was likely just a bit light for the duty. However, rutty bulls of both caribou and moose persuasions have repeatedly shown me just how tough some critters can be and he may not have died any faster with a howitzer.
The rifle is the same 700 Riley used for his caribou, a Pac-Nor Hunter weight SS barrel in a Ti stock. the scope the same Vortex 3-9x40 Crossfire II set at 6x. The conditions were miserable and a set of Butler Creeks may be in the near future...
I cannot begin to say how much we appreciated the extremely classy way the other guys handled the competition thing and brought us into their game plan after they had so clearly called the moose out from under us. They could easily have guaranteed their moose and just left us chasing a spooked bull and no one could say a bad thing about them for it. Instead they helped us and waited for their moose. Very cool and generous!
The pack was miserable, though only a short half-mile. The standing water was bad, but the trail had cut through the vegetation and left a trough of glacial silt and clay bottomed slippery slide.
On the first trip Eben carried a whole hind quarter while Riley carried a front quarter. The hinds are about 120 or so, I am guessing, the fronts are at least 100. Riley might go 165 soaking wet.
And funny I should mention that... On the first trip Riley was crossing a knee-deep cut when he fell face first with the pack holding him down. Eben pulled him free and they dropped that pack and came back for it after they got Eben's load to the beach.
The meat pile was right on the shore above a drop-off to a short beach. The big brown bear tracks were right under the meat pile if that might help one locate it!
Riley was soaked and remained so for the duration. They stopped at the boat long enough for Riley to eat a can of cold Stagg's chili.
We finished cutting up the bull and the last two loads went out in the dark. The moose was stacked river-right while the boat remained aground river-left.
Eben built a fire with the wettest wood imaginable by filling a chili can with gas and topping it with wet leaves and moss. When lit it burned like a candle putting out enough heat to dry the wood and eventually burn it. Gradually enough got burning to actually provide some heat.
So there we huddled around a small fire and facts started to be assembled... We were just a few days after the full moon and therefore the tides were declining. We had ridden all th eway to the top of the last
tide. The next might be quite a bit smaller.
The next
tide high enough to float the boat might not come for another 28 days. We had added to the problem with hundreds of pounds of meat.
The options were running something along the lines of bringing a smaller boat up to the boat and offloading everything and floating out the smaller boat... and then returning with a bunch of rollers and come-alongs to move the boat as far as needed to refloat it.
And then it hit me... Remember the
bore tide at 5:30PM the previous evening while flying home? It was 9:30 and we would have seen it by now, surely.
At 10:30 I started thinking about ways to provide a bit more cover and how to get Riley warm as the fire was not enough. For hours he had been soaked and very cold yet he never once hinted at complaining. And it was now obvious we were there for the night.
And the rain and snow had not stopped all day.
About 10:40 someone said, "Is that water I hear?"
Flashlights all turned to the river and nothing could be seen and we returned to the fire.
Suddenly there WAS water noise and a standing wave from the
bore tide rushed up the river bed and the river was coming up fast! We loaded the boat as quickly as possible, kicked the fire apart and the burning pieces into the river and finally shoved the boat off its gravel mooring.
The river was now rising even faster. Within minutes the dry river bed had a couple feet of silty gray, cold water pushing upstream.
We got the boat across the river and the boat now nosed up directly to the drop-off. Riley held the boat tight to the bank while Eben tossed the chunks onto the bow. I tossed each piece into the boat in a huge pile, complete head and antlers last.
It was struggle at first finding the channel in the dark and we bumped off several sand bars as we worried our path downstream.
The other boat had a big headstart and knew they had to get downstream as fast as possible, lest they be stranded again as the
tide retreated.
But they had no lights.
Riley drove the boat all the way out and as we got farther downriver it got easier and easier. Suddenly he looked at me said, "I guess this is payback for an easy Kodiak bear and a caribou."
We caught up to the other boat fairly quickly and remained behind them shining the way for them to go all the way to the launch ramp. At 11:11PM we touched the beach at the ramp and we were so incredibly happy to be off the river!
Riley stripped out of his wet gear and I realized then just how much water he had shipped and just how miserable his night could have been...
The bull is 53 1/2" but very heavy. The main beams are enormous and one paddle is smaller than the other by quite a bit. One eye was puss-filled and probably blind from taking a tine during a fight. There is a fresh ding on his nose. He was probably a pretty dominant bull for the area and there is a much happier dink bull with a ready-made harem going to town even as I type this.
I will post some photos as soon as Riley can send them to me.
