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Laughing
Moose hunt, Horton style
By SHANE HORTON
We had planned a moose hunt down the channel about forty air miles from home at a place called the Endicott river just off Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska.
The main culprits involved in this escapade were Uncle Jim, Toe draggin Bill, my cousin Jimmy and myself, the only marginally sane one of the bunch.
Jim and I had been scouting the area from the air with my 1947 Stinson Voyager, a trusty bird with one of the greatest pilots of all time at the wheel, ah oh but I digress.
As this was a small area with only a few moose, we didn’t want any extra company so Me and Jim flew down the week before season and set up a lean-to tent to store some supplies at one end of the strip. Then we set up another one to hold some extra gas at the other end. These looked so good we set up one more about midway to store some dry firewood. It wasn’t our fault that they looked just like hunting camps and discouraged other pilots from coming in.
We had planned a two pronged attack on the moose. So on the day before season we loaded up a seventeen-foot riverboat with a little bit of gear. One Super Bronc motor cycle, one iron wood stove, four sections of stove pipe, six sheets of plywood, a dozen two-by-fours, nails, wire and enough groceries for a troop of infantry to stay a month.
Uncle Jim and Toe draggin bill got in the boat and I backed the trailer in the water. The trailer went down the ramp and the boat went down the ramp too. Bill and Jim were sitting up to their armpits in the freezing water. I pulled ahead and we unloaded a half ton of stuff then tried again.
This time we had three inches of freeboard so off they went.
Jimmy and I had more things to do so we planned to fly down the next morning.
At the crack of dawn the great bush pilot was checking over his sturdy steed, getting ready for another harrowing day of Alaskan bush flying. Parked just behind him was my plane, we threw our stuff in and took off.
The flight down Lynn Canal in the early light was awesome; the meadows at the mouth of the Endicott River looked like emeralds. From 1500 feet the strip looked like a knife cut in the forest. With a steely eye and steady nerves I set up for landing. A small miscalculation would mean disaster. Drop a bit too low and you tear the under carriage off on the vertical bank, come in too high and you over-run the strip and crash into the brush at the end. The strip is only cleared about forty feet wide and my wing span is thirty-three so touch a wingtip and you cartwheel down the strip.
I came in high, then just before I stalled dove at the ground, then jerked back on the yoke just before we hit. The plane touched down tail wheel first then slammed the mains on the ground. We bounced and flopped down the strip to a stop.
Wiping the sweat off my brow I casually said, “bleeble thi gosrt ah, Best one this year” My voice was pretty quavery but Jimmy had his head between his knees with a down coat wrapped around it so he failed to notice. I nonchalantly spun the plane around and taxied back to the tie-down spot.
Jimmy had pulled his head up and said “you been practicin? That felt much smoother than the last time I landed with you. It felt like we only bounced three or four times and not more than ten feet or so high”.
We unloaded our backpacks and hiked over to the camp. Now, we had a 14x16 wall tent frame and had sent down a stove, new roofing and lumber the day before so I was a bit exasperated that Toe Draggin Bill was sound a sleep in a pup tent in the middle of the floor with soggy supplies scattered all over. After a bit of prodding he woke up and tried to explain about the mess. They had left town figuring on a two-hour run and arriving at camp right at high tide. Well the trip took about eight hours and they got there in the middle of the night at dead low tide. No lights, a huge load, two crippled old men and about three hundred yards of wet slippery rock beach.
I called a halt to his sniveling and got to work. In a short while we had four bunks, a new roof and upper walls of visquene, the stove set up and the supplies put away. We fixed a bite of lunch and then set out to look for Uncle Jim. He had not wanted to miss opening morning so he had hiked up the main trail to hunt. Now Bill and Jim usually hunt together ‘cause one is gimpy on the left leg and one on the right. If they hunt together they go where they point but if they hunt alone they just go in circles all day.
Jimmy and I walked together up the trail to the fork then split up. I had traveled about three miles, sat on a meadow for a while and was just starting back when I heard the roar of an engine. Soon the engine stopped, then started ran for a bit and suddenly with a big bang, shut down. I could hear screaming and moaning something awful. I took off at a run cross-country straight toward the scene of the wreck. I clawed through alder jungle and leaped through devils club, after several hundred yards I burst out into the other trail.(this made quite a mess in itself).
I looked wildly around to locate the bodies when all of a sudden I heard the roar of the engine again. I spun around just in time to be run down by these two blood covered maniacs on the Super Bronc. Thud, thud both wheels right over me, then crash! Right into a tree they went. The two idiots lay on the ground and rolled around, gasping and hooting in laughter.
Jimmy was covered with blood, not uncommon for him as he is quite accident-prone. Uncle Jim was just as bad or worse.
“What the hell are you doing” I asked? “Wall weze jist goin back ta camp” says Jim. “Yeah dad got a moose, see” said Jimmy and he pointed to a bedraggled bit of bloody hair wired to the handlebars
of the bike. “Jeeze that looks more like a road killed bunny rabbit to me”I said. “Naw thats just his ear, I brought it in for proof”says Jimmy.
