"You awake? You awake? Are you awake?"

I was, but in my sleep-induced stupor I was having trouble separating the present from the dream-filled world of make-believe from where until moments ago I had just been. A world where all the moose are 60 inches. A world where all the bucks make book. And, a world where hunters let their guides sleep at night.

Each year I take on a number of guiding assignments for various outfitters in North America. I do this for a number of reasons including putting a little green in my bank accounts but, the primary appeal is that it allows me to hunt a few more days of the year in regions I might never get to spend time in otherwise.

Hunt may seem a strange word for a guide to use, but the guide is as much of a hunter as the client who accompanies him. Sure, he will not be the one pulling the trigger, but the hunt is in no way exclusive to the individual carrying the rifle. In many ways the guide is more the hunter. He is the one with an intimate knowledge of the country and the game. He is the one upon who the blame falls for lack of success. And he is the one who is ultimately responsible for the safety and care of his hunter. I use the word "he" to describe the guide here but the term is in no way gender exclusive. There are many fine female guides who also epitomize the term professional.

A guide/hunter relationship is much like a marriage, with each partner contributing to its success. But just as many marriages end in divorce, so do some hunts end in disaster. For this relationship to truly work, the hunter must set aside some of his pride and bravado and allow the guide to be the leader. As one outfitter put it, "you have to allow the guide to guide." But so too must the guide assess each hunter and allow his strengths to come through and his weaknesses to never be noticed. When this relationship clicks it can be as beautiful to watch as any Russian pairs figure skating team. When it fails, it can be ugly.

I was guiding for outfitter Craig Yakiwchuk of Lone Wolf Outfitting and had what can only be described as the toughest hunter of all. It’s not that this hunter was difficult to get along with, or not competent in the woods or not every bit as good a hunter as me, but there were some circumstances surrounding the relationship that might have made a lesser man pack up his bedroll and catch the next stage out of Dodge, or Whitehorse as the case may be.

"Are you awake?"

I reached over and grabbed the hunter’s arm that was now vigorously shaking me. It felt softer than normal, there was little hair on it, and while strong and muscular, it was much more delicate than previous hunters I had guided. It felt almost feminine. "Oh my God, it was feminine."

That’s right, this hunter was a woman. A very handsome woman at that.

"Wake up!!"

I had read about this sort of thing happening in Hemmingway’s, The Short Happy Life Of Francis Macomber, where a client fell for the professional hunter and they ended up spending the night together, but I was married. "My wife. I can’t," I muttered, still trying to separate reality from the dreams of my deep sleep brought on by a hard day of moose hunting.

"I am your wife you idiot." I felt the pain of a sharp, not so feminine elbow digging into my ribs. "I heard something outside."

Now, fully cognoscente of the world I was in, painful ribs and all, I listened to the shuffling outside.

"Is it a bear?" my wife Kim asked.

Ever so slowly I slid the zipper back on the tent door, shotgun at the ready. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the pre-dawn darkness, then the large, black object began to take shape. Its large, bulbous head was buried in one of our food boxes. The one containing my raisin bread!

"Get out of there," I yelled.

"What is it?"

Our intruder was not ursine in origin and while feared by many Indian tribes and villainized by Edgar Allen Poe, the large black bird posed little danger to us. I grabbed one of my heavy hiking boots and hurled it at the huge raven, missing by a mile.

"Get out of here," I yelled again, trying to emphasize the point my misguided boot had not. The raven flew off, totally unscathed.

Kim and I have hunted together on countless occasions and taken some fine game to show for it. But this was to be the first time where it was a true guide/hunter relationship. And it was to be for a species she had dreamed all her life of hunting – the huge antlered moose of the Yukon Territory. Ever since I can remember, it has been a dream of Kim’s to shoot a bull that stretched the tape to near 60 inches and pushed the Boone and Crockett score to well over 200. Now the pressure was on me.

In retrospect I likely tried to bear too much of the pressure myself on this hunt. Kim was just along for the experience like she had been on all our previous hunts. Killing an animal was secondary. She had made up her mind before we left home not to shoot a bull that scored under 200 and would not be disappointed to come home empty handed. I, on the other hand, would accept nothing less than fulfilling all her dreams.

What follows is the story of the toughest client of all.

"Mmmmrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Mmmmrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Mmmmrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

The sounds of a mournful cow moose shattered the still evening air. In this case the sounds resonated from deep within my lungs but it was a pretty good rendition of the "Love-Sick Cow Blues" if I do say so myself. It was with great anticipation that we awaited a response.

It was our first day on the tiny tributary to the mighty Teslin River and it had already been long, arduous and not without peril. The day had begun early in the morning at the Whitehorse Airport where we boarded a Cessna 206 and took a short flight into one of Lone Wolf Outfitting’s main camps. From there we loaded all our gear, enough for 10 days, aboard a Honda four-wheeler and a three-wheeler and drove four hours to our spike camp. The remainder of the day was spent setting up camp and just generally acclimatizing to our new surroundings.

