Shadows on the Koyukuk

by Sidney Huntington

  With that Austin Joe called, “Open the den.” Tom and I pulled our poles clear. One of the “big animals” charged. Austin Joe set the spear and the charging “big animal” impaled himself upon it. Like the old female, the big cub was thrown through the air with lungs and heart shredded. The dying “big animal” landed far downhill, near the adult.

  Austin Joe handed the bloody spear once more to the braggart, with the same results. The last “big animal” in the den pushed the blade aside.

  Then the spear was handed to one of the younger people. The third “big animal” charged and impaled himself, and the spearman tossed it down the hill to join the first two dead animals.

  “One of the younger people,” was, of course, Louis. Old Louis Golchik refused to brag, even though he knew he was near death.

  For many years the eighteen-inch-long metal blade from the spear used on that hunt was displayed in the home of trader Dominic Vernetti at Koyukuk Station. With lingering belief, Louis told me, “That spear point would not be good for another hunt. Too many women’s hands have touched it. Too many people have seen it.”

  Louis Golchik died a few weeks after we canoed down the Huslia River at the end of our beaver hunt.

  Jenny and I were divorced in 1944. We remained friends, and we both stayed close to our children. Later that year I married Angela Pitka, a Koyukon girl of eighteen. Tall and strikingly beautiful, she was a woman of great determination and ability. She lost both of her parents early in life, and was raised by an older sister and an aunt.

  In 1945, at war’s end, Angela and I moved from Galena to Hog River, where I took up my old life on the trapline. I took enough fur so we had some cash. I killed enough game and caught enough fish to permit us to eat and live well. Ours was a simple wilderness life, much as I had lived for years before the war.

  In some ways, those years on the trapline with Angela were the best of my life. She helped me whipsaw lumber so I could build boats. She cut firewood, helped run the traplines, and caught, cut up, and dried fish. She often stayed alone while I was off running distant traplines or working at other jobs, which I was forced to do in order to make enough to take care of our growing family. Every year we had a new baby. First came Roger, then Elma, Carl, Annie, and Agnes. There were to be more.

  21

  KOYUKUK MOOSE

  September in the Koyukuk valley has a special feel. Dark nights have returned, there is less heat to the sun, and at midday tree shadows have noticeably lengthened from those of summer. Nights, brilliant with Northern Lights, are crisp, and ice forms on the edges of ponds—a forecast of things to come. Yellow, gold, and red leaves splash the forest and hills. Great Vs of cranes and geese bound for a warmer land pass over, their musical cries drifting in their wake.

  It is the time to dig potatoes and use the last of the broccoli and cabbage that still hangs on in the garden. Blueberries, which ripen in the muskegs by the end of August, must be picked and sugared down before the frosts soften them. Crimson cranberries are firm and ripe shortly afterward, ready to put up in baskets or kegs. Firewood must be cut and split. Cabin chinking should be checked for tightness. Dried fish and meat must be stored. Early September is also time to hunt moose, before the rut begins and while the meat is still sweet and mild, yet when it is cold enough so that it won’t spoil. One fine mid-September day in the late 1940s, I left our cabin in late afternoon, and, alone, poled and paddled a small boat up Hog River. I had planned an evening hunt, hoping to find a bull moose near the river. Moose had moved into the Koyukuk, and were becoming a more common part of our diet.

  Moose are best hunted at dawn and dusk, when they are active. I eased my boat ashore, tied it, and with .30–30 rifle in hand, followed a winding, well-used game trail through the spruce and birch forest beside the river. It was sprinkled with fresh moose tracks. I wore moccasins and soft-fabric pants and jacket that made no noise as I eased past trees and through brushy thickets. I ghosted along for half a mile, then climbed to a favorite lookout where I could see a few acres of treeless tundra flats, the edge of a pond, and a few hundred yards along tree-lined Hog River. There I sat on a downed tree, watching, listening, absorbing the sounds, sights, and feelings of the land. I was content and fulfilled, one with the land. I didn’t feel as if I owned it—I was, simply, a part of it, and it was beautiful and wonderful.

