Seeth and his better half's 2023 outdoor adventures

[seeth07]

The shot was right on and although we didn't see where he went, we knew he couldn't be far. A short 100 feet of trailing led to finding him trying to hide in a spruce.



Is it possible to get a better backdrop for a photo?

 

[seeth07]

Knowing the grizzly country we are in, we get to work quickly and take all the precautions we can. We drag it out into the open where we can see at least 50 yards clearly in all directions. I'm not a fan of putting gloves on but I don't want blood on anything so I take off all the clothes I can and get gloves on. I slit up the belly and roll the guts out where my wife grabs ahold of them and she drags them down wind of us which thankfully is also downhill. She takes them a few hundred yards away. By the time she returns, I have the hide off the first half and meat starts going into a game bag. First half done and the bag is full and my wife takes it to a nearby spruce on the hillside and lays it across a low branch in the shade. There are no options for hanging the meat so this will have to do until we return back to camp this evening. We finish up and get the second bag to that tree and leave our bloody knives, saw (used for horns) and gloves with the meat. It took us only 35 minutes start to finish - all that practice from doing this dozens of times really came in handy when our goal was to be quick and efficient here in griz country.

We climb up that face and to the peak where all the deer were on. The backside of it is a big bowl that is thick with young spruce and we pick out a dozen more deer in this bowl. I was thinking that two things became very evident at this moment. One, it's super easy to spot deer in this habitat especially with the sun shining on them. It should be a walk in the park to pick up elk shall we ever see one. Secondly, if there are no elk and we suck as elk hunters, putting my elk locking tag on a deer should be easy.

View from along the top of the peak/ridge looking back into the saddle where the deer was shot. The entire bowl was the same small spruce that the deer were using as perfect cover.

 

[seeth07]

We continue along the ridge gaining more elevation and then down a little bit to a huge rock feature. It was blowing extremely hard at this point and we wanted to use this rock to get some relief and sit down and eat some lunch. We get there and after getting everything out of our packs to get cozy for awhile (tripod, glassing pad, food, coffee, water) my eyes are drawn to a white looking patch across the ridge in front of us and in the bottom of the next valley about 1.5 miles away. I get my bino out and take a peak but I'm unsure of what it is. It is a long ways away so I mount the bino onto the tripod and stare at this spot for awhile. I notice a second white blob and the first I can hardly see now. I think they are elk but with the thick vegatation they are in, I'm not 100% positive. I relay this to my wife and she glaces over with the naked eye and goes "aren't those all elk on that entire hillside in the sun"

"Uhhhh yeah....lots...lots of freaking elk!" There was easily 200 plus elk over in the next valley.





It's almost 1pm at this point and we set a hard rule that we wouldn't shoot an elk after noon because we didn't want to have to deal with breaking down a bull in the dark with grizzlies closing in. We figured from this spot, it was at least a 2 hour hike over to the herd so we proceeded to eat our lunch and relax while talking about how to hunt this herd the next day.

We trek back to our deer meat and load up our packs. We knew of some large dark timber back towards camp in the first saddle we spotted some deer and that spot also gave us a location to pack straight down to the beach where we came from. We get the load there and I play monkey climbing the tree as high as I can to rig something up for hanging the two meat bags from. We get it high and hopefully safely out of reach for any bears.



We return to camp and cook supper which has fresh backstrap on the menu. Nothing beats meat cooked in the mountains. We discuss with the other two that we found the elk and it was going to mean an early wake up call and that they should head that way with us as we felt good the next day we would be thick in elk and might need help packing.

 

[seeth07]

I missed something from my notes from the first day while hiking up to camp. I looked down towards the water and saw a water spray from a whale surfacing. Through the binoculars I was able to spot a huge pod of maybe 8 or so orcas swimming through the strait. Talk about getting to see all the wildlife of SE AK in one day!

 

[seeth07]

That early morning wake up call was 5:15am. We figured that if we left camp by 5:45am, we could make it to the Rock as we were simply calling this spot now (note that this landmark is going to continued to be used in this story over and over again) by 8AM which would be slightly after it got light enough to see. It was almost exactly a two mile hike of fairly easy alpine hiking however, my wife and her step dad aren't exactly the power walking type so we needed to take our time. We also had to be careful as we needed to pass directly past our meat stash and also past the carcass. We do so carefully and make it to the Rock right on time, just before 8am.

