Moose Hunting On The Minto Flats

By TJ "Pipedreams" Booth

At the consideration of a request from my children as well as the tenuous stature of my health, I am honoring their request for me to write down the details of some of my adventures in the Alaskan wilds. I believe I still have some 35mm photographs from these early trips, but I can’t seem to locate them right now. I hope my words suffice to capture the essence of this Alaskan Hunting Adventure in an enjoyable fashion……

The previous three years of hunting my valley had only produced marginal results. I had taken two bulls in those first years in Alaska, but the larger of the two was only 36”….both had made excellent table fare for sure, however I had spent a lifetime dreaming about hunting big bull moose in Alaska and wanted to get face to face with a truly big bull more than anything.

I had come to the conclusion that while my valley held a lot of moose, none of the bulls were all that big, at least not the ones that were down from the high country early in the fall when moose season was open. The big bulls were still in the hills or deeper in the bush….cautious and not yet consumed by the rut. If I wanted to get a big, trophy class bull it was clear that I would have to hunt the country where they were this time of year and the nearby Minto Flats seemed to be the best choice.

I had seen the flats for the first time about a month earlier on a canoe trip with a few friends in late July. We went down the lower Chatinika, spending the endless summer days fishing for pike and camping on islands along the way. The Flats were a bit intimidating for two reasons. Foremost was the fact that it was a navigational nightmare. The Chatinika spread out into a labyrinth of channels, lakes and ponds with dead ends everywhere. It was also not always such a friendly place for white boys to play being the backyard of the Athabaskan Indians of Nenana. Fortunately, I had made friends with several of the village elders over the past two years and had a “pass” of sorts in this context………..navigation, however, remained a serious challenge to be reckoned with.

Actually, the “road” to the “boat ramp” was a pretty serious challenge to be reckoned with too! It was a seldom used road, little better than what would be called a BAD trail anywhere else in America………about 12 miles total over Murphy dome….except that it had rained hard for most of August that year so by the time our two trucks, one hauling the 23 foot Aluminum jet boat and the other most of the gear and extra fuel tied to navigate it…..well, there just wasn’t much left that could be called road. The mud boggers had flogged it bad along with massive erosion ditches, some well more than two feet deep. One or the other rig was stuck, as in buried to the frame, more often than not and it took a full 18 hours to get down to the river. We could only hope that it didn’t rain or snow early before our planned return in 10 days; if it did odds were those truck would be there until next June!

It was about 10 AM before we got the boat into the water……….which turned into quite an adventure itself and well after noon by the time all the gear and the four 55 gallon drums of fuel were loaded on the boat. We were flat out drained when the 350 Chevy roared to life…….fortunately the throaty roar of the inboard seemed to breathe new life into the crew, which only moments before looked ready to just lay down and sleep for a day or two.

The river was high from all the rain which made the run easy in one sense, much less chance to run aground and little need to pick through channels, but way more difficult in another way because many of the smaller islands shown on the maps were completely underwater now. The view out the cockpit window seemed to have virtually nothing to do with the maps we had spread out on the table. Only the small black and white LCD map on my Garmin MAP76S GPS told the real story. Precise navigation is critical in the flats because even with the grace of my friends in the village, getting caught hunting on native lands is sketchy at best. The division of lands looks quite logical and easy to understand on the maps, but once you’re down in the flats in the middle of all the lakes and channels it’s quite another matter. Add to that several feet of flood waters that obscured many of the landmarks and most to the random signs posted along the banks…and the task was close to impossible.

The other problem we were dealing with was limited maneuverability in the river boat due to the heavy load we were carrying. On top of all the hunting, camping and fishing gear and provisions, right now we had close to 2,500 lbs of fuel on board! Add in four pretty big guys and right then we were probably running a 5,000 lb load…WAY beyond the load range of the boat….s l o w turns were imperative until we established base camp and offloaded all the fuel and gear.

The high water was proving to be an issue with setting up our base camp too. Back in July when Monte and I were down here in a canoe fishing, the river was low and we had “claimed” on of the bigger established campsites on an island for our base. We did this by leaving a couple of tarps pitched and stocking the fire pit area with some wood…more than enough to keep others out on the honor system everyone respected in this area. Now the Alumacraft jet boat sat off the island with the bow nosed into the main tent site!! No way was this site going to play out for us with the river this high.

