My buddy Anderson and I were lucky enough to get out of DC this past saturday and took a trip down to the Shenendoah Valley to enjoy a local hotspot that has been created with the help of the Manassas chapter of TU. Beaver Creek stretches two miles through private farmland and rolling hills near the town of Dayton VA. Access is limited to four anglers per day and requires a permit that may be "purchased" for a $5 donation to the local TU chapter that oversees the maintenance and stocking of this great spring creek. the permits can be picked up at a local country store. For more info on acess visit http://www.mossycreekflyfishing.com/beavercreek.aspx
I was really quite impressed with the fishery. There are quite a few stretches that have some really nice structure and deep holding water. I happened to run into the president of the local TU chapter. The fishery has been a great success and the landowners have proven extremely cooperative with TU's effort to build it as a reputable fishery.
Anderson and I enjoyed fantastic weather in a beautiful snow covered setting. The stream winds through open farmland with some stretches lined by trees. The blueridge mountains provide an wonderfull backdrop, and the stream maintains a healthy population of stocked rainbows, but also wild bows and brookies. I saw a couple 20+ inchers swimming in the creek. I took most of my fish on wooly boogers and a few on some sz 22 bwo emerger patterns. However, the two other anglers that were there were getting them on eggs, of which i had none.
The fishing was solid, the weather gorgeous, and the experience thereputic.
Its proximity to DC makes it a doable and worthwhile day trip. Next time...I'll remember batteries for my camera!
Monday, February 9, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Damn the Drift (part 1)
Damn the Drift pt 1Sometimes I underestimate my proven ability to be an ass. So, often, in hindsight, I feel like one; that day, week, or maybe later that year. It was on one of those days that the real beauty of our sport again provided me with a feeling of clarity that so often only a cold running trout stream can.
Autumn had brought us north to the Bighorn. We’d come from Southern Colorado. The aspen trees, fired gold by each successive day’s frost, had majestically signaled the end to our inaugural season of guiding. The endless knots and breaking wrists, the accumulated frustration of ten thousand fucked up weighted double 7x nymph rigs, and the narcissistic harangues of so many awful fishermen were finally behind us. The time was our own, the fish our own, and the probability of success only our own. It was nothing less than a piscatorial pilgrimage that Patrick and I had commenced together two weeks earlier, and from the beginning, Ft. Smith and the Bighorn had been our Mecca.
It had started with Patrick’s purchase of a beautiful 17 foot drift boat. Fear No Rock it read
emblazoned on the side. For three weeks she had sat lifeless atop a gravel parking lot in Southern Colorado aside a mere 30 CFS of flowing trout rich water known as Goose Creek. Her sexy accented blue and white curves lie covered, yet still able to torture our drift depraved souls which seemed to beckon us north, more and more, with every shortening day. We’d planned the trip for weeks, mapped out other waters to drift along the way, and dared to dream dreams of fat hulking fall browns. It was certain to be epic.
Autumn had brought us north to the Bighorn. We’d come from Southern Colorado. The aspen trees, fired gold by each successive day’s frost, had majestically signaled the end to our inaugural season of guiding. The endless knots and breaking wrists, the accumulated frustration of ten thousand fucked up weighted double 7x nymph rigs, and the narcissistic harangues of so many awful fishermen were finally behind us. The time was our own, the fish our own, and the probability of success only our own. It was nothing less than a piscatorial pilgrimage that Patrick and I had commenced together two weeks earlier, and from the beginning, Ft. Smith and the Bighorn had been our Mecca.
It had started with Patrick’s purchase of a beautiful 17 foot drift boat. Fear No Rock it read
emblazoned on the side. For three weeks she had sat lifeless atop a gravel parking lot in Southern Colorado aside a mere 30 CFS of flowing trout rich water known as Goose Creek. Her sexy accented blue and white curves lie covered, yet still able to torture our drift depraved souls which seemed to beckon us north, more and more, with every shortening day. We’d planned the trip for weeks, mapped out other waters to drift along the way, and dared to dream dreams of fat hulking fall browns. It was certain to be epic.Wednesday, February 4, 2009
New Zealand
There are few places on Earth as stunning as the South Island of New Zealand. My buddy Rob and I were lucky enough to spend a semsester down there in College. Exploring its clear rivers and Jagged landscapes with our fly rods.
