Another Swamp Donkey Expedition

The perfect place for BOB.

I didn’t apply for a moose tag this year since we didn’t need a full moose (especially with a bison in our freezer). Kevin didn’t draw a moose tag either and wanted to go, so we planned a general harvest hunt back in a place we went prior… Minto. The first time we were in Minto, we barely scratched the surface of possibilities, yet we both brought home a moose. We were hoping to expand on that experience this year and get a dandy for Kevin.

We would take BOB on this adventure. BOB, short for Blood On Board, is our 18’ freighter canoe with a 23hp surface drive motor. This thing is made for hunting shallow swamps with its UHMW bottom, ability to cut through weeds, incredible fuel efficiency, heavy hauling capability, and light enough for a couple guys to lift. Minto is BOB’s perfect playground.

We did a little map planning for potential routes and places to hunt, but nothing major since we had been there prior.  

Day 1

It takes about 10 hours of driving to get to Minto, and we need to launch in the morning for our hunt, so we plan for a day of driving and then starting the hunt early the next day.

I had BOB on the trailer ready to go when Keven came over in the morning. We were taking his truck since my truck has been fairly unreliable lately. We were all loaded up and hit the road at 9AM. It was raining when we left and continued to do so most of the drive.

Driving the highways this time of year is interesting… the terrain and surroundings are beautiful with fall colors, but the best part is seeing all the hunting rigs coming out of the field with racks stacked on the trailers and vehicles. Unfortunately, we didn’t see many antlers on our drive; hopefully this wasn’t foreshadowing.

Once we got above Fairbanks, we started to see a bunch of grouse along the road. We didn’t have a good way to keep them from spoiling or else we would have had fun trying to put a few in the truck. Although we didn’t shoot one, Kevin did end up hitting one with his truck (no way of salvaging that thing).

We got to Minto a little before 7PM, drove around the village to see if anything changed, searched for cell phone service, then returned to a pull out just outside of town along the highway. This is where we would stay the night in the truck… which I absolutely hate doing but refuse to dig out the tent and setup everything for camping.

We got out our makeshift dinners and settled in for a movie while we ate.  I think we now have a new tradition before we hunt Minto, because both times now we watched a terrible movie to cap off the first day of traveling.

Day 2

We got up around 6:30AM… or should I say Kevin did, because I barely slept. Scrunched in a car seat and listening to the freight train coming out of Kevin’s nose all night meant I was doomed to not get any sleep.

It was dumping rain when we woke up, so we weren’t in a huge hurry knowing it would be pretty bad on the open water. I had an important email I had to send for work that I committed to prior to knowing we wouldn’t have service. Kevin was very understanding so we drove around looking for a patch of service. We ended up having to drive away from Minto a few miles before we got high enough above everything to get service. I was shocked to see even more grouse all over the road this early in the morning during a huge downpour.

After that debacle, we headed to the boat launch. It was still dumping so we decided to relax in the truck, hoping for a break in weather to unload and boat in. It wasn’t until after 9AM when the rain started to let up. We figured it was going to rain on us all day, so this lighter rain was our chance for it to not suck as bad. We got out and quickly put on our warm clothes, waders, and rain gear, trying to stay as dry as possible during the transition.

It took a bit to load up BOB since we had to empty it to take it off the trailer, then reload it with evenly distributed weight. I estimate that this process takes about 45 minutes, especially because we need to make sure we don’t forget anything, and we know where all our gear is.

We eventually pushed off for our hunt and headed to our Plan A location. Along the way we saw six moose, one of which was a spike-fork bull. The spike-fork was legal to shoot and he was along the edge of the river we were in at the time. I wasn’t there to shoot a dink, but it was a good thing I was driving. Kevin nearly jumped out of the boat knowing a legal bull was within shooting range, but he would have had to swim to go after it since I refused to stop.

We had some minor motor issues along the way with the motor pulsing and not idling smoothly. This was likely caused by a gunked up carburetor and failing fuel pump. I had an extra fuel pump, but it wasn’t catastrophic enough to change.

Plan A involved getting to a huge lake off the main river, connected by a small stream. This lake and stream were likely created by beavers, and beaver dams are exactly what we were greeted with upon arrival. Depending on how large the dam is, BOB can ramp over many beaver dams. The first dam was about 12” higher than the lower water level. This is a little too high for ramping, but we were able to pull away some of the dam to allow water to flow over it in the middle, making the clearance a little less.

Kevin then stationed himself on top of the dam next to the spillover in case the boat needed a push or got stuck. I was able to get about 30 feet away for the approach I needed, which gave me enough speed to ramp the dam. After I picked up Kevin, we explored the calm water above the dam, only to eventually find a second dam. This dam was easier to ramp and didn’t need Kevin to leave the boat. I think the beavers were mad at us too because they came out to inspect the damage… and man were these beavers HUGE!

We were ecstatic to be able to ramp two beaver dams and get into the lake we set out to explore! As soon as we got into the water above the second lake, a huge pike splashed through the reeds and into the deeper water; this got me excited for fishing!

We explored the lake, focusing on our intended points of interest from map reviews. Unfortunately, nothing in our map planning really panned out. There was no solid ground surrounding the lake to put a tent, the entire lake had about 50 feet of cattails buffering the shore (if it existed), and everything that resembled ground was actually swamp. We did find one place of elevated ground to get out and explore, but with so much of the lake being pretty much impossible for a moose to want to traverse, our dreams of hunting this area quickly faded.

This patch of ground we explored was similar to a peninsula but only had a walkable surface the size of a cul de sac. Someone hunted here a long time ago because to see over all the flat ground, a makeshift ladder was created on the few trees still standing. This made me think how different this spot likely was 10+ years ago. On the plus side, there was TONS of moose poop, but the moose had to be using this peninsula as a temporary walkway: I could not see us shooting a moose here. I tried to make this spot work, thinking I could walk to some other patches of ground that may be huntable, but everything was mush and undesirable for a moose (or for us to cut a moose up in). As a result, we decide to abandon Plan A ☹

There was another smaller lake nearby with a creek to it that we called Plan A2 so we tried to get to that lake. The creek to the lake was impossible to travel, and the trees/ brush were extremely thick from the creek we were currently on. The lake was also accessible off the main river, so we backtracked a little and checked it out from that direction.

We banked BOB and walked in through the trees to the lake. The hiking here was amazing! The forest was covered with spread out birch trees. Below them… nothing but gentle grass! It was a beautiful floor covering that was ridiculously easy to walk. It was almost surreal, evenly spaced tress, shin high grass, flat ground, light flickering through the canopy top, and nothing but trunks every 5 feet or so to walk around. We had no problem getting anywhere we wanted in this terrain.

We walked about a half mile half circle, finding a few small lakes and openings that looked promising. We finally settled on a large lake opening that stretched all the way into the flats of the beaver dam lake we explored earlier. This lake looked to be about a half mile across and a mile wide; it was outlined by birch with a buffer of dead birch/ upright trunks for 20 feet inside the live birch, then another buffer of about 100 feet of swampy grasses, and then the lake full of ducks and geese by the thousands feasting on the vegetation. This lake looked like a great place for moose, especially since we saw many game trails, a bunch of moose beds, a ton of moose poop, easy walking for wide animals, and plenty of flat ground for calls to carry. There was actually an old tree stand on the far side of the lake by the other accessible place from the river, but it was dilapidated and as old as the prior one we saw earlier.

We jumped back in the boat and moved upstream 200 yards to a better area of birch and shortening our walk to the lake we would hunt. This would allow us to camp on the river, and hike a few hundred yards to our hunting ground. Ideally, we would camp in a spot where we could overlook an area that moose would potentially roam, but this was not be possible here.

The rain had stopped by this time, and it was only sprinkling now, but the plants were still soaked. It took us a while to unload and hike everything about 20 yards into the trees. In the midst of moving everything, I pulled a classic Adam move and misplaced my GPS. I eventually gave up looking for it, but luckily found it later in a spot I forgot I placed it.

We spent what was left of the evening picking the exact location we would hunt from, setting up our decoy (Bertha), and calling to anything in the area. After our first few calls, we were soon greeted with return calls, but to our surprise, they were from wolves. Directly across the lake, about a mile or two away, in a corridor that connected our lake to the hills that we were hoping moose would use to come toward us… a pack of wolves started howling… and howling… and howling; they didn’t stop for a good two minutes straight. Even after their 2-minute rampage, they would fire back up for 30 second sessions every 5 minutes or so. The terrifying serenade would go on for a good 30 minutes or so. This was extremely disappointing. We somehow picked a hunting spot and setup camp next to the largest wolf pack around. With that much howling, barking, and growling, there was no way a moose would get anywhere close to us. Disappointed, we waited a while until they finally went quite, belted out some long and hard moose calls, then headed back to camp to sulk and sleep.

As soon as we got back to camp, it started to dump again. Thankfully, we already set up the rain fly tarp so we had a place to stay dry. We cooked up some dinner as we arranged camp even more. As the sun set, we crawled into the tent intent on getting up early the next day and spending the entire day calling over the lake. The forecast for the following day would also be very wet… great!

Day 3

It rained all night. Something was weird was going on with Kevin’s tent because that thing had a ton of condensation on the inside, and the outside of our sleeping bags (or anything that touched the tent) got soaked. Luckily I brought my water proof bivy to sleep in, so I had no issues. It was lightly drizzling when we got out of the tent.

We got some breakfast together, put on our rain gear, and headed to our hunting spot. It wasn’t long after we arrived when the wolves started sounding off again. They were going absolutely bonkers, even longer and louder than the night prior, in the exact same spot. With the wolves and the crummy weather, there was little chance moose were moving anywhere nearby. Regardless, we sat, and called, and waited, and got cold/wet from the wind and rain.

