The Alaska Adventure: The Magic Hour

HUNTING. We recently had our new neighbors, Alaskans through and through, over for dinner for the first time. It's moose hunting season right now and that inspired the sharing of many gun-slinging tales. Now, not a hunter myself, I thought I still had a decent idea of what a trip out to get a moose might look like. I envisioned hiking through the forest, gun slung over my shoulder, maybe a canteen for water and a little hip satchel with snacks. Apparently I've read one too many Little House on the Prairie books. Our neighbors enlightened me with some of the logistics a modern hunter needs to consider. Like how if you take down a big animal like a moose away from a trail or forest corridor, you need to make your own corridor to bring the moose out (think chainsaws and four-wheelers). Or how most animal activity happens during "the magic hour," that chunk of time right before and after sunset, and it's super hard to see with the low light; thus if you happen to get a lucky shot, it's dark by the time you actually have a kill on your hands. Compounded with the off-the-trail factor mentioned above, you could have yourself an all nighter just cutting a path through the darkness to your moose, let alone the effort to butcher, wrap, and haul the meat out on your four-wheeler. Our neighbor told of being surrounded by a pack of wolves for several hours in the dark as he cut his way through the forest en route to his moose. His mom, back at a camp site where she could hear the wolves howling in his vicinity, kept calling his cell phone to make sure he was still alive.

For those of you, like me, still stuck on the image of the hunter on foot, I was informed that it takes a reasonably fit person 10 trips to bring one moose out. My teacher-mind feels a word problem coming on:

Question: You're out on a hunting trip and you proceed five miles down a trail. With luck on your side, you meet a moose and are able to shoot him right there, without needing to leave the trail. If it takes you 10 trips to pack all the meat out, how many miles did you hike in all?

(find answer at bottom of post)

Because we have absolutely no pictures related to hunting or chainsaws or four-wheelers, I am including a few extremely random pictures from the past two weeks... enjoy!