Alaska Wilderness Moose

Alaska Wilderness Moose

When the sun went down on the lake, the shoreline and surrounding brush and slopes almost immediately became too dark to see clearly. I sent Tina up to the camp about one hundred yards from me to retrieve a lantern and flashlights. We were putting the meat bags of caribou on a makeshift lattice of small sticks and twigs to air the meat and cool it to keep it from souring. In the morning, I would re-bag it. Using nets and a screw-in anchors system, I will submerge the waterproof bags in the lake to keep the meat cool for a week.

It is a fall hunting season on a lake about fifty miles west of Mt McKinley and as remote as one-hundred-thirty miles of straight-line flying north-west from Anchorage can be. The moose are huge and scarce, so only two hunting permits are drawn each year in this permit area. The caribou, on the other hand, are abundant. At this time of the year, they migrate past this lake. There are often multiple thousands of caribou within eyesight and a couple hundred that would be productive to attempt to get in a good position to kill. The object is not to haul the harvest; the meat, cape, and the head with the antlers a long way. The caribou's cape and head would weigh about 50 pounds if caped for a full head mount. The whole pelt from front knuckles through the rear knees usually is a full load to pack out when the liver, heart, and tongue are added to the pack.

My partner became ill almost as we arrived, so when I signaled that we were in a Medical emergency a few hours into the week-long hunt, I had to consider if I needed to break camp and return to Anchorage. I had attempted to draw this moose tag for over a dozen years of lottery drawings, so I did not want to give up my long-awaited chance to shoot a seventy-two-inch or larger mature bull moose.

Carl, my hunting partner, had come out and placed game cameras and scouted for a week before we came and while scouting the countryside did locate two legal moose. When I signaled the air traffic above us, a cross-country airliner caught the signal and relayed my SOS signal to the Civil Air Patrol in Anchorage. We had a game warden within eight hours, and my hunting partner was Medevacked to Anchorage. Maybe I should have returned to Anchorage with him.

I had the luck to draw this hardest to draw and most elusive and respected permit. In the last four years, no hunter was able to complete the hunt successfully. One hunter had to leave the permit area after a Grizzly bear destroyed his cooking equipment and emptied his food box.

This season I had the revered Flat Lake permit number one for the year. With that permit, I was authorized to fill my 'Bull Only' Moose permit. The catch to the hunt was that the bull needed to have antlers with a minimum width of 72-inches.

While I was hunting, there was one other hunter on the hunt with the second permit. Carl and I had hunted caribou from this spot for at least ten years, so we were both familiar and able to hunt and not be concerned about getting lost or being in danger.

As I finished the meat, I turned to look toward camp and saw the person approaching who had late in the afternoon flown into the lake and camped approximately a half-mile around the lakeshore from us. They were silhouetted by the sunset, so they appeared to be my worst fear, a Grizzly bear.

With a "Hallow" call to me, they stopped and asked, "Could I get some help?"

I was satisfied with how I had the meat situated to cool, so I stepped away from the cooling racks and asked, "What is it you need? Are you alone?"

I presumed that this person had a survival issue because no one who hunted in the 'bush' ever interacted with another hunter's layout or location unless it was a serious issue or need.

The voice asked, "Yes, I am alone. Okay, to come closer?"

"Sure, what seems to be going on?"

"My hunting partner cut his hand so bad, unloading our gear, that the pilot loaded him up and returned to Anchorage so he could get some medical care. I thought I had everything to spend the ten days to harvest a moose but discovered I didn't have the camp cook box. In our haste to get my partner back to Anchorage, we didn't empty the belly pod, so the kitchen, including the cookware, dishes, and fire tools, is not out here.

"I realized my plight and decided I had no choice except to hurry over here before dark to see if I could get some matches, a lantern mantle, and a flashlight to use to return to my camp.

"I will assess my situation tomorrow. I hope in the light of a new day and a good night's sleep, I can make a rough camp and make what I will need to spend the time necessary to fill my moose tag. I do not want to return without attempting to get a moose, as I have been applying for fifteen years. Drawing this moose tag is a bucket list hunt for me. Oh, by the way, I am Dane."