Check back soon, I hope to post some of our journal entries and other photos...
Sockeye ( a short)
The tracks lie aside the river bed, beside several flesh-stripped sockeye; nothing remains but their bare spines and hooked jaws. It has over a year since the man had heard the old native, Injuquaq, tell the story of his encounter with the bear. Now a chill of fear itches from the soles of the man’s feet up to the hairs upon on his neck, raising them to attention. The man notes the fear, not foreign but rare. Having become accustomed to its absence, the man values such fear highly. It is a mortal fear, and he recognizes its significance. He takes hold of it.
The absence of the third toe in the track of the front right paw is undeniable. It belongs to the grizzly, Maguyuk.
A hunter, the man stands familiar in the face of the wilderness before him. He spits on the ground and rubs it into the dirt while breathing in the fresh air. Although less acute than those of his quarry, his senses are sharp, his instincts tuned. His rifle is draped across his right soldier. He removes it. Pulling back on the bolt, he is careful not to eject the bullet from his gun’s chamber. The gun is clean, ready to shoot. Quickly he re-chambers the bullet with a closing of the bolt as if he knows that he must be ready to shoot at any moment. He raises his rifle into the air, he fires. The open terrain barks with the echo of the shot. Quickly again he chambers the next bullet in his magazine and fires it. The warning has been sounded, Maguyuk alerted. As the last distant echo of the shot dissipates into the great open space of his surroundings, the man can’t help but think about the events that have brought him here; the railroad, the bear, Injuquaq’s story.
The Klondike gold rush had begun in 1897 and without delay the construction of a railroad to carry mining supplies across the border between Alaska and the Yukon had commenced in order to elicit the profits being lost to high transportation costs. It was to run from Skagway, north to Whitehorse. Gold prospectors poured into the area, along with workers for the construction of the railroad, men who had built the railroads that spanned the lower American States. These men were hard men; soldiers, hunters, and outlaws. These were men that knew the wild, men that knew better than to go into the Alaskan and Yukon wilderness unarmed.
During the building of the railroad, prospectors traveled out of Whitehorse into the wild hoping to discover more gold within the Yukon’s mineral rich landscapes. Occasionally they would not return. The disappearances were at first attributed to ineptitude and ignorance, casualties of a harsher world. As construction of the railroad made its way north, the mystery of these disappearances was revealed as death soon besieged the railroad camps.
The mangled and flesh stripped corpses of the bear’s victims were found amidst grizzly tracks indicating a disfigured right paw. As the death toll mounted from five, to ten, to twenty, the rail company had no choice. After just a year, construction was suspended.
At that time the man was halfway around the world, in Kenya. The construction of another railroad had just been re-commenced after being stopped by the infamous Tsavo, maneless, man-eating lions. The man had successfully slain both the beasts, which had been responsible for the deaths of more than 130 workers. His reputation was the best, his skills known around the world. Within six months he would arrive in Alaska, contracted by the rail company to kill Maguyuk.
Injuquaq had been hired by the rail companies as an ambassador and translator to the natives. He was old and wise, a proud hunter, respected by his people and the white men. However the temptations of the white man’s whiskey were too much for Injuquaq and he fell from the favor of his people and plunged deep into drunkenness. He became a fixture at the Fool’s Gold Tavern in Skagway, often telling the tales of his youth to the tavern’s bibulous patrons for liquor and food. Seeking guidance towards his quarry, the man had sought out Injuquaq. He remembers the encounter well.
