The Little Dangers
I also recognize and respect the importance of conservation efforts for our wild animals and wild places and the close connection to hunting and fishing.If we want future generations to experience the wonder and adventure of the outdoors, and gain the countless benefits, we must continue to make wildlife conservation today’s priority to ensure continued opportunity.
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When non-hunters think about the dangers that hunters face in the backcountry, their mind goes to grizzly bear, wolves, mountain lion, rattlesnakes, etc. The big, obvious ones that are woven into the American culture through folklore, fiction, and Hollywood. The truth is that the most dangerous thing we face in the backcountry is gravity. Next, it’s the little things we seldom give the respect they deserve. What ended my dream hunt last Fall was something that I couldn’t even see coming.
In May of 2024, I received the coveted email from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game titled “Controlled Hunt Win” in connection with my moose tag application. This confirmed my entire focus for the 2024 hunting season. I contacted an outfitter that I had spoken to earlier, when determining in what hunt area to apply, and informed him of my recent luck in the draw. “How many years have you been putting in?” he asked. “This was my first year.”, I responded. He followed up with, “I wouldn’t tell too many people that.” Truth be told, I got lucky. What followed for the next 4 months was the preparation ritual that all hunters cherish. Since this was my first venture into grizzly country, I took that danger seriously and prepared accordingly.
I spent two separate weeks in the field. The first was during the peak of the rut, but the weather was hot (mid 80’s), and this negatively impacted the rut behavior. Moose like it cold. When I found moose that week, it was a cow that was neck deep in a lake when the ambient air was 32 degrees. I also had a moral dilemma about harvesting a 1,200-pound animal that takes 6 hours to break down in that heat.
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The second week was a month later. Temperatures had fallen, and there were a couple inches of fresh snow. The guide I hunted with was extremely skilled at tracking. Aside from reading the tracks in the snow like a book, he was former law enforcement and part of a backcountry search and rescue team, focusing on finding people that had gone missing in the expansive wilderness. The first morning, we tracked a bull and cow a mile, down elevation before losing them in dark, thick timber. The track started in the snow and was easy to follow, obviously. As we descended below the snowline, things got tricky. When I would lose it, he would point to a single overturned aspen leaf and say, “There it is.”. One time, he saw the morning dew wiped clean from a blade of vegetation, “This way.”, he said. It was a masterclass in tracking, and I soaked in every minute.
The second morning, I came very close to filling my tag. We had walked to a lake at first light and found a cow and calf about to head into the timber. The encounter was brief. “I thought I saw a 3rd moose ahead of them.”, the guide said. From the day before, we knew where they were headed, and where they crossed an old logging road to get to their bedding area. We hurried the ¼ mile to get setup, anticipating the crossing, and hoping the 3rd moose wasn’t a figment of the guide’s imagination. We could hear them in the timber as we sat. Moose do not move quietly, especially in thick timber. The scrape and snap of branches against a moose paddle is as much an unmistakable sound as you can imagine and will get your heart pumping. After several minutes, it got quiet. The guild suggested we let them bed in the timber for the day and then come back to the lake at dusk to try to catch their evening drink and feed. I had other ideas. It was getting late in the season, and I wanted to be more aggressive. “Let’s drive them out.”, I said. “I’ll stay here. You go back around where we saw them enter the timber and push them towards this crossing.” The guide followed the plan, and I waited patiently. After 10-15 minutes, I hear footsteps running toward me. I glance over and the guide is frantically waving at me to follow him. It turns out, the moose came back out of the timber to the feeding area after we left, and there was a third moose, a mature bull. We hurried back to the lake and found the calf bedded and the cow standing guard. The bull had gone into the timber. Back at the crossing, fresh tracks confirmed that the bull had crossed right where we expected. Had I stayed put the first time, or the second time, I would have had a shot.
Late that afternoon, before our evening sit, we were leaving another lake and I filled a plastic water bottle from a small tributary stream that I could leap across easily. I dipped the bottle just underneath the surface of the cool, clear water, filled it, screwed the cap on, and placed it in my pack. My plan was to take the water with me and then filter it with my Sawyer water filter into my Jetboil for quick meal. I did just that.
Back at camp that night, I had dinner and headed off to my tent. I took some Pepto-Bismol for the slight ache that I had since developed on the left side of my abdomen. That night, it kept me from getting solid sleep, waking every hour. That morning, as expected, my body went into evacuation mode. After three trips to the latrine, and forcing down a little food, we headed out for the morning hunt. About every hour, I was looking for a bush to squat behind. At about 11 o’clock, the guide looked at me and said, “I don’t want to scare you, but you’re ghost white.”. “I know.”, I said. “I’m sick.” I decided to go back to camp and rest. The afternoon became the evening, and I had not improved.
