Sitka Blacktail in Southeast Alaska with Dsnow

[44hunter45]

Congrats guys. My fall trip didn't work out this year. I'm back for bear in Spring 2026.
Your story and pics makes me miss it. POW is just so special.

Your plans to go early and outside the subsistence exclusion zone is brilliant. I bet you never saw another soul after your drop.

 

[SC Living Outdoors]

Day number three began a little differently. We got up with the plans to hike all the way up and over the top. It was a bit of a climb, but it really wasn't that bad as long as we took our time. As we were making breakfast that morning, I look up to a doe standing 30 yards from camp. We looked back-and-forth for a while and she moved off and we went back about our business around camp. About 10 minutes later I look up and 70 yards away. Looking at us is a pretty nice buck. Dsnow still had one buck tag left so I said shoot it. He began getting his gun ready in. The buck eased off before we could get him knocked down. It sure would've been nice to kill a good one right beside camp, but it wasn't in the cards so we began to climb.

After an hour or so of climbing, we bumped into a bachelor group of bucks not too far from where we had killed his buck the previous day. While looking over the deer with my binoculars, I noticed one was the funky non-typical and I told him "There's your buck." The deer were not spooked even though they were looking in our direction and after another minute or so dsnow's gun barked and he had his funky buck on the ground. We watched the other bucks ease off, and we went over to check him out. Dsnow stayed to break him down and hang the meat and I continue to climb to see what I could find. With the understanding that he would meet up with me as soon as he was done breaking his buck down.

I found a couple bucks before we began our ascent up and over the top. One of them was pretty nice, but still wasn't exactly what I was looking for. We made the steep climb up and over the top and began glassing the basin and ridges on the backside. We spent three or four hours up there that day and we saw some good bucks, but still nothing that just got me real excited. So we came back down and made our way back to camp, stopping to pick up the meat on the way by. It was another good day with a lot of deer seen.

 

[Dsnow9]

Lots of good pictures that day with good sunlight but most of it was views all the way to ketchican.

The Little Rock outcropping made for a great little hidey hole to shoot from.

 

[pabearhunter]

ABSOLUTELY GREAT EVERYTHING. Thank you.

 

[SC Living Outdoors]

Day 4
We only had one tag left. The plan for the day was to climb back up on top to a glassing point we had found the previous day and spend the time looking over some country that we hadn't been able to see as well during the hunt. The weather did not cooperate. The fog/clouds were thick and for a majority of the day we couldn't see. We put up a tarp and just hung out after a while. The clouds did clear and allow us some time to hunt in the afternoon. We were moving along the top when I looked over at the neighboring mountain and made a comment that it would be tough to go over there, but they were probably some good bucks over there. Less than an hour later while glassing the dsnow picked out a group of bachelor bucks across on that mountain. Three of which looked to be shooters. We felt like we had seen a majority of the bucks that our mountain had to offer so We made a plan to head back down to camp, pack up our gear and meat and head back down into the valley between the two mountains. We would set up a new camp in the valley and hang the meat. The next day we would make a big hike up on top of the neighboring mountain to try to track down a good buck.

We took our time getting down and finally found a spot by a pond in the valley where we would camp for the night. The next morning we were up pretty early and began our ascent, the hike up was steep and thick. The weather wasn't really cooperating much again. It was very hit or miss. It was rainy than it would clear and allows us to see for just a few minutes than rainy again. This hunt really can be a battle of mental toughness. I would just sit there and doze in the rain, but finally, in the afternoon we started to get some patches where we could see and started to pick out some bucks. We'd been able to pull up the weather through the Zoleo and knew the forecast for the next day was very bleak. I had passed a lot of bucks looking for "the one" and it was time to make it happen. We got to a rock outcropping on the backside of the mountain where we could overlook a massive bowl in between two peaks. We glassed up two bucks along with a couple does down in the bottom. One of the bucks was really tall and I could tell he was a mature buck. As I was getting my gun set up for a longer shot the weather moved back in and we had to wait. After about 30 minutes, we got another window in the weather. We located the deer again but they had moved about 100 yards farther away. They were feeding in a small open clearing down in the bottom. We picked out the big buck and I got settled. I squeeze the trigger in the buck jumped and ran to the left. He was still on his feet so I made another shot and he went down. Tagged out!

Now the fun part, we had to figure out how to get to him. It was not easy. We worked our way down a steep shoot that cliffed out so we had to slide over and go down some more steep stuff through some raspberry bushes, but finally, we made our way to the bottom and over to my buck. He was exactly what we thought he was. Probably the tallest buck we'd seen so far with a big body. We got him broken down as weather moved back in again.
We looked at the map and thought we had figured out an easier way to get back to camp without going back over the top. So we began to follow our new route and quickly discovered that was not going to get us to camp. We got cliffed out on the side of the mountain and it got sketchy fast! Dsnow legitimately almost went of a cliff. So we backtracked and began to climb all the way up to the top and over back to the saddle that would take us down to camp. As we were almost to our saddle that would allow us to drop down to our camp, we bumped into a pretty nice buck bedded on the top. We had walked right by that spot, not three hours earlier and he was not there. It was pretty cool to see him laying in the fog up on top like that. Fortunately, we were able to find a bit of a better route down from the saddle to camp and we made it just before dark. We ate some food and settled in for a rainy night.

