Posts Tagged → hunting
Hunting season re-cap
By popular demand by our one, single reader, we are going back in time a week or three, to when most hunting seasons ended. I was asked for a recapitulation of my own end of the hunting season, which, depending on which one we are talking about, could have been the end of January or mid February or even last week.
This past season was tough for me, for the simple reason that I am still recovering from a covid-related “medical event,” which really took the starch out of my shirt, the wind out of my sails, the gumption out of my Gump. Bit over a year ago, I was running the sawmill, stacking lumber, sawing logs, working very hard, getting ready for an annual out-of-state solo wilderness hunt that I do just about every year. It is a great hunt, whether I actually pull the trigger, or not, and it has resulted in both super Zen mind settling re-sets as well as the biggest bodied buck and the biggest bear I have ever killed.
So I was working overtime in the crisp Fall air filled with the sweet scent of falling oak leaves, trying to get a bunch of logs to disappear and become lumber, and enjoying the feeling of being in really great condition, and feeling physically powerful. Nothing like bossing big oak logs around with a cant hook and a pickaroon to make a guy feel strong.
By the end of the week I was in absolute beast mode. I might have been a bit heavy, but I was incredibly strong and in fabulous cardiovascular conditioning (proven by a radioactive dye test that same spring where the cardiologist told me I had the heart of an 18 year old). Over the years, I have made hunting guides and forest rangers alike laugh and shake their heads at the improbability of my non-svelte ability to carry a heavy pack and a rifle, and just go go go keep going to wherever we are going in the Scottish Highlands and many other mountain ranges from Maine to Alaska.
So I was ripped and in fantastic condition, ready to make the long drive to the out of state destination, just exit the truck, throw my pack on, grab my rifle, and head in about four to six miles. When finally out there, I live out of a Seek Outside teepee tent, which with a small titanium wood stove provides all the comforts of home I could ever need. Living on home made dried fruit, jerky, and Gatorade powder keeps everything super simple.
Hours before leaving, I woke up, feeling like I was about to die. Eventually convinced that I was in fact dying, I drove myself forty minutes to the nearest hospital, and turned myself in to the ER staff at 4AM.
“Whatever you are here for, you are in the right place,” said the wizened old lady at the ER check-in. Apparently I looked just as dandy as I felt.
Handfuls of blood clots from a freak Covid clot were sprinkled around my lungs and heart, which accounted for why I felt like I was dying. That I did not die right away amazed everyone medical. Had I reached my hunting destination without dying on the highway, I would have died in the teepee tent, and forest rangers would have had to recover my fat body in the middle of a designated wilderness area. Which would have scored me no points with people I am always trying to impress.
So, when your aging carcass nearly croaks like that, and you cannot breathe or move for months, your body begins to atrophy. Overnight. On an old body like mine, the warranty ran out long ago, and things and parts and bits of it just start going their own way. Months and tens of pounds of fat later, I was learning to walk again. Forget carrying heavy packs and rifles, just walking from one end of a damned log landing to the other end was a chore. Carrying a chainsaw? Unimaginable.
Two types of blood clots are related to Covid: The kind of “regular” red blood cell clot, which got me, which my cardiologist said they saw an enormous spike of from early 2020 to 2022, and the white, gooey clot that seems to result from the purported Covid “vaccine” shot. I never got the faux Covid vaccine shot, but I did have Covid at least twice, possibly three times. And so even a year or two later, people like me were still experiencing “late Covid” symptoms. Including death clots from out of the middle of nowhere, including originating from impossible parts of the body (not in deep muscle).
Whatever China cooked up in their Frankenstein lab in Wuhan, it was a real bitch, and China owes America at least a trillion dollars for all of the damage and death they inflicted on us. Screw you, China, you bastards ruined my fabulous annual solo hunt and kept me from doing it again the next year, too. Make your bill two trillion bucks.
So, this past hunting season, beginning in October, I was just starting to really move again. But it was slow going, and slowed down more by the incredible amount of excess baggage I had stashed away around my gut. But whaddaya know, those old timers who used to talk about their elder years being their best hunting skills time…they were right. Because when I started moving through and across our hills, fields, and especially our Pennsylvania mountains, I was by necessity moving slooooowly.
