This is my third post about my 2019 Alaska Moose Hunt.

So, at the end of the last post, Derek and I had made the horse pack trip in to our hunt camp. I said in my last post that we made it to camp during early afternoon on the second day, but as I was reviewing my journal for this post, I saw that we actually arrived at camp about 4:00pm the second afternoon. It was a tough 20 miles, involving deep river crossings, overloaded horses, pack problems, a lame horse, and quicksand, and a night’s camp on the trail. I wrote in my journal that the trip in was “an ordeal.”

Also, I neglected to mention a wreck we had on the way in that could have been a lot worse than it ended up being.  It was significant enough that I thought I’d talk about it in this post.

It was the second day and we were still making progress toward our hunt camp. We had run up against a logjam and were trying to make our way through a thicket to clear the jam. We found a way out to a clear area on the shore of the river, but it entailed crossing several downed logs and a large berm of sand that had washed up against them, creating a steep bank. Derek made it through on Finn, so I came behind him on Apollo, leading the four pack horses. Apollo and the first pack horse, Ginger, carefully walked through the jam, crossing the logs and descending the bank without trouble. The second pack horse, Moose, however, decided to jump across the logjam, rather than walking through it. When she jumped, she pulled Shadow into the logjam without giving him a chance to see where he was going, so he fell across the logs and went down. The trailer, Missy, who was just making the turn toward the logjam, saw the wreck and immediately pulled back and started fighting her lead rope.

We ended up with two pack horses, Ginger and Moose, pulling against Shadow’s lead, with Shadow down on the ground on his side with his head downhill, stretched out, and Missy pulling against him backward. Missy had fought until she was in a sitting position with her pack saddle completely off her rump and on the ground, with cinches and rigging still hooked up and tight around her hips.  After a few intense seconds, the horses stopped fighting and just held their positions with all the lead ropes taught and hard.

Derek and I immediately dismounted and tied our horses and started working on freeing the horses. The wet lead ropes had tightened until the knots were impossible to untie. We ended up having to cut some of the pigtails to free the lead ropes. Once the horses were free, we tied Ginger and Moose to brush and went back to work on Shadow and Missy. We were relieved to see that Shadow was uninjured, despite his precarious situation. We were able to unload him, remove his pack, and get him back on his feet without too much trouble.

Missy was another problem. The way she was sitting, it was a simple matter to get her packs off, since they were already sitting on the ground, but getting the pack saddle off of her was another matter. After several minutes of work, I was able to access the cinch rings and loosen the latigoes, allowing the pack saddle to fall away. I was then able to untangle the mass of rigging from around her legs and clear it all away. Luckily, she, too, was uninjured.

After getting Missy through the logjam and down onto the shore of the river, we were able to get all the horses repacked and back underway.  As we were both quite busy and the adrenaline was high, sadly, neither of us thought to get photos of this wreck.

After another couple of hours with no further serious wrecks, we made it to our hunt camp.

Our hunt camp was in about the same condition in which we left it when we departed last year.  The meat pole, unused last year, was still standing. Much of our scaffolding for the tarp roof was still there, but we had to cut a couple new poles. Our makeshift corral was still standing, so we let the horses into it, fed them, and went to work on the camp.  Our first task, after unloading and caring for the horses, was to set up the camp kitchen and the tent. By that time, it was getting dark and we were tired. After a good dinner around a campfire, we hit the sacks for a good night’s sleep.

The weather for the trip in was quite pleasant, clear and probably in the mid sixties. The problem with the pleasant weather, however, was the bugs!  The “noseeums” and mosquitoes were so thick that one breath with the mouth open would get you half-a-dozen bugs for dinner! The flies nearly drove the horses nuts! We had plenty of fly spray concentrate, but it seemed to have little effect. A couple of the horses reacted to the fly bites and had welts all over them. The best deterrent to the flies and mosquitoes seemed to be the smoke from our fire. By about the end of the first week we had a couple nights of low temperatures, which greatly reduced the bug problem. Later on we had a couple of hard freezes, after which the flies and mosquitoes were almost non-existent and both we and the horses were much happier.

The day after we arrived at camp, we went to work improving our camp. We had packed in some landscaping spikes, which we used to nail up the rails to our makeshift corral, making it much more secure. We gathered driftwood for the campfire and got things situated in camp.

I took the opportunity to take a look at Apollo’s front right hoof, to see why he was lame. I picked up my hoof pick and started toward Apollo. He decided he didn’t want to be caught, after the previous day’s hard ride, so he started walking away from me. Derek brought two dogs with us, one of which likes to nip the horses’ heels when they are causing problems. That one was following close behind me as I walked toward Apollo. As I caught up with Apollo, and was near his rump, he moved his rump toward me. I reached out my left hand to push his rump away . He apparently felt that hoof pick and thought the dog had nipped him. Apollo immediately kicked out with both hind legs, catching me just above the knees on both legs! I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, moaning and groaning.

