Steve Jeffries here, from Alaska, 35 miles SE of Fairbanks. Took me quite a while to figure out how to even do this. NOT a computer geek! more like a Cro-magnum fella, 63 years and 280 lbs., i'ts not all solid,but I can hold my own, and this could be my nitch, as I have opinions!
I am HERE in Alaska and I never want to leave the state again. When I die, and we all will, I want my ashes dumped into the Tanana River, next to my house. If you knew this river, you would know that this would NOT cause any pollution, as it is a glacially fed river and you can't see 10 inches into it's water (in the summer) because of the glacial silt.
I fish, while waiting for hunting season to arrive. I'm a big fan of the 9.3x74R in a double rifle and also in a rifle/shotgun combo barreled weapon. I carry the Valmet 412 when I'm hunting in a relaxed mood. If I am serious about meat, then I'm more apt to have either a .338 Win Mag or a .375 Ruger. I like the higher velocity of the Ruger chambering (over the .375 H&H). The .375 Ruger, uses a shorter barrel, produces a faster bullet, and is a faster handling weapon. The quicker handling firearm should be great at close quarters, IF I ever fail with the first shot. I'm one of thse fellows that shoots power at game better than those weaker chamberings. I over-developed my right shoulder, pulling a 90 pound bow, shooting 60 to 90 arrows per practice session, over 3 months, getting ready for an elk hunt. The right side of my back pulled my left side out of kilter more than twenty years ago, and it still causes me some troubles. If I stirred up a mess with any of the above, I apologize!
Two things I wanted to share with you, first is how to handle field dressing of moose, if you are ever by yourself. I developed this method because I usually hunt by myself (some others may have found it before me). Yeah, my wife wants me to have a hunting buddy, just like my scuba diving instructor taught us to NEVER dive alone. I'm also not supposed to drink, stay up late or eat anything that tastes good either. Get a life! The other side of the coin is: If you do anything alone, you don't do stupid stuff, and if you have a buddy, it is easy to rely on the buddy, and if he is relying on you and neither of you are behaving in a safe manner, BOTH of you are in trouble, buddy or NO buddy. One of the best hunting buddies I ever had, would take 2 or 3 steps foreward, and look behind her. She didn't travel far or quick, but she never got caught flat footed or from behind by stuff that would cause your shorts to be dirty.
1st ALWAYS approach any shot big game (PIG or bigger), from ABOVE (back side) and BEHIND it! If the animal is not dead, you don't want to be in front of it's eyes, if it becomes alert, especially if it has teeth and/or claws, or could have enough mass to bust your @$$ with one well placed kick or swipe of a clawed paw. If it's not dead or you just want to make sure, MAKE IT SO! And don't be shy about it, the hospital is not near-by!
Take your small blue tarp out of your back pack, the one that serves as your emergency shelter from the wind and rain, should you become lost, but for now, spread it down on the ground, so that you can place the pieces of the moose on something other than the dirt/mud. LOCATE your rifle nearby, maybe propped against your back-pack. Fill out you harvest tag, before you start anything else, you don't want to get invited to visit the judge, with the Fish & Game guys there to tell their side of the story.
Set out your skinning and boning knives, and knife sharpening tools, you will be busy for several yours, and doing it it now will keep blood off your hunting pack and allow you to touch up the knives as you go. Dull knives are more dangerous than sharp knives, and if one of my knives won't hold an edge, I throw it away! Make doubly SURE your moose is dead! Those long legs could kill you! Use those long legs as LEVERS, to roll/position the moose on it's side, and lift one or the other (left side or right side) front legs (which ever side is not laying on the ground), and rest it on your shoulder. Take a minute to look all around now (and periodically, for the rest of the process) and while moving the meat to camp too, to make sure some bear is not coming to join you. The sound of your rifle shot, was his invitaion, to a FREE LUNCH. It is NOT legal to kill a bear that wants your legally killed game meat, AND the hospital is NOT near you! You might be able to argue that the bear was threatening your life, giving you the right to protect your life, but you'd have to convince Fish and Game that you tired to retreat from the situation. It's just easier to have a bear tag to make the kill a legal taking of game, under a sporting license.
