A Life Wasted

The Great White Hunter

Since I hadn't seen this predator and lacked any scars to prove it's existence, my story of nearly being mauled and eaten by a monster grizzly bear didn't impress my wife.  She'd seen me return from too many hunts with no meat to be moved.  She was particularly unimpressed that I didn't manage to bring any moose meat back.  She went so far as to suggest that as there was a conveniently freshly killed moose on the ground, all I had to do was gut it and haul it home.  I was never sure if she was messing with me or if she didn't understand the gravity of the situation.  Regardless, the next day I was hunting again, only at Mary's suggestion I had Clay with me.

Having my ten year old son along on the hunt made me more cautious, which might have been my wife's clever intention.  I had to consider the limitations Clay had due to his heart defect.  Primarily he lacked endurance, so there would be no long walks through the great and dangerous Alaska woods.  With this restriction I'd be hunting from the Cherokee.  A hunter I knew told me of a series of jeep trails in good shape that I could hunt from.  These trails were near home, but also a mile from where I'd just had my not so impressive encounter (to my wife) with a large grizzly.  I figured my bear was so big he had to be king of that area and he'd still be gorging on that yearling, so I'd be pretty safe there.

When Clay and I went hunting the next morning I took my Seko .338 Winchester Magnum with its $2,000 Kalis scope.  Over kill for sure, but I'd learned my lesson.  I would never again carry a light caliber rifle in to the Alaska woods even if I was hunting rabbit.  The trails were as promised.  Perfect for moose hunting.  Right off we spotted several females that we could have shot and loaded without any walking around.  The season allowed me to shoot a cow, but I'd enjoyed watching too many of those momma's walk around with there young to kill one of them.  My son felt the same way, so we kept looking until we had a good shot on a bull moose.

Our bull wasn't one of those impressive monsters we always saw on the roads all over the state, but he was plenty big.  I considered allowing my son to take the shot, and would have had I had the lighter rifle, but the .338 was too heavy a round for him.  Next time, I promised myself.  I laid the expensive rifle across the hood of the Jeep, lined up the cross hairs on his forehead and pulled the trigger.  The bull moose didn't move an inch.  It froze for a second then collapsed where it stood.  It was a perfect shot, an easy shot with that rifle and scope.  Too easy.  No sport to it at all.

As I now consider this, what I am about to say surprises me, so I know it will surprise my children.  Before this point, other than fish and snakes, the only thing I'd ever killed was one rabbit and my own dog.  I'd been on numerous deer hunts, but never shot one.  I'd had opportunities for a shot at deer, but never took those shots.  There were times when I didn't think I could get a clean kill, but more times when I just couldn't do it.  Other than my wife, I've never admitted this to anyone.  As a man raised in the south, hunting is supposed to be as ingrained in my blood as opening the door for a woman.  Yet I was never into hunting because I didn't like killing things.  It wasn't until the day I killed this bull moose that I was able to admit this to myself.

One further revelation.  That moose was the last animal I killed.  I've never shot a deer or anything else.  This moose broke me of ever even trying again.  I suppose that if it was a matter of survival I'd kill an animal for meat.  But that would be the only reason I would.  I simply don't like to hurt anything.  There is one exception to this in that a few months latter I shot a killer whale, but I didn't kill him.  I wasn't trying to kill the thing, but I was very pissed off with him, but that's another story.  My rambling point is that I was never a hunter.

The fallen bull moose was two hundred yards up the jeep road, so we drove to it.  As we got closer I saw that he wasn't near the road, but the ground was flat so I drove across it towards where he'd dropped.  Ten feet off the jeep road I drove into an unseen bog.  There is a term for this thing in Alaska, but I can't think of it now.  I'd never heard of it at the time either.  It was a layer of dry ground that covered a former layer of frozen ground that had thawed.  When I drove the Cherokee across this ground it sunk deep.  It sunk so deep into the ground that I couldn't open the door.  Sunk to the undercarriage and then a few inches more.  I knew I couldn't drive out of this one, but I also knew Clay would argue that "John could do it," so I put the thing in four wheel low and gave it an honest try.  The thing didn't budge.  Didn't even buck.  It was as stuck as a thing could get.

I left Clay in the Jeep and walked over to the moose.  I needed to gut him, but I looked back at the well stuck jeep, specifically at my son's eager face through the windshield and changed my mind.  If Mary suggested I take Clay hunting to make me more cautious then it was working.  Right now my transportation was out of order a good mile off the nearest road.  Unless I got lucky and another hunter came along I'd have a long walk back to the road.  If I gutted the moose I would release a great deal of smell into the air, which would be a dinner bell to any bear in the area.  This likely wouldn't be a problem if I followed up by quartering the moose, throw it on the Jeep's roof rack and driving home.  But since I couldn't drive home until the Jeep was freed, then all I'd be doing was ringing that dinner bell.  And if I gutted the moose I'd have its entrails and its pungent smell on my hands, arms, and chest.  If I had to walk out, which it appeared I would, then I would have to carry my son most of the way because he couldn't walk more than a hundred feet without tiring.  So both Clay and I would smell like fresh moose kill on that long walk.

It was with great regret that I slid my knife back into its sheath.  If I didn't gut the moose now that would mean I couldn't move it to the Jeep.  It would take several hours to walk out with Clay.  As it stood we'd not make it out of the woods before dark.  Even if everything went well, by the time I returned with a borrowed truck it would be a few hours after dark.  By that time the felled moose would belong to a bear.  I'd have to kill the bear to claim my moose, and I just couldn't do that.  Plus it would be against state law.  So my only safe option was to leave the moose I'd killed to scavengers.  Mary was right to send Clay along.  Were he not with me I'd have gutted the moose, quartered the carcass, then put the meat in the Jeep.   Then walked out smelling like road kill.  Having my son along this was not an option.

I hated leaving the moose on the ground like that.  I am sure this is why I never hunted again.

With my rifle in hand for quick use, I carried my son out of the woods.  It was a long hard walk, but we made it without running into anything able to eat us.  But of course we saw lots of moose on the way.  The next day I returned with a local guy with a heavy pickup with a wench on the front.  The Jeep was stuck too deep to be pulled out.  It took a D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer to lift the Jeep up, then pull it out.  The undercarriage made a sucking sound when it's front was lifted.  That thing was seriously stuck.

When I got home and told Mary I wasn't going to hunt any more she didn't argue.