Departing the high, snow-covered mountains where they killed their Dall ram, the author's party moved lower to moose country--where the tundra vegetation was putting on its fall colors and the bulls began to show signs of rutting activity.

"OK, here we go," I said, and I cocked my right leg just a touch more as I pushed the rifle into my shoulder with the heel of my hand. That sequence of movements, repeated countless times in my former life as a competitive rifle shooter, calmed me. The crosshairs settled on the ram and were steady right away, and I squeezed the trigger. I cycled the bolt instantly and got back on the ram, but there was no need. He was dead where he lay.

It wasn't until we walked over to him that it hit me: I'd actually done it--I'd killed a sheep. He was a beauty, too. While they weren't terribly long at 34 inches or so, his horns flared impressively, and I couldn't have been more pleased.

We stayed up on the mountain for another day, trying to find a ram for Wayne, and the dreary weather finally lifted to reveal the sheer grandeur of the Alaska Range. The sun bounced off high, jagged peaks, a strong, high-altitude wind blowing skiffs of snow from white spires onto broad glaciers. We glassed into steep ravines of sedimentary rock, the sides a veritable rainbow of gray, peach, tan and pale green.

Later that day we broke camp due to a forecasted storm and struggled mightily up the steep shale slide that towered over camp. With all my gear plus the sheep's cape and horns lashed to my backpack, each step was a major undertaking, and I tried like hell not to look up; tracking my meager progress was too depressing. It took 45 minutes of grunting, cursing and sweating to reach the top. It was perhaps the 45 most grueling minutes of my life.

By nightfall we had reached the hard-sided shelter of sheep base camp, the welcome warmth of a wood stove and the comfort of bunk beds. The next day Wayne and the crew tried unsuccessfully to find sheep lower on the mountain, and the following morning--with moose season just two days away--we moved to a transitional camp to resupply and fix the ATVs that would transport us to our moose hunting area.

By now the tundra was coming alive with autumn color--the blueberry bushes, low-bush cranberries, bear berries and other vegetation rivaling the splendor of a fall foliage display in the northern hardwoods. A carpet of reds, oranges and yellows spread across the lower elevations, and the mountains we'd just descended gleamed white against a blue sky, their heavy blanket of new snow courtesy of the storm we'd just ducked.

The advancing calendar brought with it another of nature's spectacles: the onset of the moose rut. I'd never seen a bull in the flesh, my only previous hunting experience comprised of eight completely moose-less days in Ontario a few years back, and I was excited at the prospect of pursuing the biggest moose subspecies in the world.

We'd barely unpacked our gear at moose camp--a small, two-story plywood building perched on a sharp hill--when the first moose walked into view on the vast semicircle of tundra below.

We got behind the spotting scopes and found not just one bull but three, and it didn't take us long to grab our stuff and dash down the hill. Within an hour or so we located the bulls in a thick patch of willows, their presence given away by the swaying and shaking of limbs as they stripped leaves from the branches. Then one of them emerged from the cover and sauntered into the open.