BEST. BURGER. EVER: Chef Dan's Moose Burger!
From Elisse's moose! :-)
I truly can't even Begin to describe HOW good these are! Seared on the outside, rare in the middle... So simple and SO good! IMHO, this TRULY belongs on the list of Great Burgers of the World! Moose courtesy our Foodie Hunting Trip to Canada, augmented by French Fries and Chef Dan's house-made Remoulade Sauce! Can't put moose burgers on our official Elkhorn Inn menu, but we can treat friends! :-)
Showing posts with label glunting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glunting. Show all posts
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Monday, December 9, 2013
Oh, Canada: Moose Packin', Haulin' & Hide-Scrapin'!
Day 8: Moose Packin'... Out
Next: Jasper and Banff, & Walking on a Glacier!
As my few intrepid blog readers know, Dan and recently I went moose hunting in British Columbia, Canada, and the preceding post was about me learning to hunt and, finally, getting a moose. J The morning after I got the moose, Joe, our Hunting Guide, whom we'd taken to referring to as "Nazi Joe", (behind his back, of course, as you don't want to piss off your (armed) guide), due to his oft-proclaimed love for the Nazis, managed to damn near destroy our long-planned and saved for "one in a lifetime" hunting holiday in less
than 30 seconds. At our late breakfast- no point in getting up
early, since Joe proclaimed right after I got the moose that we were not hunting on the last day of our hunt, as we had to deal, instead, with the processing of my moose- my husband- who just got cheated out fo his last day of hunting by this POS- volunteers (as usual…) to not only take
our truck to the meat processor so Joe can drive his "non-working properly" truck (which
currently has my moose in it) to the repair shop, but to then drive Joe back to
camp! So we follow Joe, who is driving his “non-working” truck
like a psycho on speed, running stop signs, etc., seemingly in a deliberate attempt
to lose us in the rural wilds of Vanderhoof. We get to their meat processor- the one Joe's wife had told me about in
our year-long email correspondence, in which I repeatedly asked
her for very specific details about the meat processing issue, as I didn't want
any surprises- and boy, did we get a surprise. Mrs. Joe had made it all sound easy-peasy, and told us it would cost $1.00/pound. But when we got to Mr.
Processor, he flatly informed us that that he
couldn't and wouldn't be able to process our meat for at least 5 days- if not
longer- as he was just Way too busy- all of a sudden. Moose started rutting two days
ago, he explained (tell me about it...), and Everyone was bringing him moose... (On top of which, if he had been willing do do it, he would have charged us $1.25/pound, cash only. And while that extra 25 cents may not sound like much, where you're talking abut an 800 lb. moose, you're talking Money). Joe smirks at the butcher’s assistant, a
fat, homely, and sullen girl with a bad hot pink haircut held back with a bobby
pin from her big, round face, and says “love your hair”. She stares back at him
coldly, blankly, and without a change in her miserable expression. Then Mr. Processor tells us there’s no way for him to ship our meat to the USA. And then
that there’s no Plan B, no alternative, no nothing. He thinks we’re from Washington
State, and finds it laughingly funny that
we have a 10-day drive home to West Virginia towing a freezer, and have to get home in a timely fashion to run a business. By this point I'm civil, but ice cold; I’m not a happy camper, and I have a Very good reason. After both Dan and I ask Mr. Butcher and Joe if
there’s anyone else we can go to get our meat processed, Joe mentions 2 other
processors who are supposedly "far away" (making it clear he doesn't want to- and
has no intention of- going to either one), but won’t give us their names, and the
butcher says he doesn't have a phone number for either one (and doesn't even try to
get one, or offer to make a call- nothing), and that’s that. So Dan and I both ask
again: what are we going to do? I start to smell a racket: this is
how they get American hunters to leave them their meat. Interestingly,
we’re supposedly having Celine’s moose stew tonight for dinner- frozen from
last season- and I can’t help but wonder whose moose was donated for the cause... Mr. Butcher finally says that if Joe and Dan will skin and quarter the moose, we can hook up our freezer to
his parking lot outlet, and let the meat freeze solid for a couple of days, and they both
agree. (Had it been just me, or me with someone who had no clue how to skin and quarter a moose, or hadn't the sheer, physical strength it takes to do that, I would have been SOL). Joe, of course, has no knives, the butcher offers nothing, and it’s going
to be up to DIY Dan- again- to drive all the way back to camp to get our little
set of Overstock.com meat knives. It’s bitter cold, so I go inside the butcher shop, and watch Joe and
Dan through the window start to wiggle the 300+ pound hindquarters of my
moose off the truck. As Mr. Butcher and Miss Pink Hair busy themselves wrapping sausages, I
mention how we had wanted to have sausages made, too, and he actually laughs in
my face. At this point I will throw my moose meat in a dump if it’s rotting and
I have to, but this bunch of uglies aren't getting one piece of it. We were
obviously about to fling about $1000 at him, and he obviously couldn't
have cared less- I guess business must be Very good in Vanderhoof. I tell him
that I understand fully that this mess is not his fault, but that no, I’m not a
happy camper, because the outfitter had no Plan B for any of this, and that I
had corresponded with Joe's wife about this exact issue for a year. “Who's she?" he asks. At his point Joe barrels in,
apologizes to the butcher(!), and bellows at me, as he runs back to the truck, “It’s
not his fault!” “I know it’s not his fault, and I told him so!” I said- and was
about to say “it’s YOUR fault- and Mike’s”- when he heaves the hind quarters of my moose back into his truck, and, as
Dan and I stand there with our mouths open, slams the tailgate shut, yelling “I’m
taking it back to camp, I’m gonna skin and quarter it, and then you can do
what the hell you want with it!” And then he jumps into his "non-working" truck and takes off
like a bat out of hell- all of a sudden his truck is running Just Fine. On
the drive back to camp- Joe has disappeared into the wilds- Dan and I try to
work out exactly what we will do: Dan, how
he will skin and cut up a moose- hopefully before Joe hacks it to pieces in a
fit of rage- and both of us, how we will keep it frozen after Dan spends today skinning
and quartering and bagging it up- instead of hunting. Hooking our
freezer up to their wonky, little generator that blows out every 5 minutes is not an
option. So much for Dan’s holiday. L Angry doesn't even Begin to go where I am right now. We've basically decided to get
out of here tonight and find a motel, possibly in Vanderhoof, where we can hook
up the freezer for a day or two and let the meat freeze solid before heading
home- there is no way we want to spend one minute more than is absolutely
necessary with a foul-mouthed Nazi lunatic with obvious Anger Management
Issues- whom I consider- especially after listening to his stories of hunting
murders: the wife and boyfriend who shot the husband square in the chest
(“right here” he said, repeatedly, poking at the center of his ribs), went to
town and partied for 3 days before reporting him missing and had it ruled an
“accident”, and the Mexicans who ‘accidentally’ killed their friend who came
back with a deer over his shoulders, shoved his lifeless body in the back of a
car, and then went on a drunken binge- to be dangerous. And I Definitely don’t
want Dan or I going out hunting with him again- this creep has “hunting
accident” written all over him with an indelible Sharpie pen.
When we get back to camp I go into our room and start packing our belongings back into our plastic tubs, while
Dan gets our set of meat-cutting knives and goes to the shed where Joe has already hung and started
cutting up my moose; Dan, of course, has no fear of Joe at all. My hope is that
in his blind rage Joe hasn't destroyed my moose and hacked it to useless pieces-
he’s obviously a nut-job of the first stripe, and a 6’2”, foul-mouthed, Nazi-admiring, armed, racist, and scary nut-job, who just had a little 4’9” Jewish (IDF Vet) girl
take out a moose at 275 yards with one clean shot to the chest, and he’s obviously
Pissed Off Big Time. Because I Really don't want to be anywhere near Nazi Joe, I don't go to the shed to watch Dan skinning and cutting up the moose, which I badly wanted to see and photograph- and help with, if I could. The whole point of this trip was for me to learn to hunt, and I wanted to learn that part of it, too. :-( Dan comes in to tell me that we are stuck here until at
least tomorrow, as Joe can’t do our tag paperwork, and we have to wait until
Mike gets back- and, inexplicably, no one knows when that might be. Joe is,
quite obviously now, very definitely not a “partner” in this screwball business.
Dan also tells me that we now have to go into Vanderhoof to buy meat bags and hide salt, as they don't have either one. Celine is sitting in the dark in the
kitchen reading her book under the skylight; the generator’s off, and although
she turned it on so I could flush the toilet(!), she has now apparently turned
it off again, because the lights aren't working and my computer goes dead. I sit there on our cot for about a half hour staring into dark space, as I truly want
nothing to do with C- or any of them- at this point, and then I think: “This is
NUTS! We have paid them $8500 and I'm sitting here in the freakin’ dark?!” I
nicely ask Celine to turn on the generator, explaining that I have nothing to do to
kill time except write my blog (hint, hint...), and she does, and I reboot the computer. I ask for a
cup of coffee and she tells me they are out of milk, too- as far as she's concerned we're already gone. They have no
refrigeration, and their little generator is a tiny joke that cuts out at least 4 times a night, so their food sits either in a plastic
chest with a bag of ice or outside (which is currently a balmy 50 degrees)- which is what made me question 3 days of her canned salmon
lunch sandwiches; sure enough, Dan got diarrhea from the last one. Both Celine
and I are ignoring what’s happened- I will not say a thing unless she brings it
up, and she obviously- and wisely- isn't going to. I have pretty much packed us
up; waiting for the word from Dan so we can get the hell out of here, hopefully
with my moose meat, hides, feet, rack, and cape intact.
