The moose story - stories for my grandchildren

I mentioned my Grandmother Anderson's brother from Canada - the one who brought fermented cranberries to the family dinner - and promised more, so here's the moose story.

Great Uncle Jess (I mistakenly called him Virgil earlier; though he is named Jessie Virgil, he went by Jess) went with his dad to Canada when he was seventeen years old (he was born in 1896).  Canada was the new frontier at the time, and it suited Uncle Jess just fine. He stayed, living most of his life in primitive areas of British Columbia, became a Canadian citizen and married a young woman from Norway, Mariene Carlsen. Together, they lived in the backwoods, hunting and trapping for food and engaging in the fur business as a livelihood. When civilization encroached, they simply moved further back into the wilderness.

Years later, on one of their visits to Texas, my brother Jim thoughtfully taped several hours of conversation with the pair, and the stories they told were incredible - the stuff of the wilderness adventure novel, but true. Like the time they were out running their bear traps. One of the traps had a bear and Uncle Jess was busy skinning it, when he said that he heard the snap of a rifle and the next thing he knew a 400 pound bear came crashing down the hillside and rolled right over him. When he freed himself from under the newly-deceased bear and stood up, he found that Mariene had seen the bear up the trail, and just as it charged, shot it with a small caliber rifle and fortunately pierced the bear's heart!

On another occasion they were moose hunting, but had seen no prey, so stopped to prepare their meal. They had but one rifle with them, and Uncle Jess leaned it against a rock and turned to build a fire. Almost immediately, he heard the gun go off, and he thought, "Oh No! The rifle fell over and when I turn around I'm going to be a widower." What actually happened was Aunt Mariene saw a young bull moose on the trail, picked up the rifle and shot it between the eyes! But I digress.

The moose story happened right at home. At one point, the couple lived by a navigable river and depended on a boat operated by a mining company up the river for supplies. In return, they provided the company fresh meat. It was late in the season, and bear meat was all that was available, so Uncle Jess was delighted to see a pair of moose swimming across the river to their bank. He shot and killed one, but missed the other. The moose he shot was floating down river, so he jumped in the canoe, chased down the moose, put a rope on it and began towing it back to their dock.

In the meantime, Mariene, having heard the shots, came down to see what was going on. She saw a moose struggling to get up on the steep bank out of the river; it only had its front hooves and nose on the bank at that point. Thinking that Jess had shot and mortally wounded it, Mariene picked up a hatchet from the nearby wood pile, walked over to the moose and dispatched it with a stroke between the eyes!  When Jess got back with his moose, she asked him what he wanted to do with the other moose. What moose? The other one you shot. I only shot one moose. You mean there was nothing wrong with that moose I just killed with a hatchet?

And that's the moose story.