Finally got out on the deer hunting I’ve sort of dreamed of since we bought our tug. I haven’t harvested deer in 4 years, I think. This was due to a lot of travel during deer season, and my ailing hip that made it so I didn’t want to hunt very far from the beach. The last chance I even had at a buck was at least two years ago. I’d been wanting to get out in the tug, anchor somewhere, then hunt near there for a few days.  Not having to run back to town the same day as you do in a cruiser makes it so you can go a good distance from town and spend some time hunting in less hunted areas. It also allows you to leave a deer (or part of the deer if you butcher it where you down it) and come back for it at first light the next day.
After a dreadful spate of day after day of rain and wind, the forecast was finally for light winds and fair skies. I made my plan, got the boat loaded up with grub and spare clothes for a few days, and I headed out the day before the good weather was to set in.

I got to the anchorage at mid-day, and got things ready. I got the punt off the stern and put the electric outboard on it. I got a ditch bag ready to take in the punt in case I had to spend the night on the beach for some reason, or, as happened a few years ago, I flip the punt and get soaked head to toe.

I check that I have everything I’ll need for my pack for hunting. I bought a set of little pulleys last year to rig up a hoist so if I get a deer, I can sling the hoist over a tree limb and pull the deer up so I can butcher it.

The next morning was dry and light winds as forecast. I motored down the beach a stretch so I could enter the muskegs into the wind. It was just before sunrise. I may have hunted this spot a long time ago with the Bue’s. The woods weren’t familiar if I had. I came to a 30 or so hard steep climb to the muskegs above. I took my time and up I went on the new hip and 60 lbs lighter than last time I hunted. Everything working good.

I knew I was only going to hunt the two muskegs up here and not go further. I had all day and a good length hike for me at 1 to 3 miles round trip. The sun was not yet over the mountain behind the muskegs when I blew the deer call. I’m trying a large bright orange plastic call I bought from a guy in Klawock that makes them with a 3d printer. I like the sound and less to worry about with moisture changes compared to a wood call. After 15 minutes, a doe came by. That was it after an hour, so I climbed up to the next muskeg.

This muskeg is much bigger, with lots of deer holding timber around it. Out in front of me was a muskeg with little bull pine in the right half of my view, and to the left, a rectangle of muskeg about 75 yards by 75 yards, with big timber behind it. On the first blow of the call,  A doe came straight away in the big muskeg area in the right side of my view. She came in alongside me at about 30 yards, didn’t seem tense or worried, and kept going into the woods behind me. The sun was just over the trees and into the muskeg now. A glorious morning.
I looked to my left, and there along the big timber at the edge of the muskeg was a bruiser buck. I could see the big curve on his anlters and guessed it was a 4 point. It looked magnificent with the sun bouncing off his rack and his huge body. He didn’t come over to me, but just worked his way parallel to me along the timber, stopped to scrape his antlers in some bushes, and didn’t seem to care I was there. I could not get lined up for a neck shot, and didn’t want to take a body shot, since he might bound off into the timber and I not be able to find him. I tried calling softly again, but the buck didn’t care. He just kept slowly walking and sniffing his way along the timber till he was gone. Wow.

I called again awhile later, and see a doe walking the same trail as the buck. She also didn’t seem to care I was there or come over to me, but just kept working her way the same as the buck. Then a fork horn buck popped his head up 20 yards from me in the brush. He gave me time to drop the ear muffs propped on my head, get a rest, and make a neck shot. Dang, it’s been a long time since I got a deer. It was 9 am.

With so many deer in the area, I knew I might call in another buck if I blew the call again, and told myself I needed to get this deer hung up and start to process it or I’d have deer laying on the ground and more than I might handle before dark, which comes early now about 4 pm.

I made up a hoist from some small pulleys and a fine high strength line and was eager to test it. First, I had to dress the deer, then find a tree to hang the deer in, and a good stick to go between the hind legs to attach the hoist to for pulling it up. I hadn’t done this in 3 or 4 years so it took awhile an hour to get the deer cleaned and hung up. I could not get the hoist as high up as I liked because the string was too fine to get a good grip on, so will have to get thicker line. I got it high enough to work, though, and when I started skinning at 10 am, I blew the call and continued getting the hide off.