We decided to push towards the Tolavana River drainage.………Our logic was simple, there was way more public land in that area and thus way better odds that we wouldn’t end up hunting and camping on native lands by mistake. It was still sunny and cool, but pushing 1900 hrs then, we knew it would be dark in a little more than three hours and if we didn’t find a camp by then we would be forced to spend the night on the boat, something no one wanted to do. Mike pushed down the throttle and the heavy boat jumped to life……….we were on our way towards Tolavana country, an area in the flats that none of us was familiar with.

A few hours later as the sun was setting, we were finally setting up camp on a small island, perhaps 3 acres in size, with a wonderful deep slough that was full of ducks on one side and the main channel of the river on the other. It didn’t take too long to get the two canvas wall tents set up, one big 16X 20 cook tent and a smaller 10X14 for sleeping. Two men worked on getting firewood while the other two set up some makeshift ramps to roll off the fuel drums. By midnight the fire was roaring and the whiskey flowing. We were in Moose camp!

The sun was high in the sky when I was awakened by the sound of shotgun blasts behind me. Mike and Carl had apparently been up for a while, got the fire and coffee going then took off to the slough to take a few ducks. Soon we were eagerly eating a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits and coffee and discussing a plan for the first evening hunt in the area.

A lot of different ideas were being tossed around and discussed, but the one thing no one seemed to want to talk about much was why we hadn’t seen even one moose during our trip down here. We saw six or seven bears, but not even one cow and calf…strange indeed. Hopefully this wouldn’t be a harbinger for the future of our hunt. On the other hand, we hadn’t seen one sign of any other hunters since we topped the ridge of Murphy dome on our way to the launch so hunting pressure didn’t look like it was going to be an issue on any level. We had, essentially at least 1,000 square miles of ground to ourselves….not unusual for Alaska, but always welcome when you found it.

We already knew without saying it, that we would be broken up into two teams, Monte and I on one, Mike and Carl on the other. One of the many strange aspects of this trip was that while Monte and I were good friends, as were Mike and Carl the four of us hardly knew each other as a group. This was the first time Monte had ever met Mike and Carl and although I had spent a couple of days salmon fishing with Mike down in the Matsu that summer, that was the first time I had met him…………I too had never seen Carl before in my life. Mike was a long time friend of my wife Sara and that proved to be a good common ground for us and Carl seemed okay too, but Mike was really there because of his boat and Carl because he was his friend……….. We were anything BUT a close group of friends, hopefully that would change over the next week in the bush.

That afternoon we spent an hour or two sighting in our rifles, Monte and I were both shooting Model 70 .375 H&H’s………..Mike was shooting a Ruger .338 and Carl was shooting a Remington 300 Win Mag. Our bench session must have put 10,000 ducks and geese into the air as the big mags boomed over the open water.

By 1700 hrs we were loaded up in the boat and heading out for our first look at what we had both (as teams) concluded was our best shot at moose country. Monte and I were going to be dropped off about two miles south of camp where some higher country dropped down into the flats. Carl and Mike were planning to hunt a similar draw about 10 miles further south. The plan was to hunt until dark, and then Monte and I would start a fire on the bank so they could find us on their way back. We had a set of GMRS radios with us, but would be hunting well beyond their range, so each team was on its own. Monte and I knew that if those guys put one down or got lost we could well be in for a LONG night in the wilds. It wasn’t a great plan by any means, but about as good as it was going to get in this country.


Ten minutes later the boat had slowed to a low rumble as we scanned the shoreline for a break in the alders big enough to land and wide enough for a fire to be seen by a passing boat in the dark. Monte and I stepped off the bow of the boat and pushed it back into the current, moments later the roar of the inboard jet drive had faded to nothing and we were, without question, alone, deep in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness about to start hunting for one of its greatest trophies……….the Alaskan Bull Moose.
The silence was profound now that the boat was gone. It seemed like every sound we made was magnified a thousand times. There was also no denying the fact that we were quite alone, if something should happen to Mike and Carl no one had clue one where we were. Certainly our wives knew we were in the flats, but the area we had planned to hunt now lay a good 30 miles north of us. This was raw wilderness in its pure form, there was no evidence that any human had ever stepped foot on the ground where we were standing before, to do so would have required the exact same boat approach that we took and there was no reason for anyone to do that other than us who had made the choice simply because it was the best looking ground close to the spot where we had chosen to camp the night before. Until we got back and lit a fire, the only thing indicating that we were in the area was a red bandana tied to a small birch on the bank.

