Been a while... a broken camera doesn't help either :(

OK, as you can tell, there hasn't been too much excitement going on up here. The other day when we were digging through old pictures to include on our Christmas card, we came to the realization that we do not take nearly enough pictures as we should up here. I think in total, there were less than 10 pictures taken of both Danielle and I.... weird. It doesn't help that our outdoor, waterproof camera has been out of commission for the last 5 months either, and her camera is too expensive/ heavy to take on many adventures. We have since purchased a replacement ADVENTURE camera, and I promise to take more pictures.

Since the moose hunt, we caught up on a lot of around the house stuff that we have been putting off since the weather was nice. Work continues to dominate my time and I have to work many weekends now which does not leave much time for shared adventures.


We finally got the bear rug back. It looks amazing! We have it hanging on our wall next to the stairs. We are now debating about what we will do when we get another. If it isn't a giant or it doesn't have any special coloring or anything, we will probably just tan it and give it a away. We have already had a couple people express interest in hide. It's weird because black bears are considered a nuisance in a lot of areas up here and there are many people that toss the hides... not us! Our next problem we thought of is where in the world would we put a grizzly bear if that ever became a reality. I tried convincing Danielle we should get a life size mount of if on it's hind legs and we can just have it stand in the living room where we put our Christmas tree; but she didn't like that idea. We might have a naked wall big enough for it... we'll see.

This is one of our favorite things to do on a good day after some fresh snow.... back country snowboarding. It's a great workout to hike the mountain and you get a smooth ride on virgin powder. Tundra loves to come too, but he gets a hell of a workout having to jump through the deep snow the entire way (we have snowshoes on of course). He like to chase us as we fly down the mountain, but he hasn't learned to keep his distance yet.

There are ptarmigan EVERYWHERE at this one valley we backcountry board in close to the house. I'm not even joking when I say there are probably thousands. Tundra likes to track them down and chase them, but he doesn't get anywhere close to them before they spook because of the snow. Hunting isn't allowed in that area either. Tundra did find a dead one and he acted like he caught it himself.
Down the valley trying not to hit the pup.

The snowboarding master.

We went back to Iowa for Christmas. We had a blast hanging-out, being lazy, and gorging ourselves. It was a busy time driving back and forth between families and friends. This is our nephew Kane in his bear hat we him. He is finally old enough to remember and miss us!!

Group hug with the nieces. Is it actually a group hug if I'm the only one hugging and they are all screaming and trying to get away?

Little Emma hugging the Alaska puzzle we got here and sporting a very stylish moose hat.

My new best bud and I heading out to the creek to explore.

The creek was frozen over in areas and that was where the minows and chubs were hiding. We spoked them out and scoped them up.

And what's a long day of exploring and being outdoors without hay bale jumping? Little super man looks good in his bear hat!

We got to go to Tuesday night roping with Brandon (Danielles' brother) and Deanna (Brandon's wife). It was an awesome time. It's just a small group of about 10 people that get together at this guys farm and have a good time drinking, roping calves, and barrel racing. They always have a yummy potluck afterward too. This is Danielle on their massive horse.

Blurry shot due to poor lighting, but that's Danielle chasing a calf out of the gate.

Brandon was easily the best roper there. He was very impressive and his horse was very well trained. This is him in the middle of flipping the calf.

Brandon at the gate.

An annual thing a lot of Alaskans do is head somewhere warm for a vacation sometime during the cold months. We decided take our vacation the second week of January. Initially, we were going to go to Hawaii, but after looking at what a Hawaii vacation would cost us compared to what we could get out of Mexico, we decided to head to Puerto Vallarta. I was shocked to find out that an all inclusive resort (food and alcohol) and airfare was about the same as airfare and a rental car in Hawaii; and that didn't include a hotel, food, and drink!! And we don't regret our decision! The flight was not bad at all. It was actually shorter to fly to Puerto Vallarta from Anchorage, than to fly home to Des Moines!! By the way, it was warmer than 80 degrees every day and only partially cloudy one day... beautiful. The picture above is me staring in the window of our bathroom. The picture above is of the resort from our sea kayak. You can't really see it the best, but it consisted of 6 different housing buildings, 5 pools, 7 restaurants, and 6 bars.

