Alaska Moose and Bear combo Hunt
Over coming the odds and never giving up
This hunt took place in 2016 near Kotzebue, Alaska, above the arctic circle.
The forecast looked really good. Lots of sunshine and very little rain was predicted for the duration of our hunt. The plan was to scout on the 14th of September and start hunting officially on the morning of the 15th.
This was the first time hunting with Willy, but I was really looking forward to it. I could tell he was a “true hunter,” and would pull his weight.
The original plan was to take my Citabria on floats and land some where around the Tag (Tagagawik, Selawik, Alaska) river. I had worked out in Kotzebue for the past 3 ½ years and knew through local sources that the Tag was golden for extremely large moose. Two falls ago, I had hunted the Tag with an Avon raft and had good success on the lower portion of the river with my good friend Andrew (dirt.) Anyways, my Citabria was still in the hanger having the finishing touches and would not be ready in time for the hunt. My neighbor owned a C-170B and offered it to me for the hunt. It truly was an answer to prayer, otherwise the hunt would have been postponed.
I left early morning on the 14th from Palmer. I had full tanks, plus 28 gallons of 100LL in jerry cans. Fuel in Palmer was $4.59 a gallon. Fuel in Galena (fuel stop) was $9.99 a gallon, and fuel in Kotzebue was $7.49 a gallon. So, as you can imagine, I was going to take as much fuel from Palmer as possible.
I estimated the trip was going to take me around 6 hours, provided I didn’t have to go through passes and/or divert due to weather. Lucky for me, the weather was good enough to skirt the large hills and cross over the lower hills. By lower, I mean 8,000 msl.
Everything was uneventful till about 20 miles from Galena. The ceiling dropped right down to the ground all around me and my only choice was to follow this little drainage that emptied into the Yukon about 20 miles upriver from Galena. I then proceeded to follow the edge of the Yukon to Galena. I had about a mile visibility and 300 foot ceilings for roughly 10 miles before it opened up and was 10 and clear.
I was a little stressed by the weather, but I knew through earlier weather updates that it was good in Galena, and even better in route to Kotz. After landing in Galena, fueling up, and chatting with the RAVN customer service agents, ground crew, and fellow pilots, I set off for Kotz. One of the RAVN pilots, Lorreta, had been up river just before I left, and was able to give me a wonderful weather report of unrestricted visibility and clear sky’s. CAVU (ceilings and visibility unrestricted.)
Lucky for me, the Tag river was directly in line with my route of flight, so my plan was to intercept near the head waters and fly down river towards the village of Selawik. Upon reaching the tag, the ceilings had dropped to about 300 foot and light rain. I was not worried though as you could see far down river, and the ceiling seemed to be holding at 300 or higher. I immediately noticed that river was very high. Normally the further up river you are, the more gravel bars there are. Well, I noticed right away that not only where there no gravel bars, but the river was so high, that the grass on each side of the river was flooded. It was easy to tell this was the highest the river had been this summer. So, right off the bat, my plans for an awesome Tag hunt where flushed down the drain. I was not discouraged how ever, as I knew there was plenty more rivers and game in the area. I continued on to Kotzebue and arrived around 4:30 P.M. It took me roughly 7 hours from start to finish. Not to bad considering it’s 600 miles and I was traveling around 90 MPH in cruise.
I called Kotzebue FSS (flight service station) about 10 miles south west of kotz and was greeted by my good friend Jim. Jim is a great friend that has been all around Alaska and has met many good, and bad, pilots. If I was to name a pilot that’s been in Alaska for a few years, I guarantee Jim knows him/her. After landing, I taxied to the Hageland ramp and topped off the airplane and parked it for the night. After visiting with dispatch and the CSA’s, some of my fellow pilots let me know where they had recently seen some big moose. So I geared up and invited my good friend John Rae to accompany me on a scouting trip to the Wulik river. Roughly 80 miles North of Kotzebue. It was a little further than I had planned, but I was open to anything by this point. Upon reaching the Wulik River (which by the way is where the largest Dolly Varden in Alaska call home), I picked a spot down river that I would start at and work my way upriver. Didn’t see a dogone thing. No Griz, no Moose, no Caribou, no nothin. Needless to say, I was a little on the discouraged side. After flying the Wulik, I flew past Red Dog Mine and then down the Kelly River. After intercepting the Noatak River off the Kelly, I flew towards the Aggy and followed that down to the mouth of the Noatak River. Nothing. Man, talk about being discouraged. Back to Kotz and a sleepless night sleep at the pilot house.