"Hi Dane, I'm Dale; my camp partner is Tina. I also hold a moose permit and have the same intention as you to stay the ten days and fill my tag.

"We do have spare mantles, a flashlight, and extra matches. Let's head for our camp, where you can see a faint light through the brush. Be careful in this light, as there are huge overgrown three-foot deep puddles that are hard enough to dodge in full daylight. I cannot figure out why Tina hasn't returned with the flashlights. She returned to camp to get them to use when we finished setting up the cooling of this caribou meat down here."

I started toward camp, and then I heard a huge splash and the sound of thrashing about in the water. Before I turned around, I knew that Dane had fallen in a puddle. Even though it was already past late summer into early fall, I knew that the water was only about forty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

I dropped to my knees, reached toward her, and dragged her from the lichen, alder, and slimy water up onto dry land. She came out shivering. I immediately hollered to Tina to bring the lantern and to be fast about it.

I told Dane, "You have to get those wet clothes off right now! The air is warmer than you are, and the longer you are wet, the colder you will become. Get those clothes off, now."

I reached for her hunting coat and started to pull it over her head. Bending quickly, she threw her arms over her head, and I pulled the coat off. It was dark enough that I could see her white skin, and it was covered with dirt, slime, leaves, mud, and a lot of blood-sucking leeches. I removed my jacket, threw it over her naked upper body, and squatted at her feet. I unlaced her boots; then, I undid her belt.

"Dane," I said," Push your pants down so I can slip them off of you."

She sat as she pushed the loosened pants over her hips and down her thighs. She was sitting on her naked ass in the brush and didn't seem to be aware of much, which is a sign of hypothermia. I pulled her to her feet as Tina arrived with a flashlight and a lantern.

Tina is usually so calm I was surprised to hear her gasp and moan all at once. She kept the flashlight, handed Dane her jacket, suggesting it be tied around her waist to protect her legs from the brush we would need to walk through to get to camp.

I had Tina lead the way back, watching Dane making her way behind Tina; I brought up the rear. I did think to place a clean meat bag around a branch to mark the place where she fell in, so we could come back in the daylight to find whatever was lost or forgotten in the dark there.

Tina and I grabbed sweaters to cover up, and Dane sat by the fire. We wrapped Dane in a cotton sleeping bag and had her put a pair of my socks on her feet; I gave her my cotton gloves and a Navy surplus watch cap. All of my clothes were enormous on her, so she looked about thirteen years old. She was so small in the clothes we grabbed to warm her. She recovered enough to notice how uncomfortable she had become and started to converse again. It had been about twenty minutes, so I felt confident that she would not go into shock or need an IV to bolster her against the cold.

I told them, "Go in the tent and, Dane, get into a sleeping bag and ball up in a fetal position. Tina, gently rub wherever she feels cold to touch, encouraging her blood to circulate. If you begin to shiver, let me know."

When I saw that they had that under control, I had a chance to catch my breath and take my mind off of autopilot to realize that there were three of us and two sleeping bags. But a half-mile away, there was a reserve of some camp supplies we might consider moving to our camp and for Dane to move over with us. That and a lot more we would have to decide in the morning. But, we all came out here to hunt, not move a camp a half-mile, the change nagged at the back of my mind.

I also replayed what had happened from when I first turned to look toward camp and saw this being standing between me and the light of the sunset. All I could see was a black shape (like a standing Grizzly bear). And there I was, still covered with the smell of fresh blood, and about a hundred-fifty to maybe a hundred-eighty pounds of warm meat stacked to cool behind me. I was ready to jump into the lake and start shooting my forty-five pistol.

Dane spoke up, about a zillionth of a second before that would have happened, and I uncoiled as we began to converse. I find it interesting to recall the trip because before she fell into the puddle until they entered the tent, I had been on adrenaline and knew I was going to crash.

There was still dinner to prepare, I needed to go back to the lake and wash up, and we had to discuss our sleeping tonight.

I could go to the lake, so I called them and said, "I am going to the lake to wash the blood and dirt off. Is Dane okay, Tina? We still need to get you cleaned off. We will need to clean that sleeping bag when you get warm. So, let me get cleaned myself, and I will bring more water when I return because we will need it to release the leeches. How are you doing, Dane?"

