The magic of the Yukon is that big game means really big, such as this trophy moose. The author has also taken world class caribou, grizzly and Dall’s sheep in the region.

Certainly there have been times of trouble in the Yukon, spurts of human habitation that threatened the solitude. The Klondike gold rush from the last years of the 1890s is the stand-out example. Thousands upon tens of thousands of human locusts--a plague of humanity--descended on the region, all seeking their fortunes. Some found wealth, most found little besides toil and heartache.

They left their mark, the miners did, but ultimately the Yukon proved too harsh and stingy with its riches. One by one and then by the boatloads the erstwhile fortune seekers exited south, leaving the Yukon once more alone and, for all intents and purposes, devoid of human life.

Yes, a few stayed, a few hardy souls, the antecedents of today's Yukoners. Tough, resilient, self-reliant, determined and confident, they discovered another Yukon, one rich in wildlife, especially big game.

Salmon-fed grizzly bears in the south and west of the territory grow to enormous size, though in fact they are only slightly larger than the moose-eating grizzlies in the central and eastern portions of the Yukon.

Dall's sheep are found in the south and west in numbers that rival the highest densities anywhere, and the large-bodied mountain caribou live in the southern half of the Yukon while the more petite barren ground caribou reside in the northern half.

There are Fannin sheep too, light-colored Stone's and wolves and black bears, but throughout the Yukon it is the mighty moose that held the early settlers rapt, for in this out of the way section of North America, these hardy folk discovered the largest moose in the world: Alces alces gigas, the Alaskan-Yukon moose.

I have been fortunate to hunt the Yukon many times, both as a client and as a guide, and every hunt has been an adventure. In a way, the Yukon has been a secret I've been guilty of keeping. There hasn't been a hunt where I didn't stand in amazement at some point during the adventure, thinking that it couldn't get any better. Whether facing a grizzly or moose, Dall or caribou, there have always been--as incongruous as it sounds--many "once in a lifetime" moments courtesy of the Yukon's big game species.

The bottom line is, there are so few people in the Yukon that the animals there are not always inclined to pay the respects we humans are used to receiving elsewhere in North America.

My father, 70 at the time and along for a caribou hunt on one of my early Yukon expeditions, nearly had a black bear in his lap when he and his guide went to recover a fallen caribou my father had just shot. The bull had been claimed during the interim by the black bear, and only by shooting a handful of bullets around the hulking bruin, from very close range, did my father manage to reclaim his prize.

The first Yukon grizzly I ever shot was a prime example of a disrespectful denizen of the wild territory. The day before I arrived into camp, the gorgeous two-tone, blond-on-black grizzly charged one of the guides. The unarmed guide hightailed it back to where his client was glassing for moose, yelling for the client to shoot the bear that was now in hot pursuit.