One Heck Of A Ride

47 More Antlered Game drove all-terrain vehicles on two-track trails to likely spots. Eventually, we were transported by helicopter to a third camp, where we hunted on foot by wandering around, and spotting and stalking. The rut was winding down and our guides didn’t try calling. What I haven’t mentioned until now is that the area we were hunting experienced more than two hundred days of fog every year, and we were there during the peak of the fog season. It was eerie to hear moose moaning and clashing their antlers a few hundred yards away when we were unable to see more than a couple hundred feet. The guides used a helicopter to haul out the moose their clients shot, and an incident while we were there showed how dangerous flying in fog could be. A chopper had picked up a hunter and his moose before the fog cut visibility to only a few yards. The pilot couldn’t see to fly safely or even find a place to set down. When holes suddenly appeared in the fog, the pilot immediately landed the helicopter and he and the client spent the night in the machine. In another incident, the pilot landed a few hundred yards from our cabin without knowing it was there until the next morning. Both Norm and I shot good eastern Canada moose. I was interested in seeing how mine differed from the Alaska-Yukon, western Canada, mountain, and Shiras races, so I spent some time inspecting mine before a helicopter hauled him away. He was a mature bull, a bronze medal animal that would meet SCI record book minimums, but his antlers (they were officially scored at 265 6/8 SCI) were a great deal smaller than the western Canada moose I’d taken in British Columbia. The “saddle” on his back also was smaller and his over-all coloration was much darker. I was surprised to learn that Newfoundland had no moose until the Canadian government began capturing them in Nova Scotia in 1878 and releasing them on the island over the next three decades. They obviously did well because more than a hundred years later they can be found in forested areas all over the island. Norm and I skinned, fleshed and salted the capes of the caribou and moose we shot, and everything arrived in California in good shape. I’d had a good hunt and made some “Newfie” friends, but it was the beginning of the end of my partnership in a booking agency with Norm and Bud Dyer. Our differences came to a head on this trip, and it wasn’t long before Norm and I left the booking business. Santa Rosa Island’s Doomed Elk And Mule Deer Santa Rosa Island, the second largest of six islands in what now is the Channel Islands National Park is only about a hundred miles as the crow flies from our home in Lompoc, so I was well aware of its history when I decided I should hunt there before its free-ranging Roosevelt elk and Rocky Mountain mule deer were “removed” by the National Park Service. The island, a one- time Mexican land grant estate, was purchased in 1902 byWalter Vail and J.W. Vickers, who formed the Vail and Vickers Company of Santa Barbara, California, and operated it as a cattle ranch for the next eighty-four years. In the 1930s, the company introduced Rocky Mountain mule deer from Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau and Roosevelt elk from Canada, creating a private hunting reserve for the two species. In 1980, when Congress passed legislation creating the Channel Islands National Park, it included a clause giving purchase of Santa Rosa Island “the highest priority.” Six years later, the owners were paid $550 per acre (approximately $29.7 million) and allowed to continue ranching and hunting for three months, followed by renewable five-year special-use permits. A 1996 lawsuit by the National Parks Conservation Association resulted in a settlement in which the