This is the second installment of my four-part blog post about my trip in September 2018 to Alaska for a moose hunt with my friend, Derek Habel.

Part 1 ended with Derek and I arriving at our trailhead destination of Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, Canada, where we parked the rig and prepared to head out on the horses to Derek’s hunt camp.

After arriving at Beaver Creek about 7pm (local time), we got the rig parked and the horses fed, watered, and cared for, then headed into town for a fine dinner at Buckshot Betty’s Restaurant.  We made it just in time, before they stopped serving. It’s pretty much the only game in town for sit-down eating, but it was also surprisingly good food for a one-dog town like Beaver Creek! Derek had made friends with Betty during his previous visits. She owns the parcel where we park the rig and set up camp at our trailhead. She allows Derek to park there during his stay during the moose hunting season.

The following morning, which would be Thursday, September 13, I believe, we loaded up our horses and headed up Beaver Creek to Derek’s special hideaway hunt camp. There really isn’t a trail. It’s just about 19 miles of rough riverbed country with close to 30 river crossings between the trailhead and the camp.

As we started out, while it was beautiful country, the visibility was limited to the river and the trees lining it. While there was no trail, to speak of, Derek’s experience of the previous years in getting to and from his hunt camp proved valuable in picking shortcuts through the thickets and cutting off long bends in the river.  There were a couple times when Derek told me to take the lead and I got us into a mess in the thickets.

With our string of Missouri Fox Trotters and Tennessee Walkers, we made great time packing in. My DeLorme (now Garmin) GPS gauged our mileage at 18.4 miles (a later run had it at 18.7 miles). We made it in 4 hours and 10 minutes, including stops and about 30 river crossings. Our top speed was 9.6 miles per hour and our average moving speed was nearly 5 miles per hour, through some absolutely treacherous country. Doing that kind of speed on Quarter Horses would have resulted in our gear being strung all along the trail and our backsides being seriously pounded, but on Fox Trotters and Walkers, it was easy.

These are the actual readings from my GPS unit at our camp:

Location: N6*11.2104 W141*2.3048 (accuracy 16′)
Time moving: 4:10:38
Mileage: 18.4
Max speed: 9.6 mph
Average speed (moving): 4.5 mph

On the trip in, Derek’s big Tennessee Walker, Finn, took a few missteps here and there. There was one instance, during a river crossing where I was leading and was just coming out of the river, when I heard Derek yell. I turned back to look and saw him looking like a fishing bobber on the water! His horse had tripped and gone completely under and all I saw was Derek sitting the saddle, thigh-deep in the river. The horse quickly got his head up and regained his footing, however, and made it safely across the river. Derek said that happened three times on the trip in. On the trip out, we put Finn under a pack saddle.

Luckily, both Derek and I wore waterproof pants, and so stayed pretty dry. Derek also had waterproof boots, but I had on my leather packer boots. Despite all the care I took to treat and wax them, by the time we had made a half-dozen river crossings, my feet were wet and cold.

We saw tracks of both Grizzly and Black Bear in the sand along the river shore, but we didn’t actually see a bear. The tracks made it exciting, though, whenever we headed through the thickets to make shortcuts to bypass bends in the river!

Here’s a short video of us just after starting out, during our first river crossing:

We rolled into camp late that afternoon, due to a late departure from the trailhead. We situated the horses and immediately set up our camp. Derek brought a small four-man tent for sleeping quarters. He also had a camp kitchen disguised as pack panniers, made of welded sheet aluminum with a cook top in it. Pretty cool.

As the framework for the canopy from the previous year was still standing, we pulled out the tarps and other gear Derek had cached nearby from previous years, and got our kitchen area covered. Once we got our camp area settled and set up, we made ourselves a very tasty dinner.

I thought I was a pretty experienced and learned horse packer, but I learned plenty from Derek during our preparation and execution of this trip. For instance, Derek’s wife, Traci, provided home made dinners for us, including lasagna, beef stew, ham, chicken pot pie, and other things, which she packed in freezer bags and froze. Derek has two large Yeti cooler bags in which all these frozen meals were packed. One Yeti went in each side of a set of soft panniers, where they fit much better than a set of hard-sided coolers. Even after 15 days, we still had frozen meals in the cooler bags in weather hovering around 50 degrees F most of the time.