The ground proved to be a lot less stable than it had looked. The first 100 yards or so, before the land began to rise up from the flood plain was pure muskeg no matter which route you chose. Every other step sank you knee deep into the muck and by the time we hit dry ground we were both weary from the effort. Our plan was to climb the rise in front of us to somewhere near the top where we could hopefully get a grasp of the surroundings. From where we stood at the base, it was pure spruce and birch along with vast thickets of alders. You were hard pressed to see more than 30 yards in any direction. Based on where I was standing right then I was lamenting my decision to take the scoped .375 instead of my open sighted 1895G 45-70. In this cover, the Marlin would have been ideal.

When we reached the top of the rise my GPS indicated that we were at 750 feet, the river ran at 350 so we had gained 400 feet of elevation, a lot in this country. The trees were mostly young birch up there, nothing much more than 4” in diameter. It looked like new growth from a fire that had passed through perhaps 30 or forty years ago. Things take a long time to grow back in interior Alaska. We did get a good view of the land below however………………..and endless expanse of marsh, pot holes, lakes and small tributaries of the main river……….the Tolovana. There were small pockets of spruce and birch scattered around the vista, which probably covered an area well in excess of 200 square miles, virtually all of which was useless to us considering the difficulty of the terrain. It had taken us close to an hour to make our way from our drop off to the rise, a distance according to my GPS again, of only .8 of a mile!

Our drop off point was on an inside bend in the river, something that was not visible to us until we could look back down on it. This gave us a good sized area to hunt within the 3 mile radius of the bank that we had established would be our outer limit of travel in the hunt. Best of all, however, there were moose everywhere we looked. Mostly cows and calves, but there were also 7 bulls within scope range………all of course well beyond rifle range and most well beyond the 2 mile edge from where we stood. There was one good size bull down at the edge of an alder lined pond about 800 yards below us. He was certainly legal and appeared to sport a rack in the high fifties….perhaps even bigger than 60 inches. We tossed a coin and Monte won, so if a shot was possible on this moose once we closed the distance this one was his. Regardless of the results of the stalk the next one was mine and it would rotate like that until both our tags were filled.
The stalk itself appeared to be pretty straight forward. The moose was at the edge of the same hill we were on, just around the bend feeding in that small pond. The country was open in front of him but probably much the same as where we were right now behind him. Typically, moose trails down to feeding areas follow natural drainages so there was probably a creek of some sort less than ¼ mile from where we stood. I would lead off by fifteen minutes or so until I found the creek, then start working my way down towards the pond. Monte would work his way down and in on the moose. Hopefully the sound of me moving down the drainage would push the bull out into the open providing Monte with a good shot. If Monte got there first, which could happen easily due to the terrain I had to deal with (creek drainages usually have heavy growth along their route) the bull would most likely move back up towards me. I might get a shot or not due to the density of the cover. Once again I was wishing I had the 45-70 in my hands instead of the .375.

We touched clenched fists and took off on our missions. It didn’t take me long to find the creek although it was quite small it wasn’t quite as choked with undergrowth as I thought it might be. I thought that perhaps the recent heavy rains had surged the flow up high enough to wash out a lot of the small stuff along the banks. Regardless it made moving down towards the pond much easier. Within 45 minutes I could see the bull still feeding in the same pond but in a slightly different position. I was around 300 yards away and although I could see him pretty clearly through my scope there were a lot of branches in the way. It wouldn’t be much of a shot from that position for sure. I sat down to rest and look for movement on my right which is where Monte should be by now but saw nothing. All kinds of scenarios were running though my mind as I waited and I had pretty much concluded that something in the realm of a terrain obstacle had forced him to work wide around it. If that was true, I wasn’t sure where he would be coming from. I also considered moving lower and pressuring the bull, but decided against it because it might force the bull out when he wasn’t in a position for a shot. Sit and wait………….sit and wait.