The following morning was brisk but windless. It was roughly 25 degrees with a light frost. Perfect hunting weather. I made my way down to the airport to do a pre flight and warm up the engine for starting. Willy was arriving that morning on Alaska Airlines, so I wanted to be ready to go as soon as he got there. The previous day I had picked up the rest of our hunting gear at NAC (Northern Air Cargo) so we were organized and ready to go.
After picking up Willy, I had him get his minimum gear, tent, gun, and some food. The plan was for us to go and scout, find a spot, set the tent up, and then I would go back to Kotz for the rest of the gear.
We went all over the squirrel valley. We covered almost every square inch looking for the best spot. Every time we found a bear or a moose, I would mark it on my ipad so we had an idea where all the game was. We really didn’t see that many moose, and it really was quite discouraging, but goodness gracious, we saw lots of bears.
After scouting for roughly 2 ½ hours, we landed on a gravel bar and put 10 gallons of 100 low lead in the tanks, then set off for the village of Kiana where we were going to top off with fuel.
After purchasing some fuel, we topped of each tank, hopped in, and were on our way to check out the tag….. again. I had reports that the water level had gone down and there might be some gravel bars available. It was a normal take off, and before heading to the Tag, I wanted to check out where the Melvin Slough emptied into the Kobuk River. I had seen big bulls there before. So we departed runway 06 and initially headed south towards the tag, but then turned to the west to check out the Melvin. About 3 miles away from Kiana, I noticed I had the throttle about an inch more forward then normal to maintain the current power setting that I had. I shrugged it off since everything else looked normal. Well, I was slowly loosing RPM so I pulled my carb heat out thinking I was getting carb ice. The RPM’s went down, but never increased. Knowing something was definitely not right, I immediately turned around back towards Kiana. I glanced at my fuel flow and it was reading 2.4 gph! Holy crap, it should be reading at least 6.5 or 7 gph. I put the mixture full rich, started climbing, and made a bee line to the airport. By now I had gone full throttle and was only able to maintain roughly 2100-2200 RPMs. At full power, I should have been able to maintain roughly 2450 RPMs. We got closer and closer to Kiana, finally we were with in glide at 2000 feet over the airport. I told Willy “were good man, were good. We are with in glide, no worries.” Willy maintained his composure very well. He was an excellent passenger. Over the village, I was planning on reducing power to start a descent. As I reached for the power lever and tried to reduce power, the lever was stuck solid. I pulled hard, but not to hard, as I didn’t want to rip it out of the airplane and have bigger issues. I decided it was no big deal, I would just pull the fuel mixture and turn off the mags on short final and glide in. By this time I was to high in altitude to attempt a landing, so I pitched up to reduce my airspeed, added 30 degrees of flaps, nosed over, and did a slip from down wind, to base, and then to final. As I was rolling out on final, my engine completely stopped! My heat immediately went to the top of my throat. It all happened in a split second, but I could tell at our current speed and distance from the airport, we weren’t going to make it. I wasn’t particularly worried about getting hurt, I just couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to explain to my friend how I balled his baby up on the tundra. In that moment, I just had this vision of me calling him and telling him what happened. Weird right? In that split second, I remembered something important, I still had flaps in!! I put the flaps up, lowered the nose, and gained airspeed. Amen, we were going to make, and with some distance to spare. I immediately let Willy know where were going to make it, and he was pretty happy about that. He did such a great job. If I was him, I would have been freaking out and looking for the parachute. Before touching down, I made sure to cut the mixture and turn the mags off as I didn’t want the engine to come alive at a bad moment since I already had the runway made. I used my flaps as an airbrake and glided in for a nice landing. I even made the taxi way. Of course, there was an airplane behind us, a Ryan Air Casa, so after coming to a stop on the runway, we both rushed out and pushed the airplane off the runway to the taxi way and onto the ramp. I was shaking pretty good by this time, as you could imagine. Many thoughts where going through my head. The Lord had his guiding hand on us the whole time. Everything worked out the way he planned it. Wow, what a day.
