Moose vs. Train: who wins? We do!

in #homesteading7 years ago

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Of all the day to call about a moose, it’s when we are sick.

So at about 12:30pm we go a call about a moose that needs to be harvested. Sweet! So I call the Alaska Moose Federation, whom I have a membership with, to pick up and deliver the Moose to our house. Awesomeness!
So I send the husband out to guard our moose because me have poachers/vultures in a sense, that will steal the whole moose or literally cut chunks out of it.
It doesn’t cost anything to be on the Salvage Call list, you only need three adults or more in your group. That’s it! But people still won’t sign up, I just don’t get it.
Anyways so we purchased a years membership for this place to come pick up and and deliver the moose to us, $100 a year! We have had two delivered this year. The first was destroyed, it was a young calf hit by a semi.
So my husband calls me saying he can’t find the moose because it isn’t where the trooper said. The trooper give me further info on the Moose. It was hit by a TRAIN! My heart sank, I’m thinking it is going to be gut shot and worthless. So I get more info on the location of the moose and relay it to my husband. He finds it, he says it’s beat up and that it looks like it was drug and that the guts are mostly gone. He sends me these photos.

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So after looking at the photos its looking a bit better. Yay!

The guy who delivers the moose to us was just turning in his truck to have he breaks done, and just transferred his stuff to his wife’s truck when I called for his help.

He is about two hours away, and suppose to be getting more employees soon. Good thing the temps are in the single digits, and the train gutted it for us.

The delivery guy had a hard time finding the place just like my husband. The train delivered it to a train overpass, where they have all their electrical boxes and stuff for the train maintenance.

Eventually the guy got there, used a winch to pull it up onto his flat bed truck and delivered it.

We set up a tarp for processing the moose on. Both @alaskatactical and the delivery guy did a great job on dropping it on the tarp.

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They take the lower jaw for fish and game so they can keep track of ages on the harvested moose.

Since the guts are mostly gone we focused on getting the quarters off. We started on the left hind and left front. One of the back straps seems to be shot. 🙁 But we got a lot more from this one then last.

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We have been working for 12 hours and are finally on the last leg. We try to use as much as possible.

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Tools we used.

We have made 20 roasts, 30+ steaks, close of bot more then 100 pounds of burger.

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Wow ! great job both of y'all. That's a lot of meat stocked.

Thanks! It really is. A lot of hard work too, but worth it.
Waking up today was hard, this cold/flu is a nightmare. I had body aches before, but now it’s amplified.
Man I just want to rest! But the wood people moved our delivery of wood up from a week to today. Once they unload the truck we will have to haul it to our wood stack.

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Yayyy meat!
That is a HUGE job, but now you have a freezer full of meat! So much healthier than grocery store meat.
Feel better!

It is a huge job, and I am thankful for that job. It’s very nice when moose hunting fails. Most of the city folk come out here and stir the place up, so you mostly get grouse, like a wild chicken. Our salvage covers 20-30 miles. With cars, trains, and moose breaking their legs we should have another next year too, maybe another this year too. We share the meat with the other people on our crew, and family. Sad that is happens, but it won’t go to waste.
In Alaska it is illegal to take the moose after it has been hit, unless the troopers call you off their slavege crew list. We have hit a few with our car 😕

@alaskahipie Yum! One day I will get to try moose. They just don't wander this far south! Great post, good pictures.

That was an awesome post!!! Keep up the great work...

As a kid not old enough to hunt but having gone on many with my relatives in Maine.

The thing that used to crack us up more than anything was seeing hunters from out of state bag a moose in a swamp about 500 yards in, then argue about how they were going to drag a 1500 lb moose out of the swamp back to the truck. LOL

LOL that’s funny! I have been tempted a few times to take the harder ones because it was the first legal one in hunting season. Never have though.
City people come out here on four wheelers and tear up the place making so much noise it spooks everything.
We see more moose in the winter then in the summer or fall.

Not to mention the neon orange snowmobile suits LOL. You could spot them guys walking the woods from the next mountain over 8 }

Hahaha Damn that’s bright 💡

Congratulations on this post doing really well! What a great way to enter Steemit :)

Not really my intention, it’s just my life.
Thanks for showing @alaskatactical and I this place.

Sharing real stories and a real journey is an amazing way to reach people. You will do really well here. I believe that you and @alaskatactical have so much good stuff to share. I'll be following :)

I am still following 😊

That is awesome! And with it being so cold, it would be hard for it to go bad during the whole process! You've definitely made up your $100 yearly fee this year!

True it won’t go bad, but it does freeze solid. So we have to bring it in and store it in cold water and ice. Oh yeah we have made back our $100 investment! I plan on renewingour memebership this fall. There is just so many that get hit it’s almost not worth hunting. We still try, good exercise and a great opportunity to find new blue berry bushes.