One thing that was happening that would quickly change the texture of this hunt was the wind. The sun had dropped below the horizon and now the wind, which had been moving uphill from the valley, was switching to a down slope movement. Pretty soon, my scent would be carried right down to the bull. Once that happened he would probably move out of the pond into the valley. Hopefully Monte would be in position for a shot, if not this bull would be gone. I still had seen no sign of Monte moving on the flank and there’s just no telling what he ran into in the way of ground obstacles on that route, for all I knew this creek which probably fed the pond drained off in that direction producing a wide “moat” that couldn’t be crossed for a considerable distance. The thought of the bull just wandering off was depressing, so I decided to close the distance a little more and perhaps come up on a more open shooting lane in the process.

Then suddenly, without warning I heard a loud THUMP, along with a cloud of moose hair flying in the air and a big mist of blood as the 320 grain solid blasted through the mass of the bull’s chest……. followed a split second later by the huge BOOOOOOOM of Monte’s .375. The Bull took two steps forward then fell down on his knees; he took a few deep hacking breaths spewing volumes of blood each time….clearly the sign of a perfect heart/lung shot. He struggled to get up but couldn’t and collapsed. I stood up with my crosshairs of my rifle trained on the back of his neck, but he wasn’t moving. I heard Monte give a war cry off to my right. This hunt was over, but the work was about to begin.

As we stood over the bull admiring him Monte told me that he had run into the exact problem I had imagined on his stalk. The creek spilled out of the pond into a wide, muddy bog that was impassable. He said he tried to wade across, but went in over his knee in mud with his first step and then spent the next 20 minutes trying to get his hip boot unstuck from the morass! Our light was fading fast so we had to develop a game plan fast. Monte would start the task of dressing out the bull while I made my way back to the drop off point to pick up our big bag and packing frames. We were going to use my back trail to the kill instead of Monte’s for obvious reasons, but being that there was no “trail” per se; part of my mission was to actually cut a trail that could be followed and navigated with heavy packs in the dark.

I left my rifle behind so I would be more mobile on this trip and would be relying on my Ruger .44Mag for protection against the many bears in the area. Due to the fact that my path there was based on a stalk and not the shortest distance between two points, I was going to cut the pack trail with the aid of my GPS. I punched in the drop off waypoint, hit “go to” and took off. The distance to the waypoint read 1.1 miles, considerably better than the 2.3 miles I had traveled to get there………..assuming of course that the direct route was traversable at all.

It only took me about 45 minutes to cut the trail and reach the drop off point. Fortune was on my side this time and the direct route was easy traveling, mostly dry ground with small sparsely growing birch. It didn’t take long to clear out stray (eyeball poker) branches and blaze big gashes on both sides of strategically located trees along the way. It was pitch black when I got there and I was hoping, of course, that I would hear the rumble of the jet boat when I got there, but that was not the case. It was totally silent there and I couldn’t hear anything in the distance either. I knew that Mike had way pointed the drop off on the boats GPS too, so they would certainly be able to find the spot, so I just scribbled a quick note, stuck it on the tree below the bandana and started back with the pack frames.

You never feel quite as alone in the world as you do traveling on a fresh trail in unfamiliar country in the middle of nowhere Alaska in the dark! Bears often move in on kills and sit off in the shadows watching. It’s quite common to find a bear on the kill when you return for a second trip when packing out the meat. As such, I probably put my hand on my .44 at least a dozen times just to “check” that it was still there as I made my way back along the new trail that was unwinding in front of me in the narrow band of light from my headlamp.

When I got back, Monte was almost done with processing the bull. The hide and a tarp were spread out with nicely wrapped muslin game bags of quarters and meat. Eight bags plus the rack………..this was going to be a LONG night! A half moon was high in the night sky now, so there was a little natural light, but other than that and the narrow beams from out headlamps it was pure pitch black everywhere. We quickly ate a few cans of sardines and some bread, then lashed on our first load and took off. Again, there was no sign of the boat when we got there even though it was well past midnight now. Each trip took a little more than an hour to complete so by the time we made our final trip…….a very heavy one for Monte who was packing the rack, but a light one for me who was only packing gear and both rifles, daylight was beginning to break. Still no sign of the boat!