And when you move slowly, you move silently, and with more attention paid to your surroundings. This results in seeing more animals, at closer distances, than usual. Being close range to prey animals with a rifle in your hand is usually a recipe for success.
In rifle season I killed two deer up in the mountains this way, the slow, sickly, deadly old man way. Then I returned south to the mostly Flatlands, and proceeded to again slowly sneak up on a doe in the middle of a wind storm with snow on the ground, and shoot her with a lever action rifle at about twenty-five yards. I was starting to feel a lot better physically, and about life.
Later on, in the late season, I really struggled to master a new flintlock rifle, for which I had waited two years, after taking a year of my time just to assemble the parts. I will write about hunting deer with this beautiful new flintlock rifle tomorrow, as Part Two of this report.
Going to the inauguration? Not I
Despite being bombarded with tickets and neat opportunities to go to the inauguration of President Donald John Trump in Washington, DC, I was of no mind to go. Not because I am not hyped and excited about his presidency, which I am, because of the good he is already having on world peace and the American economy, even before he actually takes office.
Rather, I had no idea what to expect once I got down to DC. Was it going to be all rainbows and happy unicorns? Or was it going to be mass riots and violence against Trump supporters, with local police standing by and allowing it to happen? And what about my own home, possibly at risk in any mass hysteria…
I was thinking about the days before the 2020 election, when I received a phone call from an old family friend of my parents. Someone I had not seen in thirty years at least, nor spoken to. An old far-left Quaker, Sam was in his early seventies when he called me in late 2020, and he was happy to get me on the phone.
“If Trump wins, we are organzing a nationwide boycott, massive civil disobedience, shut down the streets, protest marches in every city. And we need good organizers, responsible adults to help us prepare. Can I count on you to come to an important meeting in Philly next week?”
To which I replied, “Sam, it is so nice to hear your voice. Been a real long time. I know you and Dad enjoyed your philanthropic bike ride together last year, which was cool to follow. But I have to tell you, I am not in college any longer. That was decades ago. I left the Quakers decades ago over their political ideology, and I left my policy job at the US EPA in DC over the ideology there, too. I left the Democrat Party in 1993, after Bill Clinton was elected and tried to take away everyone’s guns. And to your point, I have donated thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign because I am a huge Trump supporter. So I don’t think you want me coming, because I will definitely ruin your Black Panther party,” trying to borrow a phrase from the Forrest Gump movie that I thought humorous and appropriate at the moment.
But Sam didn’t have to pull his trigger. Right after my brief conversation with Sam, the 2020 election was blatantly stolen, and America endured an incredible amount of purposeful self-destructive abuse at the hands of the Biden Administration, enabled by the ever-corrupt and lazy Republican Party.
No, for me now, the logistics of being in or even getting to Washington, DC, and running a gantlet of violent leftists, just to reach the inauguration site, and then standing in the cold, and then doing it all in reverse, was just too daunting.
Fortunately for me, I no longer have to endure the torment of happy reports of smiling unicorns and rainbows from ecstatic revelers who did manage all of the significant logistics to participate in person. Now that the event has been moved indoors (supposedly for weather, but probably just as much for the safety of President Trump), I don’t imagine all that many people are going to go to DC.
Except for Sam’s rioters and street theater thugs. I am quite certain those people will show up to protest and hurt innocent Americans and break things, no matter what formalities are or are not held outside, or who else shows up to celebrate.
Considering it all, last week I was of no mind to go in person, and even more so now I would still rather be at home sitting by my cozy fireplace, watching the inauguration on TV. Or maybe I will go out hunting that very last day of flintlock season. We are supposed to get a wonderful dose of snow Sunday evening, perfect for deer tracking and hunting in on Monday…now THAT is a great way to celebrate America’s new birth of freedom!
Have a wonderful Xmas+ season, friends
Whatever your nationality, nation of origin, religion of origin or religious practice or faith, if you live in America, it is Christmas time. For orthodox Christians this time of the year has a special meaning, and for everyone else it absolutely must be just barely a notch below how orthodox Christians feel.