Tom, the "go-fer" has just walked in. I am listening through the paper-thin,
unfinished walls (as if they are in the same room with me) as Celine tells him
that no one has heard from Mike for 5 days; this really is nuts! Seriously- how can you even Think about running a business- not to mention an international tourism business- when you won't contact your employees or clients for a week at a time?! Would I
recommend this outfitter? You have Got to be kidding! I hear Celine tell Tom
about my one-shot kill, and Tom is ecstatic; when I walk into the kitchen he
makes a fuss, congratulates, and hugs me, and basically does what I really
needed to be done last night, when I wanted to break out our sparkling
Spanish wine from Jasper, share it with the whole gang, and have a celebration.
But he’s a day late and a dollar short; I am pleasant but cool as I regale him
with the short version of my shooting the moose, and we trade a few comments about hunting adrenaline rushes- how you literally don't feel the gun going off, or flinch, or shut your eyes, even for a second. (Yes, adrenaline is really interesting stuff...) On my way
out the door I SO want to turn back and say “and Joe destroyed it all in 10
seconds this morning” and leave them with their mouths open, but I don't. I
still have hope that Mike will return and rectify this mess.
Dan and I buy Kosher salt for salting the hides at the Co-Op, meat bags at the one sports store in Vanderhoof that sells them, and a bottle of whisky, which we have a feeling we're going to want later on this evening, and get back from our 4+ hour “run to town” at 7p.m. On the way to town we accidentally find another meat processor- the one Joe
insisted was So Far Away that he wouldn't be bothered to even call- or give us the number- but
“unhelpful” doesn't Begin to describe the sullen, expressionless woman there,
too. (Is this a Vanderhoof Thing, or is it just us? LOL) No, they won’t process our moose, and no, they don’t have meat bags, and
no, she doesn't know where one can buy any, and no, she doesn't know of any
other meat processors. We stop at the A&W to have a rather nasty bite to
eat- ballast, essentially, as we're unsure if we’ll be having dinner at “camp” or bugging out. I
know for a fact that I’m Definitely not sitting at table again with Nazi Joe. The
camp’s “driveway” is so badly pitted that even driving our 4WD truck at 1 mph
makes our strapped-down 7’ freezer bounce on the truck bed like a rubber ball- and while funny the first time or two, after a solid week of it, wondering if we've damaged the truck or the freezer, it's decidedly less amusing. We return to camp to find that Mike and the couple from Washington have finally
returned, but are out hunting- as Dan should be- as all they got during their cold, wet week at "Spike Camp" was hubby’s
small bear- really small, judging from the tiny ball of fur outside next to their
tarp-covered pile of meat. According to Celine, the wife did not even See a
moose, much less get to live out her fantasy of slitting its throat in a river, so methinks she’s Not a
happy camper. My gut feeling is that when she saw my 5-point moose rack, sitting next
to my two giant moose skin hides, (not to mention the shed full of my hanging
moose meat, or the Extremely Disturbing eyeless, hornless moose head which
would have been Just Her Ticket…), she put her tiny Cabela’s-shod foot down and
demanded to be taken moose hunting Right Now. Psycho Joe is gone- happily- as I
hoped he’d be. My moose has been cut up into five pieces (two hind legs, two
forelegs, and neck) and is hanging and covered, and Dan managed to get the hides partially scraped. Dan said that Joe calmed down "somewhat" while they were skinning
and cutting up the meat, and hadn't deliberately hacked it all to bits as I feared
he might, but apologize, or leave me an “I’m sorry- I totally lost it” note, he didn't have the balls
to do. Dan shared the stunt Joe pulled this morning at the butcher with Celine,
and she acted appropriately aghast- so she’s at least pretending to have the right
attitude, if nothing else. We spend a bit of time chatting with her in the
kitchen, acting like everything is Just Dandy, and she asks if I’d like French
Toast for our last breakfast the next morning. I tell her that it’s lucky Dan had the knowledge,
skills, abilities, physical strength, and our set of meat knives and saw, or
I’d still be in that field with a now-rotting moose carcass, and she thinks I’m
joking and starts to laugh! So I tell her I’m very much NOT joking- and that since
she was there, she knows I have a dozen photos proving my point, and she shuts up. It will be
interesting to see how Mike- Boss Man- responds to all this, this evening. I sit
at our laptop in our room, eating some yummy moose carpaccio Dan brings me J If we’d thought about it, we would have bought capers, parm, and balsamic vinegar in Vanderhoof, and not just another bottle
of whisky, but we were kind of focused on the meat bags and getting back to Camp before
Psycho Nazi Joe did something Else crazy, and the thought of being able to have a drink that evening was foremost in our minds... Dan brings me a tiny piece of "half-smoke" salmon from the Washington couple, who apparently travel with salmon, as well as beer and hot sauce. Still no moose stew, which I am waiting to
try...
Then I hear, through the paper-thin, un-insulated walls, that Joe
is back. And chatting to Dan in the dining room like everything is hunky-bunky!
Ugh! I steel myself: I’m going to try to let Dan handle this one. I’ll sit here in our room,
sip scotch (with dinner at some point, hopefully), and play on the computer, and let Dan
do the Guy Thing with Mike and hopefully fix this mess. Not only did Mike write my name
wrong on my hunting license, refuse to change it, and make fun of me for being
concerned that the name on my license didn't match the one on my
passport, saying, with a smirk, that if US Customs gives me a
problem at the border I should “tell them to call me”, (and leave a
message on his machine which he Might bother returning in 2 weeks?), I have
just realized he wrote my birth date wrong, too, and I am now Very concerned about taking the moose meat through Customs at the border. As we booked this hunt
over a year ago, and Mike Facebook-messaged me asking for our exact names and
birth dates and I responded immediately with both, there’s no excuse; either
he’s an incompetent idiot or a crook- and either way he shouldn't be allowed to
run an international outfitting company. My hope is that Mike is smart enough-
or gets smart fast enough- to at least offer Dan another day or two of hunting (with
another guide) to make up for this ugly fiasco. We're more than willing to pay for another day or two of hunting (if he's a prick and wants to charge us), and we're also willing to spend a night or two in a motel in Vanderhoof at our own expense so we can plug our freezer into an electric outlet. For as the chances of us having another opportunity to drive cross-country to go hunting here are infinitesimal, we need to do it Now.
At 8: 42p.m. I hear Joe try to get Dan into another stupid WWII conversation about
Nazi atrocities, braying again his
respect for the Nazis, and how, again, if they just hadn't been in a rush they
would have won, and for me that’s the last, stinking straw. I call Dan into
our bedroom (“Honey- when you get a minute. I need to speak to you…”), and put
my foot down. Either he deal with that piece of walking Nazi excrement- and
Mike- right now, or I will- and it won't be pleasant. I’ll be damned if I- who shot the only thing with bragging rights this week- am going to sit alone, holed-up in our bedroom, because I don’t want to be in Nazi Joe’s stinking, fetid presence. The whole idiot band is
now back and yukking it up in the dining room full-volume, right outside my
door; Joe should have Long crawled
back into his cockroach hole with the darling wife he claimed to have been
away from too long- or at least be in his room with the door shut- and Mike is
the one who needs to send him to his room. After what he pulled this morning, why
he is even Here tonight is beyond both of us. I warned Dan- with tears running down my
face as I slammed my sunglasses across the room and shattered them- that he’d better
do something fast, because if I go out there I will give a little speech that
will leave them all with their jaws down around their ankles. Tonight was the night for Mike to make amends for Joe’s fiasco and
make it up to Dan and I, and it's not happening; he obviously thinks he’s
10 feet tall and bullet-proof, and doesn't give a shit. At 10:26p.m. Dan comes in our room to tell me that he took Mike aside and told him the whole story, and that
Mike professed to be “appalled”, but it’s obviously a lie; he not only isn't doing a damn
thing about it, he and Nazi Boy are Still sitting at the dining room table right
outside our bedroom yukking it up. And no, Dan can’t stay and hunt for a day or
two to make up for this ugly fiasco and being screwed out of a day’s hunting,
because they have a whole new bunch of hunters coming in; Mike is, however,
taking the other couple hunting in the morning to try to placate the wife who didn't see a moose all week. Dan is now furious: he’s stunned
that Mike didn't even come in to speak to me, much less apologize, and he wants out of here now even more than I do. While Dan is
packing the meat and hides into our freezer and loading our truck, Mike is laughing
louder and louder at his own jokes right outside our room to make Sure I get
the message and know how much contempt he holds us in. And get the message I
do-and so will the BC Hunting License Authority. It is now pouring rain and 50 degrees; apparently
Mother Nature didn't listen to genius Celine: “the meat will be fine- there’s
no humidity”. The only saving grace of this entire fiasco is the moose
meat, and we need to get out of here and get to a motel where we can connect
the freezer to an electric outlet ASAP so we don’t lose it. Lorne, the kid
trainee guide, comes into our room to help carry out the last of our cases and
actually congratulates me on my great shot with a big, shit-eating grin. That’s the last freaking straw, and
I go off on the poor sod and succinctly tell him- loud enough for Mike, et al to clearly hear-
how Nazi Joe essentially destroyed our once-in-a-lifetime, year-long-planned hunting holiday in 10
seconds flat that morning. His eyes go wide like saucers, and it’s patently obvious he’s a
clueless nit and that 99% of what I am saying is whizzing right past him at 100 mph;
he’s def not the sharpest knife in the outfitting drawer. I have written a
letter to Mike, but Dan convinces me not to leave it. We leave, instead, $20 Canadian on the table with a note: “thanks
for the cigarettes”. It continues to amaze us both how none of them were the Slightest
bit interested in getting a tip from us- and we were prepared to drop Lots of money on both Joe and Celine, as one normally would. As I walk out of
our room and towards the door no one says a word, and as I go out the door
Celine says to me “Are you coming back in?” Not “goodbye”, or “I’m so sorry”,
or anything a normal person in the hospitality business might say. I say “I
don’t think so, but I’m not sure”. “Safe travels” she says. “You, too” I say. It’s
now clear she’s either a POS who thinks Joe & Mike’s
treatment of us is appropriate, or she’s their pitiful slave. She told us a
number of things this week, including how she sold a huge tract of her land to Mike, and as she sits in the dark in the cabin
all day rather than turn on the generator, I have the distinct feeling she’s
beholden to him. And then Dan and I triple-check the truck to (hopefully) make
sure we have everything (we leave behind the ghastly eyeless, hornless moose
head, and accidentally forget our excellent bottle of mango hot sauce that we bought at the winery), and begin to slowly drive down their I-so-wish-I had-a-Deuce-And-A-Half,
pitted, mud-soup “driveway” from hell towards Vanderhoof in the wet dark. Never
did get a plate of that moose stew, much less Celine’s vaunted French Toast.