We tried the radio a few times to no avail. Base camp was only a couple of river miles from here (1.5 miles direct) and well within the range of the GMRS radio, but our calls of “hunt 2 to hunt 1, over” only generated static in response. . We concluded that they too might have put down a bull and were just too tired to load up the boat and take off in the dark, electing to wait for daylight instead………at least that’s what we hoped had happened. We could care less at that point and just started a fire and crudely cooked up a couple of moose steaks and downed a couple of the beers we had stashed in small cooler we had left at the drop off.

By the time we woke up it was well after noon. The sun was high in the clear blue sky, the air was crisp and cool and the leaves that surrounded us were brilliant yellow. You couldn’t imagine a more perfect fall day in Alaska….except for the fact that we were sitting on the bank of a remote river and waiting for a boat to pick us up that we hadn’t seen in almost 24 hours. By now our emotions about that ranged from concerned, to pissed off. Regardless, we were where we were and needed to make the best of it in the interim however long that proved to be.

Fortunately the air was crisp and cool so meat spoilage wasn’t too much of a concern, however we needed to get it all hung properly and tarped off to keep it in the shade all day. We also decided to build ourselves a lean to while we were at it and spent the next several hours building a respectable camp. The small chainsaw I had insisted on bringing along was much appreciated. Even though it only had the fuel in the tank, by the time it ran out of gas we had cut all the ridge poles we needed and a good couple of days of firewood too. By the time the sun started dropping we also took a deep inventory of the provisions on hand. In the cooler were 8 beers, a quarter slab of bacon, a loaf of Italian bread, a stick of butter and a half dozen eggs. In the pack, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a small 4 quart pot, a frying pan, two plates and cups, some coffee and about 2 lbs of dried beans and two MREs…………..and in the trees under the tarp about 900 lbs of moose meat!! We wouldn’t starve anytime soon.

By the time all of this was done, the sun was about to set and the day was done. Still no sign of the boat. We cooked up some backstrap filets and along with bread and butter and a couple of not so cold beers enjoyed a great dinner in a truly magnificent setting. Soon it was dark and we broke out the whiskey and sat around the campfire talking about everything from women to hunting and every possible scenario regarding our missing partners and their riverboat. The possibilities there were endless.

It was still pitch black when Monte shook me awake to listen to the sound of a boat coming our way. It seemed like it took forever for it to get on our stretch of river but our spirits sank when we realized that it was an airboat blasting down the river on the opposite bank. These were, however, the first people we had “seen” in several days other than our partners. We were still tired, but too awake to go back to sleep so Monte suggested that we head back over the pack trail to the kill site to see if we might come up on a bear feeding on the gut pile when daylight broke. Having nothing else to do, it seemed like a great idea so we grabbed our rifles and made our way up and over the hill to a good vantage point above the pond. We could hear something moving around down there but couldn’t see a thing as daylight made its way into the scene because the whole valley was covered in a thick fog. It had dropped down to 27 degrees overnight and morning fogs were quite common in these conditions. A heavy frost was on all the underbrush and we were starting to get pretty cold waiting for the fog to break so we could see what was going on below us.

It was very surrealistic in a way, us sitting in the clear crisp air as the sunlight filled the valley overlooking a giant grey cloud with large unknown critters moving around in its veil. There were indeed several critters moving around too. To the left, around the pond was the distinct sound of moose….big suction pops as they pulled their hooves out of the muck as they moved around and off to the right in the area of the gut pile was what sounded like a bear feeding. The tension was brutal! By the time the fog broke they could all have vanished into the forest but there was nothing we could do but wait.

Finally there were small breaks in the thick fog. I was focused on the pond area being that I was still wanting a bull and Monte was focused on the kill site hoping for a bear. It sounded like there were several moose in the area and I caught glimpses of two cows and a calf in the breaks, but no bull………however I knew there was another one on the far side that I still couldn’t see and the suction breaks coming from there sounded big too. I was starting to get kind of dizzy staring into the rifle scope into the fog looking for breaks; there was no reference of distance and space in my view. Monte tapped me on the shoulder and pointed towards the gut pile which was a good distance from the pond and starting to clear off. Sure enough there was a good size black bear on the feed. I knew he was ready to shoot, but I didn’t want him to blow up the situation taking a bear, after all, we were MOOSE hunting and it sounded like there might be a big bull still hidden in the fog. We whispered a quite agreement that if we heard the mystery moose walk off in the fog he could take the shot on the bear, if not, he would wait until I could identify what was out there. Reluctantly he agreed.