Glassing where we saw the elk the day before leads to nothing. In the valley yo our left and on the opposite main ridge of the mountains we are on, we spot two lone bulls in different spots working upwards - well over two miles away. The one looks good but going after him is basically impossible.

Those bulls somewhere over there on that face as far as you can see about half way up.



We wait and glass around until about 10am and don't turn up any other elk. We make a plan for my wife and I to head down and over our ridge in front of us to get a full look into the entire valley to the right where we saw those elk and the other two would remain at the Rock and continue to look for both deer and elk from there.

We work our way around the left side of the ridge and I catch a large white body emerge from the thick cover in the bottom of the large valley to the left. It's a bull and he is about 1000 yards away. We look him over and determine he is just a small 3x4. We sit down and notice he is slightly working his way up the valley towards us. We decide to test what we can get away on this bull as practice. We continue to sidehill the wide open grass hillside and close the distance to about 700 and sit back down. I decide to rip out a bugle and make a few cow calls to see what happens. Last thing I expected was for him to look up at us and take off in a charge right to us! He closed to 300 yards in a mere seconds. He kept looking our way confused I think that he couldn't see the elk making the calls. We let him pass on by us before moving on. Lesson learned - at least this elk isn't very smart and maybe others are too.



Big wallow we found up there:



We work up to the top of the ridge to get our first good look of the right valley where we spotted the herd. We crest and immediately pick out two bulls directly below us, maybe 500 yards away. One is for sure a 4x4 and the other looks like a big 5x4 but we aren't 100% positive. We continue to glass around and I find the main herd - they have moved and are now 1.5 miles further away! Ugh. We decide to make a move on the two bulls below us to get a better close look and also again test what we can get away with. Turns out, we can get away with a lot. We were able to get to 150 yards of them and in doing so, we were exposed in a few spots where I thought there was no way we werent going to spook these bedded bulls. Turns out that they just didn't care. We decide that this early on in the hunt, both of these two aren't what we are looking for and pass them up. I remark to my wife "dang it, we are officially trophy hunting, I don't like it but darn this is so much fun watching and getting this close to elk".

 

[seeth07]

It's almost noon and that is our cutoff for shooting a bull so we start to head back to the Rock. We stay on this side of the ridge this time and upon hitting a spine, I look back at the two bedded bulls and notice slightly above them there is another bull that is about 400 yards further down the ridge. I look him over and he too is a small 4x4. However, I catch another bull and see huge sweeping fronts - well over a foot long. Deep dark horns with bright ivory tips on those fronts. All of the other bulls had mostly solid white horns. I don't look long enough to see anything else about this bull because my mind was made up and tell my wife let's go, I want this bull. We walk past the first two bedded bulls (again fully exposed at times and within 150 yards of them) and we get within rifle range and view of the other two. I get the rifle out and ready and find a spot with a good view of the bull who isn't bedded but moving around and feeding now. I get a look into the scope and my heart just sinks. I see the big mature bull and a perfect shot is there but what isn't there is antlers. Sure he had impressive fronts but both main beams were broken completely off! He was an absolute tank, probably double the size of the 4x4 he was with but the old warrior had lost his fighting ability and was now an outcast recouping from physical wear down as well as probably a huge loss of pride. For a moment I thought about shooting him still. It crossed my mind that I hope I don't regret not doing so. Antlers aren't everything and in my mind I thought he was still a big mature bull and there should be no shame in harvesting a mature animal. Im extremely torn but I decide not to do it.

Didn't spend time taking a great photo but all antler you see is literally just brows.



We turned back to the Rock again and this time made it there with some good stories of our encounters to share with the others. Turns out they had two encounters of their own with two different small bulls making their way up towards the Rock and passing in or near rifle range.