***
“Old man, tell me the story of your bear,” said the man as he swayed from the bar to the dusty unlit corner of the tavern, his boots clapping slowly across the wood floor. Injuquaq doesn’t respond. His head points down towards his empty glass and pipe smoke billows out from beneath his rimmed leather hat, which rests upon his long untied hair, still black as an Alaskan winter. The man’s green eyes stare as he moves towards the old native seated in the corner. He is chewing a plug of tobacco and its juices stain his strawberry beard, dark and rich brown, at the corners of his mouth. He sits at the table across from the old Injuquaq. Injuquaq lifts his head. His eyes are dark, set like jewels within his weathered and wrinkled face. Across his left check stretches a scar. The man speaks to Injuquaq, “Old man, I’d like to hear the story of the bear.”
“There are many bears in this land Cheechako,” said Injuquaq, his lips drawing upon his pipe. The man lifts his hand and fills the native’s empty glass with whiskey.
“Tell me about the man hunter, Muguyuk. The beast that gave you that scar.”
***
Now the man reloads his rifle and clenches it. His pack is strapped across his broad back. He stands above the tracks and the flesh stripped sockeye in a wide valley north of Whitehorse. He is in the land of Injuquaq’s people, wilderness. The late summer air is cool and carries the charcoal scent of the oncoming autumn. Breathing slow the man harnesses his fear and prepares to wield it. It has saved his life more than once before. It’s night, and the sun sits low behind the mountains in the distance. Knowing he must reach high ground, knowing that he must spot Muguyuk before the beast smells him, knowing that it may already be too late, He runs for the silhouette of the mountainside, his rifle loaded in his hand.
***
“You Cheechako, who are you?”
The man’s name is spoken, even the drunk has heard it. “So you come to save the railroad? Bunch of damn thieves! Theives!” Injuquaq’s face tightens as he stares at the man. Around the man’s neck Injuquaq sees a tooth necklace. He doesn’t recognize the large razor sharp teeth that adorn it. “You aren’t here for the money are you Cheechako?”
“Old man my contract is not of your concern. What you need to know is that I am here to stop nature’s indiscriminate hand. To end the suffering you yourself have endured.”
“You do not know what I have endured!”
“I know enough,” says the man before he spits into the copper bowl resting on the table between them. “I know that I am the balance old man, the balance to the troubles of this wild country.”
“You might be the balance Cheechako. But you better pray that you are lucky as well, at least as lucky as I was,” says the old man as he pounds his finger into his own chest. His eyes widen and his face loosens, “Give me that whiskey and listen close.”
“Fair enough.” The man reaches across and fills Injuquaq’s cup.
“I was a young man when Maguyuk first came to our village. It was before white men came to strip the gold from the land. At first the bear appeared in the afternoon, atop the hills beyond the flat where our village was. There he would stand, staring down on us, a black shadow against the sky. Usually a grizzly would not dare come closer to a village. Not this bear. If I had known what evil was within the beast, I would not have waited to fight it. Death came soon. Many went missing. One day my wife did not come back as the sun was setting. The Sockeye were spawning, their red flesh filling the rivers almost as though it seemed you could walk between the banks atop their backs. She had left that day to net them. We called from the village for her, but dared not to leave the safety of our fires. I insisted to go searching for her; however the elders would not allow it. They already knew what had become of her. I refused to admit it. At sunrise, we found her bones scattered along the river bank, stripped of their flesh. I lost my will to live, food did not have flavor and sun no longer warmed my skin. I went away from the village alone, hoping to kill the demon bear or have him kill me.”
Once again the man reached across the table and filled Injuquaq’s cup with whiskey. He noticed in the native’s eyes not a tear, but a pride.
“Soon my desire for death was replaced by a deeper desire. I wanted revenge. I hunted the bear for weeks, hoping to take him from a distance with my rifle. Circles, I went in circles. Never could I find him. One day I scaled a mountainside and looked out across the fields where the caribou were grazing, back across the path I had traveled not more than an hour before. My eyes fixed upon him immediately. Even at that distance, I could see the tremendous haunches of his shoulders move as he ran across the field. The biggest grizzly I had ever seen. He kept up his tremendous gait and traveled towards me, passing the caribou with no interest. It seemed… that the bear was hunting me.”