It’s odd how fog breaks up sometimes. It lays in thick as a blanket then suddenly, when the sun and wind reach a certain point; it simply vanishes in a moment’s time. This is exactly what happened this morning. There were big clumps of fog still rolling, but broken open clear enough to see that the mystery moose was indeed a big bull. He was scenting the air furiously now something I attributed more to the presence of a bear nearby than to us, but it was hard to tell for sure. One thing was clear, however, he was about to bolt! By now I was on him, crosshairs centered right where the spine meets the skull. I was going to take a neck shot because I didn’t want him running off anywhere. Right behind him lay that muck hole creek that had messed up Monte’s stalk two nights ago and I sure didn’t want to have to pack him out through that! I waited for the small cloud that was partially blocking him to clear then slowly squeezed the trigger. The violent recoil of the .375 jolted me hard, but I saw the bull’s head slam to the side as his body dropped……a second later Monte’s rifle fired….then again, then it was silent except for the sound of the cows and calves crashing though the brush for cover.

I approached my bull with caution. Neck shots are funny. Ideally they kill instantly, but sometimes they simply immobilize the beast but they are still quite alive. I was pleased to find that he was very much dead when I got there. I saw Monte raise his rifle in the air in a pumping motion signaling that his bear was done too. This was a BIG bull, the biggest I had ever seen up close. His rack dried out to 64” and it looked like he weighed well over 1,500 lbs too. Montes bear was a boar that looked to be around 400 lbs. Clearly we were in for some serious work, but I was content in the fact that I would be dressing out a bull moose, while Monte had to deal with a bear that had been gorging itself on a two day old gut pile. Nasty work ahead for him for sure!

It took us all day to pack out the meat, eight or nine trips altogether, enough so that I can’t recall the exact number years later. By the time we were done we were exhausted but all the meat was hung as the sun was dipping in the west. Monte decided that he would, in fact, go back for the bear hide something that had been up in the air all day. While he made one final trip I stayed behind to tend dinner, beans with moose meat stew…….so to speak. It was pretty Spartan table fare taste wise being that we had no spices, no onions, no garlic or any of the other things I would normally add. Hell, we didn’t even have any salt! However, to two weary and famished hunters it tasted great.

Evening turned into night and night into day and there was still no sign of Mike and Carl. We had stopped being pissed off about them not being there sometime the day before, now we were just plain worried……it had been three days since we saw them last. The problem was there just weren’t very many options for us. We were stuck on a remote stretch of river bank, had no real idea where they might have gone and had no way to look for them or to get back to base camp. Sure, we had plenty of meat and it was still cool and dry out so it was fine, but the rest of our supplies were gone and we were ready to get back to base camp for sure, and ideally head home.

Help of sorts finally came later that morning in the form of a small Jon boat with a homemade center console, powered by a too small outboard that was piloted by two teenage native boys. We waved and yelled and finally resorted to firing a couple of .44 rounds into the air before we got their attention, but they did see us and turned the boat back towards our camp. We asked them if they had seen the big riverboat with the dark green canvas top anywhere, but they had not although they hadn’t been upriver yet. They did, however, say that they passed our base camp and it looked dead…….no sign of life anywhere. Their boat was way overloaded with gear so there was no chance we could get them to ferry us and all that meat back to base camp, however, we weren’t about the let them go either…..we needed them and they seemed to be in no great hurry to get anywhere either. Finally we asked them if they could just take us back to base camp to pick up some supplies. While we were there Monte and I checked our wallets for cash and came up with $180 that we offered them to drive us up and down the river looking for our lost friends, but they refused to take the money. We made all of us a good lunch out of camp coolers that were still chilled by the dry ice we had packed, loaded up anything and everything we could think of that might be of value on a SAR mission, unloaded the gear from their boat and took off upstream in search of our partners. It was 1400 hrs as the boat left base camp and headed up stream.

The older of the two, who looked to be perhaps 18 or 19 was named Will, the younger looked about 16 and said virtually nothing. The older one called him something that I couldn’t discern, but I never caught his name. We cruised past our hunt camp and kept following the main channel upstream. I was carefully plotting waypoints and mileage on the GPS while Monte poured over the Topos looking for likely looking hunting areas where they might have gone. There were three areas we had penciled off that had been discussed as possibly being good spots to hunt, so we were going to check them out first.