No Grinches allowed, only happiness and goodwill towards our fellow human being. You do not have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas, to go with the cheerful, happy flow, to give your annoying neighbor or co-worker a bit of leeway, to give someone the go-ahead at the opposite stop sign. Do it, it will feel good.
Wish people “Merry Christmas!” and see how happy they are to hear the earnest expression of our national holiday, two words that were almost obliterated from the American lexicon for fear of “offending” someone.
Hey, if you are actually offended by hearing Merry Christmas here in America, for a grand total of two weeks, then America is probably not for you. Take your unhappiness and lack of appreciation for our solid, stable society to someplace else.
Having just returned from some much-needed beach time and saltwater fishing, I am having to move fast into the snow, ice, and wood fire mode. Trapping season is upon me (I always wait for rifle season to end, so there are fewer people in the woods, and I also wait for bobcat and fisher seasons to start, so I don’t have to release those two prize species before their seasons start), as well as the late flintlock season.
Some fruit trees need major pruning, and a couple need a copper sulfate spray before spring arrives.
Good luck to everyone who is headed to the outdoors for more, whether it is skiing, hunting, ice skating, snow shoeing. Eat it up, drink it up, relish it, because in a few weeks it will all be over, and we will then be looking at Freezing February and then the glimmers of Spring in March.
Until then, Merry Christmas, everyone!
and you don’t have to be Christian to like Christmas
As much as I favor wintertime over all other seasons, there is no substitute for having morning coffee on a patio under a tropical sky, while everything back home is frozen solid
Everglades City Museum Xmas tree made of crab traps and trap buoys. This is folk art!
A limit of sea trout fed us well for several days
Even manatees can get into the holiday spirit
Rum and Coke time is never as good as when one is watching a tropical sunset over an ocean somewhere
Good luck, deer hunters
Practically a religious holiday event, Pennsylvania rifle season for deer starts tomorrow morning, and I want to wish everyone who participates a hearty Good Luck. Up north, where poor to no acorn crops this Fall seemed to be widespread, finding deer is probably going to be more difficult than usual.
All the reports I heard from bear hunters across the northcentral region here is that acorns were nonexistant. But deer are spread all over the state, and they are doing better than just OK in places with farm fields and suburban lawns. If you just want to kill a fat buck with a nice set of antlers, you should go sit on my buddy Mark’s porch in Camp Hill/ Mechanicsburg. I am sure you can easily nail one of the stud bucks that casually lay about and wander around Mark’s yard every day, with a crossbow. Mark is not alone, as anyone who lives up on Blue Mountain north of Harrisburg will tell you. Deer are everywhere in these urban/surburban places.
Pennsylvanians traditionally like to hunt in the Big Woods because it is, well, big and woodsy, and quiet, serene, magical, inspiring. Wilder places have always been where religions start, where the voice of God is easiest to hear. People are drawn to the mountains to hunt, not just to hunt, but to hunt surrounded by beauty. This is where I like to hunt. Add to that a mix of beautiful antique and black powder firearms, and life is just fiiiine, even if a skunk is all I encounter.
This year, I suspect our deer hunters up north are going to get a lot more beauty and less deer. Hope I am wrong. Fortunate am I that I am easily amused by fondling blued steel and aged walnut while sitting on my can in the cold.
Good luck, shoot straight, and have a fun, safe hunt, everyone.
Biblically bare bear woods
Today was an unnerving jolt to the hunter-conservationist-observationist, slipping through the bear woods of Northcentral Pennsylvania in search of a large black bear boar: We encountered silence.
Silence as in no or few shots heard, until lunch time, when it sounded like fellow bear hunters returned to their respective camps to eat and decided to at least sight in their hunting rifle again for this weekend deer season opener.
Hunting-related shots in what used to be Bear Central were very few. And add to that absence the absolute silence of the woods itself, and the hunting experience is spooky.
Nothing is alive in these woods. Maybe a dicky bird here or there, but nothing of note to hunters and wildlife watchers. No deer, no turkeys, no squirrels or chipmunks, and no bears. Just silence, as if a giant vacuum has sucked up all the living beings normally in these woods and taken them away.