There were only a few hours of the day remaining when we made our way down to a nearby beaver pond to call.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yea, I think so."

Then we both heard it again. "Uuuhh. Uuuhh. Uuuhh."

It was the unmistakable sound of a bull moose. He continued moving closer, grunting as he came. Through the tall willows it was impossible to see him so Kim and I made our way to a vantage point higher on the hill behind us. Still we could not see the bull but a violently shaking willow and the sound of antlers on branches left little doubt as to his location.

"Uuuhh. Uuuhh. Uuuhh."

The bull started moving toward us again. Our first glimpse was at about 70 yards. His wet antlers glistened in the evening sun, his breath, visible in the cool evening air, expelled with each grunt.

"He’s a good bull," I said studying him through the eight-power binoculars. "Should go nearly one eighty-five."

It was the kind of bull you hate to see first day. He was a good bull, but certainly wasn’t the monster this area of the Yukon could produce. While weighing his merits in my mind and taking another long look at the massive antlers, Kim spoke up.

"Definitely not a first-day bull," she said carefully evaluating him through her own binoculars.

"He’s pretty good."

"We’ll find bigger," she said confidently.

And right she was. Early the next morning we hiked a couple miles to a nearby lake and it took all of five minutes for a bull to answer my call. This bull came hard and was incredibly vocal. One hundred, 75, 50 then 30 yards but still we could not see him through the heavy cover. Then at 25 yards he broke off and continued down the lake shore, grunting as he went.

"What happened?" Kim whispered.

"I don’t know. He couldn’t have got our wind and he’s still grunting."

Then it all became clear. A cow, a hundred yards further up the lake, came busting out of the willows and jumped into the lake. A bull, the bull we had called in, was hot on her tail, grunting and swaying his head to and fro. There was little wonder why he had abandoned us when he scented the real thing so close by. The game of cat and mouse continued for nearly half and hour with the cow not welcoming any of the big bull’s advances.

"Bet she’s pissed at us," Kim said.

"That’s a big bull. We could sneak down the lake a get him easily," I said almost pleadingly.

"He only looks like about fifty inches."

"Yea but look at the mass and length of those points."

"We’ll find a bigger one."

"It’s your decision."

If there is one thing that you need to learn early in your guiding career, it is to let the hunter make the decision whether to shoot or not. If you tell them to shoot, the animal is too small and if you tell them not to shoot, they tell all their friends how they saw the new world record and the guide wouldn’t let them shoot it. The best thing to do is give your opinion and leave the decision up to the hunter. But, Kim had just passed up the two biggest bulls that had ever walked in front of her, bulls that would have given even the most seasoned hunter a case of trigger-finger itch. No, they wouldn’t have made the magic 200 mark but they weren’t far off.

The weather was cold for the first few days of our hunt and the bulls were extremely active. On day three, however, Indian summer set in and frost, which had become a regular companion in the mornings, was nowhere to be found. The bulls literally shut down and while we did manage a couple of answers and did call in the same two bulls from earlier in the week, things came to a grinding halt. The lament was the same all over the Yukon and northern British Columbia. The SBX radio was a buzz with guides and outfitters trying to figure out strategies on how to get their clients moose.

Things can turn ugly in a camp with no game. One cook was reliving a tale of a hunter who chewed her out because the gravy was lumpy. Her voice broke and nose sniffled as she held back the tears. A guide in northern B.C. had lost his horses and was begging the outfitter to fly the following day to look for them. The hunter then came on the radio and punctuated the point.

And what about my hunter, the toughest client of all? She was as positive and upbeat as the first day and delighted in laying down her third gin hand in a row. What about me? I was getting stressed out. There was no sign of the beautiful weather ending and the hunt was half over. This was certainly not the first unsuccessful hunt I had guided but boy did I feel pressure. It was a pressure from within but it was no less real.

"Why don’t we go shoot some ptarmigan tomorrow. Maybe we need a change of scenery."

"Gin," Kim gleefully blurted out again. "Whatever. Sounds great to me."

Kim was fairly new to bird hunting but she quickly collected enough of the mottled brown and white birds for the evening’s meal. Ptarmigan abound in the mountains of the Yukon and some explosive wing shooting was just the diversion I needed. Kim delighted each time the 12 gauge exploded and one of the plump birds hit the colorful tundra. For a moment I forgot all about moose and the fact that only a few days remained.

The following morning we headed high in the mountains to a remote basin where we had glassed a bull and cow earlier in the week. He had been too far and the glimpse was too brief to say how big he was, but there was no question he was a descent bull. It took a little over two hours to reach the basin and we instantly spotted a cow and two calves peacefully eating willows.