This was probably the only negative thing about the resort, who puts a curtainless window in the bathroom to the outside walking area? Granted, not everyone is 6'8" and can see in them, especially the locals.

We didn't have an ocean front, but we could see the ocean in the white of this picture. We were in the adults only block, so it was fairly quite. We weren't around this pool very much since we were mostly beach brats.

Danielle showing off her new tat.

This picture was taken for Danielle's dad Dennis. See Dennis, even Puerto Vallarta cops have charges to help enforce the law. Time to jump on the band wagon.

Daily naps were a must after long days in the sun, bottomless alcohol, and most nights lasting past 3AM.

The resort had many daily activities. This is waterpolo; of course I was the goalie. They also had different contests, water volley ball, sand volleyball (which we played for hours every day), yoga, watersports, and the list goes on and on.

Our base camp area for the day. It was a blast sweating out last nights alcohol and getting a little sun exercise. The court wasn't in the best shape tho. It had random cement patches under the sand and anything out of bounds to the north was dangerous since there was very little sand on top of concrete. Never the less, we left there with some cuts and bruises all over us that will easily leave scars.
Iguanas were everywhere. They were mostly in the trees but they came down to feed from time to time. We also found out it was mating season. We thought they were all mean lizards chasing each other all the time until we saw this guy take her buy surprise by doing a flying squirrel, jumping on her back, and latching on with his mouth to the back of her neck. Horny lizards

The sunsets were AMAZING! Being on the west coast of Mexico, the sunsets were directly into the ocean. The first night we were there, we watched the sun set and noticed something jumping out of the water. After watching closer, we could tell they were whales!!! Yes, humpback whales were putting on a jumping clinic. They were going nuts for about an hour. Unfortunately, didn't have our camera at that time and we figured we would see them again... we didn't only once more time... briefly and too far away for a picture. It was kind of comical knowing those same whales are all over up here in the summer yet we have never seen them jumping, and then we visit Mexico for a day and see them leaving like crazy.

We actually weren't staying directly in Puerto Vallarta. Our resort was closer to a place called Bucerias. Down town Bucerias was about a mile walk up the beach. This is a picture of the market in the town. It's a very fascinating place to visit and great place to get souvenirs. It's a little overwhelming however since all the 100 little shop owners are pretty much selling the same thing and want your business. We frequently here, "Want silver? Come in, take a look? I don't charge to look? Necklace? Cigars? Dress?" The cool thing about this place is there are no price tags. You go in to a shop, find something you like, and you barter.

We were recommended to go to this one local restaurant in town by a couple of ladies that frequent the resort we were at. Boy are we glad we listened to them!! It was a place called Miguel Angelo. It's a seafood restaurant that serves locally caught seafood. Fisherman bring their catches in, and they cook them up for their customers. We ordered the most expensive thing on the menu... the seafood combo platter. It included 3 lobster, 4 giant grilled prawns, octopus tentacles, mahi tuna steak, shrimp, and of some kind of unidentified fish split down the middle and cooked. There was also a few cooked vegetables and rice. This was the perfect amount for both me and Danielle and it was only 500 pesos or 42 bucks! My mouth is watering thinking about it right now.

They also had this little bird that was really friendly and would perch on your arm or shoulder. I was a little nervous since he liked to nibble...

Everyone in town is trying to make money. Those with little kids use the cuteness factor and have them run around trying to sell stuff as well. You can bet the cuteness factor worked on Danielle. This little girl was awesome. She was selling chiclets... little packs or 5 pieces of gum. She would sprint up to anyone she saw walking buy and say, "CHICKLETS??" She was selling them for 1 peso, or a little more than 8 cents. We were sitting on this red bench together and all of a sudden, she came up from behind us and squeezed her way between us asking us to buy chicklets. She was very funny because she had a tendancy to put everything in her mouth. She first cam up to us sucking on a whole pack of chicklets. She then brought over little magnets she was selling too... and after everyone she showed us, she would suck on it before the next magnets turn to go in her mouth.