After parking the airplane on the ramp, we decided to take off the engine cowling to see if we could spot anything obvious. By this time, I had already made a few calls to mechanics looking for some advice and answers. I noticed that the throttle was now moving freely, which was leading me to believe that there was water in the line, or water in the carb. This was actually a good feeling, as I didn’t want to “not find anything wrong.” For a pilot and mechanic, it’s always nice to find a smoking gun. One thing was for sure, we both agreed that we were going no where until a clear and concise problem was found, and fixed. After speaking with my friend Pauly out in Kotzebue. He told me to check the tanks. So I got my fuel strainer out and took a sample from the left wing. I noticed that the fuel came out a little thicker and slower than normal, but there was nothing on the bottom of the sample that should suggest any contaminants. I noticed however that the fuel was clear, it should have been light blue. So I smelled the sample and it didn’t smell like anything. From that point on, I knew exactly what had caused our engine failure. I proceeded to remove about a gallon from the left tank, and ¼ gallon from the right tank. With the help of my friend Lee and Adam, I was able to drain all the lines, tanks, carburetor, and strainer. We put the cowling back on, and I did a run up and test flight. I was understandably nervous. I climbed like a banshee, straight out gaining as much altitude as possible. The river was just off the end of the runway if there was any issues, lots of sand bars to land on, which eased my mind a little. I did a high and tight pattern, it seemed to last for ever, but it really was only a matter of minutes. The airplane checked out, and we were once again, on our way. It took us about 35 minutes to reach where the tag ran into the Selawik river. The weather was nice until we reached the hills. A lower overcast layer and lots of rain. Not very good for scouting. To make it even worse, the water level had only gone down maybe a foot, but just for curiosity sake, we continued up river. We only spotted a few bulls and none were even close to any landing spots. We decided to use our fuel elsewhere and head back to Kotzebue to top off.
After landing in Kotz, we gassed up and decided that our best opportunity was going to be on the Squirrel River. So, once again, we were on our way, but this time we knew we were going to be landing and setting up camp, so we were pretty excited, not only to finally be officially hunting, but to just be done with all the stress from the day. It didn’t take long for use to choose our spot as we had been marking spots all day long on my Ipad. We decided on a long gravel bar right off the Omar River, about one mile upstream from where it flows into the Squirrel. We landed with no issues after over flying the gravel bar. As soon as we came to a spot, my hunting partner, Willy says “Oh my gosh, look at all the bear crap!” I couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit. Of course we would pick the spot with the highest concentration of bears on the dang river. Why not? After a day like today, I’m not surprised one bit. I made one more trip for the rest of our gear that evening while Willy set up camp. After a long day of flying, engine failure, bad gas, pucker factor, and stupidity, it was so nice to come back to a “set up camp.” Thanks Willy!! I slept hard that night. It took a little while to fall asleep, as you could imagine. I kept playing the engine failure over and over in my head and thanking God that he kept his protecting hand over us.
We woke up the next morning at 6, bright and early. I wanted to make a nice breakfast complete with a piping hot cup of joe. It was pretty chilly out, about 30 degrees, but it was a nice morning. Clear skies, a light layer of frost over everything, and no wind. I knew from experience, that most likely, we wouldn’t see anything for 3 days. For some reason, 3 days has been the magic number for that past 5 years. As the horizon started to show up, we started with a few cow calls. We had no response, but we decided to just lay low for a while and see if anything happened. After about an hour, we got ants in our pants and decided to explore our new home and get familiar with our surroundings. There was a high bank that spanned the whole river right at the bend. It was a great vantage point that made us excited. One thing we noticed right away, was the sign. There was only large pellets for moose droppings and that meant it was from winter as the droppings are wet and soggy in the summer. The only fresh sign we saw, was a lot of bear droppings, fish carcasses, and bear trails. It became pretty evident that we were in bear haven, not moose haven. We decided to at least give the day a shot. We got off the river and made for the open tundra heading towards the higher ground for a vantage point to glass. As we reached the top of the higher ground, we started to glass. Off in the distance, I thought I saw something, but I had forgot my glasses and my eyes were just a little blurry. I asked Willy to check it out, and he said it was a Griz. It was about 1 ½ miles away. Willy kind of sounded disappointed at first because it was so far away. I asked him if he wanted to shoot it and he said “yes.” I said “then lets go get it!” The stalk was on. We strategically placed trees, hills and any other obstacles we could find in between the bear and us. We were actually jogging. Hunched down to keep our silhouette low to the tundra. We had the wind in our faces, everything seemed to be going our way. We had to do a couple of double backs to get around deep marsh as we only had our boots on and not hip waders. As we came with in 800 yards, it was evident that if we wanted to get closer, we would have to skirt him to the left side where there was more cover and lots of bushes. After a short discussion and time to catch our breath and wipe the sweat from our brow, we were once again on the stalk. I was keeping an eye out in the opposite directions just in case there was another bear, or maybe a monster moose. Isn’t that how it always happens. Expect the unexpected, that’s one of my hunting mottos.