***
The man is still running for the high ground. He thinks that he might be able to get a fatal shot off with his rifle if he can just spot the beast. His strong legs carry him across the land and occasionally through the river when it intersects his path. The mountainside is closer. Soon he will be safe he thinks. Protected from behind by the mountain and protected from the front by his rifle. He feels the strong wind at his back as he runs. He hopes that Maguyuk also is at his back, so that his scent might be hidden by the wind’s direction. The mountainside is close, just beyond the clumps of brown tussocks ahead. Suddenly he stops. His eyes widen as the wind seems to stop suddenly, the nighttime sun sits low on the summer’s horizon, the man becomes locked in a cold stare with Maguyuk, whose eyes fix on him from behind the brown tussocks ahead. The man raises his rifle. Three shots in the magazine.
***
Again, Injuquaq rattles his empty cup atop the wooden table. “You’ve had your share old drunk. Finish your story,” says the man, eager.
Injuquaq coughs, draws again from his pipe and exhales the sweet smoke through his nostrils and continues, “That night I slept holding my knife clenched atop my chest, wondering if a bear could actually track me at such distance at that speed. I did not wonder long. I was awoken by his entry into my camp that night. Startled I jumped to my feet my knife in hand. The bear stood motionless in the moonlight for what seemed like minutes. Everything was quite, he mad no noise other than that of the heavy muffled rhythms of his breath. Then he charged! He stopped before me and stood on his hind legs. I did not care if I died, but I knew I wanted to hurt the beast. I did not move. He struck me in the face, smashing me to the ground with the force of 20 men. As I lie on the ground he came over me, and paused. I looked up into his face, and with my last bit of strength sank my knife into his right paw. The bear let out a shriek of pain. I pushed and twisted the blade with all my strength before he ripped his arm away. In an instant the bear fled. Somehow I had survived. Luck. The whole night he howled in pain aside the mountain. A howl deeper and cruder than a wolf’s, more terrifying. I named the beast Maguyuk.” “Maguyuk?” asked the man
“The Howler,” replied Injuquaq.
***
His rifle shouldered, the man stands frozen against the mountainous landscape. He spits tobacco juice as he stares down the barrel of his gun. His cheeks contract, jockeying the tobacco plug around within his mouth. His hairs again prickle the back of his neck. His fear becomes focus. He is calm. Overhead, an eagle flies looking down on the two creatures. It has never seen these two together. Maguyuk moves from behind the tussock, and reveals his tremendous body, still out of fatal range. His coat is dirty, clumped with blood, dirt, and mud. Saliva drips from his hungry snout. Slowly the man aims his rifle. Ready to shoot when the shot is presented.
Suddenly, the unusual moment is broken, the bear charges. The man holds fast as the 900 pound bear pounds towards him with staggering speed.
80 yards. The man fires his rifle. A cloud of dirt erupts just behind the bear. His focus does not break.
50 yards. The man chambers the second bullet. The wind, the distance, everything accounted for, the man fires again, and strikes the bear in the right shoulder. Maguyuk unleashes a beastly roar which echoes throughout the valley. Somewhere caribou run startled. Maguyuk does not slow. He continues his charge, consumed with primal rage.
25 yards. The fear returns to the man. His aim falters as he trembles. Then expelling it along with his breath, he holds fast, chambers his final bullet, and fires his weapon. The shot travels through the cool Yukon air, through the thick fur of the beast, through its leather like skin and massive chest muscles, and rips into his lung. Maguyuk again roars without stopping. Suddenly the fear which the man has wielded so skillfully, disappears into the open Alaskan wilderness. The man’s eyes widen as he faces what he knows is his death. Droping his rifle, he draws his knife from his waist. Unable to relent, incapable of concession, he yells and stands his ground as Maguyuk takes his final leap towards him. It takes no time. A brief futile struggle and the man is dead.