I also learned Derek’s system for loading top packs. I have always tried to compartmentalize everything: sleeping bags tightly packed in stuff sacks, clothing in nylon bags, doc kit, accessories, all things in their proper bag. Derek, on the other hand, simply throws everything loose into a top pack. Effectively, each person has their own top pack and it becomes one’s personal suitcase. In other words, no compartmentalization, no little bags. Sleeping bag goes in loose. Clothing loose.  Small personal items, like soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, and meds (Ibuprofen came in handy!) in a small bag, but that’s all. In this way, the top pack contents stay loose in the top pack and the top pack stays soft and balanced. It does not have the tendency to get off-balanced by all the bagged and bundled items getting jounced around and settling to the heavy side. With everything loose in the top pack, it stays in place better. I found Derek’s system to be very effective and efficient. You have to sort of dig around to find your socks, but that’s a small tradeoff for not having to re-settle a top pack every few miles. In the past I solved that issue by covering the top pack with a canvas manty and binding everything in place with a diamond hitch. Derek’s way saved weight, time, and effort.

Derek also packed in a small chainsaw for clearing trails. It is a Stihl with about a 12″ blade. The model is normally used at the end of a long pole for trimming tree branches. It is perfect for packing on a horse and for clearing trees up to a foot in diameter. Perfect for clearing trails in Alaska. I’m going to have to take a look at getting one like that.

We packed in about 200 pounds of feed for the horses, which was supplemented by local grasses. However, the grass isn’t as nutritious as what the horses were used to, so the sack feed went fast. We saved a bag for the last day of the hunt, to give the horses an energy boost for the trip packing back out to the trailer. It would have been nice to have been able to bring in more feed, but that would entail another pack horse to feed, and there wasn’t enough local grass to begin with. There comes a point of diminishing returns…

Once we got everything settled in camp, we did a little camp maintenance and then just relaxed. In the evenings and mornings we glassed the surrounding hills for moose and other game, but it was apparent early-on that we had arrived before the moose rut season had begun. So, our first few days in camp were pretty easy and involved a lot of time spent reading Louis L’Amour novels and pleasant conversation about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We got a sprinkle or two of rain, but in general, the weather was surprisingly pleasant.

I noticed the first evening that the Northern Lights were showing a pleasant glow in the western sky. It wasn’t the spectacular display I have seen in some documentary shows, but it was plenty beautiful for me. That was one of the “bucket-list” things I was hoping to check off on this trip. I enjoyed watching the display every evening when the western sky was not obscured by clouds. Sadly, it wasn’t bright enough to get a good video clip.

After a day or two lazing around camp, Derek guided me up a trail he has developed over the past several years, which leads up into the foothills to the northeast of camp. Up in those hills is where Derek has done most of his hunting and has had good luck in coming out with some very nice bull moose over the past six years.

On the way up the trail, we passed a very fresh Grizzly Bear rub on the trail. We were happy we had Lucky, Derek’s trail dog, with us. Lucky is half Bernese Mountain Dog and half Border Collie and Derek has trained him to run ahead of the horses about 10 yards or so, to warn us of bear in the trail. When the dog senses a bear, he sets up a very noisy warning for us and allows the riders to get set up defensively in case the bear becomes aggressive. In camp, the dog is also a very effective bear alarm. He slept right outside the door to the tent. As it turned out, we had no bear in camp on this trip, but it has happened in past years. It is particularly dangerous when there is meat on the meat pole after a successful hunt.

Interestingly, we had a bull moose walk right through our camp area one night, passing not far behind our tent,  and Lucky didn’t make a sound. I was the one who heard the moose snorting as he walked by. I couldn’t even wake up Derek. I had to show Derek the tracks the following morning, so he’d believe me!