This was actually the first little cutie that we encountered. He was with his big brother who was probably 5. After his brother asked us to buy chicklets, this little guy stayed around. He didn't talk, but he was a stinker. He sat next to Danielle and just roared at her. He then started placing with his gum... which started to get everywhere on his hands. Danielle was giggling at her and he turned his attention to her. For some reason, his goal was then get Danielle to eat the gum that was on his fingers. He kept trying to shove it in her mouth :)

Yes, a Mexican pharmacy. I went in and took a gander at their inventory. They had many things we do, and some things I didn't recognize. The shop owner there didn't speak much English, so it was hard to ask him questions about how getting medicine worked. Many medication you didn't need a prescription for tho.

We found this dead lobster on the beach.

View to the South from our resort.

View to the North from our resort.

Live muscles found all over the beach.

This was a beach jelly fish... it was pretty massive.

Found this dead eel on the beach too. This was actually the second dead eel we saw too. And speaking of eel, we saw an eel snake in the water one day when the tide was out. It seemed to come out of nowhere. It was about two feet long, looked like a snake without eyes, and had red stripes all over it. We didn't know at the time that it wasn't poisonous, but it made a bee line for my feet and I had to jump skyward to avoid it running in to me.

More sealife... a Mexican Olive


The sand in the water was very interesting. It looked like it had gold flakes everywhere. We kept joking that they were going to make a reality show about mining the coast of Puerto Vallarta.

A sand angel for mom!

The night life was a blast at this resort. They had different, nightly shows that were extremely entertaining (They could have easily charged 20 bucks admission for each show) and a discotech that was open past 3AM. This is a couple we met that were really cool. They were from Canada (which by the way 95% of the people there were from).

These two old guys were from Quebec. They speak French in quebec and their English was horrible. I seriously could only understand 1 out of every 40 words that were said. The weird thing is I think their culture deems is appropriate for them to take pictures of anything they can see with their eyes... because they were taking random pictures of people at the bars, on the beach, and in the resort that they didn't even know. TOTALLY WEIRD. That guy on the left was 60 something and he took more shots than anyone at the bar. He kept saying, "Tequilla bang bang." And they would serve him up... about every 5 minutes. Needless to say he turned incoherent (even more than the 1/40 English word ratio) and they stumbled off to their room.

This is Shirley... or Tanya. I'm still not sure what her name was. She was a crazy, old drunk that blacked out every night.... and never remembered us in the morning. We even had to make sure she made it safely home one night.

Every night they would allow approved vendors to set up tables around the pools. This guy was amazing. He sculpted out of melted/ stretched glass. He made lizards most of the time while people viewed and bought his other items. However, one night a lady requested he make her a dog. I was skeptical since he didn't have any on display, but he melted that glass and whipped up an amazing looking dog in no time... with incredible detail too that I could have sworn I never saw him attempt to do.

There was a Mexican Fiesta themed night across the resort. It was pretty cool with a Mariachi band and many Mexican traditional games being played.

They even had a bull for people to pet and ride that night.

Gecko's everywhere at night.

Our plane ride home was pretty eventful. We got to pheonix and had to circle the airport 3 times since a couple runways were not open. Once we got on the ground, we had to taxi forever. Once we got to our gate, we had to wait on the plane for a while until the line to customs got shorter. Once we de-boarded, we had to wait in a massive line before we talked to a customs agent. After talking to the customs agent, we had pick up our checked bags. After that, we had to go to the front counter and check back in to our US flight to check our bags again. We then had to go back through security before we could finally head off to our next flight. Oh, and just so you know, we only had a 45 minute layover from the scheduled arrival time. Well believe it or not, we still had 1 minute left before the departure of our next flight to Anchorage. Well, we were hoping the flight would wait for us so we took off on a sprint. Little did we know that it was on the furthest concourse away from the security check point. We ran through so many of those horzontal walking treadmill things. Well, by the time we got to our gate, their was absolutely nobody there. Dissapointed, out of breathe, and sweating, we checked the monitor. We then found out our tickets had the wrong gate on them. The correct gate was closer to the security check area!! Next to our correct gate, it showed that the flight had departed. Dissapointed and knowing it would take forever to get flights back to Anchorage, we went over to customer service to wait in line. We talked to the gal there and she called someone at the other gate. She told us the plane is still there and to hurry over before it takes off. Soooo, off we sprinted again! We got there only to find out the plane was not allowing anyone else on the plane. In fact, about 3/4 of the passengers had already boarded when a "security issue" came up. This issue resulted in the remaining passengers not being allowed to board, and all passengers currently on the plane would have to all go back through the security check. I'm not sure what this issue was they were talking about, but I have never seen anything like it (and by the way, we were pissed the customer service rep made us sprint back there). Well they slowly came off the plane and in groups of seven were escorted by all the TSA and police officers they could find in the airport. About 2 hours after the scheduled departure, the plane headed home.... with us on it!! We were probably the only ones on the plane that were grateful for the late departure.



