Alaska Moose Hunt 2020

chopping off the head [Music] opening morning of moose season and we just saw two moose but the fog rolled in so we're kind of just deciding what we're going to do i think we're just going to sit here because we don't want to drive down there be too loud been a pretty good morning so far probably been out here hunting for two hours and we've seen a really nice sized cow and then we all two these two bull moose one of them definitely isn't legal but then we just saw a second one and we can't tell if he is or not and then this fog rolled in so we might walk down there and or we might just keep up the trail and look for some other ones so we're going to be calling it quits today we're actually going to head home a little early because it's just super foggy out here we saw that cow earlier and we saw two bulls we spotted one again eric spotted one again but i just don't think with the rain coming in that we're gonna see much else today and if there's one thing we learned last season it is that patience is hard but i think that's kind of key when you're mishunting so eric and i are back out here hunting um it's been a good morning so far we got out here really early and spotted four cows that didn't appear to have calves with them we pursued a few of them and some of them got spooked and one of them we really got really close to getting but she was right atop a hill and i just wasn't really comfortable shooting there so we're glassing now and we've yet to see too much more i think we saw one more cow this seems to be a really good area that we're hunting so we are just going to keep keep waiting it out see if we can see anything maybe pursue it if they are close enough to us and it looks like the fog is coming in again all right guys you may be wondering why the tundra is on an atv trail in the middle of a creek that's because we're leaving today we're done hunting for the day we didn't get anything and two miles from the truck polaris broke down on us i don't know what happened she just died in this creek checked a few things couldn't figure it out so i hiked back to the truck unhooked the trailer and i drove the truck at the trail now we're going to hook a strap to the players and see if we can tow arrow out of here [Applause] okay we are back out hunting it's our fourth day hunting we've got the players back up and running and yesterday nothing didn't say anything and today we were saying cows left and right and we came upon a cow without a calf and took a shot had a good shot she didn't quite go down as we planned um so we're we're here and she is she's on her on her way out and we're just waiting to go get up there to her so i took the shot at about 150 yards we were it was just a great placement but i was a little uneasy about it we did i shot her more than once she's not breathing anymore we're really close to her so we're gonna head head down there that is scary she's she's gone beauty that's a nice-sized cat how how old do they choose the work has just begun this moose is down we shot her from way up on that ridge where the polaris is um the good thing is she's in a great spot she's on nice flat ground the grass is pretty short and i'm pretty sure we can drive our players right down to her so that's the next step we're gonna hike back up the hill and we're gonna try the players down there because it's got all of our gear in it and we're gonna get to work i just wanted to mention one thing because i don't think we have i have a cow tag for this area that is how we were able to harvest this cow and eric has his tag for a bull if we happen to see a eligible bull pretty exciting it's i don't even know what to say i'm exhausted the work is just starting to begin this is awesome we're gonna have some meat this year okay let's head back up she's right there i don't quit you know which way to go you want me to go first technical kind of look i've been pretty shallow there or something you sure okay i just hope that's not a ditch down there it's way above my comfort zone we made it down to the moose we're getting out the proper equipment get this thing processed and i just brought pretty much every single one of our knives so we don't have to sharpen anything out here we got a victorinox we got a mora we got a benchmade and then we have a custom one uh i don't know what the brand is exactly off top of my head but this was made in italy it's an awesome skinny knife one thing we are very cautious about is the bears around here not too much the wolves we did see wolf tracks yesterday but we saw uh grizzly bear tracks really close to here yesterday so i'm gonna load up the rifle again we'll have the two sidearms and we're just gonna be kind of keeping an eye while we get this thing processed luckily it's about 8 30 in the morning uh maybe about 8 40 now and it's a beautiful day today there's just little flies out here but no rain in the forecast so this is going to be awesome there we how heavy would you go it heavier than a bag of feed perfect that's great and then if we also get that front arm actually i don't even need that front arm open well yeah i do because remember all it's so high up you have to go yeah something went on there okay guys we just got the spleen off of the stomach this is the spleen we've got the liver saved over here i'm pretty sure this is a lot of fat and our plan was we have game bags our plan was to skin things and get it