When you get into the thick forests in that area, it’s a bit spooky, knowing there are Grizzly around. You can’t see very far in any direction and the footing is poor, so you can’t rely on the horses for a quick getaway. In the event of a bear encounter on the trail, if the horse were to spook and bolt, it is likely both horse and rider would end up on the ground.

In the photos on this post, you will see what looks like beautiful ground upon which to ride, but in reality it is tundra-like, in that most of what you see is covered in about a foot of moss with mud underneath. The moss and mud is spider-webbed with roots of all sizes, hidden in the moss, creating a serious footing hazard for the horses. It is truly tough going for them and they need to be in top condition before the trip. Derek has found that MFT’s are very capable horses in that country and can move through it well and quickly. My grade TWH seemed to handle it well, but Finn proved to be pretty much a stumble-bum in it. It was probably the particular horse and not the breed in his case.

Derek’s trail has been used and maintained annually by him and is also used by game in the area, so the trail has stayed pretty open. However, it is sometimes hard to stay on, due to many game trails crossing it. Even after several passes on the trail, I still found a way to lose it in one particular spot. Once up into the foothills, however, we just found our way across the hillsides and gullies. We had particular difficulty finding our way across certain areas that were so soggy our horses would sink up to their knees in the mush. We tried to avoid those spots, but it was sometimes difficult to see them. We also had trouble finding our way across some gullies, as the streams would cut deeply and the sides were covered in dense growth. We looked for game trails passing through them, but even so, moose can go places where a horse and rider cannot. We had at least three occasions in which we narrowly avoided injury as horses went down crossing gullies.

In one such instance, Derek’s big Tennessee Walker stumbled coming up out of a deep cut and went over backwards. Derek was able to unload safely, but the horse continued rolling over backward and ended up in the bottom nearly folded in half, with his feet in the air. Derek and I were able to use the lead rope and get enough weight behind it to pull him out of the hole and back over on his side, to where he could get his feet under him enough to get back up. That was a close one, but there was no permanent damage to man, horse, or equipment. We felt pretty fortunate that there was no damage to Derek’s very expensive hunting rifle or scope on that one.

As you can see from the photos in the gallery below, we arrived in the area just as the seasonal change of colors was beginning. By the time we left, it was over and everything was brown for the winter.

We were in camp 15 days. During the latter part of the second week we discovered the moose rut had begun and we began to see a few moose. Nothing yet like the bull we were after, but game  all the same. We also saw one black bear sow with a cub from a great distance, who roamed a particular hillside for several days before disappearing. We also saw numerous Dall Sheep up on the steep hillsides above us. Their white coats stand out in sharp contrast to the surrounding terrain and they can be seen from a great distance even with the naked eye.

Since I was the horse-handler and Derek was the hunter (I didn’t even buy a hunting license), I spent a lot of time just glassing the areas and enjoying the tasty berries that covered the hillsides. We found patches of late-hanging blueberries and hillsides of low-bush cranberries. I snacked on them as often as I could. There were also a couple other kinds of berries available, but I didn’t like the taste as much as the cranberries.

Our camp was on an island, several acres in extent. As it was completely surrounded by the river, we felt comfortable allowing the horses to range freely to graze on the local grasses. For the first few days we had no trouble, but then a couple of the horses began crossing the river near camp to graze. We decided to start putting hobbles on a couple of them, but continued to allow the rest to roam freely. That seemed to work. Sometimes they would be gone for hours and then return to camp.

One evening, on the 11th day out in camp, two of our horses decided they had enjoyed enough of the outdoors, so they headed back toward the trailer at the trailhead. The lead horse, Ginger, a Missouri Fox Trotter mare, who has been on this trip several times before, led out at a pretty good pace, with her trail buddy, another MFT, following. My Walker, J Golden, who was grazing with them at the time, decided he’d rather stay with us. He whinnied at them a couple times, as they crossed the river headed north, then returned to camp. When I saw him come into camp alone, I suspected what had happened. I hiked over to where they had been grazing and their tracks were plain to see, where they entered the river on the trail back up Beaver Creek toward the trailhead.

I’ll save that story and the rest of the hunt for another post.  Enjoy the photo gallery.

Stay tuned for more.

TH