Chainsaw trophy care

[Nunyacreek]

The recent post looking for a Knapp saw reminded me of this story. The story was secondhand when I got it.
Sometime in the early ‘80’s in an outfitters camp at wolf lake on the Snag River on the North side of the Wrangells near Northway AK. I’m fairly sure it was Doc Taylor’s camp. I’ve been to the spot and Wolf Lake is tiny, Bud Conkle use to operate out of there on floats, it must have been a pretty big pucker factor on floats.
Anyway the guides were preparing trophies and a younger fellow fired up the chainsaw and was cutting the skull off a set of ram horns when he misjudged and cut about a third off of the off side horn off the ram. I’m not sure what the reaction was but I don’t think it was appreciative.
My sense was that Doc Taylor was at least as interested in horses as hunting so maybe this was just the way it was. I loved hearing those stories when we were hunting out of old outfitters areas. Bud Conkle wrote a lot about that country in his books, and when I was there I was with an outfitter named Matt Owen who wisely operated on wheels farther down the snag. I was also with a close friend and outfitter named Dave Leonard who had trapped out of the wolf lake cabin in the early ‘80’s. He taught me most of what I know about Alaska. There was a small wood cookstove and sheet metal stove as well in the cabin. I remember him telling me about getting to the cabin in winter and he’d fire up both stoves to warm it up, a fact that always stuck with me. He was trapping on foot..and that was cold country!

 

[Salmonchaser]

Hadn’t thought about Northway in years. Dad would take me down there in the late summer, had a route he would do working with the villages. Caught a lot of big Grayling. I remember it being cold as hell In September, Circa 1960 or so. We hunted Caribou further west at Tok.

 

[EastTNHunter]

I was told about a moose hunt by a guy I worked with years ago. He was from Michigan and had a drop or two of Native American blood in him, so he claimed that was able to claim tribal immunity on a bunch of game laws, and that carried over into his ethics and how he “hunted” everywhere. He went on a moose hunt somewhere up north, I can’t remember where, and he shot a moose. His “guide” broke out a chainsaw (which he said was filled with vegetable oil instead of bar and chain oil) and used it to quarter out the moose so that they could get it to the atv and out of the field. He made it sound like something that everyone should adapt to field care for all big game hunting

 

[KU_Geo]

Was just in the NWT, guide & wrangler did in fact use a chain saw to cut the skull plate off my ram and caribou once back at our horse camp. Talk about nerve wracking! But the 17yr old wrangler said he had done 75, maybe over 100 of them before with a chainsaw. I in fact do not doubt that he was telling the truth, as he grew up at the hunting camp and he been there every year since he was a baby.

 

[Mallardsx2]

I was told about a moose hunt by a guy I worked with years ago. He was from Michigan and had a drop or two of Native American blood in him, so he claimed that was able to claim tribal immunity on a bunch of game laws, and that carried over into his ethics and how he “hunted” everywhere.

Sounds like everybody from Ontario. Then they bitch about the moose population tanking.....