LOL
We check into a motel in Vanderhoof, hook
up our freezer to their outlet, pour ourselves shots of Scotch, and happily
crawl between crisp, clean, white sheets, feeling like 1000 pounds has been
lifted off our shoulders. But I do not sleep well. The whole ugly mess keeps
replaying itself in my head, and I toss and turn all night, waking up repeatedly
from “the Rolodex” as I call it, and disturbing dreams, one of which has people
stealing our suitcases out of the truck; I wake Dan up to ask if he’s locked
the truck, which, of course, he has… I finally give up, get up, and boot up the
Nexus...
Days 9: Moose Haulin' - Prince George
We stop for breakfast and coffee on Highway 16, and the waitresses
go Totally Bananas over my pink-trimmed, rhinestone-encrusted, and Hello-Kitty
festooned Real Tree handbag, wanting to know where I got it, and we share
shopping, handbag design, and eBay stories. J
As we drive towards Prince George, about half-way there (30 minutes out of
Vanderhoof), we see a billboard advertising bison for sale, and think: what the
hell- let’s throw some bison in the freezer, too! Dan turns the truck around
and we see that Chilako Meats also offers meat processing (more proof of Joe being a
lying sack of shit), and the gate is open, so we pull in, and although the sign
on the door says “Closed”, as we turn the truck around and pull up to the
building we see a nice, smiling man in the window. I lean out and say “I know
it’s Sunday, but we were hoping you were open…” and he says “what do you
have?”, and I say “a moose”, and he says “come on in”, and the next thing you
know Dan is standing in our freezer helping to hook my moose’s giant hams and
forelegs to Mr. Butcher’s meat hooks (450 lbs. at $0.89/lb., double-wrapped), and our
Really Nice Butcher, his two, happy, laughing, girl assistants working away in
the back room, is arranging to cut up our moose tomorrow (“I’m waiting on a
900 lb. moose and a bear today, but they’re local and I can push you to the front
because you’re in a hurry…”), and have it ready for us to pick up in 2 days! J
We work out with him how he should cut up the meat (tenderloins, roasts, ground meat, etc.), and he sends
us off to the very nice Bon Voyage Inn in Prince George, where we get ourselves happily situated and enjoy a pleasant lunch at the motel’s restaurant- a Greek-Chinese Fusion Diner.
LOL
I had shrimp won ton soup and pan-fried Chinese dumplings (a nice change from Celine's Fine Dining...), and Dan had the Canadian version of a Reuben, which was nice, but not a Reuben. LOL
In the evening we got All Gussied Up to go out for a fine dinner; I badly wanted to wear Dan's skinning knife on my Michael Kors belt as a Glunting (Glam Hunting) Fashion Statement, but Dan, afraid I'd get arrested, talked me out of it. LOL
Downtown Prince George was full of lovely places to dine, and we had a delicious dinner sitting at the elegant bar of TheTwisted Cork (my Canadian duck in a maple sauce, and Dan’s bison pot pie, with excellent BC Canadian wines). The really nice actor-bartender took our photo with
his phone and emailed it to us, and then suggested another great restaurant for tomorrow's dinner! Happily surprised to find so many fine
restaurants in this small town!
Day 10: Hide Heaven!
As I wrote this post, Dan was scraping Moose Hide Number One in front of our Bon Voyage Inn motel room, chatting with a guest who once did horse-pack guided hunts in the high mountains of eastern BC, and periodically feeding moose fat scraps to two very friendly and grateful doggies belonging to other motel guests. I thought it was amazing/hilarious to see Hunter Dan scraping moose hides in a motel parking lot, but this is apparently normal in BC- no one so much as batted an eye! After he scraped them clean, he rolled them in wax paper and put them back in the freezer, along with the 4 moose feet and all the meat; we'll figure out what we want to do with them when we get home. (I think the moose feet should become chair feet- a novel twist on "ball and claw", as it were. LOL). The truck is now packed like a drum, my moose's antlers topping all the suitcases and plastic tubs- there literally isn't room for One More Thing! LOLDan in the freezer, haulin' moose... |
Weighin' moose... |
Elisse, 450 lbs. of moose on the scale, and our processor guy! |
I had shrimp won ton soup and pan-fried Chinese dumplings (a nice change from Celine's Fine Dining...), and Dan had the Canadian version of a Reuben, which was nice, but not a Reuben. LOL
In the evening we got All Gussied Up to go out for a fine dinner; I badly wanted to wear Dan's skinning knife on my Michael Kors belt as a Glunting (Glam Hunting) Fashion Statement, but Dan, afraid I'd get arrested, talked me out of it. LOL
Elisse, All Gussied Up... |
He cleans up nice, right? :-) |
Day 10: Hide Heaven!
Dan, scraping hides... |
We learn that the bit of noise I heard in the wee hours was a fiasco in the parking lot that ensued when another hunter guest found his 2 giant moose back legs (twice the size of mine, judging by the rack) had been dragged off the top of his truck and eaten by dogs in the night… (It never occurred to me before, but “Please secure your game properly, as Management is not responsible for legs being dragged off your vehicle by dogs in the night” may be something we want to consider adding to our guest “rules” at the Elkhorn Inn…) While Dan scraped hides, I sat at the computer sipping Scotch and Googling “how to tan a moose hide in a motel parking lot” and "salting hides 101". LOL We then "cleaned up nice" and had another truly great dinner (with beverage selectiona from their absinthe menu!), at the fun, upscale BBQ place The Copper Pig, recommended to us by the bartender at the Twisted Cork!
![]() |
At The Copper Pig, Prince George, BC |
The next morning we picked up our moose meat at the processor: $504, exactly what
I had budgeted- and found all the beautifully wrapped packages of meat almost totally filled our freezer! We are definitely going to
be eating moose for a year! :-) Don’t know what we would have done had we
bought a smaller freezer (I truly thought Dan was going overboard, insisting we needed a 7-foot freezer...), or if Dan had gotten the moose he should have; we certainly wouldn't have been able to take back the hides… We added a
buffalo back strap (filet mignon), 4 packs of assorted buffalo sausages, and some yummy buffalo pepperoni for the road, and hit the trail for
Jasper…
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Oh, Canada! British Columbia Moose Madness!
Note: This is a post about moose hunting for meat, and about how I learned to hunt. I did shoot a moose (and am eating a delicious Chef Dan moose burger as I write this), and there are photos below of me and the moose, and the photos I took of my husband and our guide gutting and cutting it up. Hunting is not just about shooting something, it is about the process of going from living animal to steaks on the table, and that involves shooting it, gutting it, skinning it, and cutting it up into something you can put on a grill, as well as utilizing the rest of it, such as turning the hide into something you can wear or keep warm with. It is, quite frankly, not for the squeamish or those in denial, so if you don't want to see the photos, please don't scroll down. But remember: steaks do not grow on a "meat tree" in neat little Styrofoam trays. Those yummy steaks, chops, bacon, ribs, chicken strips, hot wings, hamburger patties, and meatballs- not to mention filet o' fish and shrimp scampi- were once living, breathing (and often quite pretty) animals, whom someone had to kill in order for them to wind up on your plate. And just because You didn't do it, doesn't mean it wasn't done. Humans are carnivores, but most of us are now so far removed from reality that we don't "get" what that really means. Kids who grow up hunting with their parents (like my husband did), or on farms or in rural areas where they have a backyard chicken coop (like my mom did), have a clearer picture of that reality than city-raised folks like me who grew up knowing of nothing but slabs of shrink-wrapped meat at the supermarket that bore no resemblance to the living creature it once was. There is, quite frankly, no difference between a steak, a fur coat, a leather belt, or a pair of shoes. At least once in our lives we need to know what being a carnivore means, and what it entails, and that means hunting.
