Spring Break=Moose Hunt

Outside

This week of school was a short week. Our "Spring Break" is a 4 day weekend. It's a short break but it's nice. Unfortunately the forecast was for windy conditions the entire weekend. We decided not to go towards the headwaters of the Eli on Thursday. We were going to try to wait out the wind.

Oren Likes Forts

Thursday came and went. We did some rearranging at home. It was windy for most of the day. It died some in the evening but was still blowing a little. We decided to go anyway. The plan was to head up to the Noatak National Preserve land about 25 miles up the Eli River, shoot a moose, gut it, pack it in the sled, and then have coffee before heading back. That was the plan.

Reindeer Farm

Our party got started at 11:30 ish. About 5 miles onto the trail the clevis that I had holding the sled to my machine managed to work its way loose. A little while later I looked back and realized that I wasn't pulling the sled anymore and Neighbor Kyle was. Neighbor Kyle had a slight mishap with his machine when we were almost there. The bolts on both sides of his machine that hold the undercarriage in place wiggled loose. One of the bolts was actually sitting on his running board when he stopped.

Oren's Trying Dad's Goggles

It took quite a while longer to find moose this year. We drove a couple loops through the river channels without seeing anything. Then we followed the trees on the outside of the riverbed. A couple caribou went prancing off into the trees. A few minutes later a moose ducked into the trees. Kyle and I followed. They lost us a first, then we caught a quick glimpse of them, we followed for 500 or 600 yards before Kyle was able to get a shot off in a slight clearing. The moose was down. One more shot to finish it.

Neighbor Kyle

We got going right away gutting it. Its hard to imagine how large an animal a moose is. Even after the one I got last year I was picturing a nice tidy sled load after the front quarters and hindquarters off. I was wrong. It was a very tight squeeze onto the basket sled, and an 8 x 10 tarp was not quite big enough.

Out On the Tundra

The sled was packed up and ready to go by 5:00 pm. Since we still had about 5 hours of daylight we decided to enjoy coffee. I packed a pasty for dinner, and my mouth was watering even before I could get it warming up on the fire. It was an excellent pasty.

Wide Angle

At quarter to six we said, "see ya" to Stan, his boys, and Tim. They were staying for the night. The ride back was pretty uneventful albeit a rough ride. My machine started overheating a little when we neared town. My machine is liquid cooled, and the tundra was windblown and packed, there wasn't really enough snow to cool my machine. I also was running low on gas. Towing some 500 odd pounds of meat really cuts into the gas mileage.

On Saturday we went for a ride to try to find a nice side channel where it wasn't windy. Oren fell asleep before we even made it out of town!

Out Riding

We didn't end up going far at all, it was windy everywhere.

Fast Asleep

Kind of frustrating to have a few days off work and its hard to get out because its cold and windy. I'd take 30 below and clear anyday over 10 above, cloudy, and windy.

Crashed