all wrapped up change plans because of how she went down we're actually just gonna be quartering her out maybe even taking the whole carcass home and doing a lot of it at home because there's so many flies out here it's kind of a warm day and we don't really want anything to spoil or get too dirty out here that's kind of our plan we also didn't bring that much water with us so we're kind of going to be in a hurry today i'm really thankful that we've done this with the roadkill moose already so we have somewhat of an idea how to um approach it but it is a messy job with that moose in the back of the players we're going to be a lot heavier so it's probably going to be about an hour and a half on the trail to get to the truck and then we got to get everything loaded up and then we got about a 50-minute drive home so hopefully within like three hours we should uh once we have this thing loaded up we should be home and be able to get it should be home and be able to get it fully processed get the skin off get it cold and then really start working on it so arrows over there i gotta jump in and help her cool we got the whole right side of the animal taking off at least the front quarter and the hindquarter we still got the rib cage we're skinning that we're going to take back the whole rib cage we like to get all the meat off of it in fact in alaska at least where we're at you have to get all the meat off of it so we're taking the whole thing with us we are going to now flip it over onto the other side we're going to roll the meat that we skinned onto part of the skin that we've skinned off and then also this tarp so we don't get it as dirty and then we're going to get those two other hindquarters off and then at that point we should be able to try to get that carcass in the back of the polaris it's gonna be really heavy we got the carcass which is the rib cage the back and the neck so we're gonna flip this thing over wow so far minimal damage to the meat um we found the one that dispatcher was in her head she had one in her neck and then just one that barely grazed her her belly so thankfully nothing really bad there and this is her heart it's huge we're gonna be putting that aside saving all the organs for the dogs and some for us so we kind of changed plans a little bit we were thinking we're just going to cut the back straps out and then we're going to lift the carcass in one piece up onto the polaris and i we just can't do it it's way too heavy there's no trees that we could like run a winch line up and pull it up just a bunch of dead trees around us so what we're going to do is we're leaving the back straps in the tenderloin in the animal and we're going to basically cut the animal in half through the ribs and then we're going to axe the spine and we're gonna get into two sections and i lifted up the back and i'm pretty sure we can lift each of those sections uh separately so yeah we're getting pretty close to being done here and ariel's just getting out the last of the organs and yeah we're gonna continue chopping her in half that's a bigger heart i think than that male had is it you remind me that episode when bear grylls slept inside the camel well you're really knife me you cut my tarp wait the tarp that's what this tarp is for that's so sad you're sacrificing it i don't think i actually threw it no but okay so i think i found a kidney we already had the pancreas i'm sorry we already have the spleen and i'm looking for the pancreas i gotta go back to the stomach i think this is a kidney but it's just one so we need to find the other one just buried in the fat nice little kidney bean there you go for breakfast is that why they call it a kidney bean because it looks like a kidney i absolutely have no idea it makes sense now the other way around right kidney retrieved with beautiful fat on it oh my goodness me do you want to just throw this tarp on top there's a big good one on top sure it's clean on half of it yeah you did cut through half of it so that's okay we are getting close to being able to hit the trail we brought a lot of stuff in you need a lot of gear out here to get a mousse and also get yourself unstuck some stuff like this so a lot of that was filling up the bed so i'm just finding new spots to put all this stuff but when we actually get back to the cabin and we get the mousse unloaded and get it in the freezer i'm going to kind of go over the polaris and some of our gear and just kind of what we've learned from last season about stuff that we need to bring out here moose honey pretty smooth room not that bad minus the whole way down [Music] we got players all loaded up it took us from we actually put a knife to that moose to right now a little over two hours of work so not too bad at all but it's starting to get pretty hot out here today i think it's going to be close to 70. so we're going to start hitting the trail back we drove down here there's a pretty smooth trail there's one little steep part to get up to the actual trail so we'll see how we do all right we made it up the hill in the polaris i forgot the gopro was on the dash and we lost the gopro so we're back down here arrow just found it thankfully and we're hiking up back to where the players is would have lost the camera and the footage sorry about it so we're headed home for real now [Music] that was steep [Music] so we're just stopping real quick because i have something in my eyeball and