Day 5: So close, and yet, so far…
We were out the door by 5:45am, me in my stylish Real Tree bibs and pink thermals, my Elkhorn Inn logo fleece zip-up with the pockets filled with jingling rifle bullets, topped by my Wal-Mart ghillie jacket; my fur-lined Mad Bomber hat on my head, camo glittens on my hands, and Cabela’s SHE boots and pink camo socks on my feet. My lucky orange rock and rifle-wielding Hello Kitty charm were in my pocket, and a light sparkle of frost was on the grass. The nearby marsh-surrounded lake was the most beautiful I’d seen it- pink clouds in the sky and mirrored in the water. Almost immediately at dawn we saw a mom moose and her calf- which, of course, we couldn't shoot- strolling slowly across a meadow like something out of a National Geographic film.

Then, within minutes, the female moose that will, I’m afraid, haunt me for years, appeared. She stood there in the cross-hairs of my rifle, up on that damn hill, for damn near 10 minutes, while Joe looked through his damn binoculars, searching in vain for little horns (and basically trying to “will” it to have little horns) so I could shoot “him”. (Sense the frustration here? LOL) But “he” was a she, and shoot her I didn't. I Did learn where to aim (high, shoulder) and took pix of her, and got Dan to take pix of me aiming to shoot her over the roof of Joe's little Suzuki (which we were riding in because his pick-up kept cutting out on him), as she stood there That long, looking straight at us, with apparently no fear whatsoever, until she finally got bored with the whole thing, turned, and wandered off into the tall grasses. A LOT of things go through your head when you have a moose in the cross-hairs for 10 minutes (which is not necessarily a good thing), but yes, I could have and would have shot and killed her for dinner had Joe given me the go-ahead. I am convinced that the females know they can’t be shot- it’s the only explanation for their obviously relaxed, almost blase demeanor around Lots Of People With Loaded Rifles.
We saw some mule deer, and rabbits, and then tried to track a humongous moose (based on its hoof-print size), apparently running in a pack with lots of others, to judge from the extremely fresh tracks we found. The problem was that we weren't sure if they were moose or elk- the tracks are so similar- and we didn't have an elk tag. Joe called and called into the valley, and we walked and then sat in silence the cold, Dan with his freezing hands tucked into his armpits, trying to coax what we hoped was a giant bull moose out of the trees, but to no avail. The other hope, especially from the running tracks, was that the moose are finally and actually rutting, and that the next day, assuming the frosty mornings continued, we'd see the bulls deliriously dancing in the aisles, oblivious to all and sundry. The rest of the day was a bust. We took a gas and lunch break in wild, swinging Vanderhoof, bought cigarettes and Canadian Rye Whisky, and I tried unsuccessfully to boot up the Nexus at the A&W; I got halfway through a response to our inn-sitter's latest Facebook messages before it died from lack of power- apparently the plug in our cabin room that I Thought was charging it, was a dud. L Then we drove back into the wilderness, but found nothing moving at all, anywhere. We ate Celine’s sandwiches, candy bars, and trail mix. We smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and water. We peed in the wilderness. We picked and ate wild rose hips. We scoured the horizon for moose, but found nothing more than moose-like tree stumps that refused to grow horns or move. I painted my face camo and did a Smoky Eye and Nude Lip (using Dirt Brown and Urban Grey) to kill time. Dan brought up the concept of Moose Carpaccio, the thought of which made me drool, and to which I added imaginary capers, balsamic vinegar, and slivers of Parm… We sat in the car and snoozed in the autumn sunshine. Joe found a place he could get bars on his cell phone and called his wife, telling her again how "very long" the days of hunting have been. This ticked me off Big Time, as this is why we booked an expensive guided hunt (and intended to tip large at the end of it)- which so far has been totally unsuccessful- but I said nothing. "Don't piss off the guide" has become the theme of this trip.
On the way back to the cabin at twilight, full of pretend hopefulness that a moose would magically appear in the grey of early evening (even knowing what a Royal Pain In The Ass packing out a moose carcass in the dark would be), we did see a huge bear- 6’ tall at least, and definitely man-sized when running on its hind legs- loping down the road in front of our car faster than I thought any animal that big could lope… I snapped a photo of it on all fours before it galumphed down into the valley and vanished...

The sunset was, as always when it’s clear here, a glorious and almost tropical hot pink, with molten, golden light edging the clouds and making the pale, wheat-like grasses glow in the dark, the tall, skinny pines looking like Florida palm tree silhouettes… The golden light on the top of the trees was surreal: it looked like someone had painted them with gold leaf...
And then, suddenly again, it was coal-black night. Back at camp Dan and I had a spot of Canadian whisky, and Celine’s turkey with all the fixins’, including tasteless gravy topping tasteless mashed potatoes, and canned, jellied cranberry sauce, which for me was the highlight of the feast. J Making it even More special was Celine informing us that she made the turkey for "just the 4 of us" rather than throw it out. LOL
I videoed Joe doing pretty impressive moose calls with a duct tape-covered can and a string, and bird calls with a piece of ballpoint pen, to add to the ones I have of him doing moose and elk calls in the field:
Mike and the other couple had still not returned from "Spike Camp", which we all silently assumed to mean the hunting had Not been good there, either… Après dinner I had another one of those delightfully hot baths before Celine shut off the generator, and ever the Glamouflagista, I re-bandaged my legs with camo duct tape. Hot water, as I've stated before, is a great, good thing, the joy of which never fades… The night sky was again clear and white with stars, and as Dan and I stood outside with our cigarettes and glasses of Canadian whisky we could see our breath in the crisp cold… which we took as a good sign for morning moose… And so, to bed…
Day Six: Somewhere moose are laughing…
We were up Way before a dawn so cold and frosty that it looked like snow glistening on the grass. All three of us were full of hopeful enthusiasm. And just as we got up onto Blue Mountain we met four schmucks in two trucks: hunters on the way down. To say we were bummed is an understatement. According to Joe, “the locals can only shoot spikes”- small moose with tiny horns and no points- because, we assume, as in Montana, the “point” tags are so expensive that the locals can’t afford them. And although Joe had told us that the "locals" will sometimes tell if they see a big bull, he asked no one… So we again drove around all day, and walked, and tracked- and saw nothing save a mule doe and her 2 fawns scampering across a field; Dan spying chipmunks zipping back and forth across a logging road was the joyous highlight of our day. Yes, the scenery is beautiful, and I have taken lots of photos of marshes and lakes missing their requisite photo-op moose, and festively, fall-colored trees and pines silhouetted in the mirror-like lakes and marshes, but that’s not why we’re here…

We spent the day talking about using drones with cameras duct-taped to them to spot moose, and speculating on when laws would be enacted to make it illegal. Joe told us that a woman hunter who has a TV or internet show is coming to hunt with them this fall, with her partner filming it using a computer-controlled drone camera. “It’s all about her, her, her” was his snide take on the whole thing. I didn't recognize her name, so I mentioned "Hardcore Huntresses", two women I had found on Facebook who also have a hunting show of some sort. Immediately Joe is all a quiver: "The blond beauty queen?! And the dark-haired one- Megan?!" He is now ALL excited. “But", he adds, about the blonde, "she’s really down to earth- she’ll squat and pee like anyone else.” LOL They recently did a bear hunt here, he tells us, and Mike took them out- because he didn't want anything to do with the “beauty pageant”. (My guess is that glad-handing Mike took them out because he knows Joe is a foul-mouthed racist of the first stripe, and didn't dare risk the Hardcore Huntresses getting a dose of his pro-Nazi bullshit). Yes, I tell him, those are the gals I talked to on Facebook. “You talked to them??!” Joe is flabbergasted. Yes, I did- about “beta-testing” hunting clothes for women that they were supposedly designing. I also tell Joe that I’m hoping to get a moose, not just for dinner, but so I can share that with them, too… And then on the way back to camp at dusk, we run into Another 6 trucks full of hunting schmucks- just as unlucky as we, as we haven't heard one shot in the 6 days we've been hunting. I go to bed almost immediately after dinner, too bummed to even write.
Day Seven: Moose Madness!
