UP THE DEMPSTER HIGHWAY

If I have my days right, today is Tuesday (so this must be Belgium, right?).  We are still in Keno and the weather this morning is rather crappy – rainy and windy – so we are taking things easy for a bit before we head out in search of Bullwinkle and his great-grand-daddy.  This gives me a bit of time to scribble a few recollections of yesterday’s adventures, or to prevaricate a bit about who knows what.  And later today if I can steal a signal from Mike Mancini’s Snack Bar, I will post this entry.

We are unlikely to see any caribou here in the Keno area, and I would like to shoot a caribou (never did that before), so yesterday Phil indulged me and away we went for a serious road trip.  Janice joined us, since she enjoys caribou hunting (and caribou meat), and our first stop was the town of Mayo, where they have a government office that includes a place to buy hunting licences.  In fact, that is one brilliant arrangement:  the govt building has a Canada Post office and mailboxes, a Yukon Liquor Commission outlet (open Tuesday to Saturday, so no good for us!), a social services office, a probation office (for those who spend too much time in the YLC store), the Yukon Ministry of the Environment office, and a few other services.  PLUS clean washrooms and real porcelain toilets!!!

Anyways, as Janice was buying her caribou tag, we asked the helpful lady at the office about the caribou along the Dempster Highway.  The news was not good, after she phoned the territory caribou biologist.  Most of the herd was up near the NWT border, which is to say about 700 km from Mayo.   But there were scattered groups of caribou all over the place, so we decided to keep going.  For several hours.............and up the Dempster we went.  At about Kilometre 18, Phil and I saw a large moosey-looking object off in a clearing near the road, so we pulled off to see if we might have some luck with a moose.  We went into the bush in the same general area as we had seen the aforementioned possible moose, and Phil did some cow calling.  Not cows as in cattle, but cow moose of course.  Quite soon, we heard crashing in the woods, which then went downwind of us, and then was gone.  Seems we were outwitted by a bull moose, who no doubt thought the lady of his fancy had a terrible odour, not at all like a cow in heat but more like sour sweat and genuine human body odours.

So on we went, up past Tombstone Park, into some very spectacular back country, but no caribou were evident, and around 2:30 pm or so, we turned around to head back to Keno.  We did stop at Kilometre 18 and tried to lure the bull moose into a honey trap (with me a hundred yards downwind of Phil this time), but had no success on our second try either.

So back here we drove, with a short stop at Crystal Lake to see if Emma the cow moose was in her usual spot and perhaps had a visiting paramour.  She was not in her usual spot, so perhaps she was off in the bedroom in her negligee, grunting dirty sounds into a bull’s ear or whatever.  (“Oh, Bullwinkle, you’re so BIG!  Ungh ungh mah mah).  Crystal Lake is named after a fellow who mined in this area, name of Billy-Bob Christal.  So either Billy-Bob or the folks who named the lake had spelling problems with his last name.

Grouse was on last night’s menu again (gee heck!) and I did have enough time to walk over to Mike Mancini’s to check my e-mail and post my last blog entry, before the power went out, and with it Mike’s wireless network.  Hopefully it will be up again today and I can send this missive out to my scores of faithful readers so they can get their fix of Doug’s latest adventures.  TTFN.

Dou