The first area looked perfect, it was a fairly narrow slough that ended against a bluff similar to the one we had hunted that was about a mile back from the main channel. The problem was the water was too shallow at the mouth to get the boat through. We briefly discussed the fact that the water levels had been dropping back to normal quite dramatically over the past several days and wondered, for a moment or two if this channel had in fact been passable three days ago. We saw nothing to indicate that they had been through there, so we kept going upstream, checking the two remaining areas to no avail. From there we went another 10 miles upstream and saw nothing….now we were more than 20 miles from base camp, much further than we thought they would have traveled that afternoon. Where were they?

We weren’t sure what to do, but knew that we couldn’t keep these kids running up and down the river forever, but couldn’t just quit and go home either. Somehow, we had to find our partners and hopefully find them soon enough to get out all that meat before it spoiled too. The plan we came up with was to head back to base camp. The boys agreed to ferry our game and hunting camp back to base so we would be down to one good camp at least. From there, Monte would remain behind at base camp and I was going to have the boys take me back to Nenana where I would charter a bush plane to fly me over the area. We bounced around the idea of calling the Troopers who could get a full blown search into action, but decided that was plan B should I fail to locate them from the bush plane. I saw no reason that I couldn’t accomplish exactly what the Troopers could without all the hoopla and BS that comes with a full blown SAR operation from the State Troopers and, being that I actually flew SAR flights in the past, I knew that I was just as qualified as anyone they would put in the air on the search. With that as the plan, we headed back down stream in silent resolve. This situation had gone from fun to FUBAR for sure.

As the small Jon boat made its way back downstream towards our hunting camp, no one spoke very much, we all scanned the shorelines in the hope that we would see some sign of them that we missed on our way up, but no one expected that we would. Then suddenly I saw a red emergency flare shoot out in front of the boat and there they were standing on the mud bar at the entrance of the first slough we had stopped to investigate! Mike and Carl were both waving their arms with big smiles as our boat eased up on the bank. They both had huge smiles on their faces as did we, even the native kids were happy, because they knew, better than all of us that the odds of actually locating someone out in this vast area were really very slim. Behind them on the other side of the bar, was Mike’s boat.

After exchanging greetings we found out what had happened to them. Their hunt had been almost an exact parallel to ours! Mike put down a moose the first night right before dark and they too spent that night packing out the meat. The following morning on one of their final meat packing trips, Carl shot his bull too. Mike said that they debated running back down to our drop off to tell us what was going on because they were pretty sure we were wondering what was up by then, but they decided to get all of Carl’s moose out first because they too had seem a lot of bear sign in the area. The way they saw it, they would be done and out of there by late afternoon and us sitting around waiting for them for a few more hours wouldn’t make much difference. If Mike had made the run and left Carl to work on his moose alone, not only would it be bad partnership, but the odds were by the time he got back they would end up having to make meat runs in the dark again. Monte and I agreed that we would have done the same thing ourselves.

Their plan went down perfectly and around 1600hrs they had the boat loaded and pulled out to meet up with us at our drop off. That’s when they discovered that the river level had dropped off so much and that the open slough they had used to get in was now blocked by a good 10 foot wide mud bar. Mike said that at that point (the bar was higher and wider by now) that the high point was only about 6” above the water and he had considered trying to run the bar at full power. He said that he was pretty sure that he could have made it then had the boat been empty, but with close to a ton of moose meat on board there was no way that would happen. The downside, having a 23 foot welded aluminum inboard riverboat high centered on dry land was too great to risk. Again, Monte and I agreed.

We were all having a good time exchanging stories, but the sun was dropping fast and we could see that the native kids were getting antsy to go. The problem of course, the one thing no one seemed to want to talk about, was that Mike’s boat remained on the OTHER side of what was now a 30 foot wide mud bar that was close to a foot high in the center….which was where we were standing and talking. The younger of the two, the one who never spoke finally did speak and his words were right on point. “ You need to dig a channel here to get that boat out”………we all had a good laugh at his words, but it didn’t last long because we all knew it was true and accomplishing that objective was going to be no small task indeed.