Claimed to be the best roper in Mexico. We thought... ya right when he initially came out


Claimed to be the littlest roper in Mexico... too cute


Wild critters of the ocean



This is from when we were home for Christmas. Danielle and I went for a walk and decided to pick up ears of fallen corn in the fields for the horses. Well it turned in to a competition to see who could bring the most home. I more than doubled her amount with 96 to her 47. As you can see, I ran out of room to store the corn and opted for the pants leg... via the crotch. EDIT - Not sure what is wrong with the video, but it is supposed to show us emptying out all the corn.

Some recent things that have happened (not pictured above):
- I have to have surgery on my shoulder from a snowboarding accident I had last February 2011. Of course I scheduled it after the March snagging trip, and 8 weeks before a planned bear hunt so I can heal up in time :)
- We now own a couple snow machines (known as snowmobiles by everyone else). For some reason if you call them snowmobiles up here, you get made fun of. Personally, I'm not a fan of the snow machine designation... those are the things that cover the snowboarding moles hills of Iowa when weather doesn't cooperate. Anyway, we have had them out once since owning them and are looking forward to going out many more times before the snow melts. We also got some icefishing gear that we are excited about using as well. January is the coldest month, and ice fishing is usually best right at ice over and close to thaw out.
- We also got a 4 wheeler now (looking for a second). This will come in very handy for hunting and exploring more of what Alaska has to offer.
- Daylight is slowly returning. I actually got home from work today at about 5:30 and it wasn't completely dark yet. We are exactly one month post the shortest day of the year.
- Saw the northern lights last night from our back deck. It was negative 10 out so I couldn't stay our there long enough or hold still long enough, to take a good picture.

MOOSE DOWN!