  I have always loved the evening hunt, especially when it is calm and clear. As the sun nears the horizon, a hush descends on the forest and there is an expectancy in the air. Jays, thrushes, chickadees, and other small birds scurry about with occasional calls as they seek their night’s shelter. The cool evening air is like wine, and a wool mackinaw and cotton work gloves feel good.

  Moose may occasionally call. Cows sometimes make a peculiar, high-pitched, birdlike chirrup that carries for miles; bulls may emit a deep, resonating grunt. Even the sound of water flowing down a steep creek may be heard for hundreds of yards in cool, still air.

  The shadows deepened. Two ravens flew over, playing in flight. One folded his wings and rolled upside down, only to catch himself when he had dropped twenty or thirty feet. The other imitated his companion. Ravens are masters of flight, and often play in updrafts. This big, intelligent black bird eats anything—mice, carrion, birds’ eggs, fish. They live in the Koyukuk country summer and winter.

  A great horned owl, an old acquaintance who lived somewhere in a nearby stand of spruces, called a deep, hollow who who several times. It’s a wonderful sound. In my mind’s eye I could see him sitting high among the branches, blinking his big yellow eyes, his round, eared head turning this way and that, as he contemplated the coming evening.

  I saw movement among the spruces by the riverbank. As I watched, a large bull moose quietly walked into full view, perhaps 100 yards away. Something about the forest that evening—the hush, the feel of the crisp air, the growing darkness, the occasional sounds of birds, the chirring of a red squirrel—gave the evening a magic feel that seemed more intense than any other time I could remember.

  The bull’s yellow-gold antlers were clean, with no velvet hanging from them, and they projected a ghostly luminosity in the twilight. He stopped and stood quietly, listening and looking. He was what I had come for, and he was in easy rifle range. Yet I waited. Perhaps he would move closer. A careful hunter always likes his prey close; if the first shot doesn’t down the animal, it is easier to get a second shot into it with the animal near.

  The moose walked toward me, following the trail. If he continued, he would walk so close I could not possibly miss him. Again he stopped. He wasn’t alarmed. He had probably just left his daytime bed, and, like a man awakening in the morning, he was stretching his muscles and his mind, readying himself for the evening feed. He was in no hurry. First he wanted to know what was going on around him—he was watching, listening, and scenting the air to see who or what was near.

  I remained motionless on my downed log, eyes glued to the bull. He was a fine, big, fat, mature animal. His antlers spread more than five feet, and he stood a full six feet at the shoulders. In the fading light, he looked almost black. As he moved toward me, his body was occasionally silhouetted against the bright and calm water of Hog River. I prefer to take a small bull for winter meat, for they are easier to handle than a huge, old bull. Also, sometimes the meat of an old bull is tough.

  He continued his unhurried way toward me, and I mentally prepared myself for what was to come. A cartridge was in the chamber of the rifle and it was loaded with 170 grains of lead. The tubular magazine was filled with four more cartridges, giving me five shots. To fire the first—likely the only one I would need—as I raised the rifle to my shoulder, I would draw the hammer back into the cocked position with my right thumb. To prevent a click that would alarm the moose, I would hold the trigger back. Once the hammer was back, I would release the trigger, then the hammer, and the rifle would remain cocked, ready to fire. I would aim at the bull’s chest, the deepest part of his body. The bullet would
go through his lungs. Or, if I shot a little lower, I could hit his heart. A quick, merciful, and sure death for the hunted is the goal of every experienced hunter.

  If my bullet flew true, my big bull would stagger momentarily, then he would stand, head down, provided I remained perfectly still and he didn’t see or smell me. After another half a minute to a minute, he would collapse, dead, drowned in his own blood. This bull would drop within 100 feet of the river. It would be an easy job to carry the meat to my boat. In other years, when moose were scarcer, I had killed them so far from a river that I didn’t even try to pack the meat. Instead I had wrapped it in canvas to protect it from ravens and jays, and hung it high in a tree, to retrieve it with a dog team after snow came. This moose would pose no such problem.

  The bull was within twenty-five feet. It was time for me to shoot. But the magic of the moment, the beauty of the surroundings, and the sheer magnificence of that great, alert but relaxed bull, compelled me to hold my fire. Also, I wondered, did I want this big, old animal? Would his meat be tender?