Mike said that he could run in about 4” of water even with the heavy load, but that still meant digging out a channel in the mud that was 30 feet long and at least 10 or 12 feet wide. If the channel was too narrow the odds of the boat kick to the side when powering through the shallow water and grounding were simply too great. One of the biggest problems was that between all of us we had a total of two e-tools to get the job done…and they clearly would NOT get the job done.

Finally Will, the older of the two said that they could go back to Nenana and get some shovels and maybe a couple of friends to help and come back in the morning. It was obvious to all of us that this was our only chance to get out and agreed. We told the boys to stop at our base camp and fuel their boat. We briefly tossed around the idea of Monte and I going back to base camp or possibly one of us going with them, but decided against it. We would have to trust them to do as they said and would remain with our stranded friends for the night. We had a few supplies that we had brought along for the day and that would get us all through the night. It was however, a very strange feeling watching that boat with two boys we didn’t know at all take off into what was now an almost dark river with all our hopes riding with them.

We built a big fire, cooked some moose steaks and drank some beer to pass the time that night but as tired as we all were it was almost impossible to sleep. Tomorrow, hopefully, would be a very big day to reckon with.

In the morning we stoke up the fire and made some coffee and bacon and eggs……….Mike’s boat made a MUCH nicer hunt camp than the one we had for sure!! It was well past 0900 when we heard a boat approaching, several boats in fact, with about a dozen men and several women on board! When they landed, everyone was smiling, walking around the mud bar to size up the situation and introducing themselves. The men had a good laugh at our story while the women got busy on the high side of the bar where our fire was preparing food. There was no longer any doubt in our minds; this boat was getting out today!

It took us all about 5 hours to dig the channel, along with breaks for food and coffee that the women were tending. By about 1400hrs there was water flowing from the main channel back into the slough and there was nothing left to do but fire up the boat and give it a run. Everyone was excited and a big cheer went up when the 350 Chevy roared to life. Mike let the engine warm up for about 15 minutes while we all took one final look at the channel, everyone still carrying shovels and fine tuning any area in question. The channel was a good 14 feet wide and no less than 6” deep in any area……..still, questions and doubt were everywhere. Finally everyone agreed that we should unload everything from the boat too, something we wanted to avoid but all knew was the only smart thing to do. This was going to be a one shot deal; if the boat slowed and grounded we were in big trouble for sure.
Soon the boat was unloaded and there was no putting off the big moment anymore. Mike backed the boat up about one hundred yards to get a good run at it and everyone lined up on either side of the channel in a position to help push the boat through if needed. Seconds later the engine roared and it was bearing down on us. Mike hit the channel with good speed then slammed the throttle forward hard. The throaty 350 roared and the jet drive spewed a rooster tail of mud and water fifty feet into the air, the boat surged through the first half but started to slow………..everyone grabbed a handhold and pushed…the engine roared still spewing mud and water everywhere and moments later was safely in the main channel of the river! This time the whoops and cheers lasted a while…we were all tired, wet and muddy but very happy!

It took a while to get the boat loaded again and we all enjoyed the last bit of food and coffee during the process. We tried offering everyone money for their effort, but they would take nothing. We told them that we would leave the fuel drums behind when we left and that there would be around 100 gallons that they were welcome to, an offer that they did accept. Soon, everyone was back in their own boats and headed home. I couldn’t help but be totally impressed with the cheerful, selfless effort these folks put in to help out some total strangers in the middle of nowhere. It made me wonder about all those stories I had heard about the local natives giving white people such a hard time down in the flats, from my perspective the ones we had just met couldn’t have been more friendly, helpful and concerned about the wellbeing of our group.

We stopped and loaded all of our meat up at the hunt camp, then spent the night at base camp before heading back up to the Chatanika and our trucks in the morning. We had a dang good camp party that night for sure. By mid afternoon the next day we had the boat loaded on the trailer and the trucks loaded with game and made our way back up over Murphy dome without getting stuck once. When Monte and I rolled up to the house after being gone less than a week, our wives were pleased to see that the truck was full of game bags.

All in all it was a wonderful and memorable hunt on many levels. I had managed to take what remains the biggest bull I ever got in Alaska and in the process got to experience the true character of the people who live in the Alaskan bush. I went on dozens of hunting trips after that for everything from moose and caribou to brown bear and sheep and they were all memorable, but the memory of that great effort by a group of total strangers in the middle of nowhere to get a stranded riverboat free stands alone in my mind.

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