Yukon bush life

We’ve had a few moose encounters recently, the most significant being the one I shot. The Tr’ondëk Hwich’ën people believe that if you think about an animal, you draw it to you. I thought about nothing else as we hunted and later, processed the kill and so we’ve had lots of moose visitors. I am now thinking hard about fine wine and vast sums of money. I imagine the theory is only for animals but you never know.  (Update- a kind friend gave me a bottle of wine yesterday. It works!) Hunting by boat We started hunting early. I’ve learned a lot about moose from people here and from reading blogs. The rut is around the last two weeks of September. Bulls don’t come down from the mountains til it gets cold. Best time to hunt them is just before dark or just after sunrise as they move around at night, or round midday when they tend to get up for a stretch. Moose tracks and Neil prints on the beach From the moose themsel...

That’s it. We’re out. Out of the water, out of time and, aside from the internet, out of contact with other humans. We’re cut off until the river is frozen and we can snowmachine to town. Last year we didn’t have trail in until the end of January. Why the hell didn’t we buy more booze? Ice on the hull Two days after I wrote the last blog, a crust of ice formed at the shoreline and crept along the edge of our boat. We pulled the boat out straight away. By the following day, the river was filled with chunks of spinning ice and the eddy where it was moored had become a skating rink. We would have had to chop the hull out with an axe if we’d left it. Neil moving the boat with the rope puller attached to a willow It took two days to get the bloody thing across the beach, up the bank, turned 180 degrees and pulled into its winter resting place with a handheld rope-puller, chain hoist, rollers and skids. Stuck in a hole There are fid...