A minute later a big buck came busting out of the timber in front of me, coming straight to the call. Like he was shot out of a cannon. He was not fooling around. He was looking for a fight. Or love.  Like the buck on the timber line, this guy looked spectacular in the sun much closer to me, the sun reflecting off it’s rack and gray coat. He headed into the brush of the timber edge behind me and I tweeted the call to stop him, got a rest, and now I have 2 deer in the sunshine. It was 1030.

I got to work on deer number 1 and was done around noon and finished deer number 2 about 230 pm. I hung the meat sacks of the second deer in a tree under the canopy. My biggest worry was that eagles would find it, and they can go to town on a deer in short time. I headed down the hill with the first deer and got to the beach about 320, so 50 minutes. Maybe in my younger years I could have run back up for the first deer and got back before dark. But not now. I’ve left deer in the woods before and haven’t lost one yet, so hoped my luck would continue. I boarded the punt and headed for the tug.I had a small tarp on the boat just for this purpose. I strung a line on the back deck, hung the meat sacks, then draped the tarp over it so it would shed the rain but still allow air to circulate underneath and continue cooling the meat.
Then the pure pleasure began. I cranked up the engine and also started the auxiliary heater. I shed my hunting clothes, got out of my boots, put on my crocs, and started in on some serious coffee drinking out of the thermos where I stored the remainder of the morning coffee. I cranked up the starlink and sent out some texts to people in Craig and Kurt and Sara that I was back at the boat safely. I ran the boat a couple hours to be sure the batteries were charged for the overnight operation of the auxiliary heater. I’ve had a nagging issue with the boat where the charging is very irratic, going from 11.0 to 13.2 down to 12 in a short period. Time to really fix that.

The next morning I took a route to the meat sacks from the beach nearest the tug. It was a more gradual climb that the steep hill where I went yesterday, and took me through some new country. I took my gun just in case a wandering bear was on the meat, per Kurt’s advice. I was up and back by 10 am, just as it started to rain and blow. I was back in town about 1 pm. I got home and the meat sacks hung in the shed.

I butchered the deer one day, getting all the meat off the bone, and put the meat in totes in the shed. The next day I portioned and vacuum packed all the deer. Oh, it’s nice to have some deer in the freezer again.   I watched the weather, and saw there was a forecast for several days later of one day of light wind and sunshine. I would have gone out to anchor the night before as I did for the first boat trip, but I didn’t want to miss my neighborss invite for early Thanksgiving dinner, and glad I didn’t. They had a smoked ham that a farmer whose land they hunt on in South Dakota gave him, and he took it to Dakota Butcher for processing. Best ham I’ve had, ever. I’ve never been a big fan of ham until I had this one. The ham was smoky and on the drier side and just perfect.

I left town the next morning before sunrise and it took an hour and half to motor to an anchorage we use a lot in the summer fishing. I’ve never hunted the hill behind the anchorage before, but we saw a huge buck swim there in Septermber. I called at a few places, but as I suspected from looking at my Onx app, there aren’t muskegs where I was hunting. I’d be hunting in the timber. Finding a good spot with the ability to see very far was tough. I eventually worked my way to the top of the hill and found there was a small open bowl that I could see maybe 50 yards at the furthest. The spot looked like it had two or three potential trails leading to it. I wasn’t going over the top of the hill and down the other side – this was it for the day. I heard lots of shooting down the channel. I called my normal pattern of call, count to 600. Call, count to 500. Call, count to 400. All the way down to call, count to 100. I was about consigned I wasn’t going to see a deer today, but it was a great day and I got a good hike in and saw brand new country. I was surprised I hadn’t seen a single deer, and although there were nice size tracks, I saw no fresh deer scat. I had plenty of time as it wasn’t yet 11 am, so after the normal calling sequence, I decided to try something different. I made more frequent calls and tried to sound like a whiny 2 year old who wanted his mom to pick him up and hold him.  I heard something that was out of the ordinary, and saw movement just below me. Then I saw it was a deer body. Then the head. Ooo. A nice fork horn, 10 yards away. I dropped the ear muffs, safety off, and now to start processing.