Based on the difference in elk sign and elk we were seeing, it was clear that hunting the other side of the rock towards camp for elk was a waste of time. On top of that, the herd was now quite literally as far away as possible from camp (any further away and the elk would be swimming in the dang ocean). It would be easily a 4 hour hike from camp to the herd so we decide that we needed to spend the rest of the day moving camp closer. It was close to an hour hike from camp to where we hung the deer up so we figured we could move camp near there and with the amount of dark timber there we should be able to find a good spot with protection from the wind if it got bad. Shaving an hour of hiking in the morning of which wasn't the most easy was deemed well worth the effort.

Since my buddy and I can hike and move significantly quicker, we take off together to get camp broke down ahead of the other two showing up. Upon our way back to camp, I notice as the deer carcass should be coming into view, I can't find it. It's completely gone! Knowing that a bear had got to the carcass and likely stashed it nearby sure added quite the nervousness in us moving forward going past this location for the rest of the trip. We never did see this bear on the trip despite passing by it at least a dozen times.

Camp got broke down almost completely by the time my wife and her step dad showed up. With still quite a bit of daylight left my buddy and I decide to leave promptly, drop off camp at the new spot and then proceed to grab the deer and hike it down to the beach. My wife and her step dad could setup camp and we would return hopefully before dark with the remaining food for the trip as well as a full load of water. It was a success except we returned with needing about 30 minutes of use with the headlamps. Camp was mostly setup and we were able to eat supper and get to bed by 10pm. This was great as it was going to be another 515am morning wake up the next day. This was an extremely long day since we started at 515am and my buddy and I were absolutely beat upon returning. The hike hunting elk was plenty for a day but add in a camp move and a 1500 foot decent with loaded packs and then the climb back up with 5 days of food for 4 people and 9L of water each from the 1000 foot mark (closest access to water from the stream) was bordline stupid.

 

[seeth07]

The following morning, we told my wifes stepdad that he should just stay around camp and focus entirely on his deer tag. His body needed a bit of a rest and there were plenty of deer in and around our camp location. We also liked the idea of having someone there just to see if any elk were there as well. The other three of us would hike not just to the rock but immediately go past it and up the next top of the ridge to already be able to look into the right valley at daybreak.

We get there with plenty of time and with it being finally nice and calm this morning we can immediately hear bugling. Lots of it! There is a young bull in the bottom of the left valley almost in the same spot as the bull from the day before as well as numerous bulls in the the right valley away from the main herd which is in the exact same spot as the day before except they are really strung out across a vast area. Closest to us, the same broken bull and 4x4 are within rifle range.



We decide to make a plan to head down a little bit further before crossing the valley and getting up on the other side. Near the top on the other side we could see a large bull had pushed 30 or so cows away from the main herd and this is the bull I thought we should target. He was about 2 miles total away but I figured we had plenty of time to make it happen since the sun hasnt even crested the mountain tops to the east yet.

While in route, that group with the bull we were targetting bedded among a small patch of dark timber which was fantastic giving is a perfect mark and plan for making our stalk.

The herd bull with his cows are just short of that clump of dark timber high and slightly right in the photo.



We get down the ridge almost a mile as planned and make our decent into the valley in no time. We are near the bottom and we hear a gun shot followed up by 3 more! We look as far left as we can down our ridge and a guy is shooting easily close to 1000 yards into the main herd! We catch the wounded bull, he has a broken rear leg and then 3 more shots ring out and the bull keeps going. He eventually beds after going about a mile. All of the elk in the valley herd up quick, all running along the opposite side of the valley but in our direction. Then we hear crashing and realize that some of the elk are on our side and we start to see elk coming our way and I get the rifle ready. In total, 13 bulls pass by us all within 200 yards but every single one is either a small white horned bull or has a main beam broken. The main herd also passed in front of us within 1000 yards or so and we were able to look over every bull in the group, probably 50 total or so and disappointment started to set in a bit as it was the same story except for that one main herd bull was a pretty darn good impressive bull. The hunter was able to get close to the bedded bull and another shot killed the bull.

