About a year ago, veteran dog musher Tim White of Colvill graciously shared an interview he conducted with the late fur trapper Mike West, a patriarch of Minnesota mushing, which was published in Winter 1972-73 issue of Northwoods Journal. West ran long, canoe-country traplines and trained sled dogs and drivers for the Army during World War II. The entire interview was a bit long to reprint, so, with full credit to White, a paraphrased version follows here.
Mike West grew up in Worthington. In 1921, he acquired his first Malamute puppies from a man in Shelby, Mont., who brought a pair of dogs back from Alaska. A chance meeting in a barbershop with Benny Ambrose, a trapper who lived most of his life on remote Ottertrack Lake along the Canadian border, introduced West to the canoe country. Ambrose said there was money to be made in fur trapping.
After an unsuccessful stint in Seattle, West and a partner moved to the North Woods. They stayed in Ambrose’s old cabin at McFarland Lake. Fur wasn’t plentiful in the winter of 1929, so they mostly trapped muskrats. West’s partner left, but he stayed on. For more than a decade he ran 200 miles or more of winter traplines in the canoe country. He used dog teams for transportation, and carried a tent and down sleeping bag for shelter.
Back then, fox were the money fur, but West trapped all other furbearers as well. West also had interesting experiences with wolves. Once, he and a partner trapped a small and docile wolf pup in the fall. They put a collar on it and tied it up at their cabin. Out on the trapline, they discovered that a couple of wolves and a fox had been stolen from their traps. Returning to the cabin, they discovered the wolf pup was stolen, too, possibly by a guest at a nearby resort.
Once, he owned a dog that would ride on the running board of a car. One day, they came upon a wolf. The dog ran up to the wolf and the two met, tails wagging stiffly, their postures bristling and stiff-legged. The two canines sniffed each other, then one lifted his leg on a bush and the other followed suit. Then they went a few yards and did it again. Then the dog ran back to the car wagging his tail while the wolf went off into the woods. West figured the two had sized each other up and decided “somebody could get hurt fighting this fellow.”
Drafted for World War II, West was in the mountain troops at Camp Hale, Colo., when he learned the Army was looking for big sled dogs. All of his dogs were over 90 pounds, and some weighed as much as 120. Due to a mix-up, his dogs never joined the Army, but West was sent to Camp Rimini in Montana to become an instructor for Army mushers.
Originally, the dog teams were to be used for an Allied invasion of Europe launched through Norway, but military leaders changed plans and invaded through France at Normandy. After completing the training program, many of the teams and drivers were stationed in Canada under the air routes to Europe, where they performed rescue operations when planes went down. Some of the dog teams went to Europe, where they did emergency transport during the Battle of the Bulge.
After the war, West returned to Hovland, where he raised a family. He continued to have sled dogs, and White considered him one of the few people in the 1970s who knew the practical details of working dogs.
He made dog harnesses which had a padded donut collar similar to a horse harness. He also made lightweight racing sleds capable of carrying 400 pounds.
West enjoyed watching sled dog racing, which was a new sport in the 1970s, but preferred working dogs.
White concluded by writing, “He likes his own dogs the best: the kind that can go all day pulling a 1,000-pound sled and still have energy left to start some trouble. Mike has that kind of energy, too.” Mike West died in 1987.