*** FOR SOME REASON IT IS NOT ACCEPTING RETURNS RIGHT NOW AND IS RUNNING THE WHOLE STORY TOGETHER. I APOLOGIZE FOR THIS *** Well I know we've been up to a lot lately, but the only thing on my mind right now is to share how my moose hunt went. The hunt is called the Upper Ship Creek Registration Hunt. It is a hunt that is offered within a 10 mile drive of Anchorage. It is an extremely difficult hunt as only 10% of hunters are successful. Of those 10%, 9.5% of them are horse hunters (no motor vehicles allowed in the hunt area to aid in the hunt). It is so difficult because access to the hunting area is very minimal. It takes a great deal of walking up, down, and around mountains to just get in to the hunting area, let alone finding good huntable ground. This in combination with the amount of pressure the hunt area has in the accessable areas, makes taking a moose difficult. The hunt is an any bull tag and only 100 tags are issued every year. To get a tag, you must be the first 100 in line before the Department of Fish and Game opens on the designated day (8AM). For me, this meant gambling that I would get a tag getting there at 4AM. You never know how many people will show up, especially with how close this hunt is to home. There are always people sleeping overnight in tents or bivies insuring that they get a tag for the hunt. Last year, if you weren't in line by 5AM, you were not getting a tag. This year, if you got there anytime before 8AM, you were getting a tag. The hunt starts the last week of October and the area quota is 10 bull moose. As a hunter of this area, it is your responsibility to know on a daily basis if the quota has been met or not. This means calling every morning to insure you are legal to hunt. As I already said, the hunt takes place at the end of October. This is past all the other moose, sheep, goat, carribou, etc. hunts. The rut is over, and the moose have sporadic areas that they roam, making them fairly unpredictable. The other challenge to this hunt is the weather. This is the time the snow starts to fall. So either the hunt gets closed by emergency order because the quota was met, or the quote doesn't get met because you can barely move through the valley because snow conditions are too poor to ambulate. However, the really cool thing about this hunt is that I can literally see the mountains that form the outside edge of the hunt area from my house. This also means I get to sleep in my bed at night and can be in the hunt area by sunrise. SIDE NOTE - the weekend prior to the opener, Danielle and I drove up to the hunt area to time how long it would take to drive from our house and hike into my scouting area. That totaled a little under an hour. On our way home, we spotted a group of about 8-9 grouse munchin on gravel next to the road. If you don't know what a grouse is or how they act, they are pretty tame birds. They are a little smaller than a chicken and just fly into a tree when spooked. They will literally just sit and watch you as long as you stay about 30+ feet away and don't bother them. They are supposed to be descent eating, but we have never dropped one yet. Well we pulled over and I got out my sling shot (always carrying hiking with me). I shot 6 BBs at them and the first two got within 1 mm of a head. We then resorted to throwing rocks but still could not connect. We ended up chasing them around the woods for a little bit and came home empty handed. As a result, we decided to get a .22 air rifle to make sure we get some dinner without using actual bullets. Back to the hunt story - Well somehow I managed to get the opening day of the hunt off (Tuesday, October 25th). I decided that I would give it a try and see how it went. If I didn't get anything (and chances were I wouldn't) I would wait until the next week, since I had the entire thing off in preparation for this hunt. I got to my planned spot about an hour before sunrise. As I set up on the mountain side in preparation for a day of glassing, I could see many headlights on other hunters through most of the area I would be looking for moose to roam in. Dissapointed that I would have no chance of getting to a bull moose before one of the other hunters would if I actually saw one, I stuck around until first light. It turns out that morning was a disaster for hunting. It was extremely cold, extremely windy (40mph+ gusts), and sleeting sideways. I sat in the weather for about 2 hours before I decided to throw in the towel and head home. I would try it again Saturday. The crazy thing is when I left my hunting spot and drove home, I saw 42 cars that belonged to hunters on the back road. That amazed me since only 100 tags existed, there were 2 other entry points, and this entry point was soo small. The concentration of hunters in that one area must have been incredible! Saturday came and once again I was out to my spot before sunrise (there was a foot of snow on the ground now). As it started to get a little bit lighter, I spotted two moose about a half a mile away, part way up a mountain. It wasn't quite light enough for me to be able to tell if they were cows or bulls. Deciding that I didn't want to risk someone else taking one of the moose before it got light enough for me to determine the sex, I packed up my stuff and headed in their direction. I figured that I would rather find out they were cows by walking through all the snow to get to them rather than waiting that same amount of time to find out they were bulls, and then pursuing them. Well it turns out, the moose I saw were a mamma moose and a yearling. As I was looking closer at the yearling, I noticed that it had a couple little bumps behind its eyes and in front of the ears where the rack usually is. I would estimate the size of the bumps as half of a golf ball. Anyway, this got me really thinking... is that a bull or a cow? And if it's a bull, is it a legal animal? I wasn't sure it was a bull, as I have never really studied yearling anatomy or ever thought I would approach one with the slightest inclination of taking the animal. Since being here, I have set my standards as high as possible