Bison Hunting

As real life speeds up, I've fallen into a bit of a blog slump. Too much going on to want to sit in front of a computer, especially when I'm already writing a bi-weekly article for Whats Up Yukon newspaper. Nevertheless I feel guilty. I’ve also discovered that I get way more hits on my blog when I write about something other than skiing so here’s all about the Bison hunt I just came back from with Dave.

I rammed the 340 Arctic Cat onto the tilt deck trailer. It didn’t tilt and I slid back down. I took another run at it, same thing. I stacked firewood and a jerry can at the top of the trailer for extra weight and took one last run at it. Success. I swung by Dave’s house and we loaded up his 250 Bravo, much easier with two guys. The rig we’re driving costs us a dollar a mile in gas (literally) but luckily our starting point was not far out of town.

We arrived to find five or six other trucks and trailers at the trailhead. I thought, “this must be a good spot” but I also thought, “if there’s any bison out there, surely those guys have already beat us to them”.

We loaded up the sleighs and started putting along with our underpowered machines. We stopped along the way to make sure the rifle was still sighted in since I bumped, fell on, and dropped it while chasing rams behind Kusawa last fall. It was dead on. Dave popped a grilled cheese into his HotDogger before we continued down the trail. HotDogger? It’s a mini Dutch oven fixed to the exhaust. It’ll cook you a wiener in no time, or a grilled cheese for that matter.

It took about five K to get the cheese nice and gooey and we stopped for lunch. A couple bison-less hunters passed us going back to the vehicles. We were happy that they didn’t find our bison but worried there was no bison to find. We’ve never hunted bison and those guys looked like pros.

We were too cheap/didn’t have enough time to buy a topo map so I drew one on a sheet of lined paper from looking at google earth. According to the map, we were just entering bison territory. We finally spotted what we thought were bison tracks. We strapped on our snowshoes and followed them until we realized they were moose tracks. I saw some more tracks up on a side hill across the lake. We trekked over to where the tracks were but they were old and we couldn’t even tell if they were bison tracks. “Ahh they’re just old tracks”, Dave said. I like to think it was our stone-age ancestors who were looking down on us that guided us overtop of the next hill to another lake. “HHOO FUCK!” we whispered loudly, simultaneously. “We found em Dave!” I said in the voice of a giddy little schoolgirl.

We quickly thought out a route best suited to get within shooting range. Trying to tip toe through a foot of crusty snow we were being anything but sneaky. It soon became apparent that the bison knew we were there. Now it was a game to see how comfortable they would be with us. We inched forward to try and get a clear line of sight. There were three monster bison on top of the hill, two calves just below them, and another medium sized one lower down. The big ones were too big, the little ones too little, and the medium one just right. We each had a rifle at the ready. If I missed him, Dave was going to blast a second shot.

“Ready Dave?” “Yup… Oh wait, there’s a twig in my crosshairs.” Of course it was then that the bison started to gallop over the hill, out of sight. “Come on, turn you big bastard”, I said under my breath. Sure enough as he crested the hill his curiosity got the best of him. He just had to see what that was on the opposite side of the hill. Boom! His hind legs crumpled and he stood still for a second before bolting into the bush. I worked the action frantically and squeezed off another shot as he was disappearing. “Did I get em”, I asked. “Looked like it”, said Dave.

We looked for blood. Nothing. And then, a drop, and another, and another; pretty soon we were following a steady blood trail along the ridge. A hundred meters further and Dave spotted him. “There he is… he’s dead!” We hi-fived.

As the excitement wore off we realized we had three hours of daylight left and a kilometer of dense bush between our skidoos and the bison. We hadn’t eaten dinner or set up camp. We rushed back to the skidoos. Aside from a kilometer of bush there was also a big daddy hill we had to climb right off the start. 45-degree slopes everywhere we looked.  A ways to the left we found one hill that was slightly less steep. Our little kitty cat snowmobiles screamed as we tore through the powder. First run we made it half way, then three quarters, and third time’s the charm as we made it to the top. With the sun setting it was apparent we would not get the snowmobiles to the bison that night. I’ve never had to skin a cold animal before but I know enough to know it would suck.

We left the skidoos on top of the hill and headed back to the bison with a daypack full of skinning knives, game bags, and trail mix. It didn’t take long before we realized our bison was in fact a female (Don’t worry, everything all good and legal). We skinned and skinned. We skinned into the night. With darkness upon us, and fiddling knives with numb fingers it wasn’t long before Dave cut himself. Hands already covered in bison blood it was hard to tell which was who’s. We got out the headlamps and kept at it knowing that it would be damn near impossible to field dress a frozen bison. Hindquarter after front quarter, rib cage after rib cage, we pieced apart the bison. Exhausted and hungry I would stick my bloody hand into the trail mix now and then and swallow a hand full of nuts and raisons.

It took what seemed like all night but was probably about 4 to 5 hours. We were cold, soaking wet, covered in bison blood, and hungry. Dave set up the tent and I lit a big bonfire to warm up. I changed clothes and propped up my soaking wet, now frozen, bloody clothes on sticks next to the fire in a hopeless attempt to dry them. We boiled water to heat up our army rations: premade meals packed in MSG and sealed in a foil package. At around midnight we crawled into our sleeping bags.

Morning. I looked over at Dave who had apparently put on every piece of clothing he could find during the night and was still shivering. We made a pot of oats over the fire and didn’t waste time getting to work. First thing to do was find the best route to get the skidoos to the bison. Either that or pack 600 lbs of meat from the bison to the skidoos. I noticed an old trap set yesterday which led me to think there might be an old trap line trail somewhere close by. I returned to the trap set and it didn’t take long before I started to spot some old blazes on the spruce trees. They didn’t lead exactly in the right direction but I was able to get a good deal closer. A half hour’s work with the axe and I was through.

We loaded up the toboggans and broke trail through the bush to the old trapping trail which led us to the bison. I took a hindquarter, both front quarters, the ribs and a bag with the loins, backstrap, neck meat and heart. Dave took the hide, head and the remaining hindquarter. Our little machines worked hard to crawl at walking speed. I was glad we shot one of the smaller bison.

It was a bumpy 60km trail back to the truck. We stopped a few times on the way back to throw a sandwich in the HotDogger and to let the machines cool down. They were working pretty hard.

We were back in good time. To be honest I could hardly believe how well it worked out. I was kind of expecting to take the wrong trail, have our snow machines to break down or to run out of gas. We were back a day early with a bison. Makes up for the numerous unsuccessful hunting trips this fall. I’ll be eating steaks for breakfast, burgers for lunch, and roasts for dinner from now on.