I was discouraged by the hunting conditions so I decided to walk toward the hunting blind we spotted at the other end of the lake. It took me about 30 minutes to get there. Unfortunately, close inspection didn’t change what we already knew through the binoculars… it was old and unusable. I then headed toward the river where I spooked a grouse. I stumbled across an old camp where I’m guessing the hunters that made the blind also stayed during their hunting trip. There were old meat poles, boards, string/rope, and other things from a long time ago. The camping spot looked fairly descent, but we probably would have still picked the one we were in.        

I returned to Kevin to report what I found. We then decided to take turns at the hunting spot, not needing both of us to be out there in the terrible conditions… but the important part was to make sure we continued to call every so often to ensure if any bulls were around, they would hear and plan to visit in the near future. If we weren’t around and calling, we risked a bull passing near by and us not getting his attention. And doing this didn’t necessarily need both of us at the same time.  

 We took turns staying at the tent, taking cat naps, and making/ bringing each other hot chocolate with peanut butter whiskey. It stopped raining around 2PM, but only for a couple hours.

Nothing too exciting happened the rest of the day… we called, we waited, we tried to stay dry, we hoped to see a moose, we took turns being alert, and we repeated. The most exciting part of my day was seeing a couple frogs between my walks to and from the tent to refill our hot chocolate and PB Whiskeys.

We stayed dedicated to the routine until darkness started to fall. We made our way back to the tent and prepared to do it all again the next day.

Day 4

We were up before daylight with plans to get to our hunting spot at dawn. It was just light enough to hike to see a few feet in front of us; we could see the silhouettes of the trees from the faint light through the sky.  When we got close to our lookout location, a huge owl spooked (scared us too) and quickly flew away. When we do this pre-sunrise approach, we are hoping to see a bull close to Bertha, trying to figure out why she isn’t responsive… but no luck this morning.

There was little activity on the lake and the silence was nice  change of pace. Surprisingly it wasn’t raining, but everything was wet, there were thick clouds in the sky, the air was cold and moist, and the wind was blowing. About an hour after sunrise, the wolves started howling again. They were a little further away than the prior two days, but still blocking off the corridor.

We spent a few hours doing our calling and waiting thing. Around 10AM, I swear I heard a moose causing a ruckus near the old campsite I visited the day prior. I couldn’t tell if it was a cow call or a bull rutting/making a bed, but it was short, and I never got confirmation despite calling many times. This made me go crazy thinking I may have made it up in my head. Kevin was dozing off so I couldn’t get confirmation from him either.

I ate my lunch I brought with around noon. Actually, I was snacking on it most of the morning since it was pretty boring and cold calling and waiting… so I finished off what was left, consuming the remaining protein bar (those dang wrappers can be loud!). Kevin was still snoozing, so I belted out another cow call, shooting it in all directions, but mostly at the trees behind us.

As soon as my calls were done, a faint OOOMPH came from the trees about 100 yards toward the old camp. My adrenaline instantly skyrocketed… that was a bull moose, and he wasn’t coming… he was here! I then saw him move between trees, not coming directly at us, but paralleling/ circling the lake in our direction. [It doesn’t matter how far away a bull is, if they hear a call, they know exactly where it is coming from. As they get closer, bulls will often avoid going directly to the location and circle the call/ cow, trying to get a good sniff before committing all the way.]

I immediately woke Kevin up and told him to get ready, a bull was here. He shot up, grabbed his gun, and got behind the downed tree to use as a rifle rest and to hide his body. As the bull followed his path indirectly toward us, we began to see how big he was. His rack wasn’t monstrous like we were hoping, but his tines were pretty cool looking. I suggested to Kevin we may want to pass since we have plenty of days left (but I knew this was a legal bull and Kevin wasn’t going to allow one to leave the area without bullets in it).

I got out my camera to record the shot (see below). Since the bull was just deep enough in the woods to be able to see out to the lake, but not be exposed… there were plenty of trees preventing an easy shot. Kevin knew the bull was going to follow his current path along the trees, so he picked out a shooting line fairly free of birch directly in front of us, and he waited until the bull crossed into his crosshairs 50 yards away. BANG! The bull flinched and trotted at an angle deeper and away into the woods, stopping to look back, at which point he received another round of copper. The bull dropped with flailing legs and died shortly after at 12:30PM.

We gathered our things and made our way over to him. He dropped in the most perfect spot I have ever cut a bull in (which could have been nearly anywhere in this birch forest). He was wet from the shoulders down, which indicated he recently swam across the river. I would like to think he crossed the river after hearing my cow call, but who knows… he could have crossed prior and then came to check out the call after.

The bull was 50” exactly and had three brow tines on each side, making it doubly legal. We took our time cleaning the bull since it wasn’t raining and we had the rest of the day to tend to the meat. We were surprised to find that despite two bullets in him, very little meat was ruined or blood shot! The sun decided to make a short appearance mid field dressing, which was a nice change, even though it didn’t last too long. We decided to take a break and bask in the sun for a bit and to our surprise, we heard a moose calling in the distance. It could have been another hunter, but that was doubtful due to our location.

We finished cutting up the moose and decided to hang the meat right where it died instead of closer to camp. This would keep the blood smell in one area and since it was on the edge of the trees by the lake, wind would be able to touch it better to keep it cool (we would leave it there and shuttle it out the day we were going to leave). I got the chainsaw out to cut a meat pole, and I promptly kicked the chain. It took a bit to get it back on, but we were in business soon after. I cut a tree to the exact size we needed between our two desired uprights. The problem we faced now was getting that meat pole high enough. Usually we have our ATVs to stand on and one person can hold the pole while the other wraps the heck out of it with rope. We brought tree steps so we were going to use them at the base of the tree which would get me higher up, but then it would be a solo hanging debacle trying to tie it sturdily to the tree. The struggle was short lived when we decided to use the tree steps as a rest for the meat pole. We couldn’t believe how well and easily this worked! We still secured the pole with rope, but there was no doubt this was the strongest meat pole we have ever erected. We hung the meat, covered it with a guy-lined tarp, and setup a bear fence all around it.

We headed back to camp for an early dinner and celebration of vodka and electrolytes. We knew we were leaving the field early, so we pigged out on anything we wanted. It was a tiring day, so the tent and our sleeping bags were calling our names early; we happily listened and went to bed early.

I couldn’t really sleep so I wrote in my journal and reflected on the awesome day. That’s when I realized I accomplished a feat that rarely happens… I didn’t cut myself at all during the butchering that day; my first aid kit wasn’t needed on this trip!

The plan for the next day was to hang out, fish, tend to the meat, prep the skull for a Euro mount, cook meat over the fire, and have fun.

Day 5

Well wouldn’t you know… we woke up to more rain! As I lay in my sleeping bag not wanting to go outside in the rain, I could hear moose calls in the distance. Being in the tent, it was hard to tell which direction they were coming from; Kevin didn’t hear them though.

We eventually rolled out of the tent. Unfortunately, I made a silly mistake and left my boots outside instead of inside the tent alcove. The inside of my boots were wet meaning I would have wet feet all day ☹

We were in no hurry this morning and the rain magnified the slowness. We lazily sat under the rain tarp, eating, goofing around, drinking hot chocolate and PB whiskey, checked out the field/lake, cleaned the skull, and tended to the meat. At one point, we heard what sounded like grunts and scrapes down the river. We thought about calling to the bull, but didn’t want a hormone fueled monster tearing up our camp if he got upset we weren’t the ungulate he was after.

Despite the constant rain, we finally got over the hump and prepared to go fishing and scouting. We put on our waders, gathered our fishing gear, and pushed off the bank hoping to validate BOB’s name.

I wanted to ramp the two beaver dams again and fish the lakes where we saw the pike slap the water, but Kevin wasn’t feeling that route for some reason. We weren’t too far from the place we hunted the first time we were in Minto, so we went in that direction to check out the terrain there and to see if any pike were lurking in the deep creek nearby. To our surprise, the grass and brush were extremely overgrown, and there was no way we would have been able to hunt that area this year (good thing we weren’t planning on it). There also was no fish there… so our first spot was kind of a bummer.

We decided to check out another hunting spot that had potential for future hunts. There were moose tracks everywhere in this spot, but it was difficult to get to (fairly long hike) and visibility was tough. There were a good number of trees we could use the steps with though, so we marked it on our GPSs and put it in our back pocket.

We then made our way to a small lake next to the river a couple of miles down from our camp. This lake had a very small stream connecting it to the river, so we had to ramp through cat tails to get into it. It was awesome blasting from the river, through the cat tails, and splashing down in the calm lake, where a cow and calf were eating and looked up at us in disgust.

We had no idea if pike were in this lake, but we tried anyway. After about 15 minutes of nothing, Kevin finally had a strike, and we put our first fish in the boat! That wasn’t the only fish he would catch out of the lake. I then proceeded to pull in two small pike as well. I don’t remember how, but at some point, I also broke my fishing pole ☹It wasn’t hot action like we were hoping, but we didn’t get skunked!

It was raining on us all day, but when we were fishing on the lake, the wind started to pick up and the rain turned to a downpour. This didn’t make fishing very fun, so we headed back to camp to get warm and hopefully dry. As we got back to camp, another boat approached us; it was a couple of locals from the village. They then proceeded to tell us we were trespassing and hunting illegally. We assured the individuals we knew where the private land was, and we weren’t anywhere close to it. He didn’t like our answers and stormed out of there. Good thing this was going to be our last full day on the river or we would have been concerned this guy may sabotage something.

