Yukon bush life

We are now lowing in earnest like flirtatious lady moose and have progressed from practising indoors with the aid of YouTube videos, like some weird bush karaoke, to bellowing from the porch with the aid of our moose bugle. We have fashioned the bugle in traditional style from birch bark and duct tape and are interspersing our “lonely lady” calls with huffing “I’ve got a girlie here” male calls with the aim of making any wandering bulls think there’s a gorgeous cloven hoofed gal on the porch but some other bastard’s got there before him.  Moose bugle enhances the sound and doesn't make you look stupid at all We are calling morning and evening, from the porch and the river, with the aim of getting a bull right up into the yard and preferably into the hanging rack so we don’t have to move him far if we get him.  Anyone who wants to join in go to the links at the bottom and sing-along-a-sounda-horny-moose with us. We’re also thrashing brush with an old scapula bone to m...

Everything happens in the autumn, or “fall” as they call it here. Building projects must be completed before it gets too cold to work outside, anything that involves digging has to be done before the ground freezes and trails need to be cut before there is a foot of snow on them and we can’t get to the base of shrub stems. We have to get all our winter supplies as we’ll be cut off from the world during freeze up. We won't be able to get out until the river is frozen and safe for the snowmachine (maybe a couple of months, maybe more?). On top of all that, this is moose hunting season, the salmon run is beginning and the berries are ripe for the picking. We won’t be fishing, but the rest of it applies. Hunting preparations I have my hunting licence, a moose tag and my rifle sighted in so I’m all set to get our winter’s meat. ( Here's how we sighted in our rifle .) Neil hasn’t been resident for the required time so he can’t hunt yet but he can help with dressing the carc...

(Lou, Yukon) Our journey home was packed with more firsts than anyone should reasonably be expected to cope with in one day. First time towing the boat over a rocky beach, first time ever launching a boat, first turn of the key on the engine, first time driving a boat up the Yukon alone. First time landing the bloody thing, testing our guns, seeing our property covered in matted brush and willow instead of snow and best of all, first time for us to arrive back at the place we left in the spring with all our things and a ready-made wood pile!  With no place of our own previously, we’ve had to move each year so this is the first autumn we had the joy of coming “home.”  Trailer troubles Things went remarkably well, our only fuck up being reversing the trailer into the river at 90 degrees, forgetting about the Yukon River’s tremendous 7mph current which instantly swept the boat off taking the trailer lights with it.  We made it to our place with...

(Lou) Fireweed not cinders Great news from Ryan, our hunky Dawson City Wild Fire Crew dream (I have no idea what he looks like, by the way.) Our cabin is still not cinders and with more rain forecast it’s likely the nearby forest fire will be out. A friend passed by in his boat and has informed us that the brush, mostly fireweed, is now at chest height all over our property. So the cabin is engulfed in fireweed not flames, which is less of a worry. Though now I’m wondering if we’ll even spot it as we head down the river. Cabin will be out there somewhere Beach landing Some more good news, there is a beach to land our boat. The river was still frozen when we left in April so we had no idea what was sitting under all that ice. I’m not good with landing boats. I get confused about left and right, up and down with the outboard motor. You have to do everything in a reverse-mirror Alice in Wonderland fashion. So I have a tendency to be accelerating at high speed bearing left whe...

To subscribe to our blog on your phone scroll down to the very end. We are still in London and bloody relieved that my PAL (Possession and Acquisition of Firearms Licence) has arrived. Now we can buy guns in Canada. We need them to ensure we stay alive beyond the first few minutes of getting home (see previous blog ). Checking for squatters at our gaff last year There are frequent news stories about bears eating people on arrival at remote cabins in Canada/ Alaska. Or maybe the stories I've read just stick in my mind. A large bear, but very far away. Brits and Guns Most Brits get a buzz when they first hold a gun. The wooden stock slots into your shoulder like it was always meant to be there, the barrel is velvet black with a raised sight that begs to be peered through.  But the thrill of pointing a wood and steel tool at an object in the mid distance fades once you get good enough to hit it or realise you're shit and never will. (I had that experience with 10 p...