Posts Tagged → AK
I am recovering from Alaska
To our three loyal readers, my apologies for not posting in two weeks. The reason our blog here has been quiet is I was away in Alaska, almost every day spent in remote locations with no cell or wifi, the nights spent falling asleep immediately, and I just returned a couple days ago.
Alaska tourism can be done several ways – cruise ship, fly to main city like Anchorage or Fairbanks and use tourism services to sightsee and experience, or, my preferred way, go all-in hands-on. And so I spent ten days in remote locations, hunting, fishing, and hiking, marveling at God’s creation. Fortunate am I to have a long time friend who lives there, and who has long shared my outdoor adventure interests here in PA and there in AK. While he was looking for a moose more than anything, he did have a grizzly tag in his pocket, and that is the animal “we” ended up getting.
I say “we” because we were a team, because only a fool hunts alone in grizzly country, especially around the salmon streams when the fish are running, and because it takes two large men to effectively get out and cape out a large bear after one of them gets the critter. Large here was about 600 pounds; it was trying to elude a 1200-pound monster that nearly ran me over, which is terrifying and exhilirating. It is my friend’s bear, not mine. But I was “in on the kill” as used to be said in the old days.
Despite having field dressed and butchered well over a hundred big game animals in my life, I have never before seen connective tissue between muscle and skin like on his grizzly bear. We had three custom fixed blade hunting knives, and they all went dull about 3/4 of the way through the job (my JRJ made of ATS-34 was the last to go dull and the one we both alternatively used as we closed in on finishing the job). Dull due to extremely tough hide, a thick fur filled with dirt and grit and small rocks after we winched it through the woods, and that unbelievable connective tissue that just did not want to be cut. The part of skinning a big game animal that is usually the easiest, pulling the skin off the carcass, was really challenging and tiring with this grizzly. Again, I have neither seen anything like it, nor could I have been challenged to adequately imagine the toughness of that connective tissue. No wonder these huge beasts bite the heck out of each other without showing real wounds!
While I had a black bear tag in my pocket, and wolves were on the menu, I was actually most excited to be present for my friend when he got a moose. Getting a moose out of the woods is a quintessential American wilderness experience, and the one I have not done before. A trip to AK just to eventually help your friend get his moose out of the woods is a worthwhile trip, regardless of what else one might do there. However, when the beautiful male grizzly presented itself, my friend took it. As for the black bear tag I purchased, I actually walked right up to a small black bear deeply enmeshed in a blueberry bush on a steep mountainside drowning in the roar of a nearby glacial stream’s torrential rush. I could have easily killed it, but I would not shoot a bear that small here in Pennsylvania, and so I did not shoot that bear. I think if I am going to remove a black bear from the face of the sacred Alaskan earth, it will have to be a real wall hanger. So I watched this small one duck down, try to hide, and then run like hell up the mountainside, over logs, rocks, and sticks and through devil’s club like nothing was in its way. Even the small bears are impressive.
As for the salmon fishing, I could have as many pinks as the law allows, and my friends’ freezer grew full of them and short of room they preferred to save for the silver coho salmon. And so I dutifully fished daily for the no-show coho, and felt the pang of defeat when the report came in from Juneau that the cohos were there in force, on the day I was leaving. Fishing is almost always “You should have been here yesterday” or “You should have stayed one day longer,” and this rule of thumb applies just as much to Pacific salmon species as it does to striped bass or tuna in the Atlantic.
Thanks for checking in here, friends. I had a hell of a grand trip to Alaska, got my head cleared, my lungs expanded, my blood moving, my heart pumping, my legs working again, and reveled in the this-is-oh-so-right feeling of a pack and rifle over my shoulder.
A little bit of risk is good for us sedentary Western men; it keeps us sharp, feeling alive. Combine risk with hard hunting, and you end up feeling your most alive possible. Back here in PA we have a month to go before pack-and-rifle early muzzleloader season, and then another month after that before bear and then deer seasons give us that brief but intense visit with our inner and most honest, truest paleo inside.
Pictures to come.
A 22″ grizzly skull may not sound that big by itself, but it was attached to a 600 pound body with enormous muscles and claws
Eldred Rock light house
The real center of town, the AK Fish & Game office
a bear head before being boiled
A ton of work and many lengths of rope spliced together to get this thing out of the woods.
We beat the weeds looking for a bull moose, only to find one standing on the highway on a return drive home
Setting up a moose stand is like setting up a deer stand back East, except the moose stand comes with grizzly bears, wolves, and moose
Stalking AK black bear habitat is a lot like being in PA black bear habitat, except AK has blueberries -and- high bush cranberries, salmon berries, tons of mountain ash berries and rosehips, while PA is lucky to have any blueberries or blackberries at all, due to our overabundant deer
A pink “humpy” salmon, probably the most prolific edible Pacific species. Back East we pay five bucks for a can containing about one quarter of this fish’s meat. I was allowed six a day.
