This is the second post about my 2019 Alaska moose hunt.

Derek Habel, a good friend of mine, invited me to return this year to go on his annual moose hunt in southeastern Alaska. I went with him last year, but not as a hunter. I made myself useful helping with the horses and clearing trails. As it turned out, Derek didn’t get a moose last year.  What we did find, however, was a pack of timber wolves 24 strong! I took a pretty good video of the pack. Turn up the volume to hear them howl.

While seeing the wolves was pretty amazing and hearing them howl checked one of those “bucket-list” boxes for me, it essentially signaled the end of Derek’s hunt. The wolves had pretty much decimated the moose numbers in the area. Even the mighty grizzly bear had left the area.

This year, Derek invited me as a hunter. We both bought a wolf tag each, in addition to our moose tags. It wasn’t until later that we discovered that the Alaska Fish and Game had designated the area as a predator reduction area and was allowing 10 wolves per hunter to be taken without a game tag.

So, this time I was going as a hunter.

Just like last year, we loaded up at Derek’s place in Diamond Fork, near Spanish Fork, Utah, and headed north. We departed a little earlier than last year, though. We were on the road on September 5 this year.

I took Apollo, my 7 year-old Tennessee Walker, as my primary saddle horse. Derek took his TWH, Finn. We took four more of Derek’s horses for pack animals. We loaded all six into Derek’s 4-horse living quarters trailer. By removing the dividers in the trailer all six horse fit comfortably with room to spare. Derek’s trailer has a manger built into the head side with storage beneath, so we were able to keep them well-fed during the four-day haul up to our trailhead in the Yukon Territory, Canada.

On the way up, we stopped near Monida Pass, on the Idaho/Montana border for the first night. We took a short ride the following morning to give the horses a break and to just see some beautiful country. We made this same stop last year and it is a pleasant break from the long drive.

I rode Apollo that morning, Derek rode Finn, and we trailed Missy, Derek’s lovely paint Missouri Fox Trotter mare, and Shadow, a MFT gelding, along behind. We had gone about a mile, when we found Apollo to be limping on his right rear. Looked like he might have gotten stepped on or kicked in the trailer. I got off to switch saddles to Shadow. I was just about ready to mount, when suddenly, Missy decided to head back toward the trailer and off she ran. As Apollo and Missy have become somewhat of a pair, he ran off following her. The problem was that they headed in the wrong direction! It wasn’t long before we could barely see Missy running down in the flats below us, among a herd of cattle. Apollo, who was dragging a lead rope, got behind a bit and apparently lost sight of Missy.

I had been training Apollo to come to my whistle, so I started whistling as loudly as I could. Shortly, Apollo’s head came up. He heard my whistle and came running! It wasn’t long after that Missy returned as well. We continued our morning ride without further problems.

The views were beautiful! We scared up several deer, including a couple small bucks, and came across several hunters on the Idaho side. It was a nice ride.

By about noon we were back on the road. We passed the US/Canada border about 4:00pm at Sweetgrass. Last year we passed through the border without any problem, but this year they required a full search of the truck and trailer. Interestingly, the search was conducted by one officer, unassisted, and we were not allowed to witness the search! That would never fly in the US.

Of course, we had done everything legally and we had nothing to hide, so after about an hour at the border station we were on our way again.

We made camp that evening at a pullout off the highway near Mcleod, Alberta. The third night we pulled off near Toad River, BC, after another loooong day on the road.

The following day, Sunday, we made a stop at Liard Provincial Park for a short break. There is a hot mineral spring park there, so we took the time for a very nice swim. After that, we drove through the night, arriving at our trailhead near Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, Canada, at about 3:00am. En route we were treated to a very beautiful display of the Northern Lights.

Upon arrival, we watered and tied the horses near the trailer and hit the hay. We got a late start the following day, of course, and didn’t get started on the trail toward our hunt camp until late afternoon.

The trail in isn’t actually a trail. We follow Beaver Creek southward for 20 miles (19.9 miles, to be exact), to where Derek has established his hunt camp. This was his sixth year to hunt moose in the area. The trip in entails probably 25 river crossings and it is quite a challenge to minimize the number of crossings while avoiding the tangles of logjams created by the spring flows every year. The river bed changes a little every year as well, so the path in is never the same from year to year. While the way is recognizable and certain landmarks remain, it is largely a new experience every time. This year the river was running quite a bit deeper than last year, so some crossings that worked last year were not available this year.

Packing in this year was also complicated by the fact that we were to meet two hunters, father and son, who were to be dropped off by bush plane near the camp. We had to pack in extra saddles and supplies for them. We ended up packing the saddles on top of already heavy packs on two horses. Our horses were a bit overloaded, but they are strong, well-built Missouri Fox Trotter horses and more than able to handle the extra weight for a 4-5 hour trip into the backcountry.

However, this trip in was not a smooth one. We hadn’t gone a mile, before we had to resettle the packs with the saddles on top. The extra weight on top of the packs made them top-heavy and caused them to slip to the side with frustrating regularity. Then, just before dark, when we were only halfway to our destination, We hit quicksand.

I was following behind Derek, who was on his big Tennessee Walker, Finn. Just as we were coming out of the river after a crossing, I saw Finn go down and begin to struggle. I recognized right away that it was quicksand! Experience has taught me that with quicksand, the first couple of horses will generally make it across if it’s not too wide a stretch, but after that the sand becomes a gel-like substance that simply sucks a horse’s hooves and legs in and holds them. I know of one fellow who lost an entire string of mules in the Gila River in Arizona, because he could not free them from the quicksand before they drowned. Luckily, our patch of quicksand was at the edge of the river, where water had settled in the sand like a puddle.

Upon seeing Finn begin to struggle, I immediately spurred Apollo past him, pulling the pack horses behind me. Apollo, Moose, and Ginger made it, but Shadow went down and could not rise. Missy was behind him, but was lucky enough to be only at the edge of the quicksand and was able to struggle out of it, though she was still tethered behind Shadow. Shadow was stuck, but luckily, he too was only at the edge of the quicksand.

Derek and I were able to untie all the pack horses and get them to a safe place, where we tied them and went back to help Shadow. After unloading his pack, we were able to dig his legs out of the quicksand with a shovel. The sand held form long enough for Shadow to be able to extricate himself without injury. We were lucky on that one.

By the time we got Shadow free, the sun was setting, so we decided to make camp where we were. We let several of the horses free to graze, while keeping others tied. None of the horses tried to make a break to return to the trailhead that night, so we ended up passing a nice evening on the trail, sitting by the fire, then sleeping under the stars.

The following morning, we packed up and got moving fairly early. We made it to our hunt camp by early afternoon. In all it took us nearly 14 hours to pack up and make it from the trailhead to the hunt camp. It was a very tough trip in.

By the time we made it to the camp, Apollo was nearly completely lame on his front right hoof. He was limping badly and I suspected he had been quicked by the farrier when he was shod a few days before, and that it had become irritated by the pounding on the river rock of the trail in. It was nearly 10 days before he became sound enough to use again. We’ll get into that in the next post.

It was a tough beginning to what was to become a very tough hunt trip.

TH