What seems to be the problem is our third year of no acorns. Acorns are usually abundant in our oak forests here, and acorns are the foundation upon which all wildlife exists here. But three years ago we had a drought in the late spring, which killed the oak flowers that normally become acorns. Then two years ago a late frost killed oak flowers across a wide swath of Northcentral PA. Then this past spring the gypsy moths ate everything in our oak forests, especially the tender oak flowers that accompanied the gypsy moth caterpillar hatch.
Thus, we are now in a Biblical level wildlife famine in a lot of Northcentral PA. And as a result, hunters in these dead zones are getting skunked beyond not just having an opportunity to take a trophy game animal. We are also being denied the greatest reason to hunt of all: Participating directly in the great and beautiful, magical cycle of Nature. Hunters don’t always have to kill to have a successful day afield. Rather, most of us get juiced just from sitting quietly in peaceful wild places and observing wildlife that humans otherwise rarely or never get to see. For a lot of hunters, the forest cathedral is our best and most special, rewarding, and spiritual place of worship. Especially on remote mountaintops. Tough one this year, though.
Tomorrow our “gang” is going to do a bear drive on another nearby patch of State Forest land where we have been told there are some oaks that produced acorns this Fall. Whether the acorns are a result of DCNR spraying bt on the gypsy moths, or from some local environmental factor, no one knows. What we do know is that we will at least have a higher chance at success than in our usual hunting grounds, which in good times produces many bears for hard working hunters.
As we do just a few days a year, a disparate group of men will again tomorrow band together in joint effort to participate in the oldest of human experiences, the hunt on foot. Win or lose, we still enjoy each other’s company. But we also need to know we have a fighting chance of at least encountering the charismatic wildlife of our healthy woods.
We hope for acorns.
Do deer processors give you back your own deer?
Pennsylvania rifle season for deer is nearing the end of its second and concluding week. On average, Pennsylvania hunters annually kill 400,000-500,000 deer, and I would just hazard a guess that 2/3 of those carcasses are taken by the hunter to local deer processors.
Tonight, deer processors across Pennsylvania are working triple-staffed and double overtime to process the hundreds of thousands of deer being brought in by successful hunters.
A perennial question asked by both new hunters and well seasoned is “When I pick up my deer from the processor, will it actually be my deer I am getting, or will it be someone else’s deer?”
There are two certain answers to this question, and I base these on my own experience and the experiences of many friends and acquaintances.
First answer, Maybe. Depending on what you want done to your deer, you might get back 100% of your deer or you might get back 75% of your deer, with the 25% difference being parts of other people’s deer. If you just want real simple cuts, basic steaks from the backstraps and the hams, and roasts from the neck, leg, and shoulders, then you stand a better chance of getting your deer back. This is because it is almost as easy for the processor to cut your deer up into these basic cuts with a bandsaw and a boning knife as it is to grab whatever oddball cuts he has on hand to fill your order.
Second answer, when ordering sausage and hamburger, is absolutely No. This is because deer sausage, pepper sticks etc. are made from various trimmings and random pieces of deer as they are brought in from the very beginning of the archery season, based on the kind of demand that processor has experienced in the past. Additional batches of sausage are made as demand increases towards the end of archery season and into the rifle season. There is just no way that your deer can be turned into its own sausage mix. Your deer might be contributed to a big pot of deer trimmings destined for sausage, and you might be getting your portion of that sausage, but that sausage just isn’t going to be yours and yours alone. It will be a mix of various deer brought in the same time as your own.
I cannot tell you how many times I have gone through the expense of having my prize deer turned into beautiful shrink wrapped cuts at a processor, only to discover that the cardboard box I received my order in is short at least ten to fifteen pounds of venison (from a huge buck). And worse, some random pieces have been thrown in a try to make the balance, as the processor guesses it. And some of the packages have been frozen a long time. And the same cuts of meat are colored differently, as though from different animals.
The truth is that if you want to eat your deer, then you must either butcher your deer yourself, or get together with buddies and butcher all of your deer together.
Butchering a deer by yourself is much easier than most people think, especially if you are willing to cut up the backstrap and hams into basic steaks, and then grind up everything else for hamburger or sausage. In fact, I am about to take a deer I shot today over to a friend’s house where we are going to butcher it in his garage. This is going to be his first experience doing this, but I am sure it will not be his last time.