We had a good hunch that the herd was going to head to the spot where my wife and I first spotted them on the first hunting day so we decided to make a break in that direction. Sure enough, by the time we got over there and about 700 yards away the herd showed up and immediately bedded in a tucked away bowl out of the wind. We were below them and basically stuck with no real ability to make a move without a massive long hike completley around and above them. We sat and ate lunch looking over all the bulls closely again and we indeed determined that only the large herd bull was really something special. The problem was that in the hour we spent watching him, he fought two different smaller broken bulls and the reality is he very well might not have those antlers intact for long. There is no doubt that with a bull to cow ratio of what appeared to be close to 1 to 1, these bulls go through some pure hell during the rut.

Herd just above us 700 yards away. *In idiot rifle range*



During that time while relaxing eating lunch and watching the main herd, we had watched the huge broken bull and the small 4x4 with him actually walk pretty close to us and bed down only 300 yards away. I told my wife that I thought I should just shoot this bull and I would be happy with the result. I told her that if I could stalk to within 200 yards of him and setup for a perfect clean shot I wad gonna do it. I attempted to make that happen but the old bruiser was too keen to be tricked. With little cover to work with and being below him in the direction he was facing, he easily picked me out in no time and got nervous. He even barked once at me before slowly trotting away and directly into the main herd. The rest of the elk gave no care to his bark. I got back together with my wife and buddy and we made the disaapointing long hike back to camp. It was still a fun day and I could have easily punched my tag numerous times but having one of the other 5 hunters for this hunt do some long range shooting and ruining our plan for our stalk still left a bitter taste in my mouth. I get it that it's public land hunting but shooting beyond 400-500 yards to me is just pure stupidity, you aren't changing my mind ever on that no matter how much you tell me you practice. To top that, after looking over about 100 bulls total or so, there is only one unbroken bull that we saw in this entire area that wasn't small (4x4 or less) or broken. The choices moving forward were shoot a small/broken bull, hunt the herd bull or change our game plan and look for a mature bull all on his own recovering from the hard rut. Back at camp my wife and I talked over these options and made the decision that the next day we would try for the herd bull but not entirely dedicate to him as we also wouldn't pass up something easy on any bull that wasn't a raghorn. Forecast for that night and the next day wasn't good calling for heavy rain and fog. Just before we went to bed, the rain started and never stopped by the time the alarm went off early in the morning again.

Are hunting selfies now a requirement in hunt stories? Wasn't sure as it appears most have them now. Plus my wife wanted one and she gets what she wants!

 

[seeth07]

My wife and I were headed on our own today. My buddy and her step dad wanted to sleep in and hunt around camp for a buck. The day before, her step dad saw two decent bucks fighting at 600 yards but couldnt get closer.

Its raining pretty good which I think significantly impacted their decision. I know my wife wasn't happy about it. She told me something about how much she wanted to kill me for making her hike in the dark, in the rain, in the fog over muddy slippy trails for some "stupid elk". Honestly, I thought it was stupid too and was second guessing my own sanity for waking up that morning because it truly wasnt a pleasant hike to the rock that morning. My wife wasn't the only one cusing as I slipped and got full of mud.

We hit the rock and the fog is so dense we can't see more than 50 feet. We tuck out of the wind and rain into a little shelter area of the rocks and get some relief. Warm coffee starts to brigthen my mood. Then I hear something. Was that a faint buggle? We listen closely and not long before we hear one again but this one is close! For the next 15 mintues we hear bulls just screaming non stop in the early morning light. Well over 100 in that short time. Not sure if it was because of the thick fog or what but they were extremely worked up this morning. We know for sure they are literally right below the rock in the small bowl below us. There is a brief break in the fog and I stand up and catch just over the edge an elk. I look at him and when I pull my binoculars down, the coolest thing I think I've ever experienced while hunting happens. The fog is ever so slightly clearing and as it does, its revealing more and more elk. 1 turns into 3. Then a dozen. Then dozens more. The whole bowl below is nearly visable now and there are 100s of elk right here!