I've pretty much given up hope. Unless we can add on a couple of days and hope it gets cold enough for the moose to rut and come out into the open, I honestly don't think we're going home with moose kebabs. Joe can't or won't give us a straight answer about if and how we could add on a day or two of hunting- supposedly we have to talk to Mike and Lorne, the Hunter Trainee, neither of whom are around (and no clue as to when they might return), because Joe is going home- he’s “been away from home too long” and his wife is “Not Happy”. Joe’s been a fairly good guide (assuming calling moose from logging roads is the way to guide…), and seems to be a relatively okay guy- except for his racist remarks (hot sauce makes him “sweat like a n-----" was one), and enduring admiration for the Nazis, which he continued to reiterate daily and constantly. Dan managed to temporarily stop him with a “thank G-d the Nazis lost” comment, whereas my “thank G-d the Nazis lost” didn't do a damn thing… His views, since he’s American-born, 61, and not a veteran of the US armed forces, (and yes, I did begin to wonder why he moved to Canada…), were apparently gleaned from his late US Army WWII Vet dad: "The US and Canada should both have stayed out of WWII" and let the Germans take Europe, including England, and commit their atrocities- including, of course, the murder of 6 million Jews... "I hate Churchill for tricking America into the war" was another lovely comment, along with how he hates the then-Canadian Prime Minister, as well. He repeatedly bemoaned the fact that Hitler was “in too much of a hurry” and “made stupid mistakes”, such as attacking the Soviet Union, and it took everything I had in me to keep my mouth shut. I could only imagine his views on Jews, and as he knew full well I’m a Jew (the night of our arrival the fact that Dan is US Army Retired and I’m an IDF Veteran was made clear), I knew all this was Very deliberate and it was not a place I wanted to go with him. I assume I'm the first and only Jew he’s ever met, much less spent 15 hours a day in a car with for a week, as in the beginning he seemed a tad in awe of my being an IDF Veteran. He asked me a couple of naïve questions- “What’s Yiddish?” was one- and while I was telling Dan about my Italian NYC friend who speaks better Yiddish than I, he asked why anyone who wasn't Jewish might speak Yiddish; I answered both questions nicely and simply, as one would respond to a fairly bright 3rd Grader. He tried to goad me into a political discussion over our first dinner at the Cabin, minutes after we arrived, smiling nastily and asking me if I was a "terrorist", but I artfully refused to pick up the gauntlet; “Play nice with the other children” I snarled back with a big, cold smile, followed by “Let’s talk about the weather and hunting, shall we?”



Joe called and called, and although we thought we heard a
faint response a couple of times, mostly it was birds, or trees brushing against
each other and squeaking in an incredibly moose-like way, and no moose would
come out to play.
I found a deer skull in the forest and kept it- right now it looks like the only souvenir with teeth I’ll have from Canada; maybe Dan can drill holes in the teeth and I can make an appropriately creepy ‘hunting necklace’... In the afternoon Joe’s big pick-up truck began to have problems yet again, and we drove back to camp once more to swap it out for the small Suzuki, the problem with that being that if we Do get a moose there is no way to haul it back in that tiny vehicle...
In the late afternoon we set off again, Dan talking Joe into going to a “new” area we hadn't yet been to, where we followed more tracks of running moose/elk (melk? LOL), for miles, again to no avail. As twilight descended, and we began discussing, yet again, what a total bitch it would be to pack out a moose in the dark if one of us were to shoot a moose at dusk, and I began wondering, yet again, if I could actually shoot a moose at point-blank range should one amble out onto the road 2 feet from the car, all of a sudden a huge bull moose appeared on our right- right outside my window- down in a field, smack in front of a forest of trees. Joe saw it first and within 2 seconds yelled at me: “I told you to have your fucking gun ready!” (Driving around for 7 days and seeing nothing, I no longer had a bullet in my sweaty little palm). I saw the moose and grabbed my gun. Joe leaned across me and grabbed it out of my hands, shoved it out the window and demanded a bullet which I gave him. He shoved it in my gun and shoved them gun back into my hands and barked, “put the window down!” I buzzed it up and then down- just like I did during my driver’s exam in Florida. LOL. Joe then barked at me, “it’s ready- shoot!” I leaned out the window, looked through the scope, and saw him clearly: Bullwinkle. A truly beautiful, majestic moose looking straight at me and not moving. I actually thought about letting him walk away and getting my camera… But I also knew that if I waited more than a second Dan would take him, and Joe would shoot him if Dan missed, and that this moose was going to be kebabs one way or the other. I said “High? Low?”, but got no answer, so I aimed for the center of his chest and fired- and instead of blinking like usual when I fire, adrenaline kept my eyes open and I watched him immediately fall over. 275 yards, one shot. “Holy Shit!” was what I think came out of my mouth. Joe told me I’d gotten him, and then told Dan to run down and make sure he didn't get up, and Dan started running down the hill. The fear was that if he got up and ran back into the woods we’d have a wounded, suffering, dying moose thrashing around in the forest that we’d never be able to find in the dark, much less pack out. But he didn't move. I ran down the mountain as fast as I could, shaking. Joe grabbed my gun from me, even though it was unloaded, I guess because it was obvious I was shaking, but then, finally, handed it back to me. The moose was still alive, barely, and we had to wait the few minutes until he died, which was, frankly, very disturbing: Joe repeatedly took my rifle and put it on the moose’s eye until he stopped blinking.
We then did the requisite Hunter Photo Op, Dan taking pix of me with moose and gun. I have always rather loathed the big, grinning photos of hunters with their dead animals, so it was hard for me to smile. Dan finally coaxed one out of me, and it does look better than the totally serious ones, which are actually scarier than the ones of me smiling. LOL I'm proud I could do it- with one shot at 275 yards, my first time hunting, no less- proud I did it, and Very happy to to eat it, but I'm not gloating. Hunting makes you THINK- about a LOT of things- life and death specifically- and it's a VERY intense 2 seconds that feel like an hour when you pull that rifle scope up to your eye and have to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. But I was very pleased with the fact that I was finally able to prove I'm still a Damn Good Shot, & that we Were going home (hopefully) with moose kebabs. Shooting was the one thing I was good at in IDF Basic Training, and I needed to know if I could still do it when pedal hit metal. And the answer was Yes. :-) I was also Very happy that my husband had the ability to stop himself from shooting while I took the few seconds (that felt like an hour) to make up my mind to shoot. He understood, bless his heart... With great effort, Dan and Joe then turned the moose around- I couldn't lift its foot, much less anything else- and then took more photos of me and the now artfully posed Mr. Moose.
Dan and Joe turning the moose around...
And then the fun began. Hunting, as I stated above, is very definitely NOT just about pulling the trigger. That may be the heart-pounding, adrenaline-pumping moment, but the next 2 days is the REAL story of hunting. Dan and Joe immediately gutted the moose, spreading him out belly up, Joe cutting off his balls (yes, you really have to do this), and then he and Dan cut him open (with our knife set, which thank goodness we’d thought to buy and bring, because Joe had nothing but a pocket knife), and pulled out all his still-warm guts: intestines, bowel, bladder, liver, etc. Part of me wanted to put my hands in there and help them, so I could say I that I did that part of this hunt, too, but I didn't- I just couldn't get myself to squeeze between the two of them and do it. But I watched, and I photographed, and I didn't vomit, and I didn't flinch. I just kept thinking "moose kebabs". LOL




Then Joe had to go get the bigger pick-up (hoping it worked…), and Dan and I stayed with the moose. Me, Dan, the moose, a pile of blood and guts, my rifle, and a few bullets, in the pitch darkness, knowing we have a bear mama with two cubs floating around, along with wolves and coyotes… We didn't want to build a fire, as the entire area was full of logging debris and pine needles and a literal tinder box. Joe, thankfully, left us 10 cigarettes- along with more “jokes” about how much money he could have made selling us cigs at $10 apiece. As we'd bought him packs of cigarettes to more than replace the ones he gave us, this routine of his is starting to get old. I’d spent the afternoon listening to him tell us, repeatedly, how it was “totally against the law” to leave us with bullets if we were out of his sight- if we shot a moose at dusk, for example, and he had to go back for another (sufficiently large and operational) vehicle, for example- but then, after I pushed him, he said they didn't always obey the law. But his point was clear: we can be assholes if we want to be, and make you leave your moose overnight and come back to nothing but a pile of bones in the morning after the bears, wolves, and coyotes get through with it. (See "not pissing off your guide" above). Dan and I spent the hour+ in the dark talking about hunting: about his first moose hunt in Alaska, in which he also almost didn't shoot because it was wonderful just to watch two moose fighting in the wild, and how the first word out of his mouth when I shot the moose was “shit!” because he expected to get second shot... and Seriously listening for bears- not to mention coyotes and wolves. Several times we went totally silent because Dan thought he heard something; I probably wouldn't have heard anything unless it came up and tapped me on the shoulder. We joked that while my stomach continues to sound like a female elk, Dan’s growling tummy sounds like a wolf… We also killed time debating who Joe would bring back with him to help load the moose (neighbors? friends?), and what the repeatedly brightening and dimming light on the horizon was: Dan insisted it was either cars on the highway or Joe in the truck, and even that he heard a diesel several times (LOL), we both thought it might be the train, but I was pretty sure it was the bright lights of wild, swinging Vanderhoof, which it turned out to be.