We then sat under the rain tarp for a while trying to warm up. Kevin went into nap mode, so I decided to try and fish from the riverbank. I wasn’t expecting to catch anything, but you’ll catch zero fish if you don’t try! I was leisurely casting the penis lure in the river and reeling it when 5 feet in front of me, before I lifted the lure out of the water, a MASSIVE pike swiped at my lure, missing it, splashing me, and quickly swimming away. This really got my heart pumping… there were monsters right in front of camp! A couple casts later and the exact same thing happened! After many more casts without a bite, I decided to switch lures, and that’s when Kevin joined me to fish. A couple more casts and I had my third hit, as well as my third miss; this was frustrating! Finally on my fourth chance, the pike bit hard enough to hook himself. It quickly got tied up in the grass, but I was able to land it. It was a bit bigger than the others we caught earlier on the lake, but definitely not the monsters that were biting at my earlier lures.

It was getting dark soon, so we called it a day and headed back to camp. Unfortunately, it was too wet for a fire and our hopes of eating fresh moose were shattered. It rained ALL DAY and my entire body felt like it was pruning. That’s alright… nothing a little hot chocolate and PB whiskey couldn’t fix. Actually, it didn’t dry me out, but it tried.

Day 6

It continued to rain all night and was still raining when we woke up. We had no motivation to get out of the tent, but little did we know, we were having an untold competition to see who had to leave the tent to pee first… I won! Shortly after eating breakfast, I tried fishing again for a little bit but didn’t get a bite.

We packed everything up and tried to keep it as dry as possible while staging and loading BOB. We used the jet sled as a dry base for the meat to sit in the boat, which worked perfectly. As we were shuttling the meat back and forth, we were greeted by the howling wolves again, still in the same spot. Hopefully somebody will thin them out this winter.

Bob was pretty heavy with our gear and the moose… I don’t think we would have been able to fit a second moose in the boat this year. Once we were on the water, we could tell the weight wasn’t distributed evenly either, so we had to readjust or else the nose would have been diving the entire trip out and Kevin would have been soaked.

It took us 2 hours to get out in the nasty rain, wind, and waves, leaving us cold and soaked, although we dressed as best as possible for drenching. As we pulled into the boat launch, other hunters were also returning from their outing; we were the only ones that were successful. Kevin went to get the truck, and an elder gentleman came over to talk about our hunt. He quickly became accusational, claiming we were killing moose and leaving the meat, only bringing out the “horns.” The meat was covered and the antlers were visible, but that was an offensive accusation. Even after assuring him we value the meat the most, he didn’t believe the meat was brought out of the field.

We were unloading BOB and getting everything secured when a lady pulled up next to us to ask if we had any extra meat to donate. We had plans for all the meat, and she asked if we left any in the field that would be salvageable. Both questions were odd, but we talked with her further. We found out the younger generations don’t hunt as much and are not concerned with providing the village or its elders with meat. This was surprising to us because if we lived in Minto, that’s exactly what we would love to do!

We put the meat in the back of the truck on top of the bunk cot and all gear went in BOB or on the trailer. Dry clothes and a warm truck were a welcome change! We pulled out of Minto happy to be heading home, but making a couple stops along the way attempting to kill grouse with rocks (unsuccessfully).

The roads between Minto and Fairbanks were horrendous. All the rain made the dirt roads a huge, muddy mess. We were lucky to not get stuck, but this added about an hour on to our drive out. The muddy roads also made a mess out of everything inside BOB and on the trailer (this was the driving force behind me getting a cover for BOB after this hunt).

We stopped in Fairbanks to grab a greasy dinner and beers, then headed a little south of Fairbanks to stay the night in the truck one last time. I slept better than I thought… it must have been the beers.

Day 7

We finished the drive home and got the meat hanging in preparation to cut up the next day. I then spent the entire day trying to clean the mud off all the gear. Even with a power washer, it took about 6 hours to get everything clean. That’s alright though… I’d rather spend hours cleaning up from a hunt where I turned into a raisin than buying my meat from the store.  

  

I really hate "sleeping" in the truck, but it has to be done sometimes. This is is first night parking spot. 

Successful beaver dam jumping selfie.

Kevin checking out the new water we uncovered after jumping the beaver dam... lots of water to cover.

A look back from the direction we came over the dam(s). 

This lake was LONG

Looks like someone else also hunted this area many years ago... maybe before the beaver dam(s) was created. 

The woods were beautiful, and something I'm not used to here in Alaska. Birch trees were everywhere and there was zero brush along the floor, just grass. This allowed us to move around very easy, but the many trees made it hard to find a camping spot!

We eventually found enough flat space between trees to setup our tent and shelter.

We brought a jet sled in case we shot a moose in a swamp and needed to drag quarters out. Luckily we didn't use it for hauling out a moose in a bad spot. However, the slead actually turned out to be extremely helpful for storage and water collection. After a few good rains draining off our tarp into this and we had plenty of water for our entire trip. This was WAY better then us needing to pump from the nasty creek. 

Ths is the aftermath of a bull moose rutting about 50 yards away from where we camped (this was there before we arrived). It was fresh because there were very few leaves on top of the ground he dug up and the tree was still dripping from when he decided to take out his anger. 

This is Bertha. She enjoys hanging out with the guys, being very visible, trying to show off her curves, and having other people try to be a match maker for her. She is looking for a mature bull with at least 3 brow tines on one side or a rack that is 50" wide or more. She prefers a bull that isn't afraid to take a chance and come say hi... she's tired of bulls playing hard to get. After a long week of no action, she will sometimes settle for a young bull with a spike or fork on one side. 

This is our view of the duck lake/ swamp we decided to hunt over... with Bertha to the middle left, strutting her stuff. 

You can't really see them, but there are mosquitos all over Kevin's back here. The blood suckers were pretty bad on this trip... good thing we packed a bunch of deet!

Kevin brought a small chair with, and he made good use of it! The days are fairly long staying in one spot all day, waiting for a moose to hear your calls and come to you. 

I finally got to try the chair one of the days and promptly fell asleep. I sleep terrible when hunting with Kevin due to his snoring. Lucky for me, I have been told that has been fixed!!!!

A small rainbow came out one night. I wouldn't want the pot of gold at the base of that rainbow though... that's where all the wolves were howling from. 

I went for a long stroll one of the days to see what else was around this lake. I found this old tree blind someone made; it has seen better days. There was no saving this thing or using it; one of the three trees the structure was anchored to was completely gone. 

An eagle was hunting ducks, waiting for one to make a wrong move. With thousands of ducks under him, it was only a matter of time before he pounced... which he did, easily getting his dinner. 

I pulled a hang nail and that sucker wouldn't stop bleeding. I decided to write Danielle a love note with it. 

This is probably less than 1% of the surface area of the lake. If you could see this picture better and zoom in, you would be able to count more than 100 ducks. These things were EVERYWHERE on the lake. 

A closer look. 

Bull down!! Kevin finally joined the 50" club with this bull. We typically shoot the first legal bull we see, so we were fortunate this guy was also wide. I'm still waiting for the day I shoot my 50+" bull. With my luck, I bet Ashton shoots one before me now. 

More posing pics from the back... 

... and to the side.

Team pic. 

I didn't shoot it, but I can people I did!

Getting ready to cut up the bull, and we took this picture of the moose nuts in the shape of a heart. This picture is now framed and sitting on the shelf in my Mom's house. 

Halfway done

90% done

We brought tree steps with us this year in case we found a good place on the edge of a field where we could use them to climb and glass far distances. We didn't use them for climbing but man did they work awesome for setting up a sturdy meat pole (we then wraped rope everything). 

The tree step meat pole... these things will make the final cut for inclusion in the hunting pack every year now. 

All hung

All protected... from weather and bears

Kevin's first time trimming for a Euro mount; he did a good job. 

We turned our attention to fishing after dropping the bull. We found another lake a short ways from our camp. A cow and calf were on the lake watching us. 

This cow was our good luck charm. 

Fish on!

We were surprised to catch fish; we had no idea if they would be around... can't catch something if you don't try. 

I landed my first pike on the penis lure Brandon and Deanna sent us the month earlier. 

After getting back to camp, I figured I would cast along the river to see if any water wolves were nearby. To my surprise I had a handful of MASSIVE hits, with a couple of them happening 5 feet in front of me. This was the first and only fish landed from camp.

He wasn't a monster, but he was a good size. He was released because I don't like dealing with Y-bones in these dang things. 

Kevin didn't get to video me ramping the beaver damn up current because he was standing on the dam ready to push me if needed... this is hopping it back down stream. 

Our neighbors were jerks! There was a large group of wolves that were in the trees across from the lake we were hunting. This was dissapointing because we were hoping moose would walk that corridor from the hills a mile away... but there is no way a moose would venture through that. 

The tundra swan family always had groupie mallards with them. I think they felt protected from the falcon with the big birds near by. 

And here is the falcon doing some laps around the lake, looking for a lazy duck. Although there were thousands of ducks on this lake, catching one was difficult. They all knew he was there and would dive when he got close to them. I didn't catch it on video, but he dove into the grass and snagged a duck that didn't see him coming. 

** WARNING, GRAPHIC **

This is the kill shot of the bull. I started recording after I realized this guy was 50 yards behind us. I'm not sure how long he was there since he likely pin pointed us from my earlier calls, but right after I belted out a cow call, he immediately grunted back at me. Kevin was napping so I woke him up and he got ready to shoot while I recorded. 

Danielle, Queen of the Mountain (Goat)

I don’t know how we keep doing it, but we seem to draw a mountain goat tag fairly often. I put both of us in for a new hunt this year on Kodiak that would require us to fly in (a tag condition I typically avoid), however, the harvest success rate in this area was through the roof. I figured it would be a fun adventure if we happened to get lucky. Well guess what? Right before we left for Danielle’s bison hunt in February, we got the news that Danielle also drew the Kodiak mountain goat hunt for the fall!

Danielle was nervous. She experienced the terrain with me during my last Kodiak mountain goat hunt, and it was very difficult and intimidating for her. She was not looking forward to another hike like that. I assured her that before I put her in for the hunt, I researched possible routes, and I found approaches that avoided the nasty steep terrain with the head-high brush/ thorns. This comforted her enough to not feel worried, but it didn’t rid her anxiousness.