The giant bear stands once more on his hind legs and with a last howl of victory and pain he concedes to his wounds and slowly falters to the ground. His breath slows and his eyes close.
Soon Maguyuk is dead. The Man and the beast are both slain. Overhead the Eagle still circles adrift the Yukon breeze. The sockeye sit in the shallows of the river, blood red and exhausted, soon to die in their birthplace.
The absence of the third toe in the track of the front right paw is undeniable. It belongs to the grizzly, Maguyuk.
A hunter, the man stands familiar in the face of the wilderness before him. He spits on the ground and rubs it into the dirt while breathing in the fresh air. Although less acute than those of his quarry, his senses are sharp, his instincts tuned. His rifle is draped across his right soldier. He removes it. Pulling back on the bolt, he is careful not to eject the bullet from his gun’s chamber. The gun is clean, ready to shoot. Quickly he re-chambers the bullet with a closing of the bolt as if he knows that he must be ready to shoot at any moment. He raises his rifle into the air, he fires. The open terrain barks with the echo of the shot. Quickly again he chambers the next bullet in his magazine and fires it. The warning has been sounded, Maguyuk alerted. As the last distant echo of the shot dissipates into the great open space of his surroundings, the man can’t help but think about the events that have brought him here; the railroad, the bear, Injuquaq’s story.
The Klondike gold rush had begun in 1897 and without delay the construction of a railroad to carry mining supplies across the border between Alaska and the Yukon had commenced in order to elicit the profits being lost to high transportation costs. It was to run from Skagway, north to Whitehorse. Gold prospectors poured into the area, along with workers for the construction of the railroad, men who had built the railroads that spanned the lower American States. These men were hard men; soldiers, hunters, and outlaws. These were men that knew the wild, men that knew better than to go into the Alaskan and Yukon wilderness unarmed.
During the building of the railroad, prospectors traveled out of Whitehorse into the wild hoping to discover more gold within the Yukon’s mineral rich landscapes. Occasionally they would not return. The disappearances were at first attributed to ineptitude and ignorance, casualties of a harsher world. As construction of the railroad made its way north, the mystery of these disappearances was revealed as death soon besieged the railroad camps.
The mangled and flesh stripped corpses of the bear’s victims were found amidst grizzly tracks indicating a disfigured right paw. As the death toll mounted from five, to ten, to twenty, the rail company had no choice. After just a year, construction was suspended.
At that time the man was halfway around the world, in Kenya. The construction of another railroad had just been re-commenced after being stopped by the infamous Tsavo, maneless, man-eating lions. The man had successfully slain both the beasts, which had been responsible for the deaths of more than 130 workers. His reputation was the best, his skills known around the world. Within six months he would arrive in Alaska, contracted by the rail company to kill Maguyuk.
Injuquaq had been hired by the rail companies as an ambassador and translator to the natives. He was old and wise, a proud hunter, respected by his people and the white men. However the temptations of the white man’s whiskey were too much for Injuquaq and he fell from the favor of his people and plunged deep into drunkenness. He became a fixture at the Fool’s Gold Tavern in Skagway, often telling the tales of his youth to the tavern’s bibulous patrons for liquor and food. Seeking guidance towards his quarry, the man had sought out Injuquaq. He remembers the encounter well.
***
“Old man, tell me the story of your bear,” said the man as he swayed from the bar to the dusty unlit corner of the tavern, his boots clapping slowly across the wood floor. Injuquaq doesn’t respond. His head points down towards his empty glass and pipe smoke billows out from beneath his rimmed leather hat, which rests upon his long untied hair, still black as an Alaskan winter. The man’s green eyes stare as he moves towards the old native seated in the corner. He is chewing a plug of tobacco and its juices stain his strawberry beard, dark and rich brown, at the corners of his mouth. He sits at the table across from the old Injuquaq. Injuquaq lifts his head. His eyes are dark, set like jewels within his weathered and wrinkled face. Across his left check stretches a scar. The man speaks to Injuquaq, “Old man, I’d like to hear the story of the bear.”