and have vowed to never shoot an animal unless I am 100% confident it is legal (this can be difficult when judging antler, sex, and horns). I was not confident that these bumps were on males only, as I could see these also being on cow yearlings as well, but they may just flatten out and never sprout a rack. Unsure if it was a bull or not, I called all of the people I had in my phone that knew anything about hunting. The consensus was 50/50. That didn't really help my confidence on determining whether or not the bull was legal. It was impossible to see it's penis and I tried to stick around long enough to watch it urinate, but that never happened. If I would have determined that it was a bull, I would have then been faced with my next challenge... How do I feel about taking a legal animal that is still coupled with its mother? Well, it was a Saturday, and we were having a party that night for Halloween, so after watching the pair from 100 yards for a good 4 hours, I decided that it was time to head back. (Shooting a moose would have meant canceling our hosted party and spending all night dealing with the meat). I returned home thinking that I may have just passed up the first opportunity for myself to harvest a legal animal. I had to find out if that yearling was a bull or a cow. To help me in determining this, I consulted a bunch of moose growth resources, looked at information on the Alaska Department of Fishing and Game, and consulted the Alaska hunting forums. In summary, I determined that the moose I was looking at was in deed a yearling bull. My next thought after making this conclusion was determining if I really would have shot the bull. I had mixed emotions about this, but basically concluded that yes, if given that chance again, I would take a shot at the moose. Granted, I would much rather take a bull with a massive (or at least bigger) rack; but if it was between not putting meat in the freezer or harvesting a legal animal that wasn't ideal, I would harvest a yearling. For those that disagree with my train of thought, I encourage you to read this post on our Alaska hunting forums. http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php/106954-Would-you-shoot-a-quot-calf-quot It takes a poll on this subject and then people defend their reasoning. There is some very interesting information there! I was planning on going hunting again Sunday, but it turns out I had a little too much fun the night before and missed sunrise. That's ok tho; I needed a day to recover, plus, I had all of that week off. Monday comes around and once again, I'm headed hunting. I called the ADFG and they said it was a busy weekend with 7 total bulls being taken so far... 3 left! The weather was pretty crappy again and not very reassuring. In fact, I almost decided to stay home that day because I could not find my hunting license ANYWHERE. Lucky me, I purchased my hunting license online and I had a paper printout that I could carry with me (almost forgot I had it). So the time I spent looking for my license put me behind the morning rush traffic and I actually parked my car as the light was starting to come up. There was a couple more inches of snow on the ground and I knew I couldn't glass the valley very well from my normal spot since their was basically a mini blizzard taking place at that time. Because of that, I decided to just start hiking on the path toward where I saw the pair of moose two days earlier. On my way there, I noticed some very fresh tracks from a single moose on the path I was headed. Since visibility was about 300 feet, I decided to just follow the tracks and hopefully stumble across a bull at the end of them. The tracks started to head down the mountain and in to some deep snow and timber. It wasn't an ideal direction in case I happened to harvest it, but it was still generally close the truck. As I'm winding down the mountain and weaving in and out of alders, I caught myself having an extremely difficult time following the path the moose took. I am constantly amazed at the terrain and brush that a moose can navigate through without any trouble! Well after following the tracks for a good 1.5 hours, I finally came across a moose. To my disappointment, I was staring at a big cow moose. I just stood there and watched her for about 20 minutes when I noticed some more movement in the background... it was another moose! The moose came into the clearing, and I'll be damned, it was the same yearling I spotted two days ago. The tracks I was following did not belong to these moose, but somehow, they led me right to them. Already deciding before I left for my hunt that day that I would harvest the yearling if it crossed my path again, I knew my tag was soon to be filled. Unfortunately, we were in some extremely thick brush and stalking and seeing where the moose were was extremely difficult, not to mention dangerous. A momma moose is nothing to mess around with!!!! I waited patiently for the moose to move elsewhere and I probably waited a good 2 hours only to have them move a couple hundred feet. That entire time, I was fairly close to them ( I would estimate about 200 feet). They knew I was there, but moose typically adopt a carefree attitude and don't pay much attention to things smaller than them. Well after these two hours of being in their presence, they started to get a little edgy. They started trotting down the mountain and stopping to look back at me. Of course I pursued them and they continued to trot away. There was a couple times during this chase that I had my gun set up and ready to take a shot, but I could not get a clear shot of the yearling. I ended up chasing them down hill for about 30 minutes. Getting a shot on the yearling became increasingly difficult as they were now facing away from me constantly, and the moose were staying close together. I actually ended up below them after pursing for a while. This made them turn back uphill and separate by about 20 feet in an opening before some alders. This was my chance. The yearling never gave me a good broadside shot, but quartering away was going to have to do. With