Dawn Phelps
Columnist
From Dawn Phelps. My 96-year-old Uncle Cleve Humphrey from Alabama wrote this descriptive story of a moose hunt with my little sister Joan in Alaska in 1986. Enjoy.
It has been a tradition for the Humphrey family to have a reunion in June of each year. Although Joan lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, for a big part of her life, it was a long way from Santa Fe and Water Valley, Tennessee, where her daddy grew up. But Joan nearly always made a point to attend the reunions. She and her husband Dan attended the reunion in 1986, and she knew that hunting was one of my chief hobbies since I had grown up on a large acreage in Tennessee where hunting was something a boy could enjoy. I was always intrigued by Alaska, and Joan knew that. At the 1986 reunion she told me that if I would visit Fairbanks, she and Dan would take me on a moose hunt. What greater adventure would a hunter want? I said, “You’d better be careful in telling me that; I just might take you up on your offer!”—and so I did!
Joan made nearly all the arrangements. She helped secure the plane tickets, helped obtain hunting permits, and advised me on clothing. She even purchased rubber hip boots for me because she said I would need them. I arrived in Fairbanks on September 5, after a flight over quite a bit of scenic Alaska. Joan had plans in place for the hunt, and we left Fairbanks on September 6. Dan had customized a Chevrolet van. It had four-wheel drive, huge tires, elevated suspension for great ground clearance, and bunks for at least three people. It towed a large flatbed trailer on which we loaded two Honda three-wheeler ATVs, a small cargo trailer for towing behind a three-wheeler, a 30-gallon container of gas, and many other items for an extended hunt.
We drove the Alaska Highway from Fairbanks, southward to Delta Junction, then Richardson (Highway 4) further southward to near Paxson, only a short distance from the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline. We then drove to the pipeline, which in most places has a wide cleared right-of-way. There we parked the flatbed, unloaded it, and headed to our remote camp site. Dan worked for a company, maintaining equipment at remote stations, so he obviously had observed the good places to hunt moose!
I had never been on an ATV in my life, but they assigned one to me, told me how to operate it, and had me drive it in circles in the right-of-way. With that little training, and wearing our hip boots, we headed eastward toward the Gakona River, fed by the Gakona Glacier, on the south rim of the Alaska Range. We went upstream, in and out of a creek, Dan driving the van, Joan on a three-wheeler towing the small cargo trailer, and me following on my three-wheeler—as if I knew what I was doing!
What a journey! At many places, bright red (spawning) sockeye salmon in the creek ran out of the way of our vehicles. Then after traveling several miles on rough trails, we arrived at our remote camp overlooking the Gakona River. The terrain was rolling hills, covered by brushy growth of cranberries, alders, and other vegetation. We spent the night there. The next day, the 7th, we went on our first hunt. We left camp on a rough trail (if you can call it that!), heading downhill toward the river. Dan and Joan were riding double on one three-wheeler, with me following. In some instances, there was a big rock or a ditch in our path, but we did our best to avoid them.
We would stop and glass (look through binoculars) for moose. First, we spotted 4-5 caribou on a distant knoll. What a sight! Next, we spotted a group of moose (again, 4 or 5) going uphill away from the river area. They disappeared into thick growth. At least one appeared to be a bull, legal for taking (3 points on at least one eye guard). I volunteered to follow their trail and flush them out. In one way, it was a high point of the hunt! Their trail was fairly easy to follow.
I was amazed at how they could negotiate the heavy growth. Several times I had to duck my head to go under downed growth, but the moose simply stepped over (5 to 6 feet high)! After following the trail for several hundred yards, I heard two shots. Dan’s rifle put a bull moose down uphill from where the moose entered the thick growth. (Our armaments included a .300 Winchester Magnum and a 7mm Remington Magnum.) At this point the work began. Moose are huge animals!
We brought the three-wheelers within proximity of the kill. Joan had prepared for field butchering a moose, with all the necessary supplies: knives, plastic sheeting to lay on the ground to keep the meat clean, meat bags, etc. We only had to backpack the meat a short distance to load the three-wheelers. While my memory is hazy about some details, I distinctly remember that I towed the small cargo trailer loaded with meat on our way back to our jumping off point on the pipeline. At a particularly difficult point on the trail—a steep slope, the upper rear wheel hit a rock, and the vehicle turned over, but I was not injured. The vehicle, however, was twisted 90 degrees relative to the cargo trailer, but we succeeded in getting everything upright and straightened out, and we came on out.
We drove back to Fairbanks that night and spent the next day finishing the butchering of the moose. They told me the meat would be mine, and that it would be hard frozen for shipment when I was ready to return to Alabama. The next day, September 9, we returned to the pipeline parking area and immediately mounted the three-wheelers heading south along the pipeline right-of-way. We had gone about one mile when we spotted moose crossing from our left to our right, and there was a legal bull moose! I quickly dismounted and got off a good shot before he could exit the right-of-way! This gave us a clear area to dress him out and a good route back to the van. I insisted that I do the dirty work, since I had shot the moose. Again, I marveled at how large the Alaskan moose can be. They can get up to 2,000 pounds, although this one was not that big. I distinctly remember that I had to insert my arm up my shoulder to remove the entrails! We returned to Fairbanks that same day with our second kill!
On my return flight home, I was able to count the frozen meat as excess baggage which was not expensive at that time. But when I arrived in Huntsville, the meat could not be found. I informed the personnel that it was frozen meat and that it would spoil if not found quickly. That night, at about midnight, I got a call informing me that the meat had been found, and I promptly picked it up. Joan and Dan could not have been nicer to me. They were better than professional guides! Today, a similar guided hunt would probably cost $15,000, not counting incidental expenses. Joan was a real trooper, one of the finest people I have ever known.
Note from Dawn. So there you have it, the description of a real moose hunt in Alaska told by Uncle Cleve, Joan and my retired lawyer uncle from Alabama.