“There are many bears in this land Cheechako,” said Injuquaq, his lips drawing upon his pipe. The man lifts his hand and fills the native’s empty glass with whiskey.
“Tell me about the man hunter, Muguyuk. The beast that gave you that scar.”
***
Now the man reloads his rifle and clenches it. His pack is strapped across his broad back. He stands above the tracks and the flesh stripped sockeye in a wide valley north of Whitehorse. He is in the land of Injuquaq’s people, wilderness. The late summer air is cool and carries the charcoal scent of the oncoming autumn. Breathing slow the man harnesses his fear and prepares to wield it. It has saved his life more than once before. It’s night, and the sun sits low behind the mountains in the distance. Knowing he must reach high ground, knowing that he must spot Muguyuk before the beast smells him, knowing that it may already be too late, He runs for the silhouette of the mountainside, his rifle loaded in his hand.
***
“You Cheechako, who are you?”
The man’s name is spoken, even the drunk has heard it. “So you come to save the railroad? Bunch of damn thieves! Theives!” Injuquaq’s face tightens as he stares at the man. Around the man’s neck Injuquaq sees a tooth necklace. He doesn’t recognize the large razor sharp teeth that adorn it. “You aren’t here for the money are you Cheechako?”
“Old man my contract is not of your concern. What you need to know is that I am here to stop nature’s indiscriminate hand. To end the suffering you yourself have endured.”
“You do not know what I have endured!”
“I know enough,” says the man before he spits into the copper bowl resting on the table between them. “I know that I am the balance old man, the balance to the troubles of this wild country.”
“You might be the balance Cheechako. But you better pray that you are lucky as well, at least as lucky as I was,” says the old man as he pounds his finger into his own chest. His eyes widen and his face loosens, “Give me that whiskey and listen close.”
“Fair enough.” The man reaches across and fills Injuquaq’s cup.
“I was a young man when Maguyuk first came to our village. It was before white men came to strip the gold from the land. At first the bear appeared in the afternoon, atop the hills beyond the flat where our village was. There he would stand, staring down on us, a black shadow against the sky. Usually a grizzly would not dare come closer to a village. Not this bear. If I had known what evil was within the beast, I would not have waited to fight it. Death came soon. Many went missing. One day my wife did not come back as the sun was setting. The Sockeye were spawning, their red flesh filling the rivers almost as though it seemed you could walk between the banks atop their backs. She had left that day to net them. We called from the village for her, but dared not to leave the safety of our fires. I insisted to go searching for her; however the elders would not allow it. They already knew what had become of her. I refused to admit it. At sunrise, we found her bones scattered along the river bank, stripped of their flesh. I lost my will to live, food did not have flavor and sun no longer warmed my skin. I went away from the village alone, hoping to kill the demon bear or have him kill me.”
Once again the man reached across the table and filled Injuquaq’s cup with whiskey. He noticed in the native’s eyes not a tear, but a pride.
“Soon my desire for death was replaced by a deeper desire. I wanted revenge. I hunted the bear for weeks, hoping to take him from a distance with my rifle. Circles, I went in circles. Never could I find him. One day I scaled a mountainside and looked out across the fields where the caribou were grazing, back across the path I had traveled not more than an hour before. My eyes fixed upon him immediately. Even at that distance, I could see the tremendous haunches of his shoulders move as he ran across the field. The biggest grizzly I had ever seen. He kept up his tremendous gait and traveled towards me, passing the caribou with no interest. It seemed… that the bear was hunting me.”