  As I sat, knowing he was mine—all I needed to do was to raise the rifle and pull the trigger—he stopped, swung his head about and, for long moments, seemed to look straight at me. I remained frozen. Calmly, he swung his head back, and silently and alertly moved on down the trail, into the trees, and out of sight.

  I didn’t even lift my rifle. I’m not sure whether I chose not to shoot because he and the magical evening had given me so much pleasure, or because he was a bigger animal than I wanted.

  A few days later I killed another, smaller bull, which provided us with our winter’s meat. My vivid memory of that big bull still lingers, and in my mind at least, he still roams that wild trail on Hog River.

  The Alaska moose is the largest deer in the world. Bulls weigh from 1,000 to 1,600 pounds or more. Cows weigh 800 to 1,200 pounds. Colors range from pale yellow to pure black. They have a great drooping nose, and huge ears, giving them a vaguely mulelike appearance. A moose may appear awkward and ugly, but, like other deer, it is graceful in action, and it can stride across rough ground with a swift and smooth gait. A huge bull can disappear into a thicket or heavy timber with scarcely a sound.

  Bulls grow new antlers every year, shedding them usually in January or February, and starting the new growth in the spring. The main foods of moose are willow, birch, aspen, and other twigs, although they may graze on sedges, grasses, pond weeds, and other shoots.

  Moose were virtually nonexistent in the Koyukuk prior to the 1900s, according to the Koyukon elders I knew. William Dall, the explorer, reported that in 1866 there were no deer (meaning caribou) or moose at Nulato and that food (for the people) was often very scarce. At the time, he said, the Koyukon people in this Yukon River village depended mostly on fish and small game. None of the old Koyukon stories I have heard mention moose in the Koyukuk, although some stories of the Upper Yukon mention the animal. There were no resident Koyukuk moose when I was a boy; the few that wandered into the valley from elsewhere were invariably tracked down and killed. Moose meat and the moose’s valuable hide were highly prized by Koyukon and white residents, and when a moose track was found, every effort was made to follow and shoot the animal.

  After Charlie killed the moose I had located on Hog River in 1929, I didn’t see another moose in the Koyukuk until 1935, when I killed one at Hog River. People who lived downriver from Hog River told me that fair numbers of moose had moved into the lower part of the Koyukuk valley that year. I believe they came from the Melozitna and Tozitna river valleys to the east, where good numbers of moose had long lived.

  The deep-snow year of 1937 was a turning point for moose numbers in the Koyukuk. That winter I saw snow completely bury a cabin at Clear Creek built by Charlie Swanson and George Lighten, and the ridgepole of that cabin was fourteen feet above ground.

  After that incredible snow pack settled, moose could travel easily anywhere in the Koyukuk, for they sank in only about eighteen inches, which their long legs handled easily. With the good traveling conditions, more of these big animals drifted into the Koyukuk from the Melozitna and the Tozitna river valleys, and perhaps from the Yukon River valley, scattering up and down the entire Koyukuk. Since then, moose have been a dependable source of food for the residents.

  Koyukuk old-timers John Oldman and Edwin Simon often said that they didn’t really know how to hunt moose because the animal was new to the Koyukuk. They told how, during their trapping years in the early 1900s, they sometimes ran into moose tracks in heavy winter snow, and always followed the trail until they killed the moose, even if it took days. That, they said, was all they knew about moose.

  During that deep-snow winter of 1937, I killed a moose for my uncle Hog River Johnny and his family. I drove my dog team to their cabin to tell them about it.

  “You want me to bring you the moose?” I offered. I could have hauled the meat in two loads.

  “No. We’ll go to the moose,” Johnny said.

  That was the old Koyukon way. When a hunter killed big game, his family moved to the animal. Using my dog team, I helped my uncle and his family travel to and set up camp where I had killed the moose.

  Uncle Johnny and his family butchered the horse-sized cow moose on the site much as Chief John and Big Mary had done. They worked on that animal for days, and used every bit. They even put out a few marten traps and made themselves at home in the traditional way.

