by Peter Twitchell
When I was in my late 20s, I always looked forward to hunting with my late first cousins, Joe Woods Jr. and Manny Joe Evon.
We hunted moose every fall.
One moose hunting season we gassed up, took our 22 foot wooden boat and went up the Mother Kuskokwim River. When we got to Aniak we decided to go up the Holitna River.
Since we had a wooden skiff and a couple 55 gallon drums of gasoline, we negotiated through gravel bars often disembarking to pull and push the boat. Joe Woods often sat on the bow of the boat pointing to deeper water.
We got up the river about 20 miles and it had been a long day a lot of work. We set up camp, had dinner, and bedded down for the night.
We slept like there was no tomorrow and the next day we parked the boat on tundra. I loved walking up the tundra to take a looksee at what was there.
Across one lake, I saw what looked like a manmade mud hut.
When I took out my binoculars to get a better look I realized that the 5 to 6 foot high hut was only a Beaver Den. I was amazed! I hadn’t seen anything like it before.
The moose I saw on that particular moose hunt was a sight to see. Three moose crossing the river in front of us and one moose was unusual in that it was tan with black rear legs. I thought it was very colorful.
Then a huge bull moose following two cows swam across the lake.
I was very satisfied in what I saw in the wild, after all, it was Moose Country.
When I walked the tundra I went back and walked at least a couple miles. The tundra was clean, it was pristine and all I saw was white moose antlers, bleached in the sun after laying there many years.
We are fortunate as Alaskans who depend on our land and regard it as Sacred, because it’s our table which feeds our people for generations since time immemorial!!
