"Month of Moose Hunting" Modern Day Mountain Man, Season 5 Ep. #8, Alaska Yukon River Bulls

i was eight years old trapping muskrats on lightning creek when something came alive inside me i promised myself i would somehow live like the mountain man of old [Music] since then i've guided hunters in alaska for more than two decades and counting all told eight years of my life has been lived out of a tent in the wilderness the majesty solitude trials endured and tribulations overcome the endless wonders of nature and divine orchestration of everything in it keep calling me back [Music] we're in the meat tent here's some of the rams we got this here got some nice ones we have your tags there's the jason's right there that's pretty good there's the salt and table this is jason's full body hide that was a beautiful height on that sucker yeah that is a pile of horn there what do we got there 12 rams 11 5 5 5 11 12 yep with the one on the table [Music] so now it's 9 a.m thursday september the 8th i got weathered in here in fairbanks yesterday so had the whole day off just lounge around the hotel room got to eat a salad some pizza take a shower wash my clothes weather's good today so we're going to hop on a 185 on floats fly out to moose cam do some musa [Music] [Music] so so [Music] i ended up being four days late in the moose camp and my first hunter was mauricio trail from mexico the outfitter guided him the first four days of his 10-day hunt so the morning after i arrived we loaded up the canoe and headed up to spike camp mauricio trejo you are back i'm back for another moose smarter and with more pounds in my body for endurance same mustache though nice we haven't seen any moves [Applause] so i hope our luck improves starting tomorrow let's see what what happens and how things turn on still hunting with billy i'm glad oh yeah you got that going for you you did shoot a wolf though got a nice white wolf yeah a nice white wolf uh my fears wolf there's three hunters in camp this week so far nobody's got a moose but we've shot two wolves the first night we called in a small bowl right most to camp looking at us oh yeah [Music] too small about 40. old bulls don't do this he's right down windermere camp too over the next couple days we saw a few other small bulls and one that was possibly legal but just never came in [Music] so on day four we packed up our camp and headed five air miles upstream to a new spot we got it all loaded up lots of water boy that's nice for going up yeah we should be able to make it uh an hour and a half we're gonna go where jens shot his bull last year spent our last two and a half days there and hopefully scratch out a bull let's do it it has been rough i remember when i first started hunting here 12 years ago man it was a piece of cake you come to a spot like this see three four bowls in two or three days no good ones you just go on other three four air miles down the way you'd see a few more bulls there's fewer moves definitely fewer moves in the valley way fewer moose in the valleys but i think there's a lot of the bulls are up in the hills a lot of the moose in general but especially the bulls time is moving slow on these hunts when you don't when you don't see anything there's very few bears virtually no caribou i've never seen a caribou in this country there is a few though i saw tracks one year very few black bear we did see one black bear yesterday i don't know we're getting down to the wire and hope we can put her together for mauricio early the next morning we called in another small bull [Music] [Music] that afternoon we decided to move again into an area that no one has hunted for six years due to low water i had always done well there in the past and due to the high water we were having we decided to give it a shot running out of water yep i still hate this river and the water is high [Applause] there's a reason why nobody else hunts up here it took three hours to get there but that evening we spotted a big bull with a cow up a valley right behind their glassing nub they were slowly working towards the river so we waited but they stayed holed up in a spruce thicket [Music] late the next morning we hope to find them in the river bottom but they were actually further up the valley mauricio let's bag them and tag them today go time i don't know how the hell we're gonna get this guy he probably won't make 60 but pretty close well the bull stepped out again [Music] the bowl was a mile and a half off the river in very thick cover but the main problem was the wind the thermals were blowing up the valley to the moose and the wind direction was out of the south and with the moose in the head of the draw i knew it would be tough to get close to them from any direction where we could get close enough for a shot and for them to not get our wind we eventually did get 360 yards from the moose and they were slowly heading our direction at this antler tip right there on the right there's palm i should say right there but the prevailing wind trumped the thermals just for a few seconds and the game was over well the bull we were watching and the cow they went up over the ridge so nothing left there to do well it's been a pleasure to hunt with you again really that's for sure and um today that is the september the 14th i can tell you that even though we haven't shoot a moose in 10 days because this is our 10th day and our last one i don't bring a bitter feeling with me home i know it's great to shoot what you came to shoot but that's hunting you know sometimes you get a trophy sometimes you don't it's all about how hard you try but we were out of timing we got to see moves but they weren't responding to the cow calls so that's the way it is i hope the next hunter has better timing that i