The wind was at our backs so we quickly made our way around the basin to a clearing above the willow patch. The cow had moved when we arrived but some careful glassing soon located her. Then, while adjusting the focus on my binoculars, a bull appeared like an apparition coming out of the mist. Even at a half mile, the bull looked enormous. Kim saw him about the same time.

"We need to get a closer look at him," I urged.

"Looks like about fifty-six inches to me," she said mater-of-factly. "It looks like he has folds in his paddles like those sheds back at camp. I can’t count front points."

"Folds in his paddles, are you sure?"

"Yep."

I have taken a number of good bulls over the years and have guided for several more but had never seen, let alone shot a bull with folds in his paddles. It has been my experience that there is only one type of bull that has folds – a huge one!

We could see two cows and two calves bedded alongside the bull and they were totally carefree, basking in the glow of the warm autumn sun. The wind was in our favor and closing the distance to 150 yards looked like it would be a snap. At 300 yards everything was going according to plan when I noticed a third cow, bedded about 30 yards away from the rest of the group. She was looking straight at us but making no attempt to get up. There was little to do but continue on.

At 200 yards the cows began to stand up and the bull started grunting. Soon he was standing too. We closed the gap another 25 yards and it was looking like now or never. We discussed the work involved in packing a moose off the mountain and both took one more look through the binoculars.

"He’s got lots of points on the front and he’ll go at least fifty-six inches, I said urgently.

"He might go fifty eight." I couldn’t believe how casual Kim was. "I’m going to take him."

At 175 yards she sat down, carefully aimed and slowly squeezed the trigger, sending the 165 grain Trophy Bonded bullet on its way. The moose humped and planted all four feet solidly.

"Shoot again!"

That statement seems silly now as Kim had already worked the bolt on the little Husquvarna and was bearing down for shot number two. At the report of the 30/06 the moose wobbled, tried to regain his footing and then cascaded to the ground, sending shudders through the very soul of the mountain. The cows looked on confused. The bull made one last attempt to get up and then laid silently.

Tears started to well up in Kim’s eyes. I felt as though the weight of the earth had just been lifted from my shoulders. The rest seems somewhat anticlimactic now. We approached the downed behemoth silently, each totally absorbed in our own thoughts. The moment could not have been scripted more perfectly. The bull was everything Kim had dreamed of and more. The hunt was everything I could have dreamed of and more.

The bull, undoubtedly ruler of the high mountain basin for going on a decade, was covered in blood. He had undoubtedly been in a life and death battle for supremacy the previous day and while the victor, his injuries may well have eventually cost him his life. While skinning him out we found several large puncture wounds including one that penetrated right through to his chest cavity. In his right shoulder a three inch piece of antler tip was broken off deep within the muscle. One can only imagine the force required for this to happen.

Moose are curious creatures, spending most of the year in relative solitude, worrying about little more than their next meal. But come the rut, this otherwise docile leviathan, becomes all consumed with the passion to reproduce and will peruse that goal to whatever end, even if that end is death.

Moose hunters too are curious by nature, going to unbelievable extremes and through unbearable hardships for even just a glimpse of the magnificent beast. I don’t consider myself a moose hunter, not in the purest sense. Certainly I’ve killed several bulls, including some fine trophies, but the passion is not ingrained deep within my being, not like it is in Kim. She is a moose hunter. I am a moose guide.

It took the better part of three days for us to pack all the meat and antlers off the mountain but it was small penance to pay for the experiences Kim and I had shared. It is a trip that neither of us will ever forget nor will we probably ever match again. I hate clichés and everyone is always talking about the spell of the Yukon, but she really has cast her spell on me, and on Kim as well. It was a land that until a year ago I had never seen. Now I have been there five time and will unquestionably return next year.

Robert Service once wrote, while describing the Yukon in his famous poem, The Spell Of The Yukon:

"It’s the great, big, broad land `way up yonder,

It’s the forests where silence has lease;

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It’s the stillness that fills me with peace."

Author’s Notes:

Lone Wolf Outfitting operates in one of the Yukon’s most prolific moose areas with bulls in excess of 60 inches routinely taken. 1998 was a tough year across the north but all of Lone Wolf’s clients took bulls, including one the should score over 235. They offer horseback, riverboat and all-terrain vehicle hunts and will customize each trip to the needs and abilities of the hunter.

In addition to moose, hunters can try their luck for grizzly, black bear, mountain caribou, Stone sheep, wolf, wolverine and a variety of game birds including ptarmigan, spruce grouse, ruffed grouse and blue grouse. 1998 saw Lone Wolf clients take some monstrous grizzly bears including one that was over 30 years old, a 41-inch Stone sheep that was just shy of the books and several book caribou.

If you have never been to the Yukon, you owe it to yourself to go, but just be careful she doesn’t cast her spell on you.

For more information on hunting with Lone Wolf Outfitting, contact: Lone Wolf Outfitting, Box 33099, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, Y1A 5Y5, phone 867-393-3093, http://www.lonewolfoutfitting.com