Dane replied, "I want to get these horrible leeches off right away. I am about to freak out."

I said, "Are you cold?"

"No, I need to get these leeches off, please."

Her desperation was turning to despair, so I grabbed the water jug as I said, "Come out here where the two lanterns will give the maximum light. I will get the leeches off before I go clean up.

I set up the two camp chairs I brought so I could have her sit close to me. I had everything set up when they came out of the tent, so I was ready to tell her where I wanted her. I looked up at the two of them, and I could tell they were attracted to each other. That solved the sleeping bag problem very clearly. A split second thought went through my brain, 'I hope that Dane was in Tina's sleeping bag earlier.' I was immediately distracted from that thought by the beautiful woman standing in front of me.

I had a white and bright image with the light on her front, very like the black image I had almost filled with forty-five slugs. There was another difference besides the black and white. Dane's contours made the lighted image of her burn a color photographic image in my memory. I still, too many years later, can see that color image in my mind.

This woman was not the shape of a Grizzly bear. Dane's shape looked almost as though she had an internal bustle in her hips. Her waist was so small that I thought sure I could close a circle of my outstretched fingers of both hands around her. Her breasts were firm, sharply pointed with nipples atop tightly excited areoles. Both areoles and nipples had skin wrinkled like a straw wrapper pushed to one end of the straw. Her straw wrapper nipples were the color of a worn brown leather wallet sitting on top of deeply tan-colored areole skin.

I caught my breath at the same time as her hand touched my shoulder. At her touch, I could feel my cock begin to stiffen. She pointed to a leech on her stomach. I was able to remove it easily. I was getting harder and harder as the seconds ticketed away. We worked on the obvious, easily accessible places until she said, "Next, I really would like to get two very irritating ones. Are you ready?"

Where it came to close scrutiny of a naked, spectacularly beautiful, and shapely woman, I was an untested amateur. I had a hard cock, and eventually, I had a wet spot on the front of my pants that was growing at the same rate as the heartbeats in my chest. Adrenalin had begun pumping again. I was alert and unresponsive to my own distraction. I found a few leeches she couldn't seem to feel, and then she lifted her leg and placed her calf on my shoulder. I was not only looking at her opened vagina from less than a few inches; I smelled her sexually arousing scent with every breath.

Every breath was a treat to my brain but a threat to my prostate trigger circuit. Dane reached down, placed her fingers between, and opened her outer labia to show me a graphic tour of her vagina. The space between her labia had three leeches attached.

I was raised on a hard-scrabble dairy farm and learned to make do with what you had, and then I learned under the immediate, intense pressure of Naval combat to use what you have, so I knew to stay focused and not be affected by the extraneous input. Removing leeches from a woman was so close to being a personal disaster that I would have ruined the entire trip in a half-second without discipline training.

I knew there was only one end to an open attraction between Tina and Dane. They were going to couple up, and I would become almost an inconvenience to them if I didn't keep all of our communications open and clear.

Tina chimed in, "I'll apply some burn salve from the first aid kit when Dale is done. That always helps me when I catch a crotch full of leeches when searching the puddles for water-soaked carve-able wood. I usually do not pick up wood when I hunt, though. There is so much weight to moose and caribou meat that we have to take out of camp that I do not add the weight of the heavy water-soaked logs and limbs."

"The wood is from a forest that hadn't covered the land for thousands of years. The wood is hard but not petrified and has all the rainbow colors depending on the puddle it comes from."

"I know the removal of some leeches hurts much worse than others. Can you wait until Dale finishes?"

Dane replied, "I look forward to it."

Seeing the gleam in her eye and the huge smile on Tina's lips, I laughed and said, "Tina, sit your ass down here and show Dane how you care enough to pull the leeches from the crack between her cheeks."

I stood while they finished the leech removal, grabbed the soap and a towel, grubbed in the toolbox to find a scrub brush, then headed to the lake with a headband flashlight on my forehead.

When I returned, Tina had water heating and had begun to prep the food we had planned for the evening meal.

Dane was dressed in a pair of white coveralls that were in Tina's clothes bag. She couldn't button the top, and the bottom fit so snug that her labia formed a deep and prominent camel toe while her nipples pushed the cloth with two prominent bumps.