Lift a leg up onto your shoulder and make an incision on the underside of the front leg, from the knee to the belly, and remove the skin from the leg with your knife and lots of pulling of the hide AWAY from your knife, well up into the top of the shoulder and into part of the neck. The front leg is held onto the body without a ball socket, just muscle to hold it on the body. Prop the front leg against the body of the carcass, and safely use SHARP saw to remove the lower portion of the leg near the knee. Lift the front leg with the shoulder hanging toward the ground, and lower it onto/into the meat bag, and tie the meat bag closed near the knee. Note: Bring me both your front legs, and I will show you that each lower front leg has two letter openers in itl
Next, CAREFULLY make the start of an incision from the underside of the rear leg, towards the belly, and with your non-knife hand pull on the hide while cutting the hide free AWAY FROM any portion of your body, you'd not like to damage! The front leg usually weighs less than 75 lbs and the rear leg can go more than 100 lbs.( up to 150 lbs on a HUGE moose). Prepare another meat bag for the rear leg. After the rear leg is skinned, lift the leg by having the leg on your shoulder and stepping in close to the moose and cut it free from the inside of the leg, THROUGH the ball joint. Lower the rear leg, begin to cut the leg free from the top of the leg, against the pelvis bone. After cutting off the lower portion of the hind leg BELOW the hock, lift the rear leg by the handy-to-hold-onto hock, and set it on the waiting meat bag, pull the bag up to the hock, and tie off the bag and move it to a place that it can begin to cool.
Remove the rest of the meat from this side of your moose, meat along the back bone, ribs and reach in under the spine and remove the tenderloins too, but don't bother with the meat of the neck.
Pull the removed skin out behind the moose, with the fur side of the hide next to the ground. Use those long legs to roll the remaining half of your moose over onto the removed skin.
Now just do it again, the legs and the remaining meat from the second side of the moose. Put the neck into a separate meat bag, the neck can weigh 100 lbs. and makes good stew.
IF you leave the field with horns, the boys from fish and game will be able to tell if you left much meat in the field, and you don't want that. They can spread it out, and sort through the different pieces. You could argue that you ate some of it, but how much can you eat in a few days?
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Heat causes meat to spoil, and un-skinned meat WILL spoil, especially in these huge muscle masses of the rear legs.
Remember, the hospital is NOT near you! . . . . . . . NUF said for that department. If you haven't begun to see what I'm trying to say, maybe hunting in Alaska is not for you, unless you just want to feed the bears. Honestly, I've never had one accept my invitation, but as soon as I don't keep a sharp watch for them, they just might show up! Careless hunters in Alaska, have short careers!
IMPORTANT!!!! In ALASKA, horns do not prove sex of animal. You are required to leave some portion of the sex organ (penis sheath, penis or vaginal opening) naturally attached to one piece of the meat. This is true for moose, caribou and bear. We are not always required to salvage he meat of a bear, but we are required to salvage either the meat or the hide, and we are required to have evidence of sex for bears.
ALSO, in some areas, all meat has to be attached to the bone and the bones must be transported from the field to where the meat is processed. This makes for lots more work carrying meat from the field. A clear method of punishing folks that know how to care for meat in the field, because some folks did NOT properly care for meat in the field, and it spoiled. Wasting game meat is a serious game violation. The fines are steep, and can include loss of any and all equipment used on the hunt (rifle, truck, boat, 4-wheeler, tent, knife, GPS and in theory, even your clothes.
2nd Bring the right weapon. Within limits, you need to have a weapon to protect you from the toothy creatures, that might be hunting the same animals you are. Caribou can be cleanly taken with a .243 or .25-06, but do you want to stop a big 'ol bear with either of those chambered weapons? Carry the best stopping rifle that you can shoot ACCURATELY, shoot high quality bullets, and shoot heavy for caliber bullets (though not necessarily the HEAVIEST available), as they usually give poor trajectories. The bullet is the cheapest part of the hunt, and can be the most important part of the hunt.
Lastly, feel free to contact me for information. Please include a couple of bucks for postage, if you want me mail hunting regs to you. The hunting regs are extensive, require a large manilla envelope and weigh about twice as much as most magazines. Fishing regs are much smaller. Better yet, Fish and Game will mail the stuff to you for free. They pay folks to do that and they have money for postage, and they will try to answer any questions you might have. Maybe after you read the regs, I could clarify confusing portions of the regs via email, and I'm NOT talking down to you. For part of it, you just about have to be a lawyer to understand it! Good GPS's with maps showing river drainages are great, especially if you are going to get off the road system wiuthout a licensed guide. Our regs can be over-whelming, with the state divided into 26 game areas, and most of these areas are further subdivided for additonal regs to govern what, when, where or even how, for one or more species.
One of my shooting friends, an ex-Marine sniper, can bang the 5s and 6s all day long.
