We hunted just about all of the entire, brief, season— it closed Monday at midnight after less than two weeks. We heard the news from John and Henry Monday evening when they stopped by our camp on their way down the river. John has an airboat, so we always know when he’s on the way. It sounds like a small plane. He said 28 bulls were taken (the target harvest is 20-25). Of course we were pretty sure Tuesday morning would be our moose moment. We had three cows hanging around, and had seen several bulls that didn’t meet the hunt guidelines. Surely the one for us would have been waiting on the edge of the meadow in the brush when the sun came out–
Oh well.
John didn’t get one either. But the camps nearby did. Pastor Sage and his crew and Charlie. Upriver the all-women party was successful. Craig had three come out of his camp area, which includes family, friends and a wide circle that will share the meat (and the work of butchering it). I bet he’ll give us some. He already has dropped off five sockeye he was too tired to process after a night of fishing. Craig’s luck is a good sign that he may be elected to the Borough Assembly and that Tom could be the mayor. This is election season, too. We vote on Tuesday. If you’ve read Of Bears and Ballots you know about the drama of our local politics (anyone who lives here does). This campaign feels different. More positive and hopeful.
But I want to tell you about the hunt.
First of all, it’s beautiful and mostly peaceful and so present in nature– I can’t describe how eveything slows down and is in focus. Sounds. Light. Birds. Leaves falling. A hawk hunting. Trumpeter swans. Even the way the clouds are suspended.
Also, after a lot of time in close quarters, in a fair amount of rain, Chip and I are still happily married.
We agreed that even if we weren’t, we’d like to date. Hunting can strain nerves. There’s a lot of sitting and waiting with suddenly tense interludes. I’m more than slightly terrified when moose stomp nearby.
Then there’s the back and forth– Is it legal or not and why can’t you be sure? You forgot your binoculars?
Not to mention the boating. Quick hop out and tie us off. Look out for the sand bar. It’s much better with the new skiff. It has a tunnel for the jet motor so it can skitter over the shallows. Charlie built it for Ralph, and when he moved Outside, Chip bought it.
I am in charge of the meals, but Chip lights the morning fire and puts the coffee on before I leave my warm sleeping bag. Speaking of food, after we came home I saw Fireman Al in the grocery store and he said he shot a moose. He was hunting up north, in the same place where he fell last year and broke his back. This time he used a treestand and not a rotten branch as a perch. It took courage and work rehabbing to hunt again. I told him I understood why. It’s the same reason I ride a bike after a life changing crash. For love. Happiness. It’s an activity that is fundamental to the life I lead in this place. I don’t want to give it up.
Al doesn’t talk like that.
He shrugged and said, “I mean, people who get in car wrecks drive again.”
On Al’s regular Safety Report on KHNS the morning after we returned, our neighbor Lyle, who also hunts up north instead of Haines, in part because there are more options, said they had a near disaster. ( You can’t shoot any bull in Haines. It must have three brow tines, a fork or spike, or an over 50 inch spread. All configurations require careful and relatively close observation.) Lyle’s group forgot the coffee. I can live without wine – our camp is dry, for many good reasons. But coffee? Never. This year we put the percolator on at lunchtime and kept plenty of half & half in the cooler. It was my luxury in the dirt-floored canvas tent that smells like blue cheese.
We offered to brew some for Larry and Lyndsey when they pulled in on their way up to hunt while we were eating soup, but they didn’t have time to wait for it to perc. So we talked on the bank. Sharing news of the river.
Scotty’s accident on the four-wheeler wasn’t as bad as first feared. Nothing broken, Lyndsey said, just a badly dislocated shoulder. Of course hunting stories old and new are in the mix. The ones that got away, the one that walked right into camp and was the easiest pack ever, the young sub-legal bull who would not leave the base of the treestand if you dropped rocks on his head. My favorite is the story about the very old gray legal bull and the very old gray cow that young Kyle couldn’t bear to separate. He lowered his rifle and let them walk off.
Have you noticed a pattern here? Can you tell that what I love about the hunt on the river is how social it is, without cell communications, in that small-town-know-your-name-and-your boat-kind of way? The skiffs don’t all stop, but everyone in them waves and smiles. Luck, Shane, Jackson and Dave. Paul. Bean and Caitlin and their boys. Julia, Kim and Nene. Stu and Heath. Dylan. We are in this together. It made my heart happy to belong. That explains a lot about the world these days, for better and worse, doesn’t it? We even look alike. Camo. Life jackets and float coats. Rubber boots. Funny hats. Bulked up against the cold. Everyone was pretty dirty. (Honestly, it’s not my best look.) The mountains are much better dressed.
One of the books I re-read was John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. In it he says that stories are about three things: emotions, values and beliefs. Hunting is chocked full of that stuff– It is life and death — But not in all the ways you may imagine.
Hunters hearts and minds are as unique and individual as any group of humans are. Around here it’s easy to know, and certainly to guess pretty accurately, what our differences are politically and socially. What makes me hopeful is that doesn’t matter at all to the moose hunters. None of that was part of any conversation. We were, it seems to me, all happy to be there, and I bet too, that we all know how lucky we are. We had- and still have- that much in common. It is a lot. Plenty. Enough to change the world, or at least to cut a break in the clouds for the light to shine through.
Chip and I didn’t get a moose, but this was one of our best hunts. We had a good time together. And I rekindled another old love (or at least a big like)– the one I have for this community, the one that I had lost a chunk of during my 2016-19 term on the Haines Borough Assembly.
It’s nice to be home again.