With buddies, you can pool your odd trimmings and leg meat for sausage. One or two guys or their wives run the sausage/ hamburger grinder and filler, and by the end of the weekend the sausage has been cooked/smoked, and everything is all done simultaneously. I have seen a historic hunting camp in Elk County that had the most impressive kitchen and butchery set-up, including scales for weighing both the whole deer and the various parts and cuts. This is nice so that the guy who shoots a 60-pound yearling gets his deer, and doesn’t unfairly get a bonus pay-out taken out of someone else’s 120 pound deer. Unless this is the way everyone agrees to work together: Everyone goes home with more or less the same amount.
Nothing against the deer processors, they have an important role to play. But the question asked in the beginning can only be satisfactorily answered by doing the job yourself, and I can say from long experience that butchering a deer is easy and gets faster and easier the more experienced at it you become.
Ok so how is your deer season going?
You wait all year for these two weeks of rifle season in PA, and then after a restless night the opening morning arrives. Five days in, and hardly a shot heard each day, no deer seen, hardly any sign encountered, and you are wondering what the heck is going on.
Don’t sweat it, you are not alone. You are in very good company. A lot of Pennsylvania hunters are grousing to each other tonight about not seeing any let alone many deer so far, not getting shots at deer, not even finding sign of deer, like poop or tree rubs. Not even hearing shots. Apparently Wisconsin is also seeing a real drop in their deer harvest in firearms season, too.
Something is amiss, especially in the Big Woods, no question.
Are we witnessing some mass die-off from disease, like Chronic Wasting Disease, or Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease? It is possible, but I have not yet seen any deer skeletons lying randomly in the woods. Maybe they are out there and I just haven’t found the graveyard yet. In 2005 northcentral PA had a huge deer die-off from late season snow and ice that made the mountains impassible. The deer could neither walk on the surface for weeks, nor could they dig through the compacted ice and snow to reach food. We did encounter random deer carcasses everywhere during the spring that year.
Maybe black bears ate more deer fawns than we anticipated (I witnessed a large black bear catching, killing, and eating a young deer this May, which is cool). Same can be surmised for coyotes, which are renowned deer eaters. After several years of purposefully hard harvests, there are now fewer bears in PA, by design, and theoretically less bear depredation of fawns in 2023. But there does seem to be an awful lot of coyotes. Everywhere.
Up north, we have no acorns to speak of. Late spring frosts killed our acorn flowers a couple years in a row, and gypsy moths have been terrible year after year. Any acorn flowers that survived spring frosts were eaten by the gypsy moths, whose egg masses are visible everywhere up here. So there is very little to no food in the Big Woods, and as a result, most wild animals seem to have flown the coop. Bear hunting last week was impossible. And so far this week, deer hunting has been tough.
Yesterday I was fortunate to set up in a natural funnel and catch two does transitioning from feeding areas to bedding areas. And today, with the help of friends on a small and carefully targeted drive, I filled my buck tag. Based on what I am hearing, I am incredibly lucky this year. Most hunters are struggling just to see deer tails bouncing off into the distance.
So if you are one of the PA hunters who is feeling dispirited right now about the apparent evaporation of deer this season, here is my best advice: Go hunt places you don’t normally hunt, and where you think others probably don’t hunt often, either. Steep hillsides are great locations for hiding deer. Play the wind, keeping it in your face as much as possible. Go slow, and quiet. And have a friend or two join you for a two-man push or leap-frog, or a two-man push with one stander. And then the stander becomes a pusher and the former pushers take up stands.
Remember that whitetails like to loop around behind their pursuers. If one guy is pushing and another guy is quietly lagging behind a hundred yards or more, he has a good chance of getting the deer that snuck off and went around the pusher. Again, make sure the wind is in your favor (blowing from the deer to you, not from you to the deer), and be as quiet as possible.
Switch up your game this season, because it seems that just sitting and waiting for animals to come out and present themselves broadside is not happening a whole lot in 2023. We gotta get in after them, and make our own action.
Good luck!
A simple request of PA hunters
A simple request for our Pennsylvania hunters: Be hunters, not assassins.