Just as we were starting to get Really cold, and Dan was getting ready to build a fire, and had started to clear a spot of ground with his boot, Joe returned with the pick-up, Celine(?!), a small flashlight, one piece of wonky, rotten rope, and 3 boards in various states of disrepair. No chain, no saw, no chain saw, no winch, no lanterns, basically no nothing. Talk about “unprepared”! His excuse was that Mike had taken everything with him to Spike Camp- all three chain saws, all the chains, etc. If not for my husband’s sheer, physical strength, ability, and knowledge- and the set of meat knives and little saw we’d bought at the last minute and brought with us, I’d still be sitting out in a field with a (now rotten) moose carcass. I shot a 5-point moose; large enough for us, for sure, but definitely not trophy-sized. Had I shot a truly large moose, there is no way Dan and Joe could have physically handled it. I have no idea what we would have done- I probably would have had to leave it to the bears and wolves- and file a lawsuit. While Celine- coughing and reminding us of her heart attack- and I took turns holding the flashlight, Dan and Joe first tried unsuccessfully to load the moose onto the truck in one piece. No way. They then cut it in half- so much for my moose hide rug- using our little saw, and used the “come along” (the piece of rotten rope that kept breaking and the small, manual winch) and the 3 half-rotten 2x4s to pull it up into the truck- and just barely managed to do it.
On the ride back to Camp I ask Joe how we're going to handle the meat, and he tells us the carcass will sit in his truck all night, and then in the morning we will take it to the meat processor; tough shit on us if it warms up and the meat rots. As it’s now 11:30pm, he doesn't want to take the moose to the processor- even though he actually tells us all that the processor “told me I can come at any time”, and he knows that the next day is our last day for my husband to hunt and try to get his moose. It’s quite obvious that he simply doesn't want to- as far as he’s concerned our hunt is now over and he wants us gone. And I am pretending not to see any of this, because I don’t want to ruin Dan’s holiday... When we get back to camp, Mike and the other hunters are still not back. I tell Joe and Celine that I’m hoping Dan will be able to get his moose the next day- our last day unless we stay on- and Joe immediately announces, flatly, “We’re not hunting tomorrow.” No? “Read your contract” he barks. Read my contract?! ”The day after you kill something you deal with the meat- otherwise you Will have rotten meat”. So much for a celebration of my getting a moose. Silly me thought that the reason you do an expensive, fully-guided hunt with an outfitter is so They deal with the meat while you hunt. And I also assumed, based on my year-long correspondence with our booking agent who recommended them in the first place, Mike, his wife, and Joe's wife, not to mention their website (which brags that their hunts are “for people of all ages and abilities” and offers a checklist of things to bring, the only tool being “a skinning knife”, not “a complete set of meat cutting tools and a saw, ropes, chains, and a winch”), glowing online reviews, and their Facebook page, that you didn't have to be an experienced big game hunter, (with a US Army skill-set and all your own tools), to enjoy their guided hunts- that this was the POINT of doing an expensive, fully-guided hunt. I then asked Joe outright what it would cost for us to stay another 2 days so Dan could hunt. “I have no idea what Mike will charge you” was the answer. And we can’t reach Mike? No. And that was that. Celine started discussing getting her Menu (LOL) ready for the next batch of hunters, and between them they made it crystal clear that they not only had no Plan B for hunters who wanted to pay them to stay on and keep hunting, they obviously- especially Joe- wanted us gone. We then had dinner: sweet and sour meatballs- with a gummy, sweet sauce Celine tells us she used to make by the bottle for her now-defunct restaurant (LMAO)- rice, and corn, and apple pie for Dan. The food was okay as usual, but also, as usual, much more appreciated after a long, cold, hard day of hunting… And then Joe and Celine did what they did every night of our hunt: went right to bed, leaving us sitting at the kitchen table on our own. No celebration, no nothing. I had enough adrenaline coursing through my body that I could have danced all night: I wanted badly to party and celebrate what I felt was a pretty stupendous achievement, but there was no one to party with, and the idea of driving an hour into Vanderhoof through the mud in the dark didn't even enter our minds. :-( With nothing to do but feel a kind of post-partum depression, I then DO pull out and read our contract- and there is NOTHING about any of the bullshit Joe’s regaled us with. It’s exactly what I remembered: a one page receipt: what we paid and the breakdown of what it was for: tags, licenses, and fees. Observation: Joe’s not only a Nazi-loving, racist, foul-mouthed psychopath, he’s a lying sack of shit. But I got my moose!
Next: Moose Processing...
Day 5: So close, and yet, so far…
We were out the door by 5:45am, me in my stylish Real Tree bibs and pink thermals, my Elkhorn Inn logo fleece zip-up with the pockets filled with jingling rifle bullets, topped by my Wal-Mart ghillie jacket; my fur-lined Mad Bomber hat on my head, camo glittens on my hands, and Cabela’s SHE boots and pink camo socks on my feet. My lucky orange rock and rifle-wielding Hello Kitty charm were in my pocket, and a light sparkle of frost was on the grass. The nearby marsh-surrounded lake was the most beautiful I’d seen it- pink clouds in the sky and mirrored in the water. Almost immediately at dawn we saw a mom moose and her calf- which, of course, we couldn't shoot- strolling slowly across a meadow like something out of a National Geographic film.
Elisse, with her war paint on... |
A frosty Sept. morning in British Columbia... |
Then, within minutes, the female moose that will, I’m afraid, haunt me for years, appeared. She stood there in the cross-hairs of my rifle, up on that damn hill, for damn near 10 minutes, while Joe looked through his damn binoculars, searching in vain for little horns (and basically trying to “will” it to have little horns) so I could shoot “him”. (Sense the frustration here? LOL) But “he” was a she, and shoot her I didn't. I Did learn where to aim (high, shoulder) and took pix of her, and got Dan to take pix of me aiming to shoot her over the roof of Joe's little Suzuki (which we were riding in because his pick-up kept cutting out on him), as she stood there That long, looking straight at us, with apparently no fear whatsoever, until she finally got bored with the whole thing, turned, and wandered off into the tall grasses. A LOT of things go through your head when you have a moose in the cross-hairs for 10 minutes (which is not necessarily a good thing), but yes, I could have and would have shot and killed her for dinner had Joe given me the go-ahead. I am convinced that the females know they can’t be shot- it’s the only explanation for their obviously relaxed, almost blase demeanor around Lots Of People With Loaded Rifles.
Ms. Moose ... |
Elisse's gun, pointing at Ms. Moose... |
Elisse, aiming at Ms. Moose |
Elisse aiming at Ms. Moose... 10 minutes later |
We saw some mule deer, and rabbits, and then tried to track a humongous moose (based on its hoof-print size), apparently running in a pack with lots of others, to judge from the extremely fresh tracks we found. The problem was that we weren't sure if they were moose or elk- the tracks are so similar- and we didn't have an elk tag. Joe called and called into the valley, and we walked and then sat in silence the cold, Dan with his freezing hands tucked into his armpits, trying to coax what we hoped was a giant bull moose out of the trees, but to no avail. The other hope, especially from the running tracks, was that the moose are finally and actually rutting, and that the next day, assuming the frosty mornings continued, we'd see the bulls deliriously dancing in the aisles, oblivious to all and sundry. The rest of the day was a bust. We took a gas and lunch break in wild, swinging Vanderhoof, bought cigarettes and Canadian Rye Whisky, and I tried unsuccessfully to boot up the Nexus at the A&W; I got halfway through a response to our inn-sitter's latest Facebook messages before it died from lack of power- apparently the plug in our cabin room that I Thought was charging it, was a dud. L Then we drove back into the wilderness, but found nothing moving at all, anywhere. We ate Celine’s sandwiches, candy bars, and trail mix. We smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and water. We peed in the wilderness. We picked and ate wild rose hips. We scoured the horizon for moose, but found nothing more than moose-like tree stumps that refused to grow horns or move. I painted my face camo and did a Smoky Eye and Nude Lip (using Dirt Brown and Urban Grey) to kill time. Dan brought up the concept of Moose Carpaccio, the thought of which made me drool, and to which I added imaginary capers, balsamic vinegar, and slivers of Parm… We sat in the car and snoozed in the autumn sunshine. Joe found a place he could get bars on his cell phone and called his wife, telling her again how "very long" the days of hunting have been. This ticked me off Big Time, as this is why we booked an expensive guided hunt (and intended to tip large at the end of it)- which so far has been totally unsuccessful- but I said nothing. "Don't piss off the guide" has become the theme of this trip.
On the way back to the cabin at twilight, full of pretend hopefulness that a moose would magically appear in the grey of early evening (even knowing what a Royal Pain In The Ass packing out a moose carcass in the dark would be), we did see a huge bear- 6’ tall at least, and definitely man-sized when running on its hind legs- loping down the road in front of our car faster than I thought any animal that big could lope… I snapped a photo of it on all fours before it galumphed down into the valley and vanished...
The sunset was, as always when it’s clear here, a glorious and almost tropical hot pink, with molten, golden light edging the clouds and making the pale, wheat-like grasses glow in the dark, the tall, skinny pines looking like Florida palm tree silhouettes… The golden light on the top of the trees was surreal: it looked like someone had painted them with gold leaf...