And issues, I had. I got the hoist put together, this time with halibut ganion. The first branch I threw it over sagged as I pulled on the hoist, so had to find a new tree and move the deer to it. I got the deer hoisted up, and off comes the stick between the legs. I got the stick back through the legs, pulled the deer up, and started skinning. I had the hide about half way down, and was pulling it further when the leg stick broke. Down the deer went into the forest duff. Oh boy. I found a live sapling like I should have in the first place and cut a new stick, hoisted the deer back up, and continued. Now it was well past noon.   I got the deer butchered and into meat sacks, and the sacks into my pack, and started down the hill.I found a muskeg on the way down and marked its location on my Onx app for next time. It was alot closer to the beach with timber all around and several entrances for deer to come.  It seems like it should be a simple matter of just heading down the hill in a straight line til you reach the beach, but for me, it is not for some reason. Even with a GPS that shows my track. I realize now I need to take a compass bearing with the GPS on where I want to go, and then use a magnetic compass to use that bearing to keep on a straight line to the beach. I wandered back and forth across the hill side getting down, and burned up alot more time than necessary. And with 60+ lbs on my back. I got to the bottom of the hill and was in the flat and still not keeping a straight course.

Sunset was coming. I was exhausted in part because I wasn’t drinking enough water because I didn’t want to take the pack off to get it. It was almost dark, and I didn’t want to negotiate the field of deadfalls I knew was coming in order to get to the beach. So I got out my headlamp, dropped the pack where I was, marked it on the Onx, and headed for the beach. I also marked my trail with flagging tape like we used to before electronics as a back up til I reached the beach. When I got a short ways from the pack I finally saw the water but glad I didn’t yield to temptation and go back for pack. I got to the beach and was about a third of a mile to get to the punt. In the last bit of light and a glorious sunset.

As I neared the point where the punt was, I saw movement ahead. It was a deer on the beach. It looked like a buck in size, and it would have been such luck to get a second deer right on the beach, but there wasn’t enough light left to tell if it was a buck or doe, and it walked up into the woods.I got to the punt in the light of my headlamp, and idled back to the tug. Another night of luxury. I drank the remainder of the coffee I made in the morning from the thermoses and texted people that I was back on the boat and got a deer. When the coffee was gone, I fried up a dinner of spicy deer sausage Steve gave me, with eggs, cheese, and Mama Lil’s. I made a big salad on one of the plates Sam gave me, and put half the fried mess on top, then topped it with olive oil and vinegar and dug in. I ran the tug engine an hour to charge the batteries up well while I continued texting friends. I went to bed and continued reading the history of my hometown of Bolivar, NY written by George Bradley that I started on the first tug trip.

The anchor alarm went off a couple times overnight. The wind shifted to the south as forecast and had picked up.  After a few more alarms I thought it was time to move. I got up about 245 am, pulled the anchor, moved to the middle of the channel in the deepest water, reset the anchor, then babysat the navigation plotter to be satisfied the anchor was holding. I got the first real sleep of the night after that, and got up about 20 minutes after 6.

It was spitting rain now and blowing and cold now. I bundled up and motored over to the same spot as I had yesterday. I was going to motor up the beach the third of a mile to save that hike with the heavy pack, but the surf onto the beach was too big now to safely land. Oh well. Just more good hiking to do.

I walked along the beach fringe and saw the first fresh deer scat on the trails. I talked to a friend later in the day who hunted a nearby island and he said he noticed the same thing where he was.

It took about 30 minutes to get to the pack, which was untouched by any critters. Then about an hour to get to the beach and down to the punt. Unfortunately, no deer was waiting for me in the daylight to see this time. I got back to the boat, offloaded the pack to the back deck, pulled the punt up on the swim step, then I checked my fuel level, just because. It looked like it was gonna be lumpy on the way home, and I didn’t know how much fuel I might burn with the auxilliary heater running the 14 hours of darkness when I’m on the boat. I was pleasantly surprised it was barely down at all on the sight gauge in the lazerette.

