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...

(Lou, Yukon) We’ve spent most of the last week in a state I can only describe as being moose-bombed. Anyone who hunts will tell you that pulling the trigger is the easy part. It’s a lot of work and I think we both wondered at points whether it was too much. But as I reminded Neil in my usual sympathetic style- “It is fucking disgusting to destroy this magnificent creature and then whinge and bitch about having to deal with it.” (In fairness, Neil had to do most of the lifting.)  But we managed it and, after about 3 days of work, we are toasting our beautiful bull as we tuck into tenderloin, Moroccan moose stew, dill and beetroot moose stew (and so it will go on all winter...) Last Saturday, a friend from Dawson stopped by in his boat after an unsuccessful hunting trip down river.  “Show us your moose calling then,” he asked. A bit shame-faced we gave it a go-  “Nah, needs to be more nasal. Shorter. With an ‘eaarlgh’ sound at the end.” So we all practised bello...

(Lou, Yukon) We’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in a media project for the last couple of weeks, which has involved multiple people toing and froing and even camping at our property. We are unused to seeing so many people in one go and all got a bit dizzy with it. Neil has been stuffing his face with their exotic luxury food, I’ve been too excited to sleep and Homer’s forgotten all his training, who we are and probably his name again.  Me and Homer getting dizzy with it Snacks- brilliant! I won’t say much about who visited at this stage which makes it all sound terribly exciting, like we have had MI6 here listening in on Putin.  Thankfully it wasn’t MI6 as I can’t imagine the British civil service would have brought such nice biscuits.  In fact, the food was so nice we were tempted to empty the squirrel’s winter stashes out from under the tree roots and stuff the holes with KitKats.  Learning the river Aside from snacks, we had the privile...