But just as quickly as the fog lifted, it thickens up again and we can't see a single one. I told my wife that this is perfect and we should use the fog to our advantage and sneak down into them. The closest elk was probably 500 yards away and I knew that by dropping down the face we were on we could easily make up a lot of ground without being detecting. There was a downward wind but the fog was drifting to our left making me feel pretty confident that they wouldnt wind us. We begin. At moments we can catch glimpses of the elk closest to us and we simply just paused and waited for the fog to thicken before morning forward. We end up in a spot where if we go any further the timber in front of us will restrict our view of the elk so we sit down and wait to see them. We start to hear antlers crashing and the fog lifts revealing two bulls across from us duking it out. I look them over and its a 4x4 and a good 5x5 fighting with the 5x5 having two broken tines. I decided that I was going to be happy with either and I would be extemely happy with the hunt ending here. I slowly get setup but getting a range doesn't work. Its too foggy and the range we get is 14 yards...22 yards...8 yards...crap. I look ahead and see a large spruce and determine that it has to be near 100 yards away. The bulls are for sure further than that by double and almost certain it's about triple. I think over MOA and consider the consquences of guessing the range. I set for 275 yards knowing that as long as the bull is under 350 yards, Ill have a good shot impact and I was confident we were no more than 350 yards away. Its hard to see in the scope through the fog so I need to wait. I would think it is lifting slightly, look into the scope and then determine it wasnt enough. Then almost as if it was meant to be, I can see a brief moment of blue sky, can see through the scope and a shot fires. The suppressed rifle doesn't let out a loud sound through the bowl and we hear the unmistakable sound of a bullet hitting an animal but it doesnt appear as if the elk was hit. He looks the other direction in attention. My wife whispers "hey I got a range, 330 yards". I turn the rifle dial a few clicks and shoot again. Same story. Fire again. Both this elk and the one he was fighting disappear behind a few dark spruces and with the fog rolling in immediately we hear and see nothing. Moments pass by and bugling resumes but we can't see anything! Its back to visability of 50 feet. For 2.5 hours! It was a crazy test of patience because with the fog, we knew that finding the exact spot where the elk was standing was going to be extremely difficult. Furthermore, if I did indeed miss, the entire herd did not bust and was still bugling like crazy within a few 100 yards of us. I felt almost nearly 100% confident all three shots hit but with not seeing anything that happened after the shots, we wanted to play this safe by waiting.

This was the best view we had of the shot location for 2.5 hours sitting their waiting. He was in the the grass in the center of the photo but most of the time the tall trees closest to us we could hardly even see let alone any of that spot.

 

[seeth07]

The shots happened at 9am and it was now close to 11:30am. Still no change in the fog and my patience ran out, I had to make an attempt to go look. We get out some orange flagging tape and mark the shot from spot and my wife stays put. I put some tape on my pack and we go over hand signals in the event that while down there I can look back and find her.

I slowly make my way. Bugles are still going off but I don't see any elk through the incredibly dense fog. I get about 50 yards from where I think I need to be and I hear movement. Here comes an elk, 6 bulls actually and they walk on by me at less than 20 yards. One of them is the broken 5x5 that was fighting the bull I shot at. I do not see the bull I shot at in this group. As I'm pinned down from these elk moving through, the fog starts to lift. I scan back where I came from but can't find any orange tape or my wife through the fog yet. On hands and knees I carefully make my way to the spot I thought I needed to be, drop my pack and search briefly. I see nothing. No hair, no blood. I stand for a moment and look around and don't see anything obvious. Now I look back and can see the orange tape. My wife is giving the signal that I'm on the spot. A few more looks in that immediate area and I find nothing. I make my way again carefully back up to her but leave my pack in that spot.

 

[seeth07]

When I get near her, I see she is looking through binoculars at all the elk. This is what we see:



That group of bedded bulls in front is 280 yards away. I explained that I didn't immediately find anything but I wanted to know more exactly where I was in relationship to where I should be. My wife explained that although I was in the right area, the bull for sure was standing about 5 to 10 yards further away. We make a quick plan to head back down there together and do a careful review of the area to determine if there was a hit or not as well as check closely the direction he was headed.

We get down to my pack without spooking any elk somehow and as soon as I walk that extra 10 yards further I see some hair and then looking the direction where he went there he was laying - stiff as a board and piled up with three bullet holes, one slightly back and below mid body with two about 6 inches above that one, 2 inches apart. He didn't even go 20 yards. A good yell and high five sent the herd of elk by us into a stampeed! Oops. The stiff huge bodied bull made it rough for some solid photos, not to mention the brush he was in. We have shot and processed three moose before and it is certainly true what they say about these elk being moose body sized. It is absolutely impressive just how big they are.