We made plans to hunt early season. This is NOT the time you want to hunt Kodiak because it can get super warm and the bugs can be terrible. Because I had a moose hunt already scheduled for the end of September, and I can’t take too much consecutive time off from work, we were forced to hunt late August/ early September. After anchoring the dates, I made all the needed reservations… airline tickets, puddle jumper, accommodations before and after the hunt, and a babysitter. We convinced Danielle’s Mom, Gayle, to come up and watch the kids while we were playing on Kodiak.

Gayle arrived a couple days before we were taking off; this got her comfortable with the routines, kids’ needs, settled in at the house, etc. Danielle was super organized and made the hand-off to Gayle easy.

We were able to bum a ride off Gayle to the airport while the kids were at school. Once we were dropped off, it felt odd and refreshing knowing we had a 10-day date ahead of us (we don’t even go on date nights for a single night without the kids).  We had no trouble checking our hunting equipment and guns, so we grabbed lunch before jumping on our flight. A short 60 minutes later and we were at the Kodiak airport.

I have flown to Kodiak before, but this was a first for Danielle. She loved the fact that we don’t pull up to a terminal in Kodiak… we simply took stairs down from the airplane and walked to the ticketing building to gather our bags. After gathering our stuff, we called a cab and checked in to our hotel. After putting our stuff away, we reserved a ride for the next morning and then grabbed dinner at Henry’s. We headed back to the hotel early knowing we had a big day ahead of us.

Day 1

We were up at 6AM in preparation for our scheduled taxi at 7AM. Danielle was on coffee and breakfast duty, while I was tasked with shuttling all of our gear to the curb. We sat and ate breakfast burritos until our taxi showed up. Despite our destination only being a couple miles away, it was a scary drive! The driver was NOT safe; good thing they were in an F150 I guess.

We arrived at Island Air and checked in. The weather was absolutely perfect for flying, and apparently was like that for many weeks prior. This meant the plane season was going great, and no cancellations/ delays were happening. We unpacked our gear and weighed in… 700 lbs (60 of it being water and 20 for food). Our pilot showed up shortly after weighing in, so the gear was loaded on the plane and we got ready to take off.

The weather at the float plane base was replicated in the sky… zero wind, partly sunny, warm, and very comfortable. Our route had the potential to get bumpy from turbulence, but that didn’t happen today. We saw a couple goats on our flight in, but they were in a different hunting area. We tried to do a few fly bys of the bowl we wanted to hunt, but the winds were being weird there, so we couldn’t get too close.

We landed in a bay of glass water, called Hidden Basin. This bay had a few houses on the west side, but only a couple of them had full time residents (man, that would be an amazing place to live). We puttered over to the east side of the bay toward a ridge I was hoping we could camp on. We were able to pull ashore near a shallow beach close to the needed location. I jumped out, carried Danielle across the water, and helped unload our things. We then stood, waving at the pilot as he took off, leaving us to fend for ourselves for the next week.

Our first task was finding a place to camp. We left our gear on the beach and started walking through the grass. Walking here was extremely easy despite the grass being about waist high, but that was because there were brown bear trails EVERYWHERE. And with those trails, poop! This didn’t make us feel too comfortable. We couldn’t really hike all this gear too far, so we were limited to camping along these brown bear trails.

We found an absolutely perfect camping spot about 200 yards away, inside a small valley on some flat ground. There were no trees anywhere near us, but having three walls fairly close to the tent would keep us safe in case a nasty Kodiak storm decided to role in. Before we setup our tent, we had to flatten the waist high grass. I walked off a 20’X10’ perimeter and we systematically tromped the entire thing.

We then began the grueling task of moving everything from the beach to our camping spot. Carrying the heavy bags and containers along the uneven, hole-ridden trail was tiring. The wind was picking up a little bit so that helped keep us cool. After what felt like a million trips, we had everything at our base camp site. We took our time setting up the Arctic Oven tent, cooking/ drinking area, assembling cots, organizing inside the tent, and setting up a bear fence around us.

We took a break to eat lunch, and the wind died down for a little bit. That’s when we realized there were white socks (nasty little biting flies) everywhere. Apparently they like to hang out in the grass, and when they felt safe to fly, they attacked! We quickly put on our head nets and sprayed deet on every exposed body part. This worked, but it wasn’t too enjoyable.

Since we flew in on this day, we weren’t allowed to shoot anything until the next day. Because of this, we weren’t in too big of a hurry, but we wanted to start hiking the mountain to hopefully camp under a legal animal to shoot the next day. Before we could take off, we needed to get Danielle some shooting practice (she didn’t have time to get to the range before the hunt). I brought extra bullets and some targets for practice. I left Danielle at camp with the trekking sticks assembled in the shooting position, while I ventured out to place the targets. I taped one target to brush at 100 yards, and another at 200 yards.

The wind picked up again, so the target was moving a bit with the breeze. At 100 yards, Danielle was shooting pretty good vital shot groups. She then moved out to 200 yards, and her first three shots missed the paper. Stumped, we finally figured out the combination of not supporting the rifle on the trekking sticks correctly, combined with not adjusting for the crosswind was throwing off her aim. Once accounting for those, she drilled the bullseye!

Satisfied with target practice, we loaded up packs in preparation for hitting the mountain. The forecast predicted the next day to be gorgeous, but rain likely moving in the following day. Ideally we could drop a goat the next day and get back to camp before the mountain got slippery. With that in mind, we secured camp and headed toward the mountain at 2PM.

We had a massive climb ahead of us. From satellite imagery and the plane, there appeared to be a path that didn’t involve any trees or high brush, with deer trails scattered throughout. We found this to be fairly true, except at the base of the mountain. There weren’t many frequented paths since the deer were able to spread out the lower on the mountain they got. We could tell where we needed to go with a clear path seen on a ridge about mid mountain. We simply picked the best route to get us there… hiked through the waist high brush until we found a deer trail,  followed the trail toward our needed direction, the trail would eventually disappear, yelled to potentially scare any nearby bears, then we would repeat the steps.

The higher we climbed, the better the game trails got, and a prominent one stuck out following a ridge most of the way up. The best part about this hike was no alders! At one point I was goofing around when we were walking through some tall bushes at a flat area, doing a silly growling sound that would make Danielle giggle each time, when all of a sudden the brush about 10 feet in front of us exploded. I released an OH SHIT, and a deer sprinted out the other side of the cluster. We had a good laugh at that scare, and we were thankful it wasn’t a bear! We actually saw about a dozen deer on our hike up the mountain as well as a large brown bear walking along the neighboring, valley creek bed.

There were a few steep spots, but the hike up wasn’t too bad at all, just long. We were going to crest the top of the mountain, but decided to follow a flat ridge around the outside of the peak to get a look at the backside and onto the next mountain in the range. As we circled, we were spooked again by a different animal… this time, rock ptarmigan. There was a family of rockies sitting tight to the rocks. These guys do an amazing job of blending in, but once you know they are there, they seem silly for not trying to escape. A couple were so close we could potentially touch them.

As we left the birds behind and crested around the edge of the mountain, we could see a white dot along a ridge that connected the mountain we were on with the next in line. We knew the white was a goat, but we confirmed it was a billy after getting a good look through the spotting scope. This would be an amazing goat to take when we could shoot, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized there was no good place to camp, and there wasn’t a good place to approach him in his current position. We decided to rest our legs and watch him for a little longer as we debated what to do.

After about 30 minutes, he moved along the ridge almost at the peak of the other mountain and bedded down behind a rock, just out of sight. That peak was halfway to the area we were wanting to hunt. Since we really had our hearts set on hunting the third mountain and its bowl, we decided to simply push the billy toward the third mountain as we continued our path. We then walked toward the ridge that connected the two, thinking we would be able to simply use it as a bridge. We soon found out the ridge bridge was not a thing and sudden cliffs dropped out of the ridge, making it extremely sketchy to hike… something doable, but not smart.

The billy never saw us so he didn’t get pushed out and just stayed put. We decided to drop down into the bowl between these two mountains, then hike up the outside of the far mountain, circling the second mountain in a similar manner we did with the first. There was a group of large bucks in the bowl walking in the same direction we were planning to go, so we simply followed their path. As we started ascending the bowl on the second mountain, we realized it was a lot steeper than anticipated. There was a couple clear deer paths, but those things are like mountain goats too. We ended up getting pretty high on the mountain, then having to side hill on a steep slope. The fact that there was nothing below us except a massive drop and almost certain debilitating injury if a fall occurred, made Danielle extremely scared. Regardless, it was fairly controlled and we were still ascending at an angle (descending is more difficult and dangerous). I assisted her as we circled the nasty part of the mountain and got to leveler ground. She had a chance to recover at this time and swore to never do that again (I don’t think she realized we had to get back to camp at some point).

The worst was over and we circled the second mountain. Again there was a ridge between this mountain and the third mountain/ bowl. Once on the ridge, we had a good view of the bowl and large lake in front of the mountain more than a mile ahead of us. This lake and bowl was huge… about a half mile in diameter. While starring in amazement, we quickly realized the walls of the bowl were littered with white dots… goats everywhere, at least 30 of them!

We were too far away to tell how big they were so we started to walk the ridge closer. We soon realized this ridge didn’t bridge all the way to the bowl/ lake area, which was a bummer because that meant we would have to drop below the bowl and lose elevation. It was getting late at this point, about 7PM. We decided we better not try to get to the bowl anyway since all the goats could see everything in it and likely anything approaching it. We crossed over top of the ridge and started heading down to the head of a valley where we would be able to find water and a flat spot to camp for the night. This area would also allow us to watch a few of the goats as they went to bed.

