Bugs, on my guided Alaska moose hunting trip? You must be joking. “I can handle bugs no problem”, you might say. But, until you have been moose hunting in Alaska you haven’t even seen bugs. Bugs of all sorts will be there to greet you while you are looking for your trophy Alaska bull moose. Where there are bull moose there will be bugs.
Mosquitoes of various sizes will be dive bombing you, trying to reach in and bite any exposed chunk of skin. You will be trying to calmly glass from a good lookout hill for a trophy bull moose, on your guided Alaskan moose hunt, when your gaze is abruptly broken by a buzzing in your ear and then, pow, you can’t handle it any longer, you have to reach up and itch, right now! Then, you start all over again, right where you left off, you begin glassing, just to have the whole scenario played out over and over… every 30 seconds. And, while this is going on, you only have one eye to look through. There is a constant swirling of black flies about your head and one is in your eye at the moment. All of a sudden something grabs your neck and you reach up in time to scratch a white sock off and squish him. There, is a tickling sensation on your wrist and you look, but don’t see anything, so scratch anyway, knowing that it’s a no-see-um.
And then the gnats….all this while you are glassing for bull moose through the greenish haze of your head net, a necessity. Every square inch of exposed skin is thoroughly drenched in bug dope, preferably the kind with deet in it. Whenever a breeze comes up it brings a welcome reprieve from the ever present BUGS.
Ahhh, the joys of moose hunting in Alaska!!
