How to Cross a Beaver Dam on Crutches

squirrel

WKR
Joined
May 25, 2017
Messages
324
Location
colorado
Well it appears I cannot upload pics on this site so I will try another route.
IMG_3807 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

After 20+ years of applying I finally drew out on my once-in-a-lifetime CO bull moose tag. I was excited for this chance of course but immediately a bit disappointed when I found out that things had changed from when I had first researched the area I had applied to for many years. The tag quota had been just one but while I was not paying attention they had bumped it up to 10. I felt that would be quite a bit of pressure on the easier to access spots where moose were known to be. My plan to deal with this was to go into a remote wilderness area with a large string of llamas where I had found moose eggs for 20 or more years and yet there had never been a harvest in, according to the kill reports kept by the CPW. I had drawn the rifle season but planned on hunting with my bow, with the rifle being a possibility in the last days.

My summer was very busy, as usual, renting llamas and this summer I had to build my barn, which I had managed to burn down the previous fall in a smoked turkey gone wild mis-hap. I had an elk tag for WY that I would have gladly turned back in to free up time to scout for moose but WY does not offer this as an option. I would just have to man up and hunt elk and scout as well. In mid-September WY closed all of my known areas for elk when a forest fire cooked it all to charcoal, while bad for my elk hunting I now had plenty of time to scout for moose, and I took advantage of every glorious day of it. My dog Cashew and I went for hikes each and every day, and while it was hot a dry enough that moose sighting were few and far between I found some bulls and a lot of sign made at night as the rut started to heat up.

IMG_3791 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

I had a huge bull handed to me on a silver platter by a friend one day and just as I was really getting excited about where I was going to hang his head in my house I got a follow up obituary picture of him, killed by a nonresident archery hunter. He was a beauty!


Cashew and I were hiking 10-15 miles a day, mostly in the wilderness area, and had some drainages that were looking pretty good, some that were not really prospects at all, though during the rut a bull can be anywhere with those long legs of theirs. We also scouted some easily accessible high country that I was pretty sure would get lots of attention from the other 8, or so, moose tag holders who had not yet filled their tags. I was supposed to go pick up 8 new young llamas the week before the season opened and got a call that she had had no luck in enticing them into the catch pen and wondered if we could do it on the third day of my moose season. This was not my first choice but as I would only lose one evening I said we could do that. It turned out to be a terrible decision on my part. To accommodate this I was going to hunt the easy country for two days, go pick up the llamas and then head to the wilderness for the remaining eleven days.

I had a couple of good spots where I had seen good bulls from my jeep, and though I figured the other moose hunters would also be there I was going to concentrate on them until I got those llamas home. Opening day I went on a ten mile hike to tree line where I had never seen less than 4 moose on each previous trip, I saw nary a one. I did see a small bull out of my Jeep window at around noon as I moved to a different spot. That evening right at dark I saw a wide antlered bull with huge sweeping brow tines staring at his girl about 300 yards from the road. I knew where I wanted to be at dawn the next morning. At first light I picked out the huge black rectangle in the willows just a hundred yards from where he had been the night before, I grabbed my bow and made my approach to within 65 yards of the cow as the love sick bull followed her every move. She caught movement by me and stared for an hour as she lay bedded then she got up and walked past me at 45 yards with her man following grunting at every step. His right palm was missing a 16” second point and a huge chunk of its palm, maybe 6” square. In this same draw before the season I had found a big bull with one entire antler snapped off, now I figured I had found his opponent, also damaged. I just could not see fit to shoot him in that condition on only the second morning of my grand adventure, but he was truly a magnificent sight as he pushed through those 10 foot tall willows down past me so close I could watch his muscles ripple on those huge shoulders. I figured this guy was my “last day bull” and was now in my hip pocket to be pulled out at any time as my hunt wound down. (I never saw him again!)

IMG_3858 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

IMG_3809 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

DSC07160 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

That night I hooked up my trailer and was going to hunt moose then head south to pick up the llamas in the morning. I saw no moose and got home at dark that night with my new llamas and put them in the corral. The next morning I had to separate the 3 boys from 4 girls and was going to head to the wilderness as soon as they had learned their perimeter fence. I was in the crowded corral and watching a girl as I haltered a boy and he lunged into my left knee from the side and blew out my knee. It hurt so bad I had to let my wife walk them to the new pen just 50 yards away, my big plans were dead in the water immediately. I wasn’t able to catch my string of 8 llamas (the number I figured it would take to pack a moose out in one trip) let alone hike 10 miles into the wilderness with them and kill/butcher a moose.

I lay on the couch all afternoon whining like a little puss with ice packs on my knee, barely able to hobble to the bathroom on my own. The next day I tried to get in my truck and it just was not possible, even after a handful of pills. After another day of feeling sorry for myself on the couch I got my crutches out and managed to scream my way into the truck, not the Jeep (no way I could run a clutch) and drove to a high pass and sat in the truck for 13 hours watching it snow hard. At about 9am it was so foggy I could barely see 50 yards and off to my left I saw the silhouette of a bull moose in the fog. I rolled down the window and grunted at him as I got my rifle into position, my bow being out of the question as I could not get out of my truck in less than 10 minutes of whimpering effort. He was about 36” wide with short palms and was nowhere near what I wanted, but what I wanted when healthy and what I might get as a cripple was not necessarily the same thing. He lost interest in my grunting and walked off into the mist. I got out of the truck and crutched my way over to size up his tracks, they were not even close to some I had found in the wilderness, or my second day bull.

