Alaska moose hunting trip (part 1)

[shaddragger]

  I never get tired of seeing those pics from John's Country! Great story and stunning photos Semp!

[KySongDog]

Semp,

Those Moonsets are AWESOME!

Here is a couple more, Jerry.

[Okanagan]

Thanks for the good account and great photos.  Enjoyed the trip with you!

I spent last week after moose near the Yukon border, with no luck.  We had an odd year, with nobody in our area seeing moose or caribou, not even a track in two day old snow.  We camped where the parties around us did well last year, with five moose and four caribou.  This year the same hunters had not seen a single animal:  16 days of hunting for one party, nine days of hunting for another party of four, etc. 
 
We saw saw 4 moose (no bulls) two caribou (one nice bull a steep rough mile and a half away) and one Mt. goat.   However, in an area where I have never seen a black bear, we saw 9 black bears and three grizzly in our first 27 hours.  Some kind of odd migration going on, moose away and bears moved in.  Also the best grouse year I've seen, and of course I didn't take a .22.  Bonked one with a rock.

Gorgeous country and good company made for a good trip.  We did the loop north up the Alaska highway and back down a ways due to a closed road and saw over 200 buffalo on our way up.

Ft. Nelson is a boom town full of oil workers.  That sleepy little isolated place has big new hotels either just built or under construction, big new restaurants, parking lots full of muddy 4x4 pick-ups and service trucks, no vacancy signs on the motels and in the evening the restaurants are full of men in dirty work clothes with pockets full of money.

It felt good to see a place booming with productive work and jobs.  It is not as busy but there is a gold rush going on around Dease Lake, choppers and planes shuttling men and equipment, hauling slings of ore, or doing some kind of mineral prospecting with probes on choppers flying low and slow.  Jade boulders as big as cars on flat decks heading to a port for a ship to China.