We finally got into about 400 yards of this large Griz and Willy decided this was the spot. I let him get to the shooting spot first, so I could watch the bear while he moved, then he watched the bear while I moved. Good team work. Willy was having a difficult time finding a good rest for his .375, so I took out my leather man, cut off a few branches to create a nice “V” for his barrel, it worked out perfect. Willy touched off a perfect shot. I saw the bears front shoulder section jiggle, a sure sign of a good hit. I did a follow up shot and most definitely missed. I did not have a good rest and it was a solid 400 yards. The bear started to limp jog right towards us as we were shooting the whole time. For any one within ear shot, it must have sounded like opening day of deer season back in the midwest. I hit the bear once, and Willy hit the bear one more time before it fell down and started doing the break dance. This went on for about 15 minutes as we sat there, shaking with excitement, adrenaline, and relief. We lost sight of the bear as it was able to roll behind some bushes. I asked Willy how many bullets he had, he said he was out. I only had two left and did not feel comfortable going after a possibly wounded bear. We opted to go back to camp, get ammo, pack frame, skinning knives, and tarps. It took a while to get back to camp, then of course high tail it back. Needless to say, we were exhausted, and dehydrated, (didn’t bring any water. Some how I do this to myself every time.) We took some pictures, shook hands, and skinned Willys first Griz. Man was he happy and I was happy for him!! It was a great experience. That evening, we decided we were going to hunt in the morning, then move to a different spot with more moose sign. What a great day.
The next morning produced no results, so we hopped in the airplane and went scouting for a better spot. We had a map that gave us exact coordinates on land ownership. So we knew where we could hunt and where we couldn’t hunt. We found this really nice spot right next to an area where we saw a monster bull two days prior. We landed, set up the tent, threw all the gear in the tent, then went to Kotz to drop off the bear and grab the rest of our gear. When we landed, we were promptly met by Justin, the wild life trooper. Some how some way, he always knows when some one has an animal. He is obviously good at his job, and he has a pretty cool name. He of course wanted to ask us some questions, which we gladly answered, maybe with to much detail, but what ever. Everything was done completely legal. We told him where we were going to hunt, and he asked to see our map, the one I had gotten from fish and game. He proceeded to tell me that the map I was using was not current and the spot that we had chosen was not on state land. CRAP!! So we grabbed the rest of the gear, went back to our tent, took it down, loaded it back up and went to another spot we had marked. This one we knew was good. We had seen like 8 moose there the other day. As we flew over the landing spot, it was evident right away that this was not a gravel bar, but a sand bar. I flew over it several times and decided it was plenty long enough, just looked maybe a little bumpy. The wind had picked up this time to around 15 knots gusting to 20, so a little windy for a small light airplane. I put it down on the sand and we were bouncing all over the place. Let me tell you, the bumps look way smaller in the air. After coming to a stop, we got out, walked the beach, and smoothed out as many bumps as we could. We scouted out a nice high and dry spot in the spruce trees for our camping spot, and unloaded the rest of the airplane. As I walked back the airplane for the last load, I realized that the tail wheel was flat. Are you kidding me! I cannot believe our luck this trip. I was really hating life at that point. I decided that I had no choice but to run a few trips with this flat tire. It really isn’t that big of a deal, provided you fly light and get the tail up as soon as possibly, which is standard practice any ways for a tail dragger. I had to have Willy help me turn around at the end as the tail wheel would just dig into the sand acting like an anchor. After we got it turned around, I poured the coals to it and was on my way. The smoothing of the bumps did absolutely nothing. I looked like Raggedy Ann in a tornado . All my limbs where flailing left, right, up, and down. Full deflection on every control surface in every direction. To top it off, the trees on the side of the sand bar created some turbulent eddies. I finally made it air born, not to far from the end of the bar. After letting my nerves settle a little, I just circled around contemplating my life and current situation. I decided the best move was to come back, land, and get the hell out of there. Willy felt the same way which made the decision even easier. One problem, or several problem really.. I was going to have to land and take off from this god forsaken, hell of a sand bar 2 more times. I was not thrilled. I got my first load, took