i need to wash my hands the only one thing that we probably should have brought was more water and we both realized we brought a little amount of water so that would be nice next time thankfully there's a stream and because we're in alaska most of the time there's water nearby so we still have a few more miles to go quite a few actually and it's probably gonna take us at least another hour we're gonna go slower because of all that weight we have so that's one of the muddiest sections we just went through and you could definitely tell the difference when you have all that moose me in the back i'm not sure how much weight we have i'm guessing five or six hundred pounds the good thing about this trail most of it's downhill so going through the mud it's usually a little better going downhill there is one really steep downhill section that's really slick we were actually sliding down it when we didn't have any weight in the back but that's towards the end of the trail so we'll see what happens when we get there [Music] [Music] we've made it to the top of the mountain we just climbed out of the valley where we got the moose and this is the trail we're going down we're just checking things over real quick on the players this is probably the part i'm most worried about is the downhill because it's really steep and it's hard to go down with nothing in the back we did bust the floor on our polaris i don't know if you can see that big rock came through and hit that the stock skid plate that this comes with it only protects like pretty much the center i think it's like a maybe about that way like a foot and a half wide and after last year we scraped this thing so much we wanted to order a skid plate for this so earlier this season i went online to try to order a skid plate for it and the shipping of the skid plate was more than what the actual skid plate was so it was gonna be like 1500 to get a skid plate for this so we didn't get one and now we're paying for it so we're gonna have to do something we're gonna have to build something or get something custom built but here we go we gotta get this moose out of here this thing can be fun you go left i'll run down [Music] [Music] the hardest part is over we made it down to the bottom of the trail this is actually where we broke down in the polaris uh the other day and we had to drop the tundra here to toe it out it is two miles from here back to the truck and it should be a pretty easy ride we gotta go through this river and a couple little tiny hills but nothing bad so i think we're pretty much in the clear we made it down the hill we're loaded up and we're heading home we made it home we're gonna get this meat cleaned up get the rest of the skin off of the four quarters i think we left a little bit of the skin on there and then we're gonna get it in the freezer and just unplug the freezer just to keep this meat cool until tomorrow so we still got a little work to do today that's that's heavy i up rubber okay yes [Music] now that we got the moose taken care of and it is in the coolers we have a rainstorm coming in pretty soon so i need to get the polaris unloaded so a few of the heavier items that we bring is going to be our spare tire which since we had to put the mousse in the back went up on the roof and we always bring two gallons of gas and then i believe this polaris holds about nine gallons so we've never ran too low on fuel we've only had to use that gas can one time and then we always bring a high lift and this is or it's called a farm jack these things come in extremely handy we use this all the time we bring a shovel this is a shooting stick just to kind of use to steady your rifle we bring an axe this comes in handy for processing a moose or if you need to cut down a tree to get unstuck and then this is something new to us that we actually just bought and this is called a land anchor when you get up high into the mountains a lot of the time there is nothing to hook a winch to if you get stuck and we've been in some pretty bad situations so we decided to buy this and this basically sits like that on the ground you hook your winch here and you have you know you try to put some pressure on this have someone stand on it and as you winch these dig down in the ground and hence the name this is a land anchor and then it's actually folds up like this for storage last thing we have is two big blocks of wood a few weeks ago we were up in the mountains behind here and we got stuck in the mud and we were using the high lift to get out because there was nothing to winch to and we had nothing to put under the tires so it took us about an hour to get out so now i keep these blocks of wood in the back of the players with us last year we didn't have legitimate gun racks in this thing and i just kind of had them strapped to the ceiling of the players which worked but it was really dusty last year and every time we went to grab a rifle we had to clean them off before we wanted to shoot them so we invested in these gun boots we really like them they're in these hard shells and there's a padding in there and they keep them out of the weather so this side was my rifle and this is a marlin it's a 4570 and over on this side this is the rifle arrow shooting and this is a remington 700 and this is a 270. now that we're done with the back let's just kind of go over the actual machine itself and tell you what we use this is a 2014 polaris ranger 