  My uncle Weaselheart, trapping on the north side of Sun Mountain that winter, saw moose in numbers for the first time, and learned that a moose has a temper. One day he passed a moose walking in the deep snow, and in a casual way, he tossed a stick at it. Angered, the moose charged, but it broke through the snow crust with every lunge. Weaselheart, short-legged and heavy, wasn’t very fast on snowshoes, but he quickly figured out how to escape the angry moose.

  Where tops of willows projected from the snow, drifts were twelve or fourteen feet deep. Taking a chance, he ran across some of the willow tops where his snowshoes supported him nicely. The moose followed and floundered in the loose snow among the willows, so Weaselheart escaped.

  Mistreatment of an animal brings bad luck, according to old Koyukon tales, and Weaselheart wryly admitted he had momentarily forgotten those stories. “Never again,” he vowed. “Don’t play with animals,” he warned me.

  I have experienced many thrilling moose hunts with my family. I have instructed my sons and daughters on how to hunt, and I have allowed them to shoot the moose we find, for success brightens the lives of young people. They liked to help to provide food for the entire family. The stories of our family moose hunts which my kids told their friends did them all good. I always enjoyed teaching them the old customs.

  We hunted mostly in and around lakes on brush-covered flats where I could teach them the art of hunting. They learned to watch the wind direction, for a moose has an acute sense of smell that can detect a man for hundreds of yards. When we spotted a moose we wanted, we often removed our shoes to reduce walking noise. I warned the family not to wear jeans or other stiff fabric clothing that is noisy in the brush. They soon learned that a light rain makes hunting easier by reducing the noise they make.

  My son Arnold once used the skills I had taught him to kill a three-year-old bull moose with a bow and arrow. After studying wind direction, he concealed himself behind a tree and shot that moose at a range of about four and a half feet.

  While the kids were growing up, each fall my wife Angela and I took them on hunts for meat to carry us through the winter. We killed moose, black bears, ducks, and geese. We picked blueberries for syrup for hotcakes, and cranberries for preserves.

  Most of my boys are men now, and each takes his family on hunts like those Angela and I used to make. We included the girls in our family hunts, too. Too many men want to hunt with just other men or sons. I’ve learned that women get more fun out of hunting than most men, and our girls probably worked harder at hunting than the boys. They were eager to learn how to coo
k over campfires, and how to clean and dress meat. They liked knowing all the little tricks too, like cutting a brush pile to lay the meat on to keep it clean and to cool it quickly by allowing air to circulate around it.

  I’ve seen some tremendously big moose. One early afternoon while on a family hunt on the Koyukuk River above the old town of Cutoff, my family was traveling in a riverboat. Angela and I had five children then, all under ten. We spotted a moose about a mile away, as he bedded down not far from the riverbank. Angela took over the steering while I moved to the bow with my .30–30 Winchester lever-action rifle.

  A seven-horsepower outboard motor pushed the long boat. Angela threw a piece of canvas over the motor to muffle the noise and then she carefully eased the boat upstream toward the moose. We all crouched, listening to the sound of the boat pushing water aside and the low mutter of the muffled outboard. The wind was blowing from the moose toward us, so it couldn’t catch our scent. Every Huntington there knew that the moose would be alerted if he noticed our slow-moving boat or saw one of us make a sudden move. Not one extra sound came from the boat. All eyes were fastened on the moose. Ahead of us was our winter’s meat supply; we were all thinking of steaks, chops, roasts, and stews.

  From a mile away, the moose didn’t look especially large. I’d have guessed that his antlers spread about fifty-five inches. He was about fifty feet back from the bank, lying in the goose grass among twelve- or fourteen-inch-high young willows.

  As we neared the moose, the five-foot-high cutbank hid us from him and helped to muffle the motor noise. When we got into the shallows, Angela cut the motor, and we slowly paddled and poled the boat. As we came along under the bank he raised his head, as most wild animals do from time to time, while chewing his cud. He was facing the woods. As he lifted his head to look around, I stood up in the bow, aimed, and nailed him right behind the ear. His head dropped, and that was all. He didn’t move a muscle. The bullet hit his brain. He never knew what hit him.