Well, it’s time for another chapter of my Alaska moose hunt.

As we left it last week, Derek and I had finally made it into our hunt camp and were getting settled-in. Our hunting buddies had arrived and I was getting ready to head back to the trailhead to bring in horse feed.  That’s where we’ll start for this post.

I’ll apologize right now for the dropoff in our photography. This was a tough hunt trip and Derek and I had our hands full most of the time. Photography was not foremost in our minds unless we came across something particularly spectacular. I’ll try to do better in the future.

Our father-and-son pair of hunters, who were flown in, were there to hunt dall sheep, moose, and if they were lucky enough, grizzly bear. In our hunt area (Wrangell-St. Elias National Park) only Alaska residents can hunt the mighty grizzly. The son of the pair covers that requirement, which allows the father to enjoy the same benefits.

The day after they arrived, Tuesday I believe, Derek and I mounted them up on horses, loaded a pack horse with their backpacks and gear, and led them up into the foothills of the mountain range to our east. It was a tough haul, with a couple river crossings where the water came to near our knees, and steep mountainsides where the scrub oak and brush grew thick. We were lucky enough to come across a fairly well-traveled game trail for the last bit of our climb. We let our friends off after a climb of around 1,000 feet, just before the brush gave way to clear rocky mountainscapes.

Derek and I bid them farewell and headed back to the hunt camp.  Later that day and the following morning, Derek and I were able to find our friends high up on the mountainside, stalking a herd of dall sheep, through Derek’s spotting scope from the hunt camp.

On Wednesday morning, I saddled up Apollo for my saddle horse and rigged up Ginger, Moose, Shadow, and Missy with pack saddles. You will recall that on the trip in, Apollo came up lame. He pulled the shoe on that sore front right in the river, but I recovered the shoe and re-set it. He seemed to be doing better, so I decided to ride him on this trip back out to the trailhead to get horse feed.

Derek has a very nice aluminum camp kitchen, designed in the form of two pack panniers, that has lots of storage and a built-in cook stove. It is a very nice convenience on a hunt trip like this…when it works. Apparently the regulator went bad on us and we could not get the stove to light. So, we decided I would haul it back to the trailhead, freeing up a pack horse to haul meat at the end of our hunt.

We loaded up the camp kitchen with things we decided we wouldn’t need for the rest of the hunt, so we could maximize our capacity for the final haul out at the end of our stay. Moose was elected to carry the camp kitchen. Not a heavy load at any rate, but she is a strong, hearty mare and would stand carrying a load 40 miles in two days; we knew the loads coming back in would be heavy. The rest of the pack horses were hauling empty soft panniers.

The trip out to the trailhead was one of the toughest rides I’ve ever done. I fought with the horses the entire trip. The problem was that I had Moose first in line, so I could manage her. She is the one that doesn’t like to stay in line and occasionally gets her head on the wrong side of a tree, which is a major cause of pack string wrecks. I figured that if I put her first in line, I could keep that from happening.

The problem with having gaited horses in a pack string, is that gaited horses tend to reach forward with their front feet as they gait along. When you get a horse that holds too close to the horse in front of it, its front hooves will occasionally clip the heels of the horse in front, which is very painful for the horse that gets clipped. This has caused Moose to develop the habit of walking to the side of the pack string to protect her heels.

Moose also likes to try to move up alongside the lead horse to try to get farther ahead of the horse following her, which was frustrating to me, since we were passing through so much brush and areas treed with close-growing saplings, where the paths were quite narrow.  Moose pulling and causing disruptions in the string caused the pack saddles on the other horses to slide back on them. She would pull forward, causing the horse behind her to get dragged by his lead rope, which was tied to Moose’s pack saddle. That would pull her pack saddle back until her breast strap was stretched tight. The same thing would happen to the rest of the pack horses, except for the last in line, which was Missy.

I had initially allowed Missy to roam free, thinking she would stay with the pack string and that leaving her free would keep her from pulling Shadow’s pack saddle back on his loins. Missy, however, not wanting to be left behind, would not stay at the back of the pack string and kept getting tangled in lead ropes and trying to pass between the pack horses. I finally tied her behind Shadow.