A fine looking salmon river that you must share in close quarters with cool grizzly bears on the one side, and annoying, jostling, foolish foreign tourists on the other
Whether you harvest an animal or not, simply being in Alaska with your pack and rifle is sufficient for a complete overhaul of mindset and heart
Endless vistas of countless mountainsides, each loaded with black bears, grizzly bears, sheep, caribou, and moose. A paradise of God’s creation.
A few more thoughts on Alaska gear & public land
Even people who will never hunt in Alaska want to know what kind of gear a guy carried while he was there, and they might even have some opinions about it. Alaska is kind of the go-to place for all imaginary hunts, survivalist prepping, and bush homesteading, and you can go on YouTube and on any related video find endless debate about guns and gear by all kinds of people, 99% of whom have never been to Alaska. After the “Thousand Overnight Tragedies” essay here a week ago, I got some questions about my hunting kit from people who will never do anything more than a luxury cruise to Alaska. I know well that if a couple guys ask, there are more who want to know but didn’t ask. So here goes, my best advice on how to be properly kitted out for Alaska.
First off, before assembling your Alaska kit you have to determine if you are staying out in the Alaskan wilderness. Plenty of people get air dropped into a remote wilderness spot, tent up near the lake or river where the float plane landed to drop them off, and that’s their base camp they hunt out of every day. It is the same place the plane will pick them up from in a week or ten days. If this scenario is how you are heading into Alaska to hunt or fish, then you need all of the survival gear, various fire starting methods, a beacon, etc. kit that you would need while wilderness hunting anywhere else in North America. My Seek Outside tipi tent with the large titanium wood stove has made all of the difference for how I hunt in wilderness (thanks to Ranger Ian for his guidance on this years ago after I reported how I nearly froze to death in his service territory).
Second, the month of year really makes a difference in Alaska. I have been there in July, August, and September. July and August are usually quite comfortable. In September you are beginning to get some chilly nights, and possibly chilly mornings. Maybe a chilly day. Warm clothing you can easily layer on and off, like a Filson wool vest, becomes critical the later it gets after August ends.
Finally, where exactly in Alaska are you going? Central Alaska encompasses most of the state, and it is kind of the rugged classic interior Alaska everyone thinks of when they imagine Alaska. But all of the state’s coastal areas are really different from the interior, especially as you begin to head north or south of Anchorage. Southeastern panhandle Alaska is a temperate rain forest. It rains there even when it is not really technically raining. Something like fifteen to twenty FEET of rain falls there in the southeast. Obviously you have to be prepared for regular rain if you are hunting and fishing in the panhandle.
If you are hunting out of an Alaskan home, say your friend’s or your cousin’s, or from a lodge, and then driving or boating to your destination each day, with plans of returning before dark, then here is the kind of checklist you will appreciate:
- Rubber rain suit, jacket with hood and pants. My 25-year-old Cabela’s blue rubber rain suit worked fine for both repelling the constant light patter and sometimes more steady rain. It also served as my wind breaker with only a tee shirt underneath. Blue is a bad choice for hunting, because many animals see blue like humans see fluorescent orange. When my blue rain suit finally dies, I will get a green one.
- Good rubber boots and also good leather hunting boots. I used both, sometimes on the same day, the rubber ones in the morning and the leather ones later in the day, or vice versa. If you are hunting hard, you need rigid ankle support, and I have not found a better boot for hunting in steep, rugged terrain than the Danner Canadians. I especially relied on the Danners on the SE AK island we hunted for blacktail deer. For this recent trip I finally bought my first “good” pair of rubber boots, the only “hunting style” rubber boots that properly fitted my enormous duck feet, by Irish Setter. These worked great in all wet environments I encountered, many of which were the margins and shallows of salmon streams. A PEET boot dryer is a good thing to have waiting at home at the end of the day.
- A light day-use backpack holding extra clothing, extra ammo, food, water, GPS (I use a Garmin 62s with detailed mini SD card maps) a range finder, binoculars, etc is an absolute necessity. My LL Bean hunting pack has accompanied me on hunting trips from the Scottish Highlands to Alaska and a lot of places in between. It is a fabulous and extremely durable, well thought out piece of kit.
- Binoculars are essential in Alaska, because it is such big country. Doesn’t matter if you are hunting or fishing, you absolutely must be able to see what is happening around you, if for no other reason than Alaska serves up cantankerous grizzly/ brown bears by the minute almost everywhere you go. And occasionally mean moose. Plus binoculars help you see game you are after, or maybe circling marine birds distantly picking off scraps as larger fish feed at the surface, where you can easily catch them. Leupold has been my USA-made go-to binocular maker for a very long time, after using various Nikons for a while. Yes, you can’t go wrong with Swarovskis or Zeiss, but I am brutal on my gear, and I will cry like a baby if all 265 pounds of me face plants on top of the $3,000 binos strapped to my chest. So I use a pair that are almost as good as the $3,000 pair, but which cost about 800% less.