That night, I woke up with a screaming fever, and I suspected I had contracted “beaver fever”, or medically known as giardiasis, an intestinal infection resulting from the microscopic parasite, Giardia. Fortunately, I carry certain medications into the backcountry. On this trip, I had a dosage of Tinidazole that is meant to treat giardiasis. I took that and some Motrin for the fever, which broke that morning and never returned. My GI symptoms improved slightly but were not resolved. I had the textbook symptoms of giardiasis. Diarrhea, gas, bloating, stomach cramps, and fatigue. I will spare the details of the next several days, which include an urgent care visit, lab results, and not much time outside of my tent or the latrine. I hunted when I could, but the fatigue and inability to consume high-calorie nutrition was taking a toll on my energy and strength. “What am I going to do if I do harvest a moose?”, I asked the guide. “I can’t help pack it out.” “Just smile.”, he said. “I’ll take care of it.” He understood the significance of drawing a moose tag and put everything he had into the hunt. Between his own moose, friends, and his guiding, he has been a part of harvesting nearly 20 moose.
On the last morning, with a fresh 6” of snow at elevation, we put together a game plan. I was to sit on an old road next to a patch of timber we knew the moose were using for bedding by studying their tracks and habits over the preceding days. When I say a patch, it was roughly a square mile of dense timber with thick snow brush throughout, most of the yellow leaves from fall, already on the ground, under the fresh snow. When it is knee-high, you can march through it. When it is waist-high, you can fight your way through it. The branches are tough and do not grow straight. It has a way of reaching out and grabbing on to you, pulling you back. When it is chest-high, forget about it, you need a Caterpillar D4. The guide, showing his dedication to the hunt, offered to drive the timber. Zigzagging, crawling through and breaking unforgiving brush, singing the whole way to push the moose my way. The drive was going to take about an hour and a half to complete, given the density of the forest. About 45 minutes in, the guide comes over the radio and informs me that a bull moose is heading my way. He had heard the bull rise from his bed, and confirmed it was a bull from the track. While it was only 50 yards away, he couldn’t see it in the thick cover. He got on the track and pushed it towards me. He was close behind the bull. Its smell still lingering in the air, and steam rising from fresh droppings, but never set eyes on it. Moose walk over the thick snow bush and downfall, with 6” of fresh snow, without even trying. You and I struggle just to make forward progress, and with every movement, try to avoid losing our footing and succumbing to gravity.
30 minutes later, the guide emerged from the timber into the shooting lane about 100 yards away in disbelief. The bull never crossed. The tracks led to 20 yards from the lane, before the timber ended and I could see it. The bull stopped, spun around in a circle, and paralleled the shooting lane away from me. It continued this trajectory for a ¼ mile. I went ahead of the bull and set up in the timber in the vicinity where the bull was headed. The guide, back on the tracks, again pushed him towards me. In our effort to reposition, the bull spooked and turned up the mountain at a trot, leaping over the trunk of a six-foot-high downfall tree with ease and landing with the grace of a ballerina, known by reading the track. At one point, the guide found a mountain lion track in the moose track. This got his attention, as he was no more than 5 minutes behind the moose. At the end of the morning, I was physically spent. We made one last futile attempt in the evening hunt, with me leaving after dark with an unfilled once-in-a-lifetime tag in my pocket. The way these tags work in Idaho is that a hunter can only harvest once. If they are unsuccessful, they can apply again, after a 2-year waiting period.
I battled the aftermath of what I suspect to be giardiasis from late October to early January. It would cycle. 3-4 good days with no symptoms, and then 4-5 bad days with symptoms. The symptom that lingered longest was the cramping and ache that I had in my lower left abdomen. I was a regular at the gastroenterologist and the laboratory, and had a colonoscopy and endoscopy performed for good measure. I never was able to get a positive diagnosis.
What I suspect happened was that my water filter failed or, while I was eating, I unknowingly picked up the bottle of unfiltered water that was near my clean water Nalgene and drank it. The kicker is that I didn’t need to get water from the lake that afternoon. I still had plenty when I arrived at camp that night.
Be careful this Fall. Not only can the “little” dangers ruin your hunt that you planned all Summer, and perhaps waited all our life for, but the consequences of dangers can linger long after the season closes. I drew an elk tag this year, which was, statistically speaking, harder to draw than the moose tag for an Idaho resident. Rest assured, I will not be making the same mistake twice. Lastly, after two weeks in grizzly country, I didn’t so much as even see a speck of sign, let alone a bear.