off, went to where we had the rest of our gear, and loaded the airplane to the gills. I then went to the last spot we had saved by this big ridge line. I got to the spot and the wind was steady at 20 with guts up to 25. The gravel bar was North South, and the wind was West East. What did I do to deserve this? Just what I need, a 25 knot cross wind in an airplane that weighs a little over a thousand pounds. I lined up with the landing spot and touched down. As I was slowing down, the airplane was doing everything in its power to weather vane into the wind, and I was doing everything in my power to not let it. This was by far one of the most sickening feelings that I have had in an airplane. I really thought I was going to ground loop it on the gravel bar, but by the grace of God, I was able to just keep it straight enough until I came to a full stop. I was so mad and frustrated by this time that I just started taking my frustration out on our gear. I grabbed our bags and chucked them out of the airplane as hard as I could, saying four letter words the entire time. I thought over and over what the hell I had done wrong. It wasn’t like this was my first time flying a tailwheel airplane. I had at least 400 hours of tailwheel time under my belt. Finally, it dawned on me. I hadn’t put my ailerons into the wind or raised my flaps up immediately on touch down. How does some one with 6000 hours of flight time forget to put the ailerons into the wind on a crosswind landing? That’s private pilot one-o-one. Well, I’ll tell you why. Because I had an engine failure the other day, landed on the piece of poop sand bar, had a flat tail wheel tire, and then 25 knot crosswind landing where I almost flipped over. I was questioning why I was even out here. Later the next day during lunch, Willy and I proceeded to take apart the tail wheel and wound as much rope around the wheel as we could and put the tire back on. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than riding on the rim. Bush fix!
By the time I did my 4th landing on that sand bar, I had it down. Probably because the airplane smoothed out a lot of those brain jaring bumps. Willy was even impressed by my last landing. “Man, that was a lot shorter than I was expecting, I even moved up a bit since last time.” Willy and I did the whole “gong” show taxi back and turn around, and got the hell out of there. Willy was happy to hear that I had already taken a load to our hunting spot. That meant we had one more stop to grab the rest of the gear, then we were on our way. I was a little nervous about our up coming landing, but I stuck it perfect, put the flaps up, and ailerons into the wind. It was a non-issue. As soon as the prop stopped, I asked Willy “where is the whiskey?” He promptly got it, and we finished a good portion of that bottle in about a minute. I slept so hard that night, not even a Griz walking through camp could have woke me up.
The next morning, like clock work, we were up around 6 a.m. The sun did not rise till around 7 or 7:15, but it was nice to have time to gather our gear, cook breakfast, and make some coffee. We started the morning off with a couple of “horny cow calls” and immediately have two bulls responding. One across the river, and the other directly behind us. Talk about a rush. We felt like we finally had something going are way. Despite the grunts, we just couldn’t pull those big brutes out from the tree line. They just wouldn’t leave the protection of the spruce and birch. It was very frustrating to say the least. Later that morning, we decided to go further down the ridge and then cut in towards the tundra. We came to a meadow with a pond in the middle. There was a thin fresh layer of ice over the water with broken ice. The broken ice was consistent with moose tracks. We had a bull behind us only about 300 yards that morning, it was just to thick of brush and woods to see anything. This was the first of many frustrating moments. Every time you miss out on an opportunity to put a moose down, that’s one less chance of bringing some meat home.
That evening we made an effort to explore our surroundings and get familiar with the area. We wanted to maximize our chances of getting a big bull by knowing what our options were. There are two ways to bag a big bull, calling them in, or covering ground. When they won’t respond to calls, guess what. It’s time to cover some ground. That evening produced nothing worth writing about. We did how ever figure out why they called it the squirrel river. You guessed it, lots of squirrels. Hate those damn things. All you hear is chirping the entire day.
The following mornings were more of the same, except a storm front had moved in and we had wind and rain. The animals where not moving. My rain gear however, performed better than expected. Kuiu is where it’s at when it comes to rain gear.
We had gone through the same routine every morning with the same results. The weather was just too crummy to produce any results. One thing we did know. As soon as the weather cleared, the moose would be moving like crazy.
