Ellen's First Moose Hunt

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Going on a moose hunt

“Ooouurghhh,” I grunted from the edge of a grass lake.

            “I heard that sound,” came the excited yell of the three-year-old working hard to catch up to her dad.

            “That was me,” I loudly whispered (oxymoronic, but everyone has done a loud whisper to a toddler at least once).

            “Oh, are we being quiet?” she yelled again.

            We did not bring her for her hunting skills, her ability to be quiet, or for an extra back to carry out meat should we shoot a moose.  In all honesty, for most of the lakes and through all of the willows, she was carried: a thirty-pound practice round of what it would be like to pack a moose out of the places we carted her in and out of.

            “We’re being quiet,” I leaned over and whispered in a hushed tone now that she was holding on to my leg.

            “Oh,” she whispered, “are we looking for a moose?” excitement in her voice.  “What are we going to do once we find one?” she continued.

            “Well, I was kind of hoping we could convince him to come home with us,” I smiled.

            “So we can eat him?” she laughed.  “We’re going to find a moose and eat him.”

            Even at three she understands where meat comes from and if a person can be considered an avid outdoorswoman and hunter at such a young age, Ellen is one for sure.  After all, she has traveled multiple hours up the Unalakleet River by open river boat in the fall to camp in the wild out of the hope that we might find a moose and convince him to come home with us.

            Just the act of getting all three of us up the river was a feat.  I am not sure who had the harder, more stressful job: Myra driving our sixteen-foot boat through miles of shallow rocky bends or me keeping Ellen inside of that boat.  It felt like I had hooked a big fish and was trying to keep him on the line as I had one finger looped through the webbing of Ellen’s lifejacket for the three hours it took to get from boat launch to campsite.  In the midst of all of the action, there was laughing, yelling, and crying no matter how hard I tried to keep my emotions under control.  Myra was cool at the controls as she read and navigated a part of the river none of us had been in before.

            “Ooouurghhh,” I grunted again.

            Ellen quietly laughed this time as she looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

            “Okay, you call then,” I encouraged.

            “Ooohhhh,” she called.

            We both laughed and I lifted her and walked back to the boat where Myra was waiting.

            “No luck?” Myra asked.

            “No luck,” Ellen answered.

             Back at camp, Myra and I scavenged for wood for a fire.  Small dead spruce branches were abundant and added to a couple of decent-sized dead willow trunks made for a pleasingly warm blaze to dry out socks and take the chill off.  Ellen danced about while Myra and I sat enjoying the quiet, as quiet as nature gets with a three-year-old.

            Ellen made her way to the edge of camp and the trail that headed to the neighbor’s site.

            “Where are you going?” Myra asked.

            “I’m just walking,” was her answer as she faced us and stepped backward stealthily back into the woods.

            “Bub, now is not the time to go visiting,” I said as she continued to inch away, “I bet our neighbors are getting ready for bed.”

            “Do you think their dog is getting ready for bed?” she asked and revealed her motive.

            “I bet their dog already is in bed,” was the quick response from a savvy mom.

            “How about their swing?”

            “ELLEN,” came the chorus of mom and dad together.

            “Fine,” and she made her way back to the fire.

            Bedtime was easier than most nights at home as the fresh air did Ellen in.  She was the first to sleep, but then also the first awake in the morning.

            “Good morning Mom,” was how both parents awoke.

            We held our ground though and pretended to continue to sleep.  The fresh air had done us in as well, and our bodies don’t recover as quickly as hers anymore.

            “I have to poop and pee!” was more than effective at getting me out of bed and effectively started my day.

            Coffee, blueberry buckle, dry clothes, and then back on the river and to the places that we checked that looked moose-y the day before, Ellen still helping to look for a moose to eat, and still being carried in and out.

            At the last spot of the day, I stepped down off of the top of the bank to a clay lump a foot down, Ellen cradled in my right arm.  When my rubber boot made contact with the clay, it just continued going in an upward arc toward heaven and my body continued downward.

            “Agghhhhh!” I landed with the top half of my back over the clay mound and just laid there half groaning for a while.  I really couldn’t say anything else, Ellen still safely in my right arm, wind completely knocked out of my body, and so I took that opportunity to mentally check through the bones in my spine and rib cage.  Seemed like there should be a lot more pain if something was broken, but instead, when I got up, I noticed that my back had pleasantly popped in three or four places and I could stand taller and straighter.

            “Are you okay?” came Myra’s concerned voice.

            “Wow, blue collar chiropractor.  My back feels amazing.  Hurt when I landed, but feels great now,” and we loaded into the boat.

            We packed up camp and headed back to town, the whole return trip pretty uneventful aside from a couple of shallow spots along the way that almost stopped the boat.  We stopped about an hour (at the slow rate we were traveling) outside of Unalakleet at a gravel bar for snacks and coffee.

            “I’m going to get some juice,” Ellen said, climbing back into the boat.

            Juice box in hand, she threw her leg over the side of the boat and began a slow fall that she halted, if only momentarily, by snagging the gunnel in the crook of her left elbow and by the toes of her left foot.

            “I’m getting wet!” she hollered as her juice box holding hand submerged in the shallow water below her horizontal dangling body.

            I don’t really remember getting up or crossing the fifteen feet of beach to catch her before she fell into the river, but all three of us were laughing as I carried her back to our picnic spot on the gravel bar.

            “I got my juice box wet,” she complained.

            Ellen fell asleep on the ride home.  I gently put her in the front seat of the car while Myra drove the boat onto the trailer.  It had been a very full weekend for a little girl.

            We never did see a moose that we could shoot, but I guess that never really was the point for taking our young daughter all those miles up the river in the first place. 

A practice round.