- Range finder. Any modern range finder is useful for hunting in big country like Alaska, except over water. If you are hunting directly over a large body of water, then you need to calibrate your piece, or it will give you whacky results. I use a Nikon Forestry Pro because I work in the forest products and land business, but it has also served me just as well in hunting. I have learned that this model is rugged, because I use mine so much, in so many tough environments.
- Knife. Yes, you need a strong, sharp knife to go hunting correctly. I won’t wade into the whole which steel is better than my grandma’s Old Hickory no-snob high carbon potato peeler knife. And if anyone ever says the word “bushcraft” within arm’s length of me, you’re gonna get a healthy serving of country whoop ass. Because I can’t take it any more. The whole “bushcraft” genre is such urban flatlander weekend warrior nonsense, for God’s sake, let it be, leave it alone, leave it behind. A hunting knife can be almost any shape, size, and steel type that has worked well for you in the past. The Inuit and Inupiat just south and north of the Arctic Circle use Old Timer pocket knives, grandma’s ulu made of whale penis and wrought iron, and occasionally a high quality modern “huntin‘ knife” left behind by an appreciative tourist hunter. And guess what…all of these various shape knives work just fine for the subsistence lifestyle a lot of Inuit and Inupiat live. And they kill, skin, dissect, and eat raw on the spot – with their varied assortment of knives – more critters in one month than you will kill in a lifetime of Lower 48 recreational huntin‘. I happen to use various JRJ knives made by John R Johnson of Perry County, PA, because his ATS-34 steel and overall craftsmanship were as good as any huntin‘ knife available anywhere on the planet. Unfortunately, John has not made a knife in almost ten years. Fortunately, for years I bought armloads of knives that he custom made for me, and I enjoy using every one of them every season.
- Rifle. Yeah, some guys hunt Bigfoot with a souped up .44 Magnum or 454 Casull handgun. So what. A rifle is light years better than a handgun in every way, and I hunt big game only with a rifle, especially in real big country like Alaska. On this recent trip I carried my friend’s Henry 45-70 lever action, loaded with the Federal Premium HammerDown 300 grain rounds. There are hotter, more effective 45-70 rounds available from CorBon and Grizzly, but I was happy with the 3″ 100-yard performance of this round out of my friend’s rifle. And I don’t know how up to snuff the Henry is with the hotter 45-70 loads. The problem with the Alaska panhandle is that the weather there absolutely eats guns. If the saltwater doesn’t kill your gun, the constant rain and moisture will finish the job. A stainless steel gun like the Marlin 45-70 SBL is probably the best possible hunting rifle for Alaska. And this gun can handle the hottest 45-70 loads. One comment about the Henry: Its rear sight was very frail and kind of sad. It moved around all by itself, which can result in a severe mauling or death by Griz, if you happen to not check up on the rear sight and adjust it as needed every ten minutes.
- Backup pistol and bear spray. Bear spray works very well in places without wind or breezes. If you use bear spray in a place with wind or strong breezes, you are likely to incapacitate yourself instead of the bear (insert stupid human hungry bear joke here). I happened to be hunting and fishing in a SE AK place with constant winds and breezes, so I dispensed with the bear spray and kept a .44 Magnum revolver on my hip, loaded with some bear-buster ammo and not the ubiquitous 240 grain JHP that is guaranteed to piss off Griz more than kill him. Speaking of backup, I carried an emergency beacon of unknown make or vintage on most of my hunts.
- Clothing. My old tried-and-true Cabela’s Gore-Tex hunting pants were perfect for the cooler days, and my old tried-and-true Columbia nylon zip-off cargo pants were perfect for the warmer days. A wool hunting shirt in red and black buffalo plaid (of course) with some thermal long underwear is all I needed in the early season. I wore a no-name fluorescent orange fleece hat as well as my 2020 Trump hat. Sometimes together when it was cold. Mid to late September and beyond, you need real cold weather gear.
Good luck if you go DIY hunting in Alaska. DIY solo is my thing, and I think it is the most fun way to wilderness hunt. The challenge with DIY in Alaska is it is so big, and the critters are so big, and the distances are so big, and the civilization is so small and so far away. You really can’t do a DIY hunt by yourself in Alaska. It is not safe, and a thousand things can go wrong after you are successful and kill the animal of your trophy dreams. Go with a friend, go with a guide. And be smart about balancing your kit with practical items you are truly likely to need. Hunting in Alaska is not automatically a survival test or a Bataan Death March. You don’t go to Alaska and automatically plunk yourself down in the woods and start doing a video on (puke) bushcraft. It isn’t all dangerous, nor is Alaska all wilderness. Plenty of good hunting and fishing is available a decently brief drive out of any of the major cities, but it does get better the farther out you go.
Speaking of going further out of civilization, all this amazing hunting and fishing and trapping in Alaska is possible only because of the huge critical mass of public land there. Yes, I agree that federal and state agencies sometimes mis-manage public land. And sometimes those agencies end up “mis-managing” their relationships with the American citizen taxpayers who pay the agency staff and who own the public land the agencies are supposed to steward. But I think that public land is one of the very few things that government does pretty well. And even when government staff screw it up, the public land is still there afterwards.