On the evening of the 5th day, the weather finally broke. We had calm winds and the skies where clearing. Just before dark as we were cooking dinner, I heard a loud “wack!” I asked Willy if he heard that and he said “what?” I continued to listen and there it was again, this time it was really loud and was followed by loud scrapping noise. We were listening to a monster bull just teasing us. We immediately grabbed our guns and headed up the ridge to start looking from a vantage point. Once we were settled down and peering into the direction of the scrapping, we were able to pin point it to a small section of spruce and birch. We tried using a cow call to no avail. After about an hour of sitting and glassing, it was almost dark and we had no flash light, so we opted to head back to camp before it got to dark. After dinner, we set down for the night, rather disappointed, but at the same time, hopeful. Just as we were closing our eyes, that damn bull started teasing us again. This time even louder. Scrapping its antlers on anything and everything it could find. I swear it sounded like he found the biggest spruce tree and was planning it down to nothing but a nub. Very, very, impressive. That next morning, we immediately booked it across the river to where we had heard the scrapping. We of course made a few calls first just to see if we could get him to come out in the open. Because of all the rain, the river had risen about 5 feet. A thought occurred to me. Had we still been on that sand bar, we would have been in a world of hurt. That airplane would have been half way under water. Once again, very glad we made the right decision on that one.
After crossing the river, we made our way to the stand of trees we herd the scrapping coming from. We slowly explored, made calls, imitated scraps, and got familiar with the area. I found a huge spruce tree in which I was able cut a few branches off. It was the only spruce with in about 100 feet, all by its self, but it was huge. I made something like a ladder all the way up this tree. It was about 80 feet tall by its self. I climbed about 40 feet up to get a view of the surrounding area. It was actually quite windy up there and I decided to tie myself to the tree, just to be safe. Not sure if that was a good or bad idea, but after the luck we had most of this trip, it seemed pretty smart at the time. Lots and lots of moose sign on the other side of the river, just no moose. By this time, we were both feeling a little defeated. We both remained positive though and were able to pull our self out of that negativity rut. That evening, we decided if we didn’t see any moose tomorrow morning, we would take down only the basics of camp, fly around till we saw a monster with some cows, set up camp and shoot it the following morning.
I slowly opened my eyes as my cell phone was silently vibrating to let me know that it was time to kill something. The first thought through my head was, there is no wind, and no rain, and its freezing cold. This is gona be a great morning. It was so cold that I had to sleep with my phone in my bag, other wise the battery would have died overnight, and no one would wake up till first light. I was the first one up, as I was most morning because I had the alarm. I figured the quicker I got dressed, the quicker I would warm up. Cold was the inevitable at some point between the sleeping bag and your clothes. It is just the worse.
After I was dressed, I opened the tent fly, put my camp shoes on and opened the vestibule. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I said “Hey Willy, you’re not gona believe this, but you can only see a couple hundred feet in-front of your face.” Just our luck. After our coffee and morning ritual, we made our morning cow calls and hopped in the pro pioneer canoe and paddled across the river. We made a bee line to that large spruce tree as it was a good vantage point for climbing the tree and looking out into the willows. As we got to the tree, no sooner had I said “well, I’m not gona bother climbing the tree since I can only see 400 feet,” and we herd a loud grunt. We both looked at each other and whispered “moose!” We started looking in the direction of the grunt and saw nothing but fog. The grunting got closer and closer until I saw this huge, dark object moving from left to right. I immediately put my binos on him and saw huge sticker going every which way. It reminded me of a very large crown that a medieval king would wear. I said “big bull, big bull.” Willy started to look for a gun rest and was going crazy trying to find one. I started to get nervous that we were going to lose this opportunity when “BOOOOM!” Will fired and a millisecond after he fired, I fired. I saw both bullets hit the bulls front shoulders. He dropped to the ground immediately, and did not get up. I grabbed my gun and ran as fast as I could to where the bull was. My thinking was, if he gets up, I’m right here and I’ll shoot him dead. That was dumb, excitement and inexperience, but whatever, it all panned out in the end. We had a huge bull down and Willy was able to check another one off the list. Man, we were two happy SOB’s. We just hopped around, high fiving, shaking hands, and hugging. One of the best moments of my hunting life. We worked so hard every day. Hiking miles and miles. Covering ground and making calls to the best of our knowledge and then to finally come out with a victory after we thought we were coming home empty. Priceless in every way, let me tell you.
I wanted to make sure that I kept a detailed log of this hunt, both for my entertainment, and others. This will surely provide entertainment for years to come and will help to jog my memory. Key things to remember. Always sump your tanks no matter what, especially if you buy fuel in the village. Most importantly, never never give up. Willy just had the most positive attitude along with mine, which was able to propel us over many physical and psychological obstacles.