do that guy arrives tomorrow so i hope he gets to kill a moose so see you next year that's for sure my dad gave me a piece of advice [Applause] lots and lots of years ago it's probably the one piece of advice that i remember from him and mauricio and i were talking about this earlier you know we're both a little bit i guess down in the dumps maybe just you know come to the realization that hey it might not might not happen this hunt but my dad told me it was over something minor i don't i scarcely remember what it is but he said if that's the worst thing that happens in your life you'll be doing pretty good so yeah we're both fortunate to be up here you know my job's a lot easier if my hunter kills something early and you know morale is always better and and his life's easier but uh this hasn't been in the cards so far mauricio said we got one more shot and so we're just going to give this one one more chance he's all alone and hopefully we can call him in tonight see what happens now right at first light that day we also saw another big bull two miles upriver heading up a mountain into a thick draw so for our last stand of the hunt we tried calling in that area but once again we came up empty [Music] thank you [Music] gert's got mauricio loaded up they're off that's hot i definitely wish he'd got one mauricio was a fun guy to hunt with that's for sure just didn't work out this go around my next hunter i think i'm just gonna start from here it's as good as anything that i've seen um we're just a little bit down uh downstream of camp just head back up there start the next go around moose are moving now you know ruts really kicking in we're starting to get some frosts hopefully sooner or later get lucky four o'clock in the afternoon here comes my new hunter he's gonna land on a gravel bar just downstream of camp i'll buzz down there and pick him up i don't know who it is probably splashing her in the river oh nicely done kurt as always do you have a permit for water skiing here [Music] hi bill nice nice to be here my name is dawn rose i uh i'm from enumclaw washington it's my first moose hunt in alaska i've been an avid hunter all of my life i grew up in a logging family and started hunting at the age of 12 and when i got a little older and could afford to hire guides to take me out and show me how to do it that's what i've been doing for about the last 15 years so we're pretty excited about being up here in alaska and i'm especially excited about having billy moles for my guide so first day of dawn's hunt a couple of old black one a great one about 800 yards right now been up here moose calling away hopefully they get out of dodge eight o'clock day one did a little calling heard a bull over here spotted him crossing that slope coming our way yeah about what i figured 50 low 50s you got kind of funky brow tines i don't know if you'd say he's got two on each side or three on each side but yeah he's wrestling with the willows wouldn't be surprised if those wolves pop out somewhere well our bull's been sitting there staring into those willows where the wolves went and always feeding off you seeing you really feeding you just moving off and dawn's passing on him anyways you wants to hold out for something with a little more mass a little better points he's got fairly narrow palms he's just barely legal that's all he is and wolves they made that bull nervous enough he just heading out the winds heading from right to left we actually spotted the wolves they're actually a mile down river already but the bull probably just he walked right through where the wolves were got nervous and he lost all interest in the cow calling he wouldn't even look the last time i tried calling he just looked for a second then he looked back where the wolves were that's actually the runway you can see the airplane tracks yeah first 20 minutes of the first day so you leave a bowl here we got a good bull low 50s but he's got real good mass up front that's what don's looking for [Applause] oh oh [Music] we're just beating down this mountain here we're gonna get to the canoe get in there and we're gonna have to head this moose off because he's definitely not responding to the call so hopefully we win the race we should be able to get down here we're just motoring down we don't want to paddle just going real quiet we just got to get to this little stretch of timber here before the bowl gets through we get to this little stretch of timber we'll be able to see down the river he crosses the river and then there's about a 400 yard patch of tundra between the river and the mountain so we should have him covered as long as he comes through there and the wind is good it's swirling just a little bit but it's generally going downstream so sure we should be good [Music] [Applause] get ready get ready to shoot him pull up [Music] [Applause] [Music] shoot him [Music] [Music] shoot reload shoot that's how it's done my man day one holy man he was so close you on safety he was what 40 yards for how long a long time and it's just whisper quiet i think that moose was destiny we might be a black bear turd by now there was a black bear the whole time we were down right when we got here i look up i'm like what the heck's that black thing up on the glass and knob [Applause] and there's a black bear rolling around on her stuff we left some little bit of trash that we had and our seats and a tarp and there's a black bear up there rolling around on it [Applause] you made a nice shot don thank you he wasn't very far away but what the heck all right he's got points all the way around his fronts are the most impressive go up there and get your hands on that bugger isn't this tundra fun oh it's great [Applause] oh man he's got beautiful fronts [Applause] look at