I started the engine, pulled the anchor, and got out of my wet gear. I headed out of the lee of the islands I was anchored behind, and happily, the seas were less than I expected. I made good time getting back to South Cove ahead of the next blow that is on the way.This deer was going to my friends Bob and Laura in Juneau. They are in their 70s and I know them through Sara. Bob is an all around craftsman and welder and has helped me out since I’ve known him. He helped me build my garage, welded the zincs on the Dutch Master each year, sharpened my chainsaw chains, made a beautiful cover for the autopilot when I moved it above decks on the tug, to name the first favors that come to mind. He brought the tug down with me this year, too. I kept the ribs and the heart for me and sent the rest on Seaplanes to them.
As I suspected, I lost more weight on the 2 days of hard hiking.  I think I like hunting more now than I ever have as I see it as a hike first and hunting second. I love being able to overnight on the tug, as it takes all the hurry out of the boat transportation. If I have to leave the deer in the woods and go back to get it the next morning, that’s just one more hike to get in. This has been one great year. A new hip, the weight loss, all the friends fishing here this summer, fishing with my cousin and her husband in Ontario in September, a trip to Mexico with the cousin’s daughters and their friends in October, and now deer hunting in November (and probably December).  I’m feelin’ good.

Got up a couple hours before dawn today and got moving to go deer hunting. First time deer hunting this year, and haven’t found a deer in several years now. Today was with a new hip since March and 55 fewer pounds since February. I’ve been looking forward to this for awhile now.  Plus, I put a new heater in the truck. It’s so nice to have heat again.

I stopped at Black Bear Store for coffee, and made my way out the road. I was headed to a spot I’d taken one of my best deer with Brian several years ago, and I’ve been back a few times since. Part of the jaunt involved a fairly steep climb up and down a low ridge that would be the first challenge like it to the new hip. Doc said I was good to go on my last consult, so I felt good about it.

I had a hard time finding the “trail”. Either the sports group that sort of maintains the trail hasn’t done it in awhile, or I just plain missed it. I fought through the old logging cuts and blueberries, but knew I had 9 hours of daylight and plenty of time to get a good hike in, and just took my time.

I got up the hill to the bottom of the small knob, and worked my way along the muskegs along the base. I called in one or two muskegs before I got to the one I thought was my turn up and over the knob to the country on the other side. I called in a doe at the last muskeg. No buck with her, and she didn’t stick around. But a deer already, and I hadn’t even started climbing in earnest yet.

I started up the saddle and worked my way to the top. I checked Onx and I was a mile in. Wow. I have not hunted that far from the beach or truck in a long time. And I felt good.  Until I fell in a little muskeg hole, went down to my knees and elbows in the water. Gun went in, too. The usual.

I never was quite sure today if I was going to the “right” place I went to on the other hunts, but tried to keep from going down the wrong hill that might not lead where I wanted to go. The Onx app is quite the technology. It’s sort of like seeing a deer call work that first time- I never go hunting without it, and would be at a loss if I did. Onx is the same. I called at a couple spots in big timber where I could see a good ways. After calling at the second spot, I looked downhill and – oooh- that’s what I’ve been looking for. A muskeg I hadn’t noticed til now. Just as I got down to level ground to sit down and call at the edge of the muskeg I saw movement- I was busted. A doe nervously started walking away. Oh. And she’s got a boyfriend. I tweeted lightly on the call, and that just made her move faster. I stood still for a few moments to see if they might come back, then slowly crept along to the direction the pair had headed. And there was Romeo, who stuck around to see if he might find another girlfriend. I dropped my pack and got a rest and jacked a shell in the chamber. Only, I didn’t need to. There already was a shell in the chamber. Well, Romeo didn’t like that, and he walked out of sight. I crept up to see better, and they were gone. Cool!  My first chance of the year. I only got one chance all of last year. I think I always choke on the first buck of the year. Just a little rusty, and you learn for the next one.