little time to think, I lifted my rifle, judged where the fatal organs rested, and took the shot. The yearling bolted 10 feet.... and dropped. The momma cow stood there, unknowing of what just happened. Before the cow could realize what just took place, I high-tailed it out of there. I got 300 yards away and stopped to recover myself. I noticed at that time that I had a good amount of blood dripping from my chin. Apparently, when I took the shot the gun shot back with enough force to have my scope gash my forehead open. I didn't even feel it happen, or know it was dripping down my entire face. In foresight, I really should have gotten a couple stitches to close it up, but I didn't have time and a suture bandaid worked good later on... After I gathered myself, I took a moment to pray in gratitude for the yearling giving its life to feed many mouths. The next couple hours were the longest ones of the day. I could not start to work on field dressing the moose until the cow was no longer protective of her young. It was now a waiting game. I shot the moose at 1 PM. I proceeded to climb back up the mountain, find a place where I could see the kill sight, and watch how the mamma cow reacted, hopefully and eventually leaving the yearling. In the mean time, I contacted a couple people and lined up 5 helping hands to hike in, help field dress, and pack the moose out. I sat there, watching the cow walking around wondering why her young would not get up. In between patches of fog and 20 minute intervals of sight and then hiding beneath the clouds, the mamma cow would not separate more than 100 feet from the yearling. It was a very bitter sweet moment for me to reflect on what had just happened... I would be lying if I said I didn't mourn along with the cow. Watching that, one can't help but try to relate to how the mamma cow was feeling. I do not enjoy killing. Killing is the least rewarding aspect of hunting and fishing for me. The thrill and reward is in the preparation, execution of a plan, attempting to concur various challenges, and to hopefully provide sustenance for my family and friends. After sitting in the snow and cold for a little over 5 hours, I was starting to shiver quite a bit. I had not eaten lunch that day, I was hiking the whole morning in fresh snow, and my water was completely frozen in my camel pack. I was drained. In the mean time, the cow had yet to leave the yearlings side. It was looking like we were going to have to force the separation in order to dress the moose. The crew arrived to my location on the mountain around 6PM. We slowly headed down the mountain to the location of the kill. As we approached it, we were extremely cautious as the situation and attitude of the cow was very unpredictable. Luckily, the cow was rather submissive to our presence and never once suggested any aggression towards us. The power of numbers proved beneficial here. The cow watched from 300 feet away as we walked up to the yearling and set up our field dressing gear. Danielle was on Cow patrol and myself and the guys started to dress the yearling. Soon after we started, the cow lost interest and ventured off into the valley. It was a good thing too as darkness soon fell and it would have been extremely hard to keep tabs on a pissed off moose in the dark. We put our headlamps on and proceeded to cut up the moose. After a couple hours, we had everything cleaned up and packed ready to hike to the truck. Luckily, we had just enough people to pack the entire moose out in one trip (This would have took at least 1 other trip on a full grown bull). It's a good thing it only took us each 1 load because by the time we were ready to leave, it was snowing extremely hard and accumulated a couple more inches of fun to walk through... up a mountain... 1.5 miles... with 80 +/- 20 pounds (depending on what was being carried) apiece on our backs. It was a pretty grueling hike and my legs were CRAMPING bad by the end of the hike. This was the first time I had done any kind of exercise for 6 weeks. 6 weeks prior I broke two bones in my ankle from playing basketball. Typically, I would have been conditioning myself with cardio and a weighted pack prior to a hunt... but my basketball injury prevented that from happening. Once at the truck, we relaxed for a little bit. I was pretty beat, but it was hard to ignore the beauty of huge snowflakes emptying from the sky to the top of the mountain where we stood, knowing I just had 5 good friends help me complete the challenge I set out to conquer, that very few have succeeded at. I got home at 10:30PM and I spent the rest of the night on into the late morning cleaning and preparing the meat. I ended up staking out a lot of the meat and packaging it myself. I took the quarters and ribs to a local butcher to have the remainder processed there. Overall, we got back a little under 200 pounds of moose meat.... delicious table fare that is very lean and healthy! So far, I have had the privilege of harvesting both a moose and black bear. I just entered Danielle and I's names into the hunting draws for next year. We are guaranteed a caribou tag and hopefully we get drawn for another species as well. I am predicting that Danielle will get in on the action with a caribou and bear next year... I have my next goal set on a mountain animal... a goat or perhaps a sheep.

A view of the moose taken from my iPhone through my binoculars.

He was a chubby thing... and hairy too

I tried to clean it out, but it started to bleen again. Every high-powered rifle hunter has to get scoped at least once.

Sitting on the mountain looking down in to the valley where my moose lay. The clouds kept pushing in making it difficult to watch anything for more than 20 minutes. Good thing I was sitting there for 5 hours... I got plenty of 20 minute intervals :)

Success! We didn't have to worry about the meat getting too warm since there was snow EVERYWHERE. We didn't even have to worry about the bears since they were all denned up by now.

Close up. The next one I shoot I promise will have a rack that may get in the way of me being in the picture.