those brow palms yeah dandy congratulations man thank you nicely done thank you in this day and age a legal bowl in alaska is a good bull and that's a fine move don what took you so long first trip to alaska day one what was it about 10 o'clock in the morning well and like i told you we i said well between eight and nine is the best time we spotted the first bowl right at eight in this bowl right at nine so yeah it's uh you shot him at about 10 25. so we saw two legal bulls this morning and two wolves oh my uh my partner my sweetie her name is booga gilbertson she bought this hunt for me and she said don i want you to go on a moose you've always wanted to go on a moose on i want you to do it before you get too old to make that happen so two years ago she gave me a certificate on my birthday which happens to be christmas eve so it was kind of a combination birthday christmas present sounds to me like maybe she's kind of a cheapskate says good good for one moose hunt of your choice god bless her yeah yeah i thanked her dearly and i'd like to thank her right now it was all it would not be possible without her yeah yeah and you and i were talking up on the hill just the short time we were up there today i said you know when i've never when i was a young kid my dream was always to go moose hunting in alaska and you said yours was the same thing the moose was the one animal i wanted to come to alaska and hunt i just could not possibly believe when i was a kid how big these things appeared on american sportsman was the show that i watched and i was back in the 60s that was before you were born long before i was born american sportsman yeah they look like a dropped horse with horns but they sure are boy he's uh he's just he's a fine move see we taped him out right at 51. yeah he's just got those big big brow palms and that's that's what we noticed right away when he was coming in and uh that's what the first bolt didn't have the first bowl is actually a little bit wider his palms laid out a little flatter and his points went up this one's points go straight up but he's actually i think he was like 49 and a half from the tip of his brows the tip of his brow but yeah he's just he's a fine moose and nowadays in alaska i figure i tell most guys if you'd shoot him on the last day shoot him on the first day and yeah he's a fine moose fun's over done my work begins it does i'm glad we got some youngsters yeah we got we got help coming so it won't be too bad but yeah we'll get him rolling and uh we got an 18 year old from idaho yeah he ought to be tough enough but we'll find out a strong back and empty pockets let's hope yeah that's usually the case when the moose ignore calling like that they uh they got into a tussle his ears ripped he's got some scars as we've been flushing or skinning he got a pretty good jab right in his back there but yeah i ripped his ear right open but yeah we got this uh this underside butchered off we just left the ribs on for now we haven't gutted him yet so i'll get the neck done the hindquarters done back straps off obviously and then then we'll then i'll gut him he'll be easy to maneuver probably get the head off actually and then i'll gut him and take this ribs off take the tenderloins out flip them back over and get the other side of the ribs out you have to take the moose meat out on the bones here with the ribs and the four quarters so the bone has to be attached well the rain quit for us yeah this is just a perfect deal weather's turning good yeah the guys we think we heard about earlier so i think they're coming they'll probably be here just in time we've got about how we're done they're ready for the packing yep ready for the work although this is this is work but yeah we got time it's nice nice i love shooting them in the morning got all kinds of time to work we'll uh we'll cut them off at the hawks here once we're all done but i just wanted to get them off get them cooling down sweet deal look at that and what kind of a pilot shows up to pac meat kurt bettingfield probably the only one in alaska we're telling young scott here if he wants to be a guide you got to remember that if you're going to be dumb you got to be tough and if you're going to be a guide you better be both especially a moose guide that is a moose packing machine right there most pilots don't even want to throw them into their own plane let alone pack them through the tussocks but we got a uh pretty fine day here now rain let up the boys came to help they each got two loads down so i better better fill my pack and do a little carton here with them last load one two three big old wing nod by curtis yeah not too many pilots in alaska would land on in and help to pack a moose out that's for sure kurt's a class act no doubt about it that bugger looks nice loaded in a boat especially knowing the work is done 6 p.m so don we're loaded for grizzly bear and black bear now we got the tag so we'll uh we'll hit the hill tomorrow morning and see if we can find one we've got nine more days to fish hunt and maybe get a grizzly bear turn out the light the party's over for tonight for information on other dvds books and modern day mountain man apparel log on to billymolesadventures.com here you'll also find information on alaskan hunting opportunities with billy for doll sheep caribou moose brown bear grizzly bear as well as white-tailed deer hunting in wisconsin when he's not guiding 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Channel: Billy Molls Adventures

Views: 162,263

Rating: 4.8694444 out of 5

Keywords: Alaska Moose hunting, alaska moose hunt 2020, Alaska moose hunt 2021, float hunt, DIY Alaska moose hunt

Id: d2xOojfbU8c

Length: 31min 26sec (1886 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021