 

[seeth07]

We message the other two that we got a bull down and need help. We begin the work and get the hide off the first half as well as a front quarter that I hauled right away about 100 yards up wind to a staging area where we laid out a tarp under a big spruce in the shade.

Being nervous about bears, when we started hearing something crashing in the brush towards where I hauled that first quarter we both drew our pistols and were on high alert ready to go. Then out pops a bull elk as he runs about 100 yards past us. Talk about getting the blood flowing inside your body. The reason why this elk was running was because the other two had spooked him on their way in to us. Help has arrived.

We get two loads of scraps ready to go for them and have them help us get the hide off so I can haul it to the staging area. They depart up the bowl to the rock where we will store the meat. It's about 400 feet of steep hiking up but most is pretty easy alpine vegatation.

Back to work we get the next half rolling and we are just about wrapped up with two more loads of scrap when they return for round two.

We started to process at about 2:30 and by 7:30 we had everything to the staging area with 4 loads of scrap and loins up the hill to the rock. The 4 of us grabbed a full load which included me grabbing a full hind leg. All that was left was the other hind leg and the head.

I rush ahead as the weight of the hind is killing me and right as I get up to the top, I catch something big and brown down in the valley to the left. Its nearing dark but looking through the binoculars confirms my fear, it's a bear and he is coming directly to the kill from about a mile away.

I unload quickly and tell my buddy we need to run to get that last load out asap. We book it down the slope and the adrealine gets pumping good when the headlamp reveals two glowing eyes on the last hind. No worries, it's just a fox stealing a taste. We strap up the loads and get the heck out of there.

At the Rock we work on getting all the meat bags hung up. We drape them over the top of the tall rock ledges so they are over a 12 foot reach from the bottom and figuring a bear would have a hard time figuring how to reach over the edge from the top.

It's been a long day, it's dark and we still need to hike back to camp. It doesn't bother me one bit though and I'm practically running back to camp I'm so happy. My wife keeps telling me to slow down and stop going so fast. I'm reliving all of the encounters we had, the hundreds of bugles we heard, the dozens of fights we saw between bulls, the scenery and finally the kill. I've read in a few places that these hunts are some of the most physically and emotionally challenging hunts due to the nasty vegatation, steep slopes, logistics in travel, weather and of course, the insane density of bears that live there. Here we are, on the 4th day of the hunt with a tag punched, having done all the planning and research and work myself with the much needed help of my wife and two suckers I convinced to come along with. I felt extremely accomplished. Add that to the long list of reasons why I hunt. Not much else in this world can give me that same feeling in life, it's a purpose for living and I don't ever want to stop.

But we aren't done, there is a lot of work to be finished. It's a long haul from the rock down to the beach. It will wait until the next day however, because tonight we celebrate back at camp and of course we sleep in tomorrow.

 

[seeth07]

We told my wifes step dad that he had a full day to dedicate 100% to trying to fill his deer tag. He was the only one to get up in the dark and venture off. The rest of us enjoyed sleeping in until 8am and a slow start to the morning. Our goal for the day was to head to the rock and get a small load of meat, 20 pounds each or so, and try to find a path down to the beach in that closest valley which was one further NW from the one we came up. With the unknown and how the beaches can have cliffs, we didn't want to fully load up and get stuck with full packs in a crappy spot. Depending how that went was going to dictate the rest of our day. Low tide was at roughly noon so goal was to get to the beach around then.

On our way we look down the valley from directly above and try to plan our route. From what we can tell, it's nice and easy to a solid patch of mature dark timber in the bottom of what we can see and likely some steep hell below that to the beach. Look closely in the photo and you'll notice something



We venture over to the rock and discover the meat untouched, still hanging how we left it from the night before.

 

[Mallardsx2]

Wow. This thread is awesome! thanks for sharing it with us!

 

[seeth07]

We get down pretty easily to that dark timber and find a really nice flat spot along the creek for a quick break and talk about how cool it would have been to set camp up there. We'll protected from the wind and a full supply of water.



