Chinook
by George Hosier II  - September 25, 2008

The Moose Mystique

It’s getting where it’s almost more hassle than it’s worth to fill your freezer with meat for the winter. Moose hunting just isn’t what it used to be. What with Argos and cell phones and short magnums and GPS’s and MRE’s and air boats and Thermax underwear and whatnot, the traditional hunting mystique has become as elusive as that monster 74 incher.

I remember the days when if you pulled into the turnoff at the trailhead where you planned to begin your hunting trip and encountered another vehicle, you backed out and went somewhere else. It was the unspoken law of the Northland. “Give another hunter his space. There’s plenty for everybody.” I doubt that’s true anymore. Lately, I’ve begun to suspect that if every hunter out there got a moose each year, in just a couple of seasons the poor creatures would be extinct.

Of course, I guess that’s what the Fish and Game Department is there for—to make sure that 20 years down the road, the following conversation doesn’t become commonplace:

Gramps: “I shore do miss them thar moose-huntin’ days!”
Junior: “The what?”
Gramps: “Moose-huntin’ days.”
Junior: “What’s a mu suntinned aye?”
Gramps: “Why, that’s when a feller could grab his gun an’ walk out in his back yard an’ shoot him a big ol’ moose.”
Junior: “Waaaah! Waaaaah!”
Gramps: “What in tarnation’s wrong with you, boy?”
Junior: “You’re scaring me. You said the ‘G’ word.”
Gramps: “The ‘g’ word? You mean ‘gun’?”
Junior: “Whaaaaaaaaah!!!!”
Gramps: “Oh, for cryin’ out loud...”
Junior: “Duh, Gramps. What do you think I’m doing? Whaaaa... Ow! What did you do that for?”
Gramps: “Yore lucky I didn’t turn you over my knee. What’s wrong with you? How do you expect yore grandpa to shoot a moose without a gu...uh, without a...you know. ‘G’ word.”
Junior: “What’s a mooz?”
Gramps: “It used to be a great big ol’ wild animal that roamed these parts--sorta reminded you of a horse. It had this magnificent rack a-pokin’ out of both sides of his head like this and it would use its wiggly nose to strip willow saplings like this...”
Junior: “Mom! Tell Gramps to stop making faces at me.”
Gramps: “I ain’t either! I was just demonstrating...”
Junior: “Yes you were. You put your thumbs in your ears and wiggled your fingers at me and stuck out your tongue.”
Gramps: “Blast it, boy, I was trying to show you how a moose...”
Junior: “Mom! Are we supposed to shoot wild horses if they make faces at us?”
Mom: “Of course not, honey.”
Junior: “I knew you were lying. Mom, Gramps forgot to take his medicine again!.”

I can appreciate what Fish and Game are trying to do, but they sure are complicating
matters. When I was a kid, the entire game regulations were written on the back of my hunting license in ball-point pen. They read something like this: “Hunting season runs from the time the fireweed starts blooming until the snow is about one mitten deep. Don’t shoot more than one moose unless you’re stocking up for a potlatch, because I know where you live, and I haven’t forgotten that you still owe me a tank of three-wheeler gas.”

Nowadays, however, the game regulation book is harder to figure out than the Internal Revenue Code. This year I took a young fellow from work named Barry under my wing. I decided to coach him on the traditional hunting mystique. After all, if we old-timers don’t teach the younger generation, who will? I began by clarifying the finer points of the game laws as we headed out toward my favorite hunting spot near [...censored due to sensitive proprietary information...]:

“It’s really pretty simple, Barry.” I said, “All you have to do is read the regs. See, it says right here that in the Game Management Unit we will be hunting, ‘If the northernmost tip of the pinky toenail of your left foot is touching an imaginary line beginning at the confluence of the northernmost oxbow of the south bank of the east fork of Dimwitty Creek in the Ponkawonka Drainage and the southernmost edge of the Robertson glacial terminal moraine, extending northeast to the specific mineral outcropping at 2514 ft. elevation on the north-northwestern slope of Knob Ridge which contains a mineral content of 23.456% porphyry copper-type deposits, but circumventing the old Pierson Drop Zone on its southwesterly edge, you may harvest one albino bull with a spike/fork or a rack measuring precisely 31.753190 inches according to a Stanley 16’ tape measure. If, however the westernmost terminus of the ball of your right foot is intersecting aforementioned line, you may harvest either: a. embryonic twin bulls at 5 or more weeks gestation provided the mother is not harmed, shot, killed, disrupted, threatened, herded, driven, baited, or subjected to surgical incision; or b. a toothless old senile bull moose with at least one broken brow tine on the left side. Otherwise, you may harvest any bull between the ages of 14 and 73 ½ months according to the Aztec solar calendar, with the exception of the Ptarmigan Lake restricted usage area unless you have a Tier IV Permit and have not shot a moose within the previous 12 calendar years...’ Barry, are you even listening?”

I had to stop there, because at that point Barry was snoring so loud I could hardly concentrate, and I didn’t want to confuse myself. I also needed to take a break because I had just become aware that I had swerved across the center line while I had been glancing down at the regs. I expertly wrenched the steering wheel in a violent arc, coaxing my trusty mini-van into careening up on two tires to allow a truck full of avidly gesticulating moose-hunters to slide past in the opposite lane.

They were towing a trailer on which were strapped half-a-dozen of those new-fangled golf cart style ATV’s with side by side bucket seats. Each ATV must have had a couple thousand dollars worth of accessories bungeed to it. I mean, there were Kolpin gun boots, winches, auxiliary gas tanks, humongous Rubbermaid bins packed with gear—you name it. Beside the ATVs was strapped an inverted river boat, and as they hurtled by I believe I even caught a glimpse of a couple of jet skis with camo paint jobs.

Those are the sort of hunters who ruin it for everybody. They probably move up here from Ohio or somewhere, oblivious to the ancient keening plea of the pristine wilderness that is being slowly strangled to death under the witless onslaught of their modern contraptions. No doubt they are completely incapable of allowing themselves to abandon the trappings of the computer age in order to willingly embrace the primeval solitude of Alaska’s rugged and timeless beauty. Shoot, if I made the kind of money they do, I might be able to afford to pick up an odd trapping or two myself. But then, I wouldn’t need to hunt, so what would be the point?

The way I look at it, moose hunting is a very pragmatic affair. I need meat. I can’t afford to buy it at the store. Therefore, I will go shoot a moose so I can cut down on my grocery bills. My old lever action 30-30, a good knife, a poncho, and a pair of hiking boots cost a few bucks when I first got them, but now that I’ve been using them for a few years, that moose meat costs me practically nothing.

On the other hand, these turbo-hunters with all the fancy-schmancy bells and whistles probably wind up paying about fourteen hundred dollars a pound for their moose meat. Then, to top it off, half the time they give all the meat away and only keep the rack. That’s like buying a package of pork chops from IGA, feeding the pork chops to the dog and keeping the little bloody styrofoam tray!

What can you do with a rack? A small one makes a nice back scratcher if you duck tape it to an old broom handle, but these guys don’t like the little ones. They have to have a big one. Then they nail it over the door of their garage! Can you believe that? I guess they do that so they can show it off. Well, they won’t be bragging so loud in ten years when the nails rust away and that 80 pound moose rack comes crashing down on someone’s head.

If they had any sense about them, they would be embarrassed to hang up a great big huge rack like that. Any sourdough knows that if you want some good eating, you don’t go out and blow away the most massive grandpappy moose you can find. That’s probably why they always give their meat away. They think moose is supposed to be as tough and stringy as a boiled felt Sorrels insole.

What you want is a nice little tender spike/fork about two years old. Now that’s eating! You can peel the tenderloin right off of the backbone with your fingers, only you have to be careful not to pinch it too hard, or it will melt away in your hand like a piece of Swiss Chocolate. My, oh my! That’s when my wife has to come out and take over the job to keep me from standing there and snacking on all that buttery-soft extra rare tenderloin before I even get it packaged.

Of course, if I ever were to get a monster 74 inch bull in my sights, I would probably feel obligated to go ahead and shoot it, just to spare those other guys from the trauma of breaking their teeth on its tenderloin. Then, as much as it would pain me I should probably hang the rack over my garage door as a warning to them not to make the same mistake I did.
 

Index of Chinook Articles