***
The man is still running for the high ground. He thinks that he might be able to get a fatal shot off with his rifle if he can just spot the beast. His strong legs carry him across the land and occasionally through the river when it intersects his path. The mountainside is closer. Soon he will be safe he thinks. Protected from behind by the mountain and protected from the front by his rifle. He feels the strong wind at his back as he runs. He hopes that Maguyuk also is at his back, so that his scent might be hidden by the wind’s direction. The mountainside is close, just beyond the clumps of brown tussocks ahead. Suddenly he stops. His eyes widen as the wind seems to stop suddenly, the nighttime sun sits low on the summer’s horizon, the man becomes locked in a cold stare with Maguyuk, whose eyes fix on him from behind the brown tussocks ahead. The man raises his rifle. Three shots in the magazine.
***
Again, Injuquaq rattles his empty cup atop the wooden table. “You’ve had your share old drunk. Finish your story,” says the man, eager.
Injuquaq coughs, draws again from his pipe and exhales the sweet smoke through his nostrils and continues, “That night I slept holding my knife clenched atop my chest, wondering if a bear could actually track me at such distance at that speed. I did not wonder long. I was awoken by his entry into my camp that night. Startled I jumped to my feet my knife in hand. The bear stood motionless in the moonlight for what seemed like minutes. Everything was quite, he mad no noise other than that of the heavy muffled rhythms of his breath. Then he charged! He stopped before me and stood on his hind legs. I did not care if I died, but I knew I wanted to hurt the beast. I did not move. He struck me in the face, smashing me to the ground with the force of 20 men. As I lie on the ground he came over me, and paused. I looked up into his face, and with my last bit of strength sank my knife into his right paw. The bear let out a shriek of pain. I pushed and twisted the blade with all my strength before he ripped his arm away. In an instant the bear fled. Somehow I had survived. Luck. The whole night he howled in pain aside the mountain. A howl deeper and cruder than a wolf’s, more terrifying. I named the beast Maguyuk.” “Maguyuk?” asked the man
“The Howler,” replied Injuquaq.
***
His rifle shouldered, the man stands frozen against the mountainous landscape. He spits tobacco juice as he stares down the barrel of his gun. His cheeks contract, jockeying the tobacco plug around within his mouth. His hairs again prickle the back of his neck. His fear becomes focus. He is calm. Overhead, an eagle flies looking down on the two creatures. It has never seen these two together. Maguyuk moves from behind the tussock, and reveals his tremendous body, still out of fatal range. His coat is dirty, clumped with blood, dirt, and mud. Saliva drips from his hungry snout. Slowly the man aims his rifle. Ready to shoot when the shot is presented.
Suddenly, the unusual moment is broken, the bear charges. The man holds fast as the 900 pound bear pounds towards him with staggering speed.
80 yards. The man fires his rifle. A cloud of dirt erupts just behind the bear. His focus does not break.
50 yards. The man chambers the second bullet. The wind, the distance, everything accounted for, the man fires again, and strikes the bear in the right shoulder. Maguyuk unleashes a beastly roar which echoes throughout the valley. Somewhere caribou run startled. Maguyuk does not slow. He continues his charge, consumed with primal rage.
25 yards. The fear returns to the man. His aim falters as he trembles. Then expelling it along with his breath, he holds fast, chambers his final bullet, and fires his weapon. The shot travels through the cool Yukon air, through the thick fur of the beast, through its leather like skin and massive chest muscles, and rips into his lung. Maguyuk again roars without stopping. Suddenly the fear which the man has wielded so skillfully, disappears into the open Alaskan wilderness. The man’s eyes widen as he faces what he knows is his death. Droping his rifle, he draws his knife from his waist. Unable to relent, incapable of concession, he yells and stands his ground as Maguyuk takes his final leap towards him. It takes no time. A brief futile struggle and the man is dead.
The giant bear stands once more on his hind legs and with a last howl of victory and pain he concedes to his wounds and slowly falters to the ground. His breath slows and his eyes close.
Soon Maguyuk is dead. The Man and the beast are both slain. Overhead the Eagle still circles adrift the Yukon breeze. The sockeye sit in the shallows of the river, blood red and exhausted, soon to die in their birthplace.
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