Well I pulled a permit for cow moose on the upper Chena River this year so it was time to get some moose meat. I drove up and camped on the West Fork of the Chena where it crossed the highway on August 31st and camped out after having driven the road a bit looking for decent bogs to scope in the morning. I didn't even bother with a tent and just crashed in the truck. I finally managed to drag myself out of the sleeping bag and started to drive the road up and down slowly stopping to walk into the woods to check the bogs I had scoped out. It was pretty quick at first but around 7:30 I popped out of the woods onto a bog and there were two cows and a young bull all feeding. The bull had noticed me since he was the closest at under 75 yards but didn't do much except stare at me for a couple minutes before continuing to eat. I was looking at the cows and at my area map. I was right on the border of where I was allowed to shoot a cow and I hadn't picked up my general harvest ticket so I couldn't shoot the bull. I really should have gotten the general harvest ticket so I could have shot the bull and just skipping the cow permit. In the end after watching them for fifteen minutes I decided that this particular bog was just too close to the edge of my area and while I believe it was still in the correct drainage, I didn't want to take a chance. I backed off and got back in the truck. My thinking was that I would go around to the far end of the bog up in the trees well into my area and after they are done feeding the cows would wonder up into me and I would feel more comfortable shooting one then since they would be further into the legal area. I spent a good thirty minutes walking around the bog well out of sight and sound and was about to work my way up into the trees when gunshots rang out. Someone has spotted the young bull and dropped him. This is Alaska hunting, not the lower 48! But when its moose season the woods are plainly full of people on 4-wheelers and crazies. At any rate, I wasn't in position yet and surely the cows ran up past me. Such is life. I walked back out to the truck and checked a few different bogs and wondered around on foot for a couple hours but didn't see any more moose. I called it for the morning and went home and took a nap. Evening came around and I went back out to walk some trails up a valley bottom. I saw plenty of track but not much recent activity. I was pretty confident the bulk of the moose were still down low on river. I got home 11:30pm and didn't get an early start the next morning as planning. I rolled out of bed at 9:00 am got up to the trail about 10:30 am. I hiked in a good mile and a half up the river on the far side to avoid the massive amounts of hunters with 4-wheelers on the highway side. I was hoping the moose crossed over with all the ATV traffic the last couple days. I finally popped out on the river after an hour of hiking and sat on the bank to grab a drink of water. As I was shuffling through my backpack, a cow moose popped out up stream from me about fifty yards. I had roused her from her mid-day bed and she was moving on. She made fairly quick work of the Chena River and I waited patiently for her to clear the water and step up on the bank on the other side. I took my shot about 75 yards. It was a solid heart hit. She buckled back and try to cross back over the river to where I was standing but died about thirty feet from where I had shot her with the .300 short magnum resting right in the middle of the river. ugh. this was going to be a lot of work to deal with alone. There are not very many butchering situations that are more difficult than in water and mud. I tied a leg with rope and then tied her off to a tree on the bank so I wouldn't lose her. I started by taking both top quarters off in the knee deep water of the Chena hanging the meat from a tree to dry with each piece I cut. Back and forth from the tree to the middle of the Chena I worked for a couple hours until one side of the Cow was stripped of meat and gutted out. The river actually made gutting a breeze as the current washed and took all of it down stream as it was pulled out. With the cow a good three hundred pounds lighter I was able to grab a leg and work her up closer to shore in shallower water and get her flipped over. I repeated the process and after a good four hours I was sitting on the bank eating a granola bar with all the meat hanging from the tree drying. I covered the meat with game bags and grabbed a front quarter and hiked the mile and half back to the truck. I decided it would be easier to drive the truck up the highway until I was perpendicular to the moose and then bush whack the two tenths of a mile down to the river and cross with waders, shuttling the loads of meat that way cutting down the mileage I had to carry it. It worked out quite well and having crossed that river in waders a good half dozen times with heavy loads I had the entire cow loaded up in the truck. It took nearly seven hours from the shot to sitting down in the drivers seat to head home completely exhausted. I gave a couple quarters away and hung it at a friends house for the night. The next morning, I tossed the her back into the truck and took her up the road to where some friends were slaughtering pigs and after the pigs, she was hung and butchered up. A Chena River Cow permit is a pretty simple moose hunt. Although, I'll definitely think twice about moose hunting by myself next time. Caribou are small and easy but, even a cow moose is a lot of work for one person to manage. So with that, Moose season ended on day two this year. I wish all years it went that easy. Given the river was a pain to deal with.