The next day was rainy. Really really rainy. We had sent our pilot a message telling him we were tagged out, but he notified us he would not be able to make it in that day because of the weather. He was hopeful he would be able to come in the next day. So we sat around camp and worked on cutting up meat. I'm pretty sure I eat both my tenderloins and half of the backstrap as we sat there all day under the tarp in the rain. It was wet but yhere were definitely worse places to be. The next morning was also rainy, but we packed up all our gear and headed to the lake. Our pilot was able to find a pocket in the weather and drop the Cessna right in on the lake a few hours later.

I'm pretty sure every single piece of gear we had was completely soaked, but it had been a good hunt. A real adventure. I plan on heading back up to chase these little deer again in the near future. I really appreciate dsnow coming along with me.

I'm looking forward to the next one!

 

[Dsnow9]

The 7th:

For a while we laid under the ultra light tarps and took early morning naps until my adhd couldn’t take it anymore and made the shelter. It was mid morning and my second cup of coffee when I realized my fuel can seal was leaking occasionally and likely the last cup of coffee for the trip. SC was sound asleep but it really put a damper on an already wet morning. Necessity cooking only from this point on. I deboned my meat when we got back to camp and loaded up to move camps.

The 8th:

The morning started off with a wild sighting, there were probably 1000 newts in this little pond all piled on top of each other on a log. The hike up to the new spot was one of the nastiest hikes I have ever done. It was pouring rain, everything was wet, and it was STEEP, with very few openings. The worst of it was about 500 vertical in 400 yards, but the first 200 yards weren’t bad. The last 200 I don’t think I even used my trekking poles. Basically a scramble, it felt like I was at work climbing trees. Just grabbing branches, bushes, and anything else to pull myself up the hill. After making it to the top we worked around to see what we could find. And the after a lot of sitting in the rain, hiking in the rain, suffering in the rain we finally spotted some deer. SC left out that he passed on these deer initially and we went back around the mountain, saw another smaller buck in a harder to get to place and then came back and had to wait out the fog. The trail I broke to get down to his deer was bordering on type 3 fun but we were able to pick through the chute, around some faces, and butt slide a couple sections before finally making it to the bottom.

After getting his deer I was confident I could find us a “quick and easy” route back to camp. We made it about 1/4 of the way with ease till it got really cliffy. There was a small game trail at the base of a cliff and I wrapped it around the face, It was starting to look like this wasn’t going to happen, the game trail was disappearing, and the little bench I was on looked to be ending when my feet went out from under me. I looked downhill and it wasn’t a cliff but it might as well have been. 60-70 feet straight down of low growth before a little bench and trees. I let go of my poles and grabbed anything I could. I stopped about six feet below where I was standing. I scrambled to get back up to my cert and worked back around the corner to SC. We ended up finding a pretty reasonable path up over the top of the mountain and then down into camp on a much better route. We were racing daylight and were so wet that we were just sloshing and stepping in every puddle around if it meant we were going to stay on our feet.

The 9th:

Rain, rain, rain, and SC deboning his meat.

The 10th:

Very heavy packout to the lake, I packed both my deer and gear and SC packed his deer and gear down to the lake. I was out of fuel and we were down to the last of our food when the plane arrived. I was very relieved even though he was a day early. All those wet days I might have eaten too much food per day. But we had plenty of deer and SC had more fuel if we didn’t get out. It was an amazing experience even though there were multiple times I was absolutely miserable. I don’t mind heat, cold, snow, or most other weather but growing up in Colorado where most rain storms last ten minutes, I do not like sustained rain. I still don’t but have a new understanding of what sustained rain is.

 

[Pahoundsman]

Hell’uva write up,thanks for sharing your adventures with us. Congrats !

 

[Dougfirtree]

Great trip! Thanks for the writeup! Congrats on the deer and SC, so sorry about your dog.

 

[elkhuntinfool78]

Great trip thanks for sharing and I'm really sorry to hear about your dog. That's a tough go as they are family too.

 

[CPAjeff]

Great stuff - thanks for sharing and congrats on the success!

 

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

Thanks for taking us along! Reminds me off my first blacktail hunts in Alaska. Fun trip down memory lane, so thank you for that.

Look what I dug up, first deer and almost youth big buck winner! Lost by 1/8th of an inch for third place that year.

 

[ashersdad]

Fabulous adventure! Congrats on your success and thanks for sharing.

 

[Brittany Chukarman]

Really good post. The coats on those deer are beautiful and they are bigger than I thought. Great hunt.

 

[Sask hunter]

Congrats and sorry about your pup

 

[MarvB]

Excellent!! Great hunt!

Surprised there’s no pics of @Dsnow9 swinging from a spruce tree??

 

[CRJR45]

Cool trip , it’s in my list .

 

[Khunter]

awesome stories and pics! Thanks for sharing!

 

[jrabq]

Awesome story and photos.

Sorry about your dog SC.

 

[EastTNHunter]

Cool story, and excellent adventure.

Sorry about the pup. I still miss my boxer mix. She was the best dog I’ve ever had

 

[Paul in Idaho]

Great story and photos! Thank you both for sharing.

So sorry about your dog SC.