I checked the Onx and realized I didn’t have to backtrack the way I came in. I could just keep going around this side of the knob and get back to the road in a circle. I just hoped there wasn’t a reason I shouldn’t do that – like a cliff or something. I still had 6 hours of daylight left, so plenty of time to figure it out. I hunted my way back to the truck the rest of the morning into the early afternoon. Wow, some nice deer country I’ve never seen before. And lots of sign. I saw three more does – one with a yearling – for a total of seven deer for the day. That’s a great day for any day I go deer hunting. I’ll take it. I usually expect to see fewer deer on the road system than I do from the boat, but then again, I’m not used to hunting this far in from the road.

I worked my way down the knob out of the last muskeg, where I ate a lunch of smoked coho salmon out of the jar and called in a doe. When I reached the road, it was kind of narly getting down to the ditch and up to the road. I was doing well until I side-hopped across the ditch, stumbled, and fell spread eagle onto the road like only I can do. So much practice. The gun slammed to the road, too. I lay there a second, and realized I wasn’t injured. But no more hunting till I check the gunsights, for sure. I walked about 100 yards back uphill to the truck. I got out of my spiked boots and rain gear and wet coat.  Love the new frog toggs overall rain pants. What I had a hard time grasping was that my knees weren’t aching like crazy. At all. Last time I remember that happening was. Well. Never. They seem to like carrying around alot less lard, it appears. I feel like I’m 40 again.

I made my way down to the bottom of the hill in the truck with the new heater on full blast, sipping coffee from the little Thermos Ken left me this summer. I found a flat open spot at the bottom where I could check my gun sight, and parked off the one lane road. When I got out I looked back up the road, and here comes an SUV down the road behind me!  I’d parked at nearly the end of the road, so these people must have been out that little bit more of road and I missed them. I’m guessing they were road hunting. I pulled back onto the road and didn’t shoot there.

When I got to another spot I could shoot – at a pull off to a long logging road that goes well up a drainage, I looked around for something to make a target out of in the lot. There was an abandoned tire on the lot down range I could stand upright, and a big wood round uprange that would work for a rest. I found a bucket in the back of the truck, taped my neon yellow renewal notice for our PO Box to it, then made an X on the paper with black tape. I set the bucket on top of the upturned tire, and put a rock in the bucket to keep it there.

During the time I was doing all this, three trucks came out of the road, a few minutes apart. I’m guessing these were more road hunters.  I took aim and shot once to check the gun sight. As my friend Ron told me, it’s the first shot that counts. I walked down to check the shot. Spot on!  What a relief not to have to adjust the scope.

I enjoyed the truck heat on the way home. Wow, was it nice. Blue sky and light winds. Not the weather they called for yesterday.

Back at the ranch, I got all my soggy gear hung up, and my cork boots on the boot drier. I took a hot shower and marveled that knees still didn’t ache. Then I checked the weather for tomorrow. Not a gale!  For one day only!  Then even bigger gales then we’ve been seeing forecast for the weekend. So, I got busy getting things ready for the skiff- a ditch bag, the spare heater, and the new portabote. Looking forward to hunting from a beach tomorrow.

I got invited to go crabbing with Brian and Randy. The weather roared all night with pouring rain. By daylight, it was just pouring rain, and when they picked me up mid-morning, the rain had let up. I’d already gone to a garage sale at Kevin and Brynn’s. I had pre-ordered a couple of his boat reels I didn’t need when he told me about his sale on the ferry ride over from Ketchikan, so I went to pick those up and see if I needed anything else. I found a few Alaskana books in the free pile.

We have to crab on the other side of the island now, as the sea otters have wiped out the crab on this side. About 10 years ago, you could set a pot on this side, right by the boat launch, in 40 feet of water and catch lots of crab. Now, you need to set below 200 feet, and even then, you might not get any. So, people on this side of the island drive across the island now to get crab. Sadly, it won’t be long til those crab are gone, too.