I had returned with a five-gallon jug of water. The water jug fit in a rack of twigs and rocks, alongside the folding table. When I set it down, Dane came over and said, "Thank you for your assistance tonight. I can walk back to my camp and get set up so your sleeping arrangements won't be compromised. I have everything there except."

Dane caught herself when she realized her camp had no way to cook, even if she built a fire.

"Christ," she said." I have been out here at least twenty times, and now I pull a dumb stunt like this when I draw the most coveted tag of my life. I will have to call for a pickup tomorrow, I guess."

Disappointment shrouded her beautiful face, and I could hear her toughness failing, so I turned and wrapped my arms around her, then held her silently while she gathered herself.

When she had stopped weeping, I held her still and waved Tina to come close. I wrapped my arms around them both and said, "No one is leaving camp tonight because we are all fine here, and in the daylight, it will seem safer to make any necessary decisions. Okay?"

They both sagged against me a little, so I squeezed them and said, "Tina, whatever you started for dinner, make it for three, please."

Tina unfolded from the hug and said, "Dale, you get the salad and plates ready. I will serve in about twenty minutes. Dane, is there anything you do not eat? We have caribou back strap, boiled garlic potatoes, green salad, and sautéed peppers and onions."

I asked, "Who wants a VO and Seven-up? I am going to fix one; I can fix three."

Dane moaned, chuckled, and said, "I will have six, please, barkeep."

Tina replied, "I'll have one, Dale. I will just not let it go empty all night."

Dane found the dishes and set the table. The table was four nearly flat rocks so close that they looked like one rock that had cracked apart and settled afterward.

I had a Weed Whacker. It was an ancient, battery-powered one. I had four one-hour batteries, which I had charged before we left. There no longer were parts available, and it was excess for my yard since I had a new bigger, more powerful one. I had wanted to try it for years, so this was the trip. We used the Wigeon to fly to camp, had lots of room, and had extra weight capacity we usually didn't have in the Cessna 185.

I had whacked the area around the camp and the trail to where we drew lake water. It worked incredibly well. I was able to uncover a knife my hunting partner had dropped between the camp and the lake, along with my emergency mirror, where we had piled the remains of a camp a grizzly destroyed one year. It also made for easier relaxing in camp to not be kicking tall weeds with every step.

We gathered at the rock using folding camp stools and dove into a hot dinner by lantern light. Sounds romantic, but add in the no-see-ums and the mosquitoes, and it was still camping in the wilderness of Northern Alaska. When we were through diving-in, we began the discussion on what to do for Dane tomorrow.

The discussion moved easily to let all of that wait until the morning.

Dane had her rifle and binocs, but she didn't know when I asked if the rifle went underwater. So we emptied her rifle to see that it was dry. Same with her binocs. I became quiet, thinking of tomorrow and the mission I was out here to complete—the killing of a huge moose.

Things had gotten complicated, having a second permit in camp. How to address the first shot's etiquette rattled through my mind, and I quickly realized that we would not have that issue if we did not hunt together.

Hunting alone is dangerous. More dangerous than is usually acknowledged. Unless you have hunted alone and had a dangerous event, the tendency is to talk about it without a clue about reality. Bears are a danger, grizzlies less so than blacks. When alone, nothing is more dangerous than you, yourself.

All danger starts with a minor wrong decision. Escalation of danger depends on you determining early enough to alter the dangerous results that you have made a first wrong decision.

The decision to hunt alone is not an easy one to support. But many times, I have, and I still do it. I cannot, with my experience in the wilds of Alaska, endorse anyone else hunting alone. Tomorrow will be a telling day. We, all three of us, will grow tomorrow. Some of us will grow a lot; hopefully, Dane can understand her odds of success out here alone are about zero compared to having a hunting partner with her.

Of course, I cannot separate Tina and me, as we have been planning this trip since April when I received notice I was the permit holder for this season. She is as excited as me at times. Tina will have a tough decision. I will get up before daylight and start glassing the terrain from camp as the light comes into the killing field around camp. Maybe there will be the bull to harvest. I have never killed an animal from camp, although I have heard of such things from other hunters.