Relying on technology to obtain an animal whose senses you cannot defeat within fair chase distances because your hunting skills are stubby is lame. Killing animals from far outside their hearing, smell, eyesight is not hunting, it is just killing, an assassination. This is not fair chase.
If you are strictly subsistence hunting, I understand, but if you are adhering to fair chase and sporting chances, this long distance stuff ain’t sport hunting. It is ultra cheeseball. Yeah I know, this whole obsession with long range sniping and ultra accuracy that came out of our military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is cool. But it is not hunting.
A person who is sniping wild animals at hundreds of yards has expended zero skill or effort to defeat the animal’s natural defenses. You might as well drop a hellfire on it from a drone. And yeah, there’s probably a lot of “gamers” who will claim that that also takes “skill” and is “hunting.” Stop it. You are debasing yourself with this crap. Pick up an open sighted 30-30 lever action and learn what hunting is again or for the first time. You deserve it, the animals deserve it, the sport deserves it.
Good luck out there this deer season.
A fabulous hunting trophy
Another PA archery season over (UPDATE: No, it wasn’t over, I have not kept up with new PA archery season dates), another season I did not arrow a deer or a bear. It’s not that I could not have killed a buck with a gigantic rack, I could have, a hundred times. It is that I chose not kill him. He isn’t necessarily tame, but he has been hanging around an awful lot. It would have been easy to send an arrow or a bolt through him from a porch or an upstairs window. But in my old-er age, I must be turning soft-hearted. He even came into a ground blind I was in with a crossbow, and puttered around. I decided to admire him, instead.
Just seeing wild beauty like his brings me real pleasure. I don’t need to put his head on the wall for him to make me happy.
Even without killing a black bear or a wolf, I still got an amazing trophy from my Alaska hunt in September. And no, I am not referring to the beautiful stones and colorful pebbles I bring home with me as keepsakes from all around the world. Alaska streambeds were loaded with all kinds of incredible geological samples, and I could have easily filled a pickup truck bed with the easy ones. Instead, I picked up a memento of someone else’s kill, and brought that home with me.
While I was stalking a salmon stream in the northernmost part of southeast Alaska eight weeks ago, cradling a 45-70 rifle in my arms and looking for black bear feeding on spawning fish with one eye, or a wolf, and watching out for the ever-present brown bears/grizzlies with the other eye, I happened upon a scattering of big bones up against a stream bank. Bleaching white on the top side, and staining green with algae and moss on the bottom side, these bones marked a kill site. From what I could piece together, a two-year-old moose had made a stand against a pack of wolves or a large grizzly on this site, and had lost. It was right here where he had died and had been eaten.
One bone in particular caught my eye, the hip socket, sitting concave-side-up to the sky. What made this individual bone stand out so much was both how perfectly round it was, and yet how it was also framed on three sides by heavily fragmented and fractured ends of bone. Something really big had broken this heaviest of bones, and the tooth marks are still on the socket. As artists are fond of saying about something that catches all of the visuals just right, it was a study in contrasts.
I bent down, picked up the broken socket bone, brushed off the dirt and leaves, and stuffed it into my backpack among the long underwear and my PB&J sandwich. Back home in Pennsylvania, it was cleaned off, lightly bleached, and re-purposed into a pipe holder and ashtray. It is actually incredible how perfectly my tobacco pipe fits into that hip socket. Now I can use the bone as both an ashtray and a reminder of being in some of the world’s wildest country.
As soon as it dried, I sat down to enjoy a bowl of cherry cavendish, and with the light tobacco smoke swirling up around my head, I was immediately lost deeply in thought about God’s magnificent creation, the amazing wild beasts that have inspired us wee humans since our dawn here on Planet Earth, and how a hunting trophy is what you make of it. It doesn’t always have to be something you killed yourself. Sometimes it is just a small piece of the wilderness we love that serves as a symbolic touchstone and a time machine that transports us back to a place and time where all that mattered was the wind direction and the smell of Fall in the air.
Looking at this ten thousand years ago or fifty thousand, any Neolithic hunter anywhere around the planet would have felt exactly the same way. This one piece of fractured bone connects us two hunters across time, even though we never met.
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.