Once I was sure nothing was broken, I looked around at Apollo. He had walked off a step or two and was looking at me with this contrite and apologetic expression on his face (yes, horses have expressions) that said, “Sorry boss, I thought you were the dog.”

Derek was on the satellite phone with his wife during all this. He looked around and saw me on the ground groaning and figured that since I was groaning, I was still alive and would survive, so he just continued the conversation with his wife and didn’t even come check on me. Some friend!

That night both Derek and I slept so well that neither of us wished to get out of bed in the morning. We finally got ourselves up around 10am. We had a couple more hunting buddies that were to join us in camp. They were to be dropped off by bush plane, so we spent a couple hours preparing a landing strip near our camp. While doing so, we had let several of the horses out to graze on our little island. About the time our friends were to arrive, I went to saddle up a couple horses to bring them to camp. That’s when we noticed our horses weren’t with us anymore, so I saddled up Ginger and went looking for them.

Sure enough, Moose, Shadow, Apollo, and Finn, had all decided to head back to the trail head, 20 miles away. I caught up with them about a mile and a half from camp, headed north at a pretty good clip. They didn’t run from me when I approached on Ginger, so I caught up Moose and turned back for camp, thinking the rest would follow us, but they didn’t. So, I tied Moose and went after them again and caught Finn. Shadow and Apollo just kept on going. I stopped and tied Moose and Finn to some deadfalls and went after the other two. I finally caught up with Shadow and caught his lead rope, but it was a chase. Leading Shadow, now, Apollo decided to follow. I went back to where I had tied Moose and Finn and tied each lead rope to another’s halter, and in that way was able to lead them all back to camp. In all, that was a 3.7 mile jaunt for me. After that, we made sure never to allow more than two horses free to graze at a time. The rest remained safely secured in the corral.

By the time I got back to camp, our buddies had arrived. These are two friends, father and son (the son is an Alaska resident), who came to hunt Dall sheep and grizzly bear, as well as moose. Derek and I were to support them with the horses, hauling them up to the foot of the mountains and packing their kills back to camp. After arriving back at camp, I saddled Apollo to help them get their packs from their drop site to camp. En route, Apollo lost his front right shoe in the river. Luckily, we saw it and were able to recover the shoe.

Back at camp, and everybody settled in, I took a look at Apollo’s hoof and discovered the reason for his lameness. I could see that the farrier had trimmed him too closely and that one of the nails had caused bruising on the outer side of the sole from being placed too far into the white line. I reset the shoe, hoping it would help, but the damage was done. Apollo remained sore on that hoof for about the next 10 days. Eventually he lost that shoe again I replaced it with a new shoe. After that he walked without a limp and was useful again as a saddle horse.

The following day Derek and I put the extra saddles on two of the pack horses, and hauled our buddies up into the foothills east of our camp and dropped them off. We did some bushwhacking to get them to where they could start their hunt. It was pretty tough going with no trail, other than a couple game trails. Derek and I made our way back to camp and again spent a relaxing evening around the campfire.

The following day, Derek and I made a 19-mile tour around the area he has hunted for the past six years. Derek rode Finn and I rode Moose. We passed through some beautiful and difficult terrain, but the horses performed well. We came across the hunt camp where a local outfitter drops his clients. They land their planes on a makeshift landing strip in the riverbed of Cottonwood Creek. The pilot and one of the guides was there when we passed. They came out to talk with us. They were none too happy that we were hunting in “their” area and they were somewhat rude to us, bordering on threatening. Derek and I weren’t much intimidated, though, and we ended up letting them know we were there to stay, that we could easily reach their camp with our horses, and that they could not prevent us from hunting anywhere we wanted to hunt within the limits of our legal hunt area.

We continued on and made our way around our loop, having traversed some areas where we had previously not ventured to take the horses. On the return trip, we traveled through areas Moose was familiar with, so she set a blistering pace, occasionally hitting around 10 miles per hour in her awesome fox trot through tundra sometimes knee deep! We arrived back at camp after dark. Both we and the horses were tuckered out. It was quite a day.

Last year we were unable to pack in sufficient feed for the horses for the time we planned to stay on the hunt, so, the plan this year was for me to take the entire pack string and head back to the trailhead, where we had our feed stacked in the back of the pickup. I would pack up about 700 pounds of feed (alfalfa cubes) and bring it back. I took off early the next day to do just that. My next post will document that 40-mile trip and a few more days of our hunt.

So stay tuned!