On our way down the side of the ridge, we were stopped in our tracks when about 100 yards below us stepped out the largest black tail buck I have ever seen in my life. This thing was an absolute monster! This buck’s neck was so thick it made his head look small. He was so big it looked like he ate one of the large bucks we saw earlier. We were shocked at how calm he was, and how he just stood there, broadside, starring at us, almost begging us to shoot him. He gave us tons of time to take pictures and discuss the possibility of abandoning our goat hunt and shooting him. There was no way we could harvest both a goat and deer in one trip. This guy really tempted us at changing our plans, but we decided to stick with the goat priority, so we wished him luck as we let him pass.

We made it to the bottom of the ridge to the flat area. To our surprise, we could see about a quarter of the bowl wall still, scattered with many of the goats. One of the goats we could easily tell was a large billy, off to the side by himself. We knew the goats could likely see us too, but there was no place we could hide, so we didn’t attempt to. I have slept under many goats in the past, and as long as you don’t act like a threat and they are way above you, they don’t feel threatened.

It took a while to find a good spot to setup the tent since there were rocks everywhere and nothing was really flat. This area was a fairly dangerous spot to camp with mountain gusts easily reaching 50mph without any storm system needed. There was no wind break available, so we had to hope for the best. Luckily there was only a slight breeze while we were setting up. We got the tent setup and started warming up dinner. Shortly after the water started boiling, we heard a SNAP. I look over at the tent and the center ridge pole that goes along the entire top length of the tent broke in two! Not only did the pole break, but it decided to rip the rainfly cover from the sharp pole whipping through it. AWESOME! There is no way we could sleep tonight without a good tent to protect us from the elements. And to top it off, it started to sprinkle.

I told Danielle to continue prepping dinner and I would try to repair the tent. I always take a pole splint with me and this was the first time I was going to need it. In order to use the splint, I was forced to cut the elastic bands inside the poles, slide the splint over, tie the elastic back together, then slide the splint over and between the broken areas. I then took Gorilla tape (something I always take and use on each hunt) and taped the heck out of each side of the splint to ensure it would not slide. This repair only took about 20 minutes and worked surprisingly good, but now I had to think of a way to fix the giant hole in the fly… and prevent it from ripping further. I was hoping the gorilla tape could simply cover it, but it wouldn’t stick. I tried using my Leuko P tape (used to prevent blisters) but that didn’t stick either. I hypothesized that the material would be durable enough to sew, so that is what I attempted.

I take two sewing needles and 50lb test braided fishing line with me on each hunt. I have needed to use it a couple times, once on a Kodiak hunt to sew my torn off shoulder strap on my pack (which to this day still holds 100+ pounds). To my amazement, the material was fairly durable and would hold a stitch. I’m certain if there was enough pressure, the stitch would pull through, so I didn’t get too aggressive, but I knew I would need many passthroughs along each tear to ensure less pressure was on each hole. This took an extremely long time to do, but after about an hour and into the darkness, I was confident my hand stitches would hold. We tossed the fly on the tent, cinched it down, and gave high fives that it was going to work. Granted, if it dumped on us, drops of water would eventually get through the pin holes, but that beats no protection at all!

We gobbled down our cold dinner, filled up water, watched some goats bed down for their slumber, and retreated to our tent for the night. We only walked 5 miles this day, but it was a very long day of elevation changes and some tough hiking; we were exhausted.

The plan for tomorrow was to get up early and hopefully make a move on the goats in the bowl. We weren’t quite sure how that was going to work, but it all depended on where the goats were located in the morning.

Day 2

It got fairly gusty overnight, with the tent folding in and on top of me many times from the wind. Amazingly, the tent held up and the repairs stuck!

I’m not sure what time we woke up, but the sun was just coming over the horizon. We peaked out the tent and could see most of the goats. They slept toward the top of the mountain bowl and could easily see our tent. We were hoping they were in a different part of the bowl and out of direct line of sight, but that didn’t happen. We debated what to do, thinking we could sit in the tent for a while and hope they move out of sight. We decided that likely wouldn’t happen with the shear number of them, so we decided to not be sneaky, and let them see us.

It was going to be a beautiful day, but beautiful days aren’t really the best for hunting. Sunny and nice isn’t ideal when you need to hike, be stealthy, or (finger crossed) care for meat. However, I would take a beautiful day over a miserable weather day.

We got out of the tent, peed, prepared breakfast, and tore down the tent. We watched the goats as we did all of this, and they didn’t seem to care at all. The billy we were hoping to go after was now out of reach… he climbed up a steep draw on the gnarly side of the mountain and was comfortable resting on a knob we couldn’t get close to.

We looked back toward the second mountain and noticed a solo goat at the top. We hypothesized that this was the billy we saw along the ridge bridge the day earlier. He was likely in a spot we could shoot him, but the approach would have been impossible to keep out of sight. We debated which option we should go after, and we decided to pursue the groups in the bowl. If that didn’t pan out, we would be able to fall back on this solo goat on mountain two on our way back to base camp.

We knew rain was forecasted for the following day, so we really needed to drop a goat as early as possible. This meant that we didn’t have time to sit around waiting, and we needed to be aggressive in our pursuit. By the time we decided which direction we were headed, many of the goats started to drop into the bowl. There were still about 20 eyes on us, so we had to start hiking toward the goats with them clearly seeing us. Lucky for us, we had a descent plan.

As mentioned earlier, this bowl had a large lake in it. Picture that lake as if it was on a plateau and it was overflowing a ledge like a waterfall dropping 100 yards to another flat area below it. We were on the flat area where the water was falling to. The waterfall area was about 700 yards away, and during that entire distance, as we neared the ledge, the goats would be able to watch us getting closer. The goal was to get to that ledge as fast as possible because once there, the angle would be too steep for them to be able to see us.

Instead of scaring them with two approaching figures, I had Danielle walk directly behind me as close as possible to try and make it appear as if only one of us was there. This was kind of awkward walking over the rocky terrain, but it worked out great. We didn’t stop until we were out of sight and against the ledge, 100 yards below the flat of the bowl/ lake area. Our next step, was climbing the ledge.

The waterfall turned out to be more of a creek flowing at a very steep angle, not free falling. We were surprised to see that it was actually climbable. There were large steps, boulders everywhere, and the need to use our hands most of the time… but we scaled the creek safely and creeped closer to the start of the upper flat.

We found a good place to stop just before cresting over; it wasn’t flat, but there were a couple rocks that allowed us to keep out bags from rolling down and let us sit. The problem at this point was the huge number of goats. It’s easier to kill and approach an animal when it’s by itself, versus targeting one with 30 of their buddies watching their back. We were hopeful that a goat was in the bowl near the ledge where we would peak over, however, it proved impossible to get a view of the bowl. There were still goats toward the top of the outer mountain area of the bowl, and if we tried to peak over, they would see us and likely alert the others. A couple nannies were at the top and in position to spoil our hunt. They were at 300 yards, way too far of a shot for Danielle, especially with the crazy winds that were swirling in that bowl. We had to get closer.

I know that hunting goats is difficult, and there inevitably could be times that the only way to get close to a goat is walking in plain view directly toward them. Well, we were faced with one of those situations. If we had time, we could have tried to wait until all goats were down in the bowl, but the chances of that happening were slim. This meant we would finally use the white jumpsuit I have packed with me on all goat hunts, but have never used! Unfortunately, this also meant that only one of us would be able to show themselves before shooting, and I didn’t have the goat tag.

Danielle wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me staying below the ridge while she hiked over and toward the goats she was going to shoot, but she understood the need. In preparation, she stuffed her face with food and water (you never know how long a sit may happen without your pack), slipped on the white coveralls, put on the white beanie, took my range finding binoculars, extended and attached the trekking sticks into shooting position, slung the rifle over her shoulder, and began crawling out of the ledge toward the goats. She eventually disappeared out of sight, and I was left sitting in the shadow of the ledge, waiting for a gunshot.

I got comfortable because I didn’t know how long this would take. After putting on some warmer clothes and eating a snack, I got into a position where I could peak over and see a couple nannies. I stared at these two intensely, trying to gauge their body language and reaction to the white figure that just crested over the ledge, making its way closer to them. I was hoping the goats didn’t spook and immediately turn up mountain and move off. Surprisingly, the opposite happened. I could tell they saw Danielle as both of them were looking in the direction I believe she was walking, however, instead of spooking off, both of them bedded down, completely comfortable with Danielle and their perceived safety. This was very reassuring.

I sat there, with a million things going through my mind, waiting for a shot to ring out or to see her return over the ledge (the one thing I didn’t want). It felt like 4 hours, but about 30 minutes after she left, I was startled by a loud BANG. Danielle let a bullet fly! I stayed put for a minute, not wanting to spook anything if a follow up shot was needed, but no second shot occurred. I slowly crawled above the ledge and immediately saw a dead goat laying on the mountain side with many other goats scattered around looking at both Danielle and the immobile goat. I walked over to Danielle and gave her a huge hug… GOAT DOWN!

Danielle said she was super nervous on the approach, but apparently the goats didn’t care at all. They allowed her to get to a comfortable, flat spot and set up there. She sat in the open for the entire time, looking at every goat, trying to figure out which of them were unaccompanied by a kid. Apparently, every goat she could see was either a nanny or a kid. Billys are encouraged to be taken, but a nanny without a kid is also allowed. She had a few options, but the extended time it took was a result of her wanting to be sure the goat she picked out was indeed solo. Danielle took a 200 yard shot, straight up, with crazy winds swirling, off two trekking sticks. This is an extremely tough shot, but she put it right in the boiler room!

We retrieved our packs and brought them back to the base of the mountain side the goat was on. We hiked up to the goat, gave thanks and preyed over her. After a few pictures, we debated where we were going to field dress her. We decided to carry her down the mountain to a more stable and safer location. We could have rolled her down, but we didn’t want to damage anything. It wasn’t easy moving this toad, especially with her sharp daggers that tore into my palms a couple times, but we managed to get her safely to a nice flat area.