Peaking out of the timber and over the edge down towards the beach and our fears become reality. No more easy hiking. We had 650 feet to drop yet and it appeared as steep as we figured it would be and almost all thick salmonberries and devils club to navigate through.

We are getting close and the views from any elevation are to just die for. One of my favorite photos all trip.



The look here that I caught on my wifes face says it all. Thick salmonberries simply are just not fun. This spot actually was a brief break in just some tall grass with only a few salmonberry bushes.



We get almost to the bottom and we get nearly cliffed out. We have 100 feet or so left and the only way down is through the alders with mixed devils club where we can hang and get support sliding down the cliff using those branches. It takes us a long time and constant cussing from all of us to make it down only to be literally cliffed out at the beach. 15 feet to go down and we can't do it because it's a solid rock cliff around the beach. We sidehill in some extremely scary stuff doing our best to not slip off the cliff. Around about 400 yards to the north and we finally find a spot we can barely get down.

We determine that this route down is going to be impossible with fully loaded 100# packs. We scan and look over our maps to try for something that will be at the very least be less steep. We chart a planned path and start. Jackpot, it was a breeze. We made it back up to the dark timber spot in about an hour and it was slowed only because we had to bulldoze through 3 sections of head high salmonberries for about 100 yards each. The beauty of doing this though is it creates an obvious and clear path for us to follow on all future trips.

At the dark timber spot taking a break, we discuss how to spend the rest of our daylight. It's 3pm and we have 5 hours or so to use. We decide that we will head back up to the rock and each carry a quarter back down to this dark timber where we can easily get it hoisted up high. Then, rather than head back for another load, we will walk a direct path to camp, pack up camp and then hike camp back to the dark timber and reset. We can use our bear fence for both that load of meat and camp.

All goes to plan and we make the meat haul trip and moving of camp pretty efficiently arriving to setup camp right after dark. It was a very long day with over 25k steps walked and over 4000 feet of vertical gain but it put us in a great position for some relatively easy packing the next day to finish it up.

 

[seeth07]

There is one load to haul for all 4 of us to start the day from the rock. I got the second hind to grab yet and there are 3 bags of scrap/loins plus the antlers. We get going just after day light and make it up and back down to camp for our easiest haul of the day.





We get a solid break at camp and then it's time for the first of three trips down to the beach. The transporter wanted to pick us up at 6pm and get through the narrows under high tide and before dark. This seemed doable but meant we needed to not screw around and get hauling.

The first time down was a heavy haul for all of us and we didn't perfectly always hit our paths in the salmonberries from the day before. There was a single stretch if maybe 50 yards and by missing the mark, I led the pack train into some extremely nasty thick stuff that took is no joke at least 30 mintues to get out of.

Down on the beach with load one done was a relief but the reality is that hiking up in this stuff, even with an empty pack is for sure worse. The down took us just over an hour due to the mistake and the up took just over an hour as well.

Navigating the steep terrain required getting down on your butt at times!



The next haul was way smoother. We made it down following the same trail now in just over 30 mintues. Return trip up a bit linger. Rinse and repeat for a final load with camp and on the beach we were ready for pickup. It was 5:30pm and we were ahead of schedule.

Bye Raspberry Island!!!

 

[seeth07]

Our transporter was the best. His fish box was full of ice and let us keep all our meat in it on the return trip and until the next morning. He came down to the dock, unlocked the cabin and turned the heater on for us and we could use the top of the fish box to finish deboning and bagging the meat in gallon bags. He asked only that he could keep the bones for making stock rather than us tossing them. Deal!







That afternoon he took us back out on the boat fishing and I already reported what that was like.

 

[timberman56]

wow. epic trip . thanks for sharing

 

[Wild Bill]

What a hunt! Great write up!

 

[rjthehunter]

Well just met Larry Smith at the bar here in Kodiak. Not sure if anyone actually knows who he is or not.

Larry is a great guy!!! He towed me like 18 miles across lake of the woods 3 years ago when my motor blew up at the warrior fishing tournament. Spent the afternoon riding around with him chatting. Very nice guy!

 

[Khunter]

Awesome effort, result and writeup! Thx for sharing.

That bull has cool, beefy horns. Love it.