IMG_3906 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

IMG_3914 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

DSC07142 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

Mid-day I went for a drive, and when the road became impossibly rough, I got out to walk for a ways and look for sign in the creek bed. I took my bow and my crutches and in just a few minutes was in a terrible pickle trying to cross a beaver dam on crutches. I ended up very wet, screaming in pain, and realized that while my moose hunt may go on in some fashion or other it was now not feasible to use my bow, I put it away; the Indians had lost yet again…

I was truck bound for at least the next few days. Not surprisingly I hit a little dry spell on moose sightings when chained to my steering wheel, and was starting to think of that foggy young bull as a gift from above that I should have accepted with thanks. Once I stopped being stupid crossing beaver dams on crutches my knee was making great progress daily but my season was getting shorter at an alarming rate. The snow was beginning to really add up and the moose were really out and about chasing girls. I took Princess one morning (I was now able to run the clutch so we took the Jeep) and just 200 yards out of my unit saw a tiny bull staring at a cow, as we watched a monster bull stood up out of the willows and they wandered across the side hill instead of going up and over the pass into my unit. Princess was screaming at me to shoot him until I asked her if she could drag him uphill and across the divide without leaving a blood trail… Well…no… but DAMN he was a beautiful bu

Princess turned out to be quite the “moose magnet” as we found another medium bull that morning as well. In spite of several inches of snow with two walking sticks (less cumbersome than crutches) I was able to finally walk almost a mile on a two track road. I had turned into a hunter again, but with only a few days left in my season and snow was piling up like it was December not early October. The next day it was back to just me and Cashew and we found three young bulls tending a cow and her calf, I started to get my hopes up that I could actually make this work, although with a rifle. I was in my unit above where we had spotted the big bull the previous day and I just knew he was somewhere bedded in the willows and would stand up to take control of the cow, but he was gone. After seeing a real bull these 30-36 inchers did not quite cut it.

With my season down to 4 days I took a chance and went on a very slow, snowy hike into a drainage where I had found some huge tracks. Each step had to be planted very carefully and in snow well over knee deep. The moose were all at or above tree line in near white out blizzard conditions. I finally found the owner of the giant hooves but his head gear was not proportionate to his feet. He was at 40 yards tending three cows on about a 45 degree hillside in a blizzard in deep snow, and about 5 miles from any vehicle access, it was an easy pass under those conditions, but he was a trophy bull in every way except his headgear. I had about 10.5 miles on my knee that day and the next I could barely get in the Jeep; I had severely over done i

Well rokslide says it is too long so the last part will have to be a follow up...
 
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squirrel

WKR
Joined
May 25, 2017
Messages
324
Location
colorado
IMG_3887 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

IMG_3894 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

IMG_3917 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

Three days to go and the snow levels just kept piling on; in the evening I had a nice bull come out where I had seen my biggest, out of my unit. I called to him and he would stop and watch/listen but go back to feeding. I hunted my unit until dark then snuck down to where he should be able to hear me and cow called several times in the dark, limped back to the Jeep and went home to medicinal brown water and ice packs. The next day I was really feeling the pressure as I drove up to the pass in the dark, the fat lady was warming up her vocal cords.

As daylight broke I could see clearly a big solo set of moose prints coming up and out of the basin, over the divide and into my unit. I parked the Jeep and was trying to decipher the windblown tracks. I looked up and there he was staring at me from 50 yards away, they are magnificent creatures but they surely aren’t very bright. The shot with a rifle was a gimme and my season was officially over except for the dragging. I was able to put a very long rope on him and get him to the truck in one piece, making him a real trophy moose, I winched him up the tailgate and took him home for processing. My once in a lifetime bull moose was done and in the “done that” file. I never did see another moose hunter, either on crutches or without, and I never did come up with a good way to cross a beaver dam on crutches.

I had seen some amazing country from beautiful fall conditions to mid-winter type conditions, I had seen 15-20 bull moose, but only one trophy size, and I had gotten almost the full amount of adventure time out of my license. I will always wonder “what if” I had not injured myself and had been able to go back into the wilderness and pursue those moose that had never been hunted, or at least had not been so tied to my truck and been able to do more hikes up un-roaded valleys. Maybe I will take a fall trip with a camera and pretend I have a license, pulling the trigger on these behemoths is not really necessary and it does turn into a lot of work the very moment you pull the trigger…


IMG_3936 by squirrel2012, on Flickr



DSC07175 by squirrel2012, on Flickr

IMG_3950 by squirrel2012, on Flickr
 

realunlucky

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jan 20, 2013
Messages
12,624
Location
Eastern Utah
Enjoyed following a long on your adventure. Way to stick it out and make it happen. Congratulations on a great bull bum knee or not

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Paul M

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Dec 15, 2013
Messages
102
Congratulations on the bull and what a great story my knee was aching the whole time
 
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