HAINES -- It bothers me that most hunting pictures only show the whole moose, or a big head with a smiling hunter and never the meat. Fine, healthy, wild meat -- it seems to me -- is what hunting really is, so I decided to take photographs while my husband and I cut a whole moose into pieces with two knives and a saw before carrying it home. But then I looked at them and knew they shouldn't be printed in the paper. Cleaning a moose is a little like childbirth that way. The close-ups are better in memory than digitally recorded.
So instead, I will tell you how we did it. Chip cut out the anus and such. Then there was the long stern-to-stem cut to gut it.
Imagine fish cleaning times 1,000. Chip pulled out armloads of steaming, bloody innards, while I reached in with my knife and sliced any connective tissue. Then Chip gingerly removed the bladder (bigger than a large water balloon) intact so as not to foul the meat.
We used an alder branch to hold the ribs open so the cavity would cool, and after that we skinned it. The hide peels back from the flesh, leaving a white covering, the way paper labels on jars sometimes do. The top layer lifts off and a clean membrane remains. I am good at this.
The moose was on his side, so we removed one hindquarter and then one front quarter. (You've seen a side of beef? A moose leg and rump, or leg and shoulder, looks like that.) We heaved the moose over on his other side, and repeated the process before removing the ribs, the back, the neck, the trimmings, the heart and liver, which was big as a boulder, perhaps 20 pounds.
Doing right by the kill
There is a solemnity to the process that replaces the initial euphoria. We don't say much as we butcher it neatly, cleanly and carefully. Respectfully, I would say. Nothing about this part of the hunt is a game. Now it's about doing right by the kill.
To make sure the meat stays clean, we use a tarp and muslin bags. When we cut loose a leg we rest it on alder branches above the mud and dirt, then literally hug and lift it up in order to drop and shimmy it into a sack.
Before long, the whole moose, astonishingly, is reduced to a pile of meat, and the head has been separated. We have to bring that to Fish and Game to be measured. Some is eaten, too. A friend has already claimed the tongue.
Then we strap it all, one heavy load at a time, onto frame packs and hike out of the willows and alder, through a small swamp. The muck gets deeper and sucks hip boots harder with each pass. Once across, we hike down a trail through cottonwoods and out into a sand and gravel dry wash, across one knee-deep stream and up a 3-foot bank.
I crawl on hands and knees here. The weight is right at my tipping point.
It takes about 30 to 40 minutes to reach the boat, and half that long on the light return to the moose. The goal is to clear the kill site out as quickly as possible so we don't attract bears or, worse, get stuck there in the dark -- but we shouldn't push so hard we hurt ourselves or drop any meat.
Twice I swore and told Chip I'd never do this again and that I may divorce him. That was during and after that first load, which was ill balanced and way too heavy for me. We adjusted the weight, both emotional and physical, and both felt better.
To the tree stands
As to how we found this moose, which was the 24th taken in the Haines subsistence hunt that has a harvest goal of 20-25 bulls to maintain the health of our small herd, we spent the better part of two weeks looking for him all over a 3-square-mile area near our Chilkat River wall-tent camp. Every morning at dawn we tiptoed to our tree stands, either doubled up in the same one or in two different stands about 200 yards apart on either side of a meadow. We'd stay two hours, calling sometimes like a cow moose with a high nasal whine that carries far and is made with a horn, or by cupping our hands when a moose is close by. Other times we'd pretend we were a bull looking for a fight, breaking branches, scraping trees and grunting. Every day we heard some moose, saw some moose and even stumbled on a few moose (and once a bear), but none met the legal requirements: a bull with three brow tines, a spike or fork, or 50-inch-wide rack.
When we weren't in the stands, we walked. A lot. We were very quiet, checked the wind direction, and were on alert for signs of moose, like tracks, scent (moose smell moose-y), flat grass beds, trails, pawed pee pads, broken branches and antler raked bark. Midday we'd head back to camp for lunch and a nap and then march back out, covering a lot of ground. At dusk, we'd climb the stands again with a thermos of tea, a snack and a book. (I read Simon Winchester's "The Man Who Loved China," about a Cambridge professor who wrote a history of science in China, and Larry Watson's dark novel "Let Him Go.")
The Monday morning we killed the moose, we left before dawn to be at the stands by sunrise. I brought a hard-boiled egg, an orange and tea. We had planned to head to town by 10. At 9 a.m., I saw a cow step out in the meadow and begin eating willows. It was still, and so foggy that I couldn't see Chip in the other stand. I heard his cow calls, though, and I watched the real cow eat her breakfast while I had mine. When a shot cracked the silence, I jumped. It was really loud in that peaceful place. The cow didn't move. She just stood there staring in the same direction I was.
Did she wonder what had happened to her mate, as I did about mine? What if Chip had fallen out of the stand and shot himself? (Not that he would do that, but I imagine worse-case scenarios.) I knew Chip would never shoot at a cow. I wished I'd seen the bull to be sure it was legal. There wasn't another shot, but there was loud huffing. The cow still didn't move. I was frozen at attention, too. The heavy panting ceased, the cow bolted in her high-stepping way, and Chip pushed through the hedge. For the first time in three days, we raised our voices above a whisper.
He shouted over at me, asking where the bull was.
I yelled back, "I heard him but haven't seen him -- is it legal?" "Yes," he hollered, "three brow tines," and went back in the bushes before announcing he'd found him and he was dead. Shot through the lungs. That's when I ran toward Chip and our work began.
Help shows up
It took until about 2:30 p.m. to cut and bag the moose meat and begin the walks to the boat. I sang country songs to keep the bears at bay. Chip draped a dirty shirt on the antlers to add a human scent while we were gone. We didn't have any trouble. The magpies and ravens were the only scavengers we saw.
There were about four more loads left when our friends Don and his son Aaron arrived with their boat at the beach where we had tied ours and helped us out of our packs. I was so glad to see them. It was a relief to have company. We were suddenly all happy and humbled and proud, the way friends are after a successful hunt. "We did it, Heath," Chip said, beaming.
Aaron, who is young and strong, packed the entire meat-rich spine. Don took a quarter, Chip the head, and I carried out the tarp, gear and tools. We motored everything down to the landing and our truck in one trip, thanks to the two boats. Then, just like that, another moose hunt was over.
But you know, I don't think a hunt is ever gone for good. Of course, the gorgeous meat will be in the freezer, and for a year we will share it with family and friends after giving thanks for all this. There's also something that remains in my soul after killing a moose, and that something, I still can't quite name it, is sad and happy and holy and terrifying. I'm wiser than I was two weeks ago.
Haines author Heather Lende's third book,"Find the Good," was published earlier this year. Check her blog or Facebook page.