sign from the beach fringe on up the side of the hill. Kurt and I saw a deer near the base of the ridge, but could not get a shot. A little later, I saw two – one went uphill, and the one following it went downhill. I decided to follow the first one up the hill and have Kurt walk down about 75 yards parallell to my ascent so if I could get above the deer, it might run into Kurt.
When I got up a few hundred feet, I saw movement below. Then a deer. All I could see was the back, and saw it was a big deer. Could not see the head but sensed it was a buck. I quickly tried 3 offhand shots with the 30-30, and the deer didn’t flinch. I was in a hurry because I was worried the deer was going to go around a rock and out of sight, which it eventually did, and I never saw it again. Of course I went down to that point and saw no sign of hitting the deer, and when I didn’t hear Kurt shoot, I knew we’d lost our chance.
Kurt and I got split up at this point, and we both headed down to the beach, hunting alone along the way down. Didn’t see any more deer but lots of fresh scat. I got to the beach first, and the wind had shifted and the tide was just flooding up under the boat and rocking it back and forth. I thought I’d better get it off shore so it didn’t get beat up, so I pushed it out enough to start, then pulled up the anchor and untied the shoreline from the anchor. I tacked back and forth for about 5 minutes when I saw Kurt coming down the beach. The wind and surf were now too large to pick him up where we’d anchored, so I tried to get into a stream mouth to get out of the wind enough to pick him up. It was too shallow in there, so we ended up waiting for the tide to rise under us enough to get out and finally did. Lots of sealions in the shallows there like there were last week, and still mouthy, barking at us and not really wanting to get out of our
way. Another good day in the woods.
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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
www.GoodSalmon.com