The problem is with the Marine Mammals Act, a federal law. Unfortunately, sea otters are considered a marine mammal, so are managed by the federal government, and not the state of Alaska, which regulates the rest of the furbearers like river otter, marten, mink, beaver and wolf. The main sticking point in the federal law is that sea otter fur, whose harvest is restricted to Native Alaskans, has to be worked in some way – like made into a blanket or a hat – before it can be sold. This is a bottleneck that severely restricts how many otters are taken each year, since the harvester can’t just sell green fur (fur that’s stretched and dried and sold to a fur buyer, who moves it to the people who tan it and make it into garments), but only a finished product. It would be like saying a commercial fishermen couldn’t sell his fish to a fish processor, but had to do all the fish processing and packaging themselves before they could sell the fish. Or that a farmer couldn’t sell his corn to local buyer, but had to get it into a can before they could sell it. So the fishers of dungeness crab, geoduck, sea urchins –  all of which support a commercial fishery in the region, as well as for the rest of us for our own consumption -watch these resources consumed to such a low level by the the sea otters that, while they may not wipe out the entire populations, have them reduced to such a state that it’s not worth trying to harvest them anymore. Were the state managing them, I think we’d come up with a way to manage the sea otters to support a fur trade, a handicraft trade, and conserve the prey of the sea otter, but as we’ve seen in the past with our fisheries, the federal government functions more on process and perhaps a small powerful lobby, and less on what’s good for everybody. So, we adapt.

The day turned gorgeous, with the temperature in the 50’s and sunny when we launched the boat and headed for our pots. After we got the first pot in, I took on the jobs of baiting the bags for the next pots and tending the line hauler while the other two pulled the pots over the side and sorted the crab. The bait was fire red spawner coho salmon from the local hatchery. What a treasure this hatchery is to this side of the island. After decades of low returns and shoestring funding, the local aquaculture association took over the facility. Now the the returns can sometimes top 100,000 fish, which are shared by commercial trollers, charter fishers, and personal use harvest by residents.

When the crab pot comes aboard, females are universally returned, and males under a minimum size returned as well. Each of us can keep up to 20 crab. Randy and Brian handle the crab, with Randy using a handy measuring gauge to measure any crab that are not obviously legal. Nobody else is on the water with us, as the summer season has shut down. We have the waters all to ourselves.

Brian dropped me off at our place, and 7 crab from the tote filled my 5 gallon bucket. Dungeness crab are about the easiest seafood to catch, clean and cook, but one of the most tedious to extract what you’re after. You start out with a bucket full of critters, and when the shells are all shucked, and you eat your fill, you  have a few  bags of meat leftover to vacuum pack and freeze. Of course, it is dungeness crab, so it’s worth it.

I picked the crab and can report you get about a cup and a quarter of crab meat for each crab you pick. I ate some right out of the shell on a big bed of baby spinach greens with Mama Lil’s peppers, pickled red onions, a couple pickled crab apples from Roy’s, some Rik’s Devil Seed Chili oil (a new favorite), with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing. That did the trick.

I had a bunch of pickling solution left from canning the crab apples, so I used some to pickle a couple red onions in a big Mama Lil’s jar. I filled another Mama Lil’s jar with crab and poured more pickling solution.  This morning, I had a Wasa cracker with the crab, Mama Lil’s, the pickled onions, and Rik’s chili oil. That did the trick again.

Just back from a banner trip to the Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada with one of my oldest cousins Chris and her husband John. Her parents – my mom’s sister and her husband, and husband’s brothers – bought islands at the mouth of Henvey Inlet in the late 1940′.  They had a super cool, one of a kind log cabin built that’s still standing. It’s the only place outside of Alaska I’ll travel to fish. I’ve been going there since I was about 10 years old, and because the place is surrounded by Crown and Ojibwe lands, there’s been virtually no further development in terms of cabins built or facilities since then, so it’s still the same wild place, with no significant increase in boat traffic, etc over the last 50 years. .