I finally figured out the reason for their unseemly behavior and I am sad to say it was the direct result of taking drugs. Yes that’s right, drugs. Now Uncle Jim has real bad arthritis and he takes some real hi-pop painkillers. When Jimmy had found him he was in bad shape and just about done in. He had shot a good bull, then done his best to dress it out, but on the way back to camp had just run out of go. Jimmy had run back to camp and got the Super Bronc and some pills for his dad then charged back out the trail to pick him up. This was the first engine sound I heard. Jim had needed a couple of pills to get even, but he figured four to make it on in to camp so he took six. This really made him feel fine. Jimmy finished up on the moose and cut himself in the process so he took a couple of Jim’s “happy” pills. That is why they were roaring down the trail crashing into trees and rocks and laughing their fool heads off.
The next morning we all went out to get Jim’s moose. Now this was a fine and noble animal but he had taken his revenge on us. Jim had called him in and shot him at close range right between the eyes. Knowing he had lost, the bull took one last leap over the edge of the bank, slid a hundred feet down a sixty-degree slope and wrapped himself around the base of a hemlock tree. Jim had field dressed him through a hole in the flank!
Well sir, we set up Bill and Jim at the top of the bank and Jimmy and I took two ropes and my favorite butchering tool, a small chain saw, down to the moose. One rope was to hold us on the slope and the other was to haul up the pieces. We tied the rope onto a front leg, Jimmy lifted it up and I cut it off with the saw. “Mumph loogin oaw frrmf”Jimmy was hollering. I had to shut down the saw “What” I said. ‘Your throwing great big gobs of meat an blood an hair right in my face” he yelled. “Well shut yer mouth or chew faster” I said and fired up the saw.
As each piece was cut off Jimmy would lift and Jim and Bill would drag it up the bank. In an hour or so we had all the meat up on top.
We had us a neat little trailer for the bike that we planned to haul the meat to camp with. We stacked about 1200 lb. Of meat in the wagon and Jim headed in. We caught up to him in about twenty minutes and found he had burned up the clutch, damn! We were standing around trying to figure out what to do next when Jim grabbed a long pole and a short pole and started tying them to the wagon. Soon he had a tongue and cross-tree. Jimmy and I were harnessed in with rope, we picked up the cross bar and headed for the barn.
“I figger you two are smart enuf to get to camp without me to drive you, so git goin” Jim said. Well that was insulting, we made it to camp fine and way ahead of those two old men. We only had to stand around for a half-hour till they got there to unhitch us and rub us down.
As I am an upstanding member of the community and had work to do I had to leave the next morning. I loaded up the moose meat, licked my finger and held it up to test the wind then fired up that big ole Lycoming. This strip has one bad spot that will get you into trouble, it is a real soft section right in the middle of the run. The main gear will straddle the worst of it but if your tail ain’t up when you get there it will drag you down something frightful.
When the engine was warmed up I lined up and pushed the throttle to the wall. We waddled down the strip gaining speed painfully slow. By pushing forward I was able to get the tail wheel up just as I crossed the soft spot. I knew there was a dip in the strip down at the far end that would help to throw me into the air so I kept the hammer down. By making little bouncing motions in the seat and whispering secret incantations “Charlie” left the ground and clawed his way up. We cut a bit of a path through the tulle’s and then were up and away.
Back in Haines I got things cleaned up and put away. My wife and I had to go to Juneau the next morning so we were going to drop off some badly needed items to the guys still at camp. As we were on our way to town and those small strips make Janis nervous we planned an airdrop.
Now the critical supplies were small, Jim was out of medicine and needed it bad, Bill was out of chaw and needed it worse. I took Jim’s whole pill case with thousands of dollars of meds and stuffed in a roll of Copenhagen. Then we wrapped the case in layers of old sheets to use for more meat sacks, tied on a long roll of surveyor’s tape and we were ready.
As we flew down the channel I gave Janis instructions. My plane has sliding windows so that part is easy. “Balance the package on the window sill and when I signal you drop it”. I made one pass to check things out, then circled back for the drop. Jim and Bill, being sensible and having seen me work, stood under some large spruce trees. I came in low, two notches flaps, watch the airspeed, curve in over the beach and “now” I said. The roll of tape came loose and streamed out behind the bundle, thump a perfect hit. The guys came out and gave me a thumbs up.
A few days later when they came home I found out that though the drop looked perfect and the package stayed intact the inside was a problem. All Jim’s meds had burst and Bill’s chaw had broken open so all the powdered stuff was mixed together. This stuff is terribly expensive and the only chaw to be had so they dumped it all out on a big paper plate, picked out the broken bottle plastic and the capsules and the tobacco paper. Then they stirred the whole mess together and just took a teaspoon of it three times a day. They were little strange for a while but with them it was just real hard to notice the difference.