We then spent the next couple hours field dressing the goat. This is when the wind really picked up. Luckily the sun was out because the insane wind and massive gusts would have been nasty cold otherwise. It felt like we were cleaning the goat in a hurricane, except there wasn’t any rain, thankfully. The weirdest damn thing happened too. Large flies somehow found the carcass and meat while we were cleaning up in this bowl (where no brush or anything existed). But not only did these flies find the meat, they could somehow fly in the hurricane winds! These things were mutants that we had to keep swatting despite wind that should have kept them at bay.

I love not having to clean harvested animals by myself (that was the norm for me for a while). I did most of the carcass cutting and Danielle would debone and clean up the cuts I gave her. Unfortunately for her, I secretly and vocally don’t trust her with a super sharp knife (many accidents in the past), so I brought a dullish knife that would not cut her finger off. She hated it. Maybe one day I’ll recover that trust 😊 We boned out all meat and due to the weight, I had to make the decision to leave the hide behind. This is normal for many hunters, but I have never left a hide behind from a mountain animal. It would not have been physically possible to take it with how much weight we each had already and how far we had to go before tomorrow.

We decided to take a different route back to base camp. We came into the bowl along the east side of the ridge that connected the second and third mountain, but a flat area ran parallel along the west side, and that looked easier to hike. We crossed through the bowl, walking around the lake. The sand here was amazingly white and extremely fine powdered, likely from the pounding winds. We also found a couple tents that the winds decided to destroy from prior hunters… this would not have been a nice place to camp!

We descended off the bowl toward the flat area where we would hike toward mountain two. This drop was a little steep, but luckily it wasn’t too bad and the grass was short and dry. As we got to the flat area, we saw a huge buck, about 100 yards to our left, eating, without any idea we were there. Again, we could have easily taken him, but there would have been no way to get him out. Instead, we just proceeded along our route, eventually spooking him out of the area. We then proceeded to bump about 10 more deer along this flat route.

As we got closer to mountain two, we knew we would have to hike up close to the top in order to circle it and backtrack the scary route we took on the way in. Getting to that spot was going to be tough. It was a high hike, and we now had hundreds of pounds of weight on our backs. Slowly but surely, we made our way to the top and eventually got to the scary part. We took a nice long break here because we knew we would need fresh-ish legs to navigate this sidehill with the added weight.

As we began to navigate the steep cliffs, it became clear that Danielle would not be able to get through this part. She was scared, and I’ll admit that she was justified to be; it was bad. One slip and it was likely the last step either of us would take. Although I may have risked it if she wasn’t there, I’m glad she put her foot down and insisted we go a different route (don’t tell her I said she was right). The problem with going a different route is that there really wasn’t a different route to take. The only alternative to getting to mountain one was to descend the mountain back to the flat we just came from (losing all elevation we just gained) and follow the flat down into a deep valley that eventually meets up with the valley the bowl of mountain two feeds into. The problem with this route was that it was choked full of the thickest alders that make many parts of Kodiak unhikable. I took a deep breath, realized the terrible hike we had ahead of us, and started to slowly retrace back down the mountain.  

I wasn’t thinking clearly when we got to the flat area as I was dreading what lay ahead of us. I’m referring to the need to refill water before hiking through extended areas that didn’t have any…This would later come back to bite us in the ass.

We started the death march through the alders. There were a few deer trails here and there, but rarely did they help make the hike easier. In fact, Danielle got sick of my claiming we were on a trail, only for it to disappear 10 feet later. I was soon banned from claiming our route was on a deer trail. Yes, this route was the most horrible and difficult path possible, but it was safer and void of cliffs. We had to drop the same distance into the valley alders as we just dropped off the mountain to the flat. Then immediately after dropping that far, we had to recover that elevation. We moved slower than 1mph per the GPS, but that’s because we had to stop and climb over and around alders every few feet. The alders were so thick, the sunlight was shaded for most of our hike. I was so exhausted and mentally drained from the suck, that I became quiet and slow.

After many hours, we eventually breached above the alders at the base of the bowl for mountain two. We were so low on the mountain and exhausted that we didn’t have the desire to hike to the top of mountain one, so we decided to attempt side hilling it. This also proved to be a terrible idea. We still had to hike about halfway up the mountain, and side hilling this extremely wide mountain made the hike even further. Hiking miles with our ankles at an angle, combined with the weight on our backs and the grueling hike we already did, resulted in my feet being absolutely on fire. Of all the hunts and hikes I have done in the past, this one resulted in my neuroma (a nerve condition in my feet) and heels being the most painful I have ever experienced. And to top it off, we each ran out of water a few hundred yards into our side hill around mountain one. When this happened, Danielle could tell my body was shutting down. Typically I’m good at keeping myself fueled, but I had a weak moment during this hike and I let my body get too close to empty. She made me sit down, eat some food, and rest for a while. I was surprised how much I truly needed this snack break. My body soaked up the carbs and refilled the tanks a little. This gave me a bit of energy to keep hiking.

Shortly after we started hiking again, dusk was setting in. I have hiked a load of meat out in the dark many times on hunts, but we still had the rest of the side hill and entire descent of mountain one to conquer. Although we had our headlights, we didn’t have energy or desire to push ourselves. We agreed that the best decision was to camp somewhere for the night and finish in the morning… despite rain forecasted for the entire day.

We finished the side hilling and ended up close to the top of the mountain anyway. Surprisingly, we were able to find a fairly flat, grassy area to pitch the tent that was protected on two sides from nasty winds. Luckily, on the way in I marked a bunch of potential camping spots, and we happened to need them this night! We quickly set up the tent as dark was falling. Thankfully it was a calm night and it didn’t seem like we would get blown off the mountain, despite being toward the top.

Danielle immediately climbed into bed, exhausted. I needed to eat, but we didn’t have any water to make our freeze-dried dinners. I packed another breakfast and lunch for each of us in case we got stuck like this, so I devoured the next day’s lunch and most of the breakfast.

We still had two miles to get back to base camp. With a long descent left to hammer out, it would take a while from the heavy loads, adding rain and slippery conditions would make the hike take even longer. In an attempt to beat the rain, we planned on waking up early and moving as soon as possible.

It was extremely quiet overnight. The ptarmigan would not be quite and they were super annoying. Despite this, we both slept pretty hard… until I started to cramp. I often get cramps when hunting, but these were the mother of all cramps! I immediately shot up out of the tent, mostly naked, trying to stretch and rub out the cramps in both of my legs, in every muscle. The cramps hurt so bad that I was wailing. I could not control them and the contractions were unbearable. I have no idea how long they lasted, but I felt like my muscles would never relax. Danielle felt bad for me, but she was more concerned with me crying out loud, thinking I would call in a bear to attack this injured animal on the mountain. After what felt like an eternity, my muscles relaxed. I eventually climbed back into the tent, worried I would have another episode, but fortunately that did not happen.

A couple hours later, before sunrise, my alarm went off. We got up at 6AM and prepared for the hike out. It wasn’t raining yet, nothing messed with the meat overnight, and our muscles felt a little rested. Unfortunately, Danielle tweaked her knee the day before and the resting made it more painful as it tried to heal. This was going to make hiking out difficult for her.

There was no breeze today so the bugs came out to play, BLAH! The were tons of deer out too, but none of them wanted to play with us. As we descended the mountain, we tumbled a couple times, and we had to take many breaks to rest my feet and Danielle’s knee, but we eventually made it down in a few hours. The grass was wet toward the bottom of the mountain, but other than that, the “trails” were generally great for hiking. It would have been very difficult to hike that in the dark because we needed to see far in front of us to ensure we stayed on course, met up with a trail ahead, and steered away from unhikable areas.  

We were hoping to return to a tent and gear that wasn’t messed with, and to our surprise, that is exactly what we found. The trail that was a couple feet away from our bear fence had new deer tracks, bear prints, and bear poop on it. That tells me the bear fence did its job!

We dropped our packs with joy and ran to the water jug. We quickly chugged water and electrolytes until we were going to pop. The whitesocks were terrible this morning and the skies opened up with rain, so we grabbed some food and snacks, then jumped in the tent. We were wet from the hips down due to the damp grass at the end, but we didn’t want to change until we were done taking care of the meat. We took naps on the ground while waiting for the rain to pass over. We didn’t have the cots setup yet due to us leaving to hunt so quickly.

Once the rain lightened, we got out to tend to the meat. Everything was soaked now so walking anywhere in this tall grass would instantly get us wet again. There were no trees around to hang the meat from. We saw a couple trees next to the shore where the plane dropped us off, but we decided that was too far to leave meat unattended. After trying to put the meat in some alders, we decided to try something different. I pulled my cot out of the tent, staked the meat tarp above it, and set the meat on the cot. This wasn’t ideal due the bottom half of the meat not getting much circulation, but I would plan to flip it a couple times a day to ensure it stayed cool and dry. (Next time I’ll lay branches/ sticks perpendicular across the cot and put the meat on that, giving it more airflow underneath). This worked really well actually, completely covered even if we had a nasty storm, and enough space for airflow if the wind was blowing. The only down side is the meat was now 20 feet outside the front door of our tent. We did have a second bear fence and we put that around the meat area. I also sprayed the meat with citric acid to inhibit bacterial growth. With the warm weather, the meat couldn’t sit there for too many days before it would go bad.

We were exhausted, so we didn’t feel like venturing too far away from camp for the rest of the day. We explored the shores nearby to get a better understanding of our surroundings. It was hightide so we couldn’t walk the shore as much as we wanted, but we saw quite a bit… seals, ducks, salmon, sea lions, shells, jelly fish, and fox. We also got a better understanding of why bears loved this area. The mouth of a stream where it empties in the ocean was about 50 yards away from our tent. Apparently, bears are used to having salmon swim up this creek to spawn, but for some reason, the pinks were terrible this year and salmon were basically nonexistent. This meant that bears who knew the fish were supposed to be there likely took off after seeing it was a ghost town. I guess that was good to know bears weren’t coming back and forth to feed, but that also meant the bears that showed up were likely hungry!