6x6 and it has a 800 motor we bought this thing used because they actually don't make these anymore i believe they stopped making them in 2016. but this has been a great machine for us we used it all hunting season last year we put close to a thousand miles on it last year one of the main advantages of this machine is you have two extra tires so when you put this thing in full six-wheel drive every single one of these tires will be spinning another thing that's awesome about these is you get a huge bed and you get this huge toolbox this thing right here pretty much holds every single thing that we bring out there something we decided to bring this year was all of our rain gear so those are my rain pants in here is all of the tools that we bring air compressor wrenches spark plugs electrical gear tire repair kit all that's in here this is ariel's side arm that's a 357 magnum this is another piece of recovery gear if we need to winch backwards or to the side this is a come along whenever we go out if we see trash on the ground we try to pick it up so that's what that is binoculars this is a tripod for our gopro we have our fire extinguisher bunch of bungees some rope a nice big d-ring and what i use that d-ring for is this which is a snatch block and basically what this does is we can use this on another anchor point and we can double the strength of our winch we bought a bunch of rags which was awesome to have this hunting season this is kind of like our bug out bag or survival bag we did a video on this in the past so i'm not going to completely break it down but it's got pretty much everything we need from first aid fire starting fishing shelter water purification all kinds of good stuff in there the only real storage we have in here is the glove box and underneath the seat and underneath the seat we have a couple straps this one's a 30 foot long strap and then we have a 15 foot long strap out front there's nothing too special we did add a light bar which is awesome to have and we have a 4500 pound winch and cool thing about this ranger is it has some front storage so we have an extra belt and some extra fluids in there over on the passenger side which is where ariel sits we just have our hunting jackets sitting here which are also you know our rain jackets and then we have the glove box which we put a ton of stuff in we have more rags we have all of our hunting licenses and ariel's draw tag we have our gloves in here aerial set of binoculars her ear plugs we carry a ton of flashlights with us i think we have three or four different ones just in here and then one thing we always bring with us is our gps and then the charger so we can actually hook it up to the polaris and charge it and as far as the cab goes on the polaris this has the glass front then it has the plastic back and it has the metal roof and we really like the metal roof because it's strong enough that we can actually both stand up there and we can glass for moose and on this side of the toolbox this is where we kept a lot of our camera gear so we bring our gopro and we bring our main camera which is ariel's photography camera and then we brought our tripod but we also have our moose call in here we have some game bags that we didn't use this season this is where we kept our water bottle and all our food which i already unloaded and then this is where i had our ammo which i already unloaded overall this machine did awesome this year last year i think we really beat on this machine uh we snapped a couple axles we blew out a few tires this year we busted the hole in the floor which you know it happens we don't have a full skid plate on it and we broke down that one day and i had to drive the tundra and pull it out actually all that happened that day was a wire came unplugged that went to i believe it's the coil and i couldn't see it i didn't find it until we got home so overall we really love this machine but we have a bunch of stuff i gotta get put away so i'm gonna get to it the polaris is all cleaned up and ready for our next adventure we were not as lucky last year and i think we're both glad that this season is over and and done with and we were fortunate and we both really enjoy going out there and hunting it's a great experience but there's also the element of uncertainty which makes hunting pretty discouraging so i know that we just try to remind ourselves to be grateful that we're in the position we're in and we were able to go out there and get a moose that being said we ran out of moose meat a while ago and we want to eat some more so we're going to get in there we're going to start processing this thing and that's what you're going to see in the next video is us getting that mousse all processed and in the freezer what's up with it i don't know is it super tight it's super tight

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 455,531

Rating: 4.8097219 out of 5

Keywords: moose hunting alaska, cow tag alaska, hunting cow moose, moose hunt alaska, processing moose, quartering a moose, off grid cabin, off grid property, off grid alaska, alaska channel, off grid vlog, life in alaska, alaska vlog, off grid living, homesteading alaska, gardening alaska, cabin living, atv trail alaska, polaris ranger, 6x6 ranger, Alaska diy moose hunt, alaskan moose hunting, homestead alaska, beginner moose hunting, field dressing moose

Id: lhk7fj30VHI

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020