Golden sunlight on the treetops- pretty amazing... |
And then, suddenly again, it was coal-black night. Back at camp Dan and I had a spot of Canadian whisky, and Celine’s turkey with all the fixins’, including tasteless gravy topping tasteless mashed potatoes, and canned, jellied cranberry sauce, which for me was the highlight of the feast. J Making it even More special was Celine informing us that she made the turkey for "just the 4 of us" rather than throw it out. LOL
I videoed Joe doing pretty impressive moose calls with a duct tape-covered can and a string, and bird calls with a piece of ballpoint pen, to add to the ones I have of him doing moose and elk calls in the field:
Dan and Celine at the Cabin |
Mike and the other couple had still not returned from "Spike Camp", which we all silently assumed to mean the hunting had Not been good there, either… Après dinner I had another one of those delightfully hot baths before Celine shut off the generator, and ever the Glamouflagista, I re-bandaged my legs with camo duct tape. Hot water, as I've stated before, is a great, good thing, the joy of which never fades… The night sky was again clear and white with stars, and as Dan and I stood outside with our cigarettes and glasses of Canadian whisky we could see our breath in the crisp cold… which we took as a good sign for morning moose… And so, to bed…
Day Six: Somewhere moose are laughing…
We were up Way before a dawn so cold and frosty that it looked like snow glistening on the grass. All three of us were full of hopeful enthusiasm. And just as we got up onto Blue Mountain we met four schmucks in two trucks: hunters on the way down. To say we were bummed is an understatement. According to Joe, “the locals can only shoot spikes”- small moose with tiny horns and no points- because, we assume, as in Montana, the “point” tags are so expensive that the locals can’t afford them. And although Joe had told us that the "locals" will sometimes tell if they see a big bull, he asked no one… So we again drove around all day, and walked, and tracked- and saw nothing save a mule doe and her 2 fawns scampering across a field; Dan spying chipmunks zipping back and forth across a logging road was the joyous highlight of our day. Yes, the scenery is beautiful, and I have taken lots of photos of marshes and lakes missing their requisite photo-op moose, and festively, fall-colored trees and pines silhouetted in the mirror-like lakes and marshes, but that’s not why we’re here…
Hunter Dan |
Yes, I see a face... |
A marsh missing its moose... |
Hunting Camp, outside Vanderhoof, British Comumbia |
Huntress Elisse |
"Who's gonna decorate all the Christmas Trees?" |
We spent the day talking about using drones with cameras duct-taped to them to spot moose, and speculating on when laws would be enacted to make it illegal. Joe told us that a woman hunter who has a TV or internet show is coming to hunt with them this fall, with her partner filming it using a computer-controlled drone camera. “It’s all about her, her, her” was his snide take on the whole thing. I didn't recognize her name, so I mentioned "Hardcore Huntresses", two women I had found on Facebook who also have a hunting show of some sort. Immediately Joe is all a quiver: "The blond beauty queen?! And the dark-haired one- Megan?!" He is now ALL excited. “But", he adds, about the blonde, "she’s really down to earth- she’ll squat and pee like anyone else.” LOL They recently did a bear hunt here, he tells us, and Mike took them out- because he didn't want anything to do with the “beauty pageant”. (My guess is that glad-handing Mike took them out because he knows Joe is a foul-mouthed racist of the first stripe, and didn't dare risk the Hardcore Huntresses getting a dose of his pro-Nazi bullshit). Yes, I tell him, those are the gals I talked to on Facebook. “You talked to them??!” Joe is flabbergasted. Yes, I did- about “beta-testing” hunting clothes for women that they were supposedly designing. I also tell Joe that I’m hoping to get a moose, not just for dinner, but so I can share that with them, too… And then on the way back to camp at dusk, we run into Another 6 trucks full of hunting schmucks- just as unlucky as we, as we haven't heard one shot in the 6 days we've been hunting. I go to bed almost immediately after dinner, too bummed to even write.
Day Seven: Moose Madness!
I've pretty much given up hope. Unless we can add on a couple of days and hope it gets cold enough for the moose to rut and come out into the open, I honestly don't think we're going home with moose kebabs. Joe can't or won't give us a straight answer about if and how we could add on a day or two of hunting- supposedly we have to talk to Mike and Lorne, the Hunter Trainee, neither of whom are around (and no clue as to when they might return), because Joe is going home- he’s “been away from home too long” and his wife is “Not Happy”. Joe’s been a fairly good guide (assuming calling moose from logging roads is the way to guide…), and seems to be a relatively okay guy- except for his racist remarks (hot sauce makes him “sweat like a n-----" was one), and enduring admiration for the Nazis, which he continued to reiterate daily and constantly. Dan managed to temporarily stop him with a “thank G-d the Nazis lost” comment, whereas my “thank G-d the Nazis lost” didn't do a damn thing… His views, since he’s American-born, 61, and not a veteran of the US armed forces, (and yes, I did begin to wonder why he moved to Canada…), were apparently gleaned from his late US Army WWII Vet dad: "The US and Canada should both have stayed out of WWII" and let the Germans take Europe, including England, and commit their atrocities- including, of course, the murder of 6 million Jews... "I hate Churchill for tricking America into the war" was another lovely comment, along with how he hates the then-Canadian Prime Minister, as well. He repeatedly bemoaned the fact that Hitler was “in too much of a hurry” and “made stupid mistakes”, such as attacking the Soviet Union, and it took everything I had in me to keep my mouth shut. I could only imagine his views on Jews, and as he knew full well I’m a Jew (the night of our arrival the fact that Dan is US Army Retired and I’m an IDF Veteran was made clear), I knew all this was Very deliberate and it was not a place I wanted to go with him. I assume I'm the first and only Jew he’s ever met, much less spent 15 hours a day in a car with for a week, as in the beginning he seemed a tad in awe of my being an IDF Veteran. He asked me a couple of naïve questions- “What’s Yiddish?” was one- and while I was telling Dan about my Italian NYC friend who speaks better Yiddish than I, he asked why anyone who wasn't Jewish might speak Yiddish; I answered both questions nicely and simply, as one would respond to a fairly bright 3rd Grader. He tried to goad me into a political discussion over our first dinner at the Cabin, minutes after we arrived, smiling nastily and asking me if I was a "terrorist", but I artfully refused to pick up the gauntlet; “Play nice with the other children” I snarled back with a big, cold smile, followed by “Let’s talk about the weather and hunting, shall we?”
The happy hunting couple! |
Frost! Will the moose start to rut???? |
We get back to camp that night to find that Mike and the hunter couple Still aren't
back from "Spike Camp"; we all now Know the hunting must be terrible there, too.
There is supposedly no way to reach Mike- for 5 days now, and continuing ad
infinitum, which we, being in business for ourselves, too, find Extremely hard
to believe. The only contact anyone’s had with him is a text that popped up on
Joe’s phone, wherein Mike asked his wife who had the lanterns- indicating he
didn't have them at "Spike Camp". Dan looks as glum and blue as I, though he is
trying unsuccessfully to put a brave face on it. I think we are both thinking
the same thing: how to put a positive spin on a $16,500+(!) once-in-a-lifetime holiday we've saved for Forever, that we both will
consider a total bust if, after all this, we don’t take home at least one
moose in the damn freezer we hauled across the USA & Canada. We walked for probably 10 miles that day- more than on any other day. (The
good news being I could actually do this J).
We tracked huge moose and/or elk hoof prints for miles, watching them go in and
out of forests; we found big black bear tracks of a mama with 2 cubs (right
underneath her- amazing how she could run like that!), we hiked fens and glens
and marshes, and ate more tiny, wild blueberries… and saw nothing.
Tracks... |
More tracks... |
Still more tracks... |
Tracking... |
I found a deer skull in the forest and kept it- right now it looks like the only souvenir with teeth I’ll have from Canada; maybe Dan can drill holes in the teeth and I can make an appropriately creepy ‘hunting necklace’... In the afternoon Joe’s big pick-up truck began to have problems yet again, and we drove back to camp once more to swap it out for the small Suzuki, the problem with that being that if we Do get a moose there is no way to haul it back in that tiny vehicle...
In the late afternoon we set off again, Dan talking Joe into going to a “new” area we hadn't yet been to, where we followed more tracks of running moose/elk (melk? LOL), for miles, again to no avail. As twilight descended, and we began discussing, yet again, what a total bitch it would be to pack out a moose in the dark if one of us were to shoot a moose at dusk, and I began wondering, yet again, if I could actually shoot a moose at point-blank range should one amble out onto the road 2 feet from the car, all of a sudden a huge bull moose appeared on our right- right outside my window- down in a field, smack in front of a forest of trees. Joe saw it first and within 2 seconds yelled at me: “I told you to have your fucking gun ready!” (Driving around for 7 days and seeing nothing, I no longer had a bullet in my sweaty little palm). I saw the moose and grabbed my gun. Joe leaned across me and grabbed it out of my hands, shoved it out the window and demanded a bullet which I gave him. He shoved it in my gun and shoved them gun back into my hands and barked, “put the window down!” I buzzed it up and then down- just like I did during my driver’s exam in Florida. LOL. Joe then barked at me, “it’s ready- shoot!” I leaned out the window, looked through the scope, and saw him clearly: Bullwinkle. A truly beautiful, majestic moose looking straight at me and not moving. I actually thought about letting him walk away and getting my camera… But I also knew that if I waited more than a second Dan would take him, and Joe would shoot him if Dan missed, and that this moose was going to be kebabs one way or the other. I said “High? Low?”, but got no answer, so I aimed for the center of his chest and fired- and instead of blinking like usual when I fire, adrenaline kept my eyes open and I watched him immediately fall over. 275 yards, one shot. “Holy Shit!” was what I think came out of my mouth. Joe told me I’d gotten him, and then told Dan to run down and make sure he didn't get up, and Dan started running down the hill. The fear was that if he got up and ran back into the woods we’d have a wounded, suffering, dying moose thrashing around in the forest that we’d never be able to find in the dark, much less pack out. But he didn't move. I ran down the mountain as fast as I could, shaking. Joe grabbed my gun from me, even though it was unloaded, I guess because it was obvious I was shaking, but then, finally, handed it back to me. The moose was still alive, barely, and we had to wait the few minutes until he died, which was, frankly, very disturbing: Joe repeatedly took my rifle and put it on the moose’s eye until he stopped blinking.