Somewhere along about mile four or five, I noticed that the camp kitchen was making a lot of noise. I stopped to take a look and found that the side panel on one of the camp kitchen  panniers had not been properly fastened in place and the pannier had opened and was hanging in place. I had no way of knowing whether anything important had been lost, but I wasn’t going back to look, since I didn’t know for sure how long it had been open. I secured the panel and started on again, figuring that I would just keep an eye out for anything that had fallen out on the way back to camp the following day. As it turned out, on the trip back in I found a bag of Cinnamon Gummy Bears and a can opener that had fallen out on the trail. I am pretty sure that was all that was lost from the open panel.

Just before we reached about half-way, I looked back and found that Missy had pulled Shadow’s pack saddle back and it had slipped to the side. He had empty soft panniers on his pack and one pannier was missing. I had been so busy fighting with Moose, that I hadn’t noticed that Shadow was having trouble. I stopped and got Shadow’s pack saddle resettled on his back and left all the horses tied to trees, while I rode Apollo back to find the missing pannier. Luckily I found it about a half-mile back. It had a broken strap buckle and could not be properly hung on the pack saddle, so I stuffed his panniers in Ginger’s empty panniers and left his pack saddle empty. We started on again.

Not too much farther along, Apollo began limping again, and we were moving along at a slow walk. I finally stopped and switched my riding saddle to Shadow and moved his empty pack saddle to Apollo. Shadow has a much stouter build than Apollo and it was impossible to adjust the pack saddle to fit Apollo properly, but without a load I figured it would be alright for the remainder of the day.

Things went a little better from there, as Shadow held a little faster pace and that tended to keep the rest of the horses in line a little better. I still had to keep fighting Moose, to keep her in line, though, and Apollo’s ill-fitting empty pack saddle slid all the way back onto his loins and the cinch was way back under his belly, but it stayed on. By the time we reached the trailhead, I was beat.

I must confess here that my normally clean and proper vocabulary suffered greatly during this ride back to the trailhead. Regrettably, a number of expressive nouns and adjectives were reintroduced into my library of words that I haven’t used in many years. At the time, my normal vocabulary just seemed inadequate and some words reserved for “special” occasions were necessary.

After such a difficult trip, I was glad to see the trailer. Derek’s trailer includes a very plush living quarters, complete with pressurized hot water. After taking care of the horses and giving them a good bait of alfalfa cubes for dinner, I took a nice, hot shower. I was too tired to head into town, so I found something to eat for dinner there in the trailer. After catching up my journal I hit the hay.

I was awakened about 6:30am the following morning by a knock at the door! sliding open the bunk window, I found myself talking to a couple of Canadian Customs Officers. They informed me that I had illegally entered Canadian territory and that I could be fined $1,000 for not reporting at the border! I explained that I had gotten in late the day before, after a grueling 20-mile horse pack trip and that I would be heading back to the hunt camp that day. That didn’t satisfy them, so I said I would report at their office later that morning…after I got out of bed. They reiterated their stern warnings and left.

After feeding the horses, I drove Derek’s truck to the Canadian border station at the other end of Beaver Creek, arriving at 8:00am. I presented all our paperwork, my passport, hunting documentation, etc. They reviewed it for several minutes and contacted the US Border Patrol station about 19 miles away about my “illegal” entry back and forth into the US and Canada. The US Border Patrol informed them that they were aware of us and that we had done everything properly and they were not concerned. That seemed to take the fire out of the Canadians and it ended up being a pleasant encounter. By the time I left the station we were on good terms and they were wishing us luck in our hunt.

The encounter with the Canadian authorities put me behind schedule. I finally got all the horses packed up and on the trail about 2:00pm, knowing I would be lucky to make it back to camp before sunset. Three of the pack horses carried four bags of alfalfa cubes each, bringing the total to 480 pounds of feed. knowing the pack panniers would get soaked on the trail, I put the feed bags inside heavy-duty garbage sacks to keep it dry. That was then dropped inside the soft panniers. Apollo, being slightly lame, was loaded with food and several other items for camp. His pack was slightly lighter than those of the horses with the feed.

On the trip back out to camp I decided I would ride Moose, thus relieving myself of the single biggest problem I had on the trip back to the trailhead the day before. That worked out much better and things went pretty well for the first several miles.

At one point, as we passed through a narrow spot through a logjam, the third horse in line, Shadow, brushed a heavy branch, which then fell across the path of Apollo, who was fourth. He couldn’t get over the branch, so he stopped and pulled back. This upset Missy, who was last in line, so she pulled back as well. Ginger and Shadow were pulling forward, so Apollo ended up being stretched between three horses pulling in opposite directions. As Apollo struggled, he got himself over the heavy branch, but a small log moved, inserting itself through Apollo’s butt strap rigging. He was really in a mess, stretched over one log with another stuck in his rigging. To his credit, he just laid down and stopped struggling.

