By Stephen West
Day 13
What I didn’t mention yesterday is that Molak killed a stud of a bull just hours before we killed my bull. They were sheep hunting a couple ranges over when they came across his bull. With their focus being Stone sheep we texted them via InReach and told them to go ahead on the bull they were watching. If they did kill him we told them we would take the horses over there to pack him out the next day so they could keep sheep hunting.
Part of the reason we got so aggressive with my bull yesterday was because they ended up killing their bull which meant a day of work for us. They caped and quartered their bull and we did the same. We left our bull overnight and came back next morning with our string of pack horses. We had about two days of work that needed to be done… preferably before dark. We loaded up my bull, made a couple-hour ride back to camp, unloaded and headed to Molak’s bull. It was going to be a long night, but the long days are the good days. These are the stories we’ll tell our grandkids.
Day 14
From one bull to the next, yesterday was a long day but a good day. We finished packing my bull back to camp, unloaded, grabbed a cup of noodles for the trail and made our way towards Molak’s bull. It was a couple-hour ride to get to where Molak and Seth had their camp set up but right on the way to where the dead bull was.
We made a quick stop to see the boys and kept going trying to be as quick as possible to hopefully beat the sun back to our camp. After a couple sketchy loose rock mountain passes we found him, and he was a giant. We made quick work but quickly realized that darkness would catch us by a few hours on our ride back to camp.
The northern lights lit up the trail for us, and we made it with no issues, just tired horses. Pretty unreal to see two Canadian moose sitting side by side that would be shooter bulls for most guys in the Yukon any day. This hunt was over, but the adventure wasn’t. We still had a two-day ride back to basecamp and I was way too tired to write anymore. Moments like this help me to realize I’m living in my glory days.