Moose, Wolves, helicopters and other stuff

When I moved to Alaska my friends a the moose pens told me that the short dark days in winter keep you sluggish and then the long days of spring and summer bring out an almost manic feeling. Sometimes that's the perfect description life in Alaska. Back in December sunrise was about 8:30-9:00am and a we could look out our office windows and see it get dark by about 3:15pm. Once we had a good snowfall things brightened up a bit but until then some days were a bit tough for most of us outdoor lovers. Now with the recent changing of the clocks sunsrise today is 7:09am and sunset is 7:04pm which seems very late even though summer will have sunsets at 11pm or later!
The longer days are good because they allow more time for field work. I recently got to help some of the best people in the busisness work on a moose study. After working at the Moose Pens on the Kenai I had learned an awful lot from the top moose people in the state which came in handy since it was my first time working out of a helicopter to capture moose. I have seen it from above several times but actually landing next to rivers and flying just over tree tops and seeing the places that the pilots can land was incredible! These studies are very important to the survival and management of moose populations so it was amazing to be able to help.
I've been around helicopters dozens of times during medical evacuations of critically ill patients down south but this was quite different. The main difference is that most of the medical evacuations where I came from included a fire department setting up a landing zone that was very safe and often the helicopter rotor was shut down until after the patient got loaded and everyone was safely clear of the rotors.
Field work in the wilderness using a helicopter is a totally different and amazing experience. First of all at the beginning of the day the helicopter lands and the door is remove on the passenger side and the rest of the day you fly without the door on that side! This is to facilitate safely and accurately darting the animal with tranquilizing drugs. To make the helicopter as maneuverable as possible they drop two of us off while the biologist goes with the pilot and darts the moose. Then depending on the situation he stays with the moose and we get picked up and dropped off as close as possible to the tranquilized moose. This means that for almost the entire day you climb out and stand on the skids of the helicopter with the rotor still going and grab your gear then while ducking low enough to avoid decapitation you try to walk on the snow hoping not to break through into the deeper stuff which slows you down alot. Often the helicopter is using some rotor power to keep from sinking into the snow and tipping over.
Once you move out of rotor range you get down on one knee with you're back to the chopper and get blasted by a huge rush of air and snow blowing at you and into any part of your clothes that aren't sealed tight. The wind is so strong that on one occasion I made the mistake of kneeling on both legs and when it took off it would have knocked me over if my coworker hadn't grabbed me. Once out of rotor range we had to get to the moose as fast as one can while occasionally breaking through up to our waist in the snow(in one case I was chest deep for several minutes). We were in chest waders and often got to the moose in or near streams. I soon learned from the experienced guys that if you could make it into the stream you could move much faster by walking in the stream as long as you could get back up the snow bank when you got close enough to the moose.
Imagine trudging across deep snow and through icy cold streams(I'm so glad they told me I needed insulated waders) and then reaching a moose that ways 800-1100lbs and lays down wherever it wants to. The biologist I got to work with is amazing and often had blood drawn before we even got to the moose. However, on some occasions the moose had layed down in streams and one of us had to hold it's head above water until after the work was done and the reversal drug had kicked in. This meant waiting until the last possible moment and then getting as far away as possible to avoid stressing the moose any further.
Where there's moose there are usually also wolves. While we were working on moose the spotter plane saw several moose kills and one was so fresh that the wolves were still feeding on it. Everywhere we went there were tons of tracks nearby and we even had to land on an old carcass to collect bone, teeth and what was left of an old radio collar. We can encourage hunters not take moose with collars(although they sometimes still do) but the wolves really don't care which moose they hunt as long as it's slow enough to kill. It always amazes me to see how clean the bones look after the wolves, ravens, magpies, etc. are done with it. As you can imagine it was a very interesting day. It was much needed after months of dull data entry. The field season is finally coming up again soon so I'll be away from the computer for up to to weeks at time but hope to update when possible. Thanks all the great comments on the blog. I'll try to update with photos as soon as I can get them from the gang.