Except, of course, for the windmill farm that the Ojibwe put on their lands on either side of the Henvey Inlet. It’s like finding oil or gold on your land, sort of, only this land use is not an extraction of a non-renewable resource, but simply capturing the energy of the abundant winds there and feeding it into the Canadian power grid. The windmills are silent – you can barely hear them if it’s flat calm- a slight wooshing sound – but that’s it. And of course, no emissions. Some see them as visual pollution in an otherwise flat landscape of low islands covered with scrubby pine – but they are magnificent to me. I saw more wildlife this trip than any other trip there. So, while I’d not say the windmills are the cause for the abundance, I also would not say they’ve negatively impacted it, either. And the fishing. Still fantastic. Welcome to what the future could look like. From what I read on the wind farm, it produces enough power for 100,000 Canadian homes – so in theory, less than four of these farms could power all the homes in Alaska, but of course we have the little problem in that our communities are largely on their own grids, and not part of a larger grid, except on the road system from Homer to Fairbanks. But still, I can see the potential and power of them. You can have all the oil you want, but it’s got to be transported to some distant refinery, then transported back, and then it can provide power. With grids already in place, a windmill can be set up, wired to the existing grid, and start providing energy with the first breath of wind. The Ojibwe at Henvey Inlet looked for a decade for just the right project for and economic endeavor on their lands, and landed on this. They own a 50 percent stake in the project. Their lands are leased for 20 years for the project, and if they end the project at that time, the windmills will come down.  They voted overwhelmingly to approve the project first, and then even a greater majority voted to put some of their income in trust for future generations. I hope to talk to someone there someday to find out more about the project.

I flew into Milwaukee, where my first cousin once removed Aileen – the daughter of the cousin I was going to Canada with, lives with her husband and 2 pre-schoolers. Her parents drove there from their home in Iowa, picked me up, and north we went. I’d never been to this part of the Great Lakes nor gone this way to the Georgian Bay cabin, so it was all new to me. I’ve never seen Lake Superior, and it was neat to drive by Whitefish Bay, from the lyrics of my favorite singer of the north country, Gordon Lightfoot – who grew up, I think, not far from the part of Canada we were heading to. Then the Saute St. Marie bridge, the straights of Mackinaw – places my great uncle Carl spoke about from his merchant mariner days out of Lake Huron on the Thumb of the Mitten in Michigan. We drove on to Blind River, Ontario and spent the night. I was surprised at the number of immigrants from who seemed, from their accents and appearance, to be Indian or Pakistani, but maybe another country in that part of the world. From lawyers on billboards to the clerk at the hotel to the gas station convenience store attendant.  Kinda cool they’ve found a new home far from home in rural Ontario. Hope they feel welcome there.

The next day we headed to Sudbury, then south again around the Georgian Bay to Camp Dore at the Key River. We launched the boat, and John handed me the keys to drive.  Now, I’ve run boats in a lot of waters. Mostly ocean waters and rivers. And no where have I boated where there are more random rocks in water, just below the surface, than in these waters of the Georgian Bay. Of course, my cousin started boating here well before there were boat electronics. The only electronics on her Bayliner Capri ski boat was a cigarette lighter outlet. And not a backup kicker motor in sight, either. Away we went.

Luckily, both of them had been to the cabin many times, and they became my chart plotter and GPS.  The Key River itself is easy to run. Just stay in the middle till you get to navigational markers. Once we got out of the river, Chris and John became my GPS, directing me to the next set of markers as needed, and giving directions otherwise to avoid rocks. Miraculously, we made it to the cabin without incident.  When I was a kid, this trip seemed like it took an hour or two and was a 25 mile run. I’m guessing we made it there in about 40 minutes, and my phone app said 13.7 miles.

Most years, the last group to visit the cabin would be sometime in August. This year, it was in mid-September, whic. is between fishing and deer hunting season for me here. Sara just had her knee replaced, and was back to driving herself to her appointments. “Go”, she said. And for once, I heard her the first time.

We arrived at the island.  Just as it’s always been for 75 years. Propane lights. Propane stove. Propane refrigerator. Propane water heater. Bay water is transferred by a small gasoline pump from the bay to a large tank high in the rafters of the kitchen, so running water all around. Even a shower and flush toilet.