We broke open the vodka and electrolyte mixer for a couple celebration drinks. After sipping and chatting for a bit, we decided we needed to really secure the tent and meat cover in case a nasty storm blew in. We returned to the beach to gather large rocks to place on top of each ground stake. I was quickly reminded of how little gas I had left in the tank.

Dinner was whatever we wanted to eat. We weren’t going to be here for the entire 10 days now that we dropped a goat on the first hunting day. There was no need to ration, so we stuffed ourselves silly. Barely able to move, we rolled around enough to change out of our dirty clothes and freshen up. We then relaxed for the rest of the evening by watching a movie on my phone, and eventually dozing off.

Danielle got to sleep on the remaining cot while I cuddled with the ground. Before shutting down for the night, I rotated the meat and made sure to pee everywhere outside to spread as much scent as possible around the perimeter. This probably worked for a good 30 minutes, until it started to rain hard and likely wash away my deterrent. We slept GOOD that night!

Day 4

We slept in super late. Although we wanted to bring home a deer or two, we had all week to hunt if we wanted (and didn’t have meat to be concerned about). This day was going to be an expedition day anyway, and not a hardcore hunting day… good thing too because I had a raging headache!

It was a gorgeous morning (for us, but not the meat), there was very little wind, the temperature was comfortable, and the sun was starting to peak out through the clouds. We decided the meat couldn’t last too long like this, so we used my InReach (satellite texter) to request a pickup in two mornings. We then promptly tended to the meat by spraying it again with citric acid and rotating it.

Our destination for the day was the creek/river bed about a mile away and the shore line on the other side of the river. We packed lunch, our hunting gear, necessary layers, and emergency stuff. I wore hip waders in case we needed to cross deep water.

Our first obstacle was a large field of chest high grass growing on uneven ground. This was much harder than I thought it would be to cross, especially when we weren’t able to follow a bear path. Grass that high is difficult to push out of the way. Luckily the grass was (mostly) dry from the previous night’s rain. Since the grass could easily hide a bear, we were yelling  and making ourselves known every 5 steps.

Toward the end of the grass field, we had to traverse about 200 yards of thick trees and alders that lined the outside edge of the creek/ riverbed. The ground was flat here, and it wasn’t too difficult to navigate around. We eventually popped out on the smooth rocks and as we were standing there looking up and down the riverbed, Danielle looked down and found a deer antler shed between my legs!

We decided to walk up the creek/ riverbed first. There were deer tracks absolutely EVERYWHERE. We walked a couple miles, zig zagging the islands, splitting up, crossing the water, and constantly looking back where we came, but we didn’t see a deer. The first animal we saw was a fox taking a nap on the edge an island area, just outside the tree line. He spotted us and quickly ran away. Danielle didn’t get a glimpse of him, however, when she was trying to get a peak, she said she smelled a very musky scent. We realized we had been quiet most of the hike up the creek/ riverbed and now again while trying to get close to the fox. This musky scent could have been a bear so we both yelled out for it to leave.

Shortly after yelling, a small buck popped out in front us about 140 yards away. It stopped broadside and looked at us. We were clearly busted and completely in the middle of the creek/ riverbed. We tried to get ready for a quick shot, but we were not fat enough and he sprinted off.

We decided to eat lunch a little past where the deer popped out. This area had a large opening above and below where we were sitting, and mountains on both sides of the river started/ended near this stretch. It looked very promising if we wanted to sit for the rest of the day, but that was the last thing we wanted to do with big exploration plans.

We decided to retrace our path back toward the ocean. Shortly after walking, we looked behind us and saw a large doe crossing between mountains. We ended up seeing a couple more does as we got a few hundred yards away from the ocean. Once we got to the ocean, the biting bugs disappeared and walking flatness improved. There were shells, jellyfish, and interesting things everywhere on this beach! There were deer and bear tracks everywhere too, but the interesting thing about these tracks is that they were on the beach below the last high tide line. That means all of these animals were on the beach within the last 6 hours!

We walked the beach as far as we could until the cliffs next to the ocean kept us from going further. We had to turn around at this point. It’s amazing what someone misses the first time down a beach and then finds on the return walk. We discovered so many shells we overlooked and even a shed that was completely buried except for a couple inches of a tine.

We got back to the tent a little before dinner time. We were thankful to see nothing messed with the meat while we were gone! We clocked 7 miles for the day and we were starving. The plan for the night was to cook the goat loins over an open fire on the ridge above our tent, overlooking the ocean. We collected a bunch of firewood and prepared a safe ring to burn it. I prepared the meat with olive oil and seasoning and placed it on the small cooking grate once the embers were perfect. Danielle has never had fresh loin over the camp fire, and she now knows why it’s said to be the best meat you can imagine… especially goat! IT WAS SOOOOO GOOD!

We enjoyed our steak, crackers, M&Ms, and electrolytes plus vitamin v as we watched seals hunt. We reflected on the awesome day we had full of so much laughter our cheeks were hurting, yelling at bears, goofing off, and tons of jokes. We didn’t kill an animal today, but it was probably one of the best days of the trip.

We crashed early because we wanted to get up early to get after a deer on our last day to hunt. Although Danielle was dreading it (and secretly, I was as well), we were going up the mountain again because there were big bucks everywhere up there.

Day 5

We were up at 6AM and faced with a difficult decision. It rained good overnight, which meant wet grass and slippery hiking up and down the mountain. This was the straw that broke our decision, and we bailed on the mountain deciding to play it safe and head back to the river.

We moved slowly now that we were in hunting mode. We only called out to potentially scare off a bear when we were in thick brush or had an uneasy feeling. At about 7AM, we peaked out into the creek/ riverbed at the same place we came out the day before. We started to walk up the creek/ riverbed and after only 10 yards, we spotted movement along the tree line to our left up about 50 yards in front of us. We were out in the open again, so we dropped and froze in our tracks. A doe then walked into the opening, stopped, looked at us, turned toward us, and then started to walk right to us. She knew we were there, but was curious what we were. She then walked slowly trying to figure out what we were. As she closed the gap, two does and a fawn popped out into the creek/ riverbed a couple hundred yards up ahead of us. They didn’t see us and kept slowly crossing to the other side.

Meanwhile, the doe continued to close the gap towards us. At about 10 yards, she decided she was close enough, then skirted around us, and slowly walked toward the ocean like we weren’t a threat or anything. It was pretty cool to get that close. Silly deer… it’s a good thing it wasn’t doe season.

We thought about staying in this area since we saw 4 deer within the first 10 minutes of getting here. Instead, we decided to stick to our original plan and head back to where we ate lunch the day prior. We were planning to be patient, and wait for something to cross our path there. I had a cribbage board and cards in my pack, so we would stay entertained 😊

There were fresh tracks everywhere from deer that were moving along this creek/ riverbed since we were there 20 hours ago. We got to about where we saw the buck the day before, and I spotted movement to my right. It was a small deer that was slowly grazing toward a patch of trees. It looked over at me and I quickly stepped backwards so the trees he was going to obstructed his view of me, then froze. I knew the deer was likely going to continue his current path walking behind this patch of trees. I told Danielle to quickly follow me.

We hurried to close the gap between us and the deer. We could see the outline of it walking and it was headed directly where I thought it was going. We got to a shooting lane about 75 yards away from the patch of trees and setup for a shot. I dropped the pack and assembled the trekking sticks into shooting position while Danielle loaded and prepared the rifle. I got in a kneeling position and had my binoculars ready. At this point, we didn’t know if the deer was a doe or a buck, but I was going to be as ready as possible when it cleared the trees so it didn’t have time to run once we determined the sex.

As soon as the deer peaked its head out from the trees, I could see it was spike buck. Danielle handed me the rifle and before she could cover her ears, I ripped a shot at the deer; it dropped instantly. We wondered if this was the same buck we spooked in nearly the same spot the day prior… we would never know. We didn’t even make it to our hunting destination and we were tagged out for the day.

We thanked the animal for its life and prayed over him, also thanking the Lord for the bounty and the many opportunities we are blessed with. After looking closer at the buck, I could tell it was a bad shot and I should not have rushed it so much. I ended up spining the buck and shooting it too far toward the back, clipping the gut. Unfortunately this results in lost meat since you really shouldn’t eat anything the gut contents touch (especially without a way to clean the meat out here, and that gut bacteria being able to flourish on warm muscle meat). That made this already small buck even smaller ☹

When I dropped the buck, it was nice, cool, and cloudy, but 10 minutes after it fell, the clouds vanished, the sun came out with a vengeance, and it got hot outside! This was terrible timing. To top it off, the flies quickly caught wind of the kill and were swarming us.

The deer was small enough and we were in a hurry to cut and protect it from the flies, so the bones stayed in the meat. As soon as a quarter or cut of meat was removed from the body, we sprayed it with citric acid and placed it in a covered meat bag, in the shade of some nearby trees. Danielle was on meat cleaning duty again, with her dull knife that made her job twice as hard. The next hunt I will have her wear steel mesh gloves and bring a sharp knife for her. I make fun of her, but really I’m the one that cuts myself often… which I did on the first slice of this deer.

By the time we were done cleaning this little guy, we had time to shoot another, however, we weren’t sure how much more weight the 206 could carry. We didn’t want to go over the 206 allotted weight for something small and then require a large beaver to come get us with a couple hundred pounds of available weight not being used. We decided that meant we would not shoot another buck, unless it was a monster.

