Fall Subsistence Moose Hunting

By:

This paper was written by Tevin (student) and submitted by his teacher.  

On the boat ride to Piamut, I stayed awake until we got below Russian Mission. I fell asleep and when I woke up, I didn’t know I had passed out. When we stopped above Russian and below Holy Cross, we collected fresh water for Piamut camp. When we got there we got every thing out of the boats; including the gas, food, tents, and the equipment that we needed. We were camping pretty far from home about 105 miles up the Yukon. When we got done setting up the tents, we started to chop wood for the fire pit, which took awhile because the wood was twisted. When that was done, John made kindling, so the fire would be able to start a lot easier. That night I went to bed when my captain told me to go to bed. How ever, I had a little trouble finding a tent because there were more boys than girls and the boys had to share two tents.

When almost everybody else was awake, I finally got up. I had breakfast and then my boat captain told William, Justin, and me to get ready because we were about to take off to go look for moose. We finally took off it was about ten minutes later. We went up the Paimut River through the first slough on the left. We went pretty far into the slough after awhile and we came upon a waterfall. I thought that there was a pond but the water was on top of the tundra. It looked like a little river flowing through the plants. When we finally decided to leave I was right by the boat when I noticed my sunglasses were gone. I asked my boat captain if I could go look for them, but I couldn’t find them, so I went back to the boat mad. I got over it.

We started to go back and out of the slough, but not even a mile later, I shot my first duck and then we all ate lunch. When we got out of the slough, we got a distress call from Clarence’s boat saying they were lost. The next time we stopped, Justin, William, and my boat captain went on a trail because there were moose tracks leading into a clearing. I was at the boat because I didn’t have a harvest ticket so I fished in the river. William came back to get tissue to go to the bathroom. After William went to the bathroom he came back to the boat and asked if he should stay and I said, “Go back to the others” but he stayed anyway. When he got into the boat, we heard gunshots, so he and I went in to see how big of a bull Justin was shooting at. It was a small bull. When we got to the clearing, William saw Justin make one more shot, but I was a little way back. When I got there it was already down. We started butchering the moose and when we finished all of us took out one leg each and started going back to the boat. It was almost dark out when we got to camp, unloaded the boat, and hung up the legs.

The next day we went back to get the rest of the meat. The only thing the scavengers took during the night were the kidneys. This load was pretty heavy but we managed. We went back to camp, unloaded the boat, and hung the meat. Then we rested, but not for long. Justin and the boat captain washed out the boat. William and I tried to go canoeing but we tipped. I didn’t get back in the canoe again because I had only brought two pairs of clothes. 

The last day I didn’t do much. I just stayed at camp to dry my stuff, and it literally took me all day to do that. While I was drying off my wet stuff it rained a couple of times, so I had to bring my stuff in the tent so they could dry faster. The rain lasted for while. I don’t remember how long it took for all of my stuff to dry, because it felt like it took a long time to dry. When it was starting to get late we had to wait for the last people that went in the canoes so we could start shooting. After shooting at targets we made a pretty big fire, had marshmallows with graham crackers, and chocolate. We stayed up until about 12o’clock, but I don’t remember. I may have stayed up until maybe 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning. It was a fun trip.