And there’s a smell to this place. An earthy smell of dry pine trees and brown pine needles and the lake air. The smell immediately tells me I’m back to this home, of sorts. A place I’ve been coming to for 50 years. Paradise, as I said. It’s a place where kids can sunbathe, swim from island to island, jump off the diving board or slide down the water slide. water ski, canoe, kayak, sail, boat, put together puzzles, play cards, and maybe learn for the first time to work as part of a team moving groceries and goods from the water up to the cabin. As a kid, I remember watching my cousin’s husband Mike magically help me get an old outboard running. All the workings in the cabin, from the propane appliances to the plumbing, were new to me then. After spending most of my life in Alaska doing the stuff I love to do, now I was the fix it and set up guy. And I loved it. I coaxed the water pump engine to life. Took down the window covers. Fixed some leaks in the plumbing. Removed an ice-split valve in the water line and spliced it. Re-spooled a fishing reel and got lures out of the fishing net with my younger eyes. Took apart a 9 volt battery to make a connector for a 9 volt wire feed to the fridge. Cleaned and cooked the fish for everyone. Life was all about fishing when I was 12. Now, it was still about fishing, but also keeping the camp running with a lifetime of practical skills learned, the training of which started right here.

The cabin is unlike any I’ve ever seen. A central square made up of about twelve, 8 to 14 inch diameter logs, with another square log room added off of 3 of the sides of the center square. The front side of the center square looks out on the bay. Two of the side squares make up 2 bedrooms, each, for a total of 4. The 3rd side square is the bathroom and kitchen. There are lofts above the bedrooms – coveted sleeping quarters of teens and pre-teens. I remember there being so many at the cabin that I slept on 3 chairs – two chairs facing each other, with one to the side between them to form a sleeping platform – and never thought anything of it. When you’re 12, you can sleep anywhere. I was just happy to be there.

We got the cabin opened up without incident. John and I removed the plywood window covers with his cordless drill – a nice invention from the early days of coming here, for sure. Once inside the cabin, Christine got to cleaning and John to putting the plumbing together. I got the water pump out and John helped me carry it down to the waters edge. John put the intake pipe into the bay, and I hooked the other end to the pump, then hooked up the outflow pipe, primed the water pump, and cranked up the engine. It soon started and hummed along for a good 15 minutes before it quit. And wouldn’t restart. I went through the diagnostics from a lifetime of doing this now with outboard engines and generators and the like. Got gas. Yep. Got spark. That took awhile to actually see a spark, but finally did. Note to self: put spark plugs on the list for next group. So now to drain the carb bowl. Actually didn’t look too bad in there. So put it all back together, and with a lot of pulling on the starter rope and adjusting the choke from full to half when it would fire, I finally got it running and it stayed running and we filled the water tank.  There’s a ball valve by the front steps of the cabin that serves as a check valve so all the water you pumped up into the tank doesn’t just drain back out, as the fill line goes into the tank on the side, and not at the top. When I shut off the valve, I saw it was leaking. Looked like water got trapped in it over the winter and the ice split the side. So, I got to looking at the plumbing pieces that were around. Eventually I found a nipple to splice the section, but it was not tapered enough to want to easily go into the plastic pipes we were connecting. I remembered seeing a you tube, from the Developing World somewhere, where the person used a torch to loosen up the plastic pipe for just this purpose. We found a torch, heated up the end of the pipe, and the pipe slid right in. When the pipe cooled around it, it was water tight. We put on a hose clamp, just for back up.

Meanwhile, Chris was getting out the bedding and making up our beds. John was trying to get the propane refrigerator to run and I looked at with him. First I checked that the propane tank valve was open. Check. Now to check if we have propane by checking the cook stove. Nope. So changed the 100 lb bottle out for the full 40 lb bottle, and check the cook stove. Burner lights. We have propane.  There’s a 9 volt battery on the refrigerator that somehow is a safety check to a CO sensor, I think. If the sensor sniffs CO, then it turns a valve to stop the flow of propane. Well, we had to hook a 9 V battery to a set of wires. The last group taped the wires to the battery terminals, and that didn’t work for shit. And we couldn’t test the 9 V battery to know if it was the problem, or the wiring was the problem, since we didn’t have any other 9 V appliances to test it on, nor a volt meter. So, we got out a fresh 9 V battery, and I took one of the old 9 V batteries, peeled off the outside cover, removed the top terminals