We then did the requisite Hunter Photo Op, Dan taking pix of me with moose and gun. I have always rather loathed the big, grinning photos of hunters with their dead animals, so it was hard for me to smile. Dan finally coaxed one out of me, and it does look better than the totally serious ones, which are actually scarier than the ones of me smiling. LOL I'm proud I could do it- with one shot at 275 yards, my first time hunting, no less- proud I did it, and Very happy to to eat it, but I'm not gloating. Hunting makes you THINK- about a LOT of things- life and death specifically- and it's a VERY intense 2 seconds that feel like an hour when you pull that rifle scope up to your eye and have to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. But I was very pleased with the fact that I was finally able to prove I'm still a Damn Good Shot, & that we Were going home (hopefully) with moose kebabs. Shooting was the one thing I was good at in IDF Basic Training, and I needed to know if I could still do it when pedal hit metal. And the answer was Yes. :-) I was also Very happy that my husband had the ability to stop himself from shooting while I took the few seconds (that felt like an hour) to make up my mind to shoot. He understood, bless his heart... With great effort, Dan and Joe then turned the moose around- I couldn't lift its foot, much less anything else- and then took more photos of me and the now artfully posed Mr. Moose.
I got my moose!
Me and Moose |
And then the fun began. Hunting, as I stated above, is very definitely NOT just about pulling the trigger. That may be the heart-pounding, adrenaline-pumping moment, but the next 2 days is the REAL story of hunting. Dan and Joe immediately gutted the moose, spreading him out belly up, Joe cutting off his balls (yes, you really have to do this), and then he and Dan cut him open (with our knife set, which thank goodness we’d thought to buy and bring, because Joe had nothing but a pocket knife), and pulled out all his still-warm guts: intestines, bowel, bladder, liver, etc. Part of me wanted to put my hands in there and help them, so I could say I that I did that part of this hunt, too, but I didn't- I just couldn't get myself to squeeze between the two of them and do it. But I watched, and I photographed, and I didn't vomit, and I didn't flinch. I just kept thinking "moose kebabs". LOL
Moose gutting... |
Then Joe had to go get the bigger pick-up (hoping it worked…), and Dan and I stayed with the moose. Me, Dan, the moose, a pile of blood and guts, my rifle, and a few bullets, in the pitch darkness, knowing we have a bear mama with two cubs floating around, along with wolves and coyotes… We didn't want to build a fire, as the entire area was full of logging debris and pine needles and a literal tinder box. Joe, thankfully, left us 10 cigarettes- along with more “jokes” about how much money he could have made selling us cigs at $10 apiece. As we'd bought him packs of cigarettes to more than replace the ones he gave us, this routine of his is starting to get old. I’d spent the afternoon listening to him tell us, repeatedly, how it was “totally against the law” to leave us with bullets if we were out of his sight- if we shot a moose at dusk, for example, and he had to go back for another (sufficiently large and operational) vehicle, for example- but then, after I pushed him, he said they didn't always obey the law. But his point was clear: we can be assholes if we want to be, and make you leave your moose overnight and come back to nothing but a pile of bones in the morning after the bears, wolves, and coyotes get through with it. (See "not pissing off your guide" above). Dan and I spent the hour+ in the dark talking about hunting: about his first moose hunt in Alaska, in which he also almost didn't shoot because it was wonderful just to watch two moose fighting in the wild, and how the first word out of his mouth when I shot the moose was “shit!” because he expected to get second shot... and Seriously listening for bears- not to mention coyotes and wolves. Several times we went totally silent because Dan thought he heard something; I probably wouldn't have heard anything unless it came up and tapped me on the shoulder. We joked that while my stomach continues to sound like a female elk, Dan’s growling tummy sounds like a wolf… We also killed time debating who Joe would bring back with him to help load the moose (neighbors? friends?), and what the repeatedly brightening and dimming light on the horizon was: Dan insisted it was either cars on the highway or Joe in the truck, and even that he heard a diesel several times (LOL), we both thought it might be the train, but I was pretty sure it was the bright lights of wild, swinging Vanderhoof, which it turned out to be.
Just as we were starting to get Really cold, and Dan was getting ready to build a fire, and had started to clear a spot of ground with his boot, Joe returned with the pick-up, Celine(?!), a small flashlight, one piece of wonky, rotten rope, and 3 boards in various states of disrepair. No chain, no saw, no chain saw, no winch, no lanterns, basically no nothing. Talk about “unprepared”! His excuse was that Mike had taken everything with him to Spike Camp- all three chain saws, all the chains, etc. If not for my husband’s sheer, physical strength, ability, and knowledge- and the set of meat knives and little saw we’d bought at the last minute and brought with us, I’d still be sitting out in a field with a (now rotten) moose carcass. I shot a 5-point moose; large enough for us, for sure, but definitely not trophy-sized. Had I shot a truly large moose, there is no way Dan and Joe could have physically handled it. I have no idea what we would have done- I probably would have had to leave it to the bears and wolves- and file a lawsuit. While Celine- coughing and reminding us of her heart attack- and I took turns holding the flashlight, Dan and Joe first tried unsuccessfully to load the moose onto the truck in one piece. No way. They then cut it in half- so much for my moose hide rug- using our little saw, and used the “come along” (the piece of rotten rope that kept breaking and the small, manual winch) and the 3 half-rotten 2x4s to pull it up into the truck- and just barely managed to do it.
The front half of Mr. Moose goes up on the truck... |
The other half of Mr. Moose goes up on the truck... |
On the ride back to Camp I ask Joe how we're going to handle the meat, and he tells us the carcass will sit in his truck all night, and then in the morning we will take it to the meat processor; tough shit on us if it warms up and the meat rots. As it’s now 11:30pm, he doesn't want to take the moose to the processor- even though he actually tells us all that the processor “told me I can come at any time”, and he knows that the next day is our last day for my husband to hunt and try to get his moose. It’s quite obvious that he simply doesn't want to- as far as he’s concerned our hunt is now over and he wants us gone. And I am pretending not to see any of this, because I don’t want to ruin Dan’s holiday... When we get back to camp, Mike and the other hunters are still not back. I tell Joe and Celine that I’m hoping Dan will be able to get his moose the next day- our last day unless we stay on- and Joe immediately announces, flatly, “We’re not hunting tomorrow.” No? “Read your contract” he barks. Read my contract?! ”The day after you kill something you deal with the meat- otherwise you Will have rotten meat”. So much for a celebration of my getting a moose. Silly me thought that the reason you do an expensive, fully-guided hunt with an outfitter is so They deal with the meat while you hunt. And I also assumed, based on my year-long correspondence with our booking agent who recommended them in the first place, Mike, his wife, and Joe's wife, not to mention their website (which brags that their hunts are “for people of all ages and abilities” and offers a checklist of things to bring, the only tool being “a skinning knife”, not “a complete set of meat cutting tools and a saw, ropes, chains, and a winch”), glowing online reviews, and their Facebook page, that you didn't have to be an experienced big game hunter, (with a US Army skill-set and all your own tools), to enjoy their guided hunts- that this was the POINT of doing an expensive, fully-guided hunt. I then asked Joe outright what it would cost for us to stay another 2 days so Dan could hunt. “I have no idea what Mike will charge you” was the answer. And we can’t reach Mike? No. And that was that. Celine started discussing getting her Menu (LOL) ready for the next batch of hunters, and between them they made it crystal clear that they not only had no Plan B for hunters who wanted to pay them to stay on and keep hunting, they obviously- especially Joe- wanted us gone. We then had dinner: sweet and sour meatballs- with a gummy, sweet sauce Celine tells us she used to make by the bottle for her now-defunct restaurant (LMAO)- rice, and corn, and apple pie for Dan. The food was okay as usual, but also, as usual, much more appreciated after a long, cold, hard day of hunting… And then Joe and Celine did what they did every night of our hunt: went right to bed, leaving us sitting at the kitchen table on our own. No celebration, no nothing. I had enough adrenaline coursing through my body that I could have danced all night: I wanted badly to party and celebrate what I felt was a pretty stupendous achievement, but there was no one to party with, and the idea of driving an hour into Vanderhoof through the mud in the dark didn't even enter our minds. :-( With nothing to do but feel a kind of post-partum depression, I then DO pull out and read our contract- and there is NOTHING about any of the bullshit Joe’s regaled us with. It’s exactly what I remembered: a one page receipt: what we paid and the breakdown of what it was for: tags, licenses, and fees. Observation: Joe’s not only a Nazi-loving, racist, foul-mouthed psychopath, he’s a lying sack of shit. But I got my moose!
Next: Moose Processing...
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