NOT YOUR AVERAGE PACK-OUT

I had ever seen. I initially mistook him for the giant and rushed back up to camp, to tell the guys.

Once we had more time to study the moose, we realized that the bigger bull was, indeed, a different animal and was a few years younger than the monarch we saw on day 1. Nevertheless, he was an absolute beauty and an extraordinary example of what a big, mature Yukon moose can grow to look like. We watched them for over a half-hour as they grazed on the willow.

On August 14 of 2021, I set out with my hunting partners, Steve Hossack, Rory Allen and Sean McEwen, on what was supposed to be our first fly-in sheep hunt, together, as a team. After getting dropped off at a remote lake, we made quick work of unstrapping the canoe from the floats and began making shuttle runs to the base of the mountain. That afternoon, we made the three-hour hike into the alpine to set up our base camp.

Once camp was set up, lowhanging clouds in the valley began to clear and we were offered our first clear look at the surrounding mountains. None of us had flown to this part of the territory before, and we were all taken aback by the beauty and ruggedness of the giant peaks.

Despite having obsessively studied maps of the area, nothing could have prepared me for what I was looking at. I remember feeling intimidated by the sheer scale of the mountains that we planned to climb, and my inexperience in dealing with this sort of terrain made me uneasy. It was comforting to know that our buddy Sean, while new to hunting at the time, was a highly skilled and experienced mountaineer and was there to help guide our decision making and navigation in the hills.

Any experienced northern hunter knows that it is not uncommon to go days, or sometimes even weeks, without seeing much action. Much to our delight, this would not be the tale of this adventure. Minutes after getting the tents set up, we glassed back down at the lake, where we were dropped off earlier that day, and spotted the big bull moose of a lifetime. Steve, the most experienced moose hunter of our group, ballparked the bull to be somewhere in the high-60/ low-70-inch range—a true Yukon giant. We laughed as we watched the bull walk right over our tracks where we had been dropped off just hours before.

While we were all there to hunt sheep, I’d be lying if I said that spotting the giant bull didn’t have me thinking about changing gears. When you work a full-time job and hunt to fill your freezer, sometimes you’ve got to make the most of the chances you’re given. Despite the fact that the big moose had likely just disappeared out of our lives for good, I couldn’t help but think about where everyone’s head would be at if we crossed paths with him again.

Later that night, Rory and Sean volunteered to make the twohour round-trip hike down the mountain to the nearest creek, to supply us with a few days’ worth of water. Steve and I seized this opportunity to do more glassing and were thrilled to spot another Yukon giant, this time a large Bonnet Plume caribou.

By the time Rory and Sean made it back to camp, we were happy to report that we had also spotted over 35 ewes and lambs. There were sheep in these hills. The next morning was our first real day of hunting, and while the guys finished eating breakfast, I grabbed my spotting scope and hiked 50 metres down from camp, to do more glassing.

While enjoying a morning coffee, I worked my spotter along the mountain block that we planned to hunt that day. Not five minutes after hitting the glass, I picked up something that I couldn’t believe … not one, but two BIG bull moose! Excluding the bull that we spotted the day before, the larger of the pair was easily the most-impressive moose

As we continued to glass back into the bowl, we spotted our first seven rams of the trip. The male sheep were bedded down just below the summit at the west end of a rocky outcropping. After determining that none of them were legal, we went ahead with our plan to hike up and traverse the east end of the mountain block.

For the next two days we hunted hard and did everything in our power to turn up an old ram. While we hiked and explored, we made sure to keep eyes on the two moose that continued to feed down in the valley below us. As every hour went by where we weren’t spotting “no doubter” rams, I could feel my thoughts slowly drifting back down to the two moose. I contemplated, in silence, as to whether or not it would even be possible for us to go after the big bull.

With the moose just over five kilometres from the nearest access to the lake, I knew that this would be close to the limit of what any sound hunter would ever dare to pack out. We managed to close in to 700 yards on a band of rams, on day 3, but, after watching them for an hour, we determined that none of the sheep were legal. Later that day, we found a slightly older ram tucked up higher in the cont’d on page 7 ...