This all happened very quickly and I had little time to react to do anything to help the situation. I dismounted and tied Moose to a nearby tree and went back to see what I could do. I was able to get all the lead ropes free and separate the horses, which I then tied to trees. After some work, I was able to remove Apollo’s packs and get the log out of his rigging. With a little encouragement I got Apollo back on his feet. I resettled his pack saddle and repacked him and we got back underway. No serious harm done.

A little farther along,  just over half-way to camp, came the second wreck. As we crossed the river at one of our normal crossings, I found the riverbed had changed a bit, due to the recent rains in the area. We hit a deep spot just before reaching the opposite shore. The water came up near my knees, fully wetting my boots again. As the horses struggled through the hole, Apollo tripped and went down. Luckily the momentum of the pack string dragged him through the deep spot, but, struggle as he might he could not get his feet back under him. Again, he just gave up and lay there, with his head just out of the water and his body still in the river. Missy, with a heavy pack, had enough lead rope to make it to shore, but was unable to go farther, as she was tied to Apollo’s pack saddle. Again, I made a quick dismount and tied Moose to a tree limb. I also tied Ginger and Shadow. I had to cut Apollo’s lead rope off Shadow’s pack saddle, because the wet knot had pulled so tight it was hard as rock.  Missy waited patiently, while I did the same to free her from Apollo’s pack saddle. Then I went to work unpacking Apollo and dragging the water-logged panniers ashore.

By this time, Apollo was pretty tired and discouraged. He didn’t want to get up. I let him lay and rest a few minutes, while I removed his pack saddle.  Then, with a little encouragement, he stood up. Again, no injuries, just tired from struggling. I tied him to a tree and started working on getting him repacked.

While I was working on Apollo, Moose freed herself from the branch she was tied to and began heading on down the trail toward camp. There was nothing I could do but watch her go. I let loose a few of those special words at her, which I reserve for just such occasions,  as I watched her round a bend and go out of sight. I was envisioning myself trying to cross the river numerous times on foot, cold and wet and spending a night on the trail without provisions, as I walked the last seven or eight miles back to camp.  I finally got Apollo re-packed and I headed out after Moose.

Most of you know that I am a religious man. During my pack trips I have learned that God, our Father in Heaven, is very much aware of and involved in our lives. He loves and watches over each of us very closely. I have had numerous experiences in which He has answered my earnest prayers, helping me when I was in need during my pack trips. This was one of those experiences. As I watched Moose head on down the trail, knowing I could do nothing about it as I worked to get Apollo re-packed, I said a quick prayer asking the Lord to stop Moose for me, so that I might not have to spend the night out on the trail without provisions, wet and cold.

I left the other horses tied and headed on down the trail on foot, following Moose’s tracks, hoping I could walk her down and that she would let me catch her when I found her.  I was very surprised and grateful to find her just around the bend in the trail, about fifty yards from the rest of the horses, where she was calmly nibbling on the sparse grass just off the trail. She had stepped through her reins, which had become caught in some undergrowth. It was another humbling experience and a further testimony to me of our Father’s great mercy and love for his children.

A few minutes later, we were back underway and moving down the trail.

We had one more incident before we reached the camp. Just over a mile from camp, while ascending a short bank, Missy, last in line, went down. Somehow, her front legs had become tangled in her lead rope and she went down. She struggled and her pack slipped to the side. Luckily, no other horses were involved. Again, I had to cut Missy’s lead rope loose from Apollo’s pack saddle, as the knot had pulled rock-hard. I got her packs off (she was loaded with 160 pounds of feed) and got her up. She had a pretty good cut on her shin, just above the ankle on her front right leg. It didn’t look to serious, but it bled well. I put some pressure on it for a minute and got most of the bleeding stopped. Then I got her pack saddle re-settled and got her panniers back on the saddle. By this time I was beat! I mean I was really tired. I got back in the saddle and on we went.

We dragged into camp just after sundown at about 7:00pm, after a little over five hours on the trail. Derek had arrived back in camp about a half-hour before, having been out hunting all day, and had a nice fire going and supper warming. He helped take care of the horses and we got them put away. I was very happy to get a hot meal ( BBQ ribs, I believe) and sleep in a warm sleeping bag that night.

I very well might have spent the night on the trail, wet and cold, without a sleeping bag!

That was a very tough forty miles in two days.

TH