coolpool
10-06-2013, 12:15 AM
This was an eventful trip to say the least. My son Sam shot a nice bull on the afternoon of the second day on the river. I even managed to get a picture as it was going down. After winching it out of the water, gutting, skinning and loading it in to the canoe we decided to try to make it down river at last light; a stupid decision on my part as we almost capsized in one of the rapids. We went back upstream to the kill site and hunkered down for the night with no food or shelter. Luckily there was tons of wood for a big fire. We weren’t prepared to spend the night and ended up boiling river water for tea and eating fresh moose tenderloin wrapped on a stick, yummy! We got hit with -5 C temps and a heavy frost came in as can be seen on Sam's back pack and canoe. At 1:00 in the morning I was chilling out watching the fire, Sam was sleeping, and I heard the unmistakeable grunts from a Bull Moose right behind me; it was a big one spoiling for a fight. I woke up Sam and looked over the logs we were resting against and there it was 50’ away. I’ve never seen aggression like it with a big fire going and all the commotion from us. It didn’t know what to make of us, the rut makes them stupid; if it had started swaying its antlers it was a goner. Damn thing crossed the river and watched us for half an hour. Needless to say there wasn’t much sleep after that. When dawn finally rolled around at 8 we headed upstream to the closet take out point 1 km away upstream; on the river 1 km = 3 km with all the twists and turns. I had to pull the canoe through the rapids which was a pain with all the weight in the canoe. Once back at camp in the afternoon we hung the meat and finally hunkered down for supper and some rest. Lo and behold a bear shows up across the river and swims across to our camp. I scared it away and it crossed back to the other shore 75’ away, Problem was it didn’t want to leave smelling all that meat. It started walking stiff legged, arching its back and popping its jaws. I’ll I’m going to say is it was breathing when I last saw it. You fill in the blanks. We had some great father son times on this trip but I’m wiped out. I’m not complaining though because some of you might remember we were dealing with a horrific motorcycle crash Sam was in this time last year. Enjoy the pics!