We were back to camp before lunch. It was still hot and the bugs were bad around the tent. We spread the meat out on the covered cot, hoping it would cool off soon. We then grabbed our lunch and some electrolytes, and went to eat on the beach. After lunch, it was nap time!

We spent the rest of the evening enjoying each other’s company, knowing we had a great hunt and we would be picked up tomorrow morning. We feasted on anything we wanted while playing cribbage (I won of course) and drinking more vodka. The fun bled into dinner time. The weather wasn’t the best for another fire and steaks, so we had our freeze-dried meals.

After dinner we were just hanging out in the tent organizing things listening to music on my phone. In hindsight, this probably wasn’t the best idea because we couldn’t hear the bear that was sneaking up to our tent!

All of a sudden, we hear a paw thump and then a couple huffs… we nearly pooped our pants! We looked at each other with chills shooting down our backs, then both of us started yelling at the bear to get away. I quickly grabbed the gun and fumbled with the zippers of the two doors that needed open prior to getting out. By the time I was out of the tent, the bear was gone. Regardless, I unloaded a couple .44 Mag rounds into the hillside to hopefully keep the bear from thinking about returning. From that time on, we decided to keep the bear fences on while we were in the tent during the day.

We started to wind down for the night. We got more organized and pre staged stuff for packing the next morning. We did some final meat care, perimeter peeing, and bed prep before passing out for the night. We were getting picked up at 10AM, so we set the alarm to wake up at 7AM.

D6

We got up to another beautiful morning. The meat wasn’t as cool as I wanted it to be, but we would get it in a freezer later that day, so I wasn’t too worried.

Packing took forever! We were setup to last 10 days, and man did it take a while to tear it all down. It got to a point where we had to get sloppy and hurry if we wanted to be done by 10AM. We crammed everything into the bags and tubs and started shuttling them to the beach as fast as we could. I had my hip waders on again because I would be getting in the water to help load the plane… this is where disaster struck. I have no ankle support in the hippers, and on my second load to the beach, I stepped awkwardly, felt a pop in my ankle, and I forward on the ground and the tub went flying. I was in instant pain and could barely walk. There were still a few super heavy items left, and I couldn’t expect Danielle to carry them that far by herself. I had to take some time to recover, but I was able to hobble back and carry the heavy things with her (albeit slowly).

Right when we dropped the final tub on the beach, the plane appeared from behind the mountain. We were sweating and I was cursing in pain, but it worked out. Next time, I’m planning more than 3 hours to pack up camp!

We loaded the plane and took off toward town. The return flight was smooth once again, but Danielle still had a close call with seeing her breakfast. The pilot said it was probably a good idea to get out when we did because rain and wind was moving in the next morning!

Once we got to the float plane dock, our gear was offloaded, weighed, and piled up for the taxi. We thanked everyone and headed to our hotel. Thankfully the hotel had a freezer so we were able to put our tubs of meat directly in the freezer as soon as we arrived. We settled into our rooms… showered… hydrated… and caught up from our disconnect with the outside world. We eventually got around to go grab some lunch. Greasy burgers were exactly what we needed!

We didn’t have much to do between lunch and dinner, so we went to the hotel bar to hang out and chat with other hunters in town. We drank some beers, made some friends from Florida, played pool, played darts, and eventually found some barbeque to eat. We took our grub to a local brewery where we ate next to a super weird guy that sat down at our table. That was awkward, but there isn’t much normalcy going on in Kodiak.

We were pretty much done for the night after dinner, so headed back to the room to rearrange all of our gear in preparation for flying home the next day. Luckily, I was able to reach Mom on the satellite texter after we knew when the float plane was getting us, and I asked her to change our Alaska Airlines flight times. She was able to get our return flights moved up 4 days earlier. As such, we were departing around noon the following day.

We started to watch a movie before bed, and as normal, Danielle fell asleep 10 minutes in. I wasn’t far behind… the exhaustion and alcohol were hard to fight.

D7

It was raining pretty good when we woke up, so we were thankful that we got out of the field when we did. We grabbed our frozen meat, loaded our gear in the taxi, and headed to the airport. It was a fairly uneventful trip back home. We missed the kids and were thankful to get a 3-day weekend with them, but it was bittersweet knowing the best date I have ever been on was over. 

Scenary on the flight in.

I forgot about this picture when writing the entry above... this was a group of about 12 goats.

Looking down a river valley.

Solo goat on the ridge.

Marsh next to the grass flats by camp.

This is a great picture of mountain one with our camp spot near lower center of the picture, and the creek/ riverbed to the right. The picture below shows you further where we were camping. 

This is an aerial view of the grass flat below the mountain and to the left of the creek/ riverbed. The point on the left is where the plane dropped us off. You can see a slight green path between ridge at the top of the little bay and the bump that eventually ends the elevation drop of the mountain... that is where we camped. 

Unloaded and ready to abandon us.

I'm standing in the middle of the grassfield looking back at our camping spot. You can see the small gap beween the ridge and the mountain were we put our tent. 

Looking up mountain one from the grass field. 

Our basecamp

Headed out.

"Dang, that's a long way up!"

Starting our hike up the the mountain

We saw our first deer in the creek/ riverbed while we were hiking up the mountain. 

Early hike pose

Descent buck

Getting higher

A beaver made quite a network of ponds

Overlooking the creek/ river bed and ocean

Made it to the top, almost.

Rock ptarmigan baby

Easy pickings, if we were hunting them

We are peaking around mountain one here looking at mountain two, with mountain three in background

This is the billy on the ridge toward mountain two

The billy bedded down, head away from us. 

Trying to walk the ridge to mountain two

There's a group of 6 bucks in the middle of this picture. This in acorss the bowl on mountain two. 

Here's a close up of 4 of the big bucks. 

The path these two guys took is what we followed to circle mountain two. You can kind of see a slight trail behind them. 

Hey guys.

This is Danielle starting up the bowl of mountain two.

The billy saw us after we passed him and were circling around mountain two.

Our first peak into the bowl of mountain three.

Can you see the white dots everywhere!?

This is the monster buck that made us question everything. He was the only buck that didn't have velvet on his antlers and was twice the size of all other bucks. 

Danielle is dropping down into the flat where we will stay the night. 

This is a picture from our tenting spot below the bowl we wanted to hunt.

Zooming in a little, the left side is the outside sides of the bowl and the right side is straight down to the creek/ riverbed. The middle is the shoot the billy is in. 

Zooming in further, and here is the billy

Some pretty flower by our tent.

The ripped rainfly!

Splinting the poles.

Sewing

And more sewing

Splinted and taped poles.

Rainfly repairs complete! 

The goats started moving quite a bit before bedtime.

Exhausted selfie

Feet care

Morning view from our tent.

A few low goats.

A few more low goats.

Looking back toward mountain two from our morning tent.

And looky here, the billy from mountain two.

The view from the shoot we climbed. The area below is where we climbed. 

Here are the rocks we had to climb.

Danielle is looking goaty... 

... cresting the ridge...

... leaving me behind.

These are the two nannnies I was watching to get an idea of how they reacted to Danielle; they are both looking at Danielle here. 

And they laid down after getting comfortable with Danielle. 

Danielle took the shot, and these are the goats still hanging around. The shot goat is the one in the center left. 

More goats hanging out looking at me and Danielle, wondering what that loud bang was. 

Mamma and kid overlooking the disruption. 

This is where Danielle setup to take her shot from. 

No caption needed.

This is where we carried her down to to cut up... still not flat, but way better than the prior location.

Cutting on the hill side.

Danielle cleaning meat.

We put the reflective blanket over the meat to keep the sun and heat off it.

All done cutting, quick break. 

What a view... the lake(s) in the bowl were gorgeous. The water was crystal clear too no matter the depth. 

Another lake in the bowl.

Looking down on the opposite side of the mountain toward the end of the bay (opposite side from our camp).

Headed out, this is one of the bucks we came across. 

Yup... this was not fun to hike through at all. 

Looking down from our spike tent site after conceeding that we weren't going to make it out in one day.

Another view from our second night spike tent.

This is the only bear we saw the entire trip, and it was about 5 miles away. This was surprising to me, especially with all the tracks and scat we saw. 

This is a little fawn that was hiding in the grass. 

On our last descent, I'm looking up at Dainelle slowly making her way down, trying not to injure her knee. 

Almost there.

Setting up the meat shelter.

Meat secured.

Our entire camp after the meat shelter addition.

And from the other direction.

Overlooking the bay next to camp.

Hey seal!

He tried getting a better look at us. 

More beach exploring. 

This is what the last few hundred yards looked like next to the creek/ riverbed. 

SHED!

Here we are in the creek/ riverbed and Danielle is pointing to the bowl she shot the goat it.

Zooming in, the crevace is the kill spot.

Zooming in further, you can see the exact location where Danielle took the shot. 

Posing along the creek.

Beach combing.

Mamma and baby bear along the beach.

Washed up star fish

Beached sea star

These jelly fish were everywhere.

Here's a jelly fish close to shore.

More bear tracks walking along the beach.

Danielle looking for treasures.

Headed back to camp.

Prepping the loins for cooking.

The absoluate best way to cook fresh meat in the field.

Almost done.

Cooking selfie.

The moment she fell in love.

Danielle's morning table... revolver, Tama County sherif mug, and instant coffee. 

This is the doe that walked toward us.

And here she is closer.

And here she is within rock throwing distance.

Probably the smallest "big game" I have ever shot.

Danielle is doing work... with the dull knife.

Cribbage fun!

Cribbage goofs!

Loading up the place to get out of here.

Selfie with the pilot.

Stinky love birds.

Killing it at darts!

Sitting and waiting for Danielle to shoot

The wind was insane!

That's me dissapearing into the brush. This was actually the easy part of, almost at the end of the climb back out. 

Look at all this life in the water by the shore! Surprisingly, none of these critters you see are fish. 

Seals next to our camp site, hunting