"Moose!"

I whipped the jet boat into a hard, upstream about-face turn and throttled back to hold her steady in the current. "He thinks the boat is a cow!"

The young bull, obviously looking for love, trotted out to the riverbank and into the rushing current. That the strange object of his attention did not even remotely look like a cow moose, there could be no question, but that love is blind, there also could be no question.

UGGGHHFFF! The youthful suitor declared his intentions so ardently I felt a pang of sympathy; the poor guy was destined for rejection. It couldn't possibly work: a 16-foot aluminum jet boat and a moose simply don't have enough in common to form a lasting relationship.

UGGGHHFFF? Over the throttled back four-stroke, the sound reached us easily. What was this? A second bull? A bigger bull? Yes. And equally as intent as the first on making love to our watercraft.

"Get the video camera out!" Jim Bissenden, who was both my client and cameraman for the trip, was already diving for the one thing that would prove our story later. Both bulls were now standing in the river, both grunting their messages d'amour. At a distance of 30 feet, the first bull pulled up, belly deep in the frigid fall runoff.

UGGFF? Even with my limited understanding of moose, it was evident the bull realized that he'd been duped. Disappointed at love lost, he slowly turned and waded back to where his buddy still stood, staring at the exotic silver-colored beauty that purred so demurely. I turned the rudder and let the current pull us downstream, away from where the two jilted bulls stood.

"Never seen humans," I said, smiling at my stunned crew. "Never heard a boat before either."

"That was incredible!" said Jim, his head wagging from side to side in disbelief. For me it was just another magical day in paradise.

Could there still be hunting areas in North America where big game animals are wild and free and have no fear of humans? Could there still be lands so remote that a hunter can expect to have hundreds of square miles of prime big game habitat all to himself?

Is it possible that there are still pristine areas in North America where moose can live and eventually die of old age, never having heard the foreshadowing drone of a Super Cub? Where moose in fact outnumber humans by a ratio of two to one? Where Dall's sheep roam, grizzly bears wander and caribou click and clack across landscapes spectacular?

Scientist R. G. McConnell, vested in 1902 with the task of making an instrumental topographical survey of the central Yukon area, described the breathtaking Yukon scenery in this way, "…the shattered pinnacled crests which often surmount the ridges of sharply tilted cherts and agglomerates, give variety to the view."

Truly it was as close to subjective as a scientist, overwhelmed by the scenery, could be. Since Mr. McConnell's time, more than 100 years ago, very little has changed in this last frontier.

In fact, the Yukon has stood empty--or at least devoid of human life--for most of the years since the last Ice Age. White spruce forests--quilted with black spruce, aspen, balsam poplar and birch and stitched with black pine--still cover the Yukon below the tree line. Reindeer moss covers the high country benches and the eruptive mountain slopes. Nary a logger is to be found, and what roads exist are usually little more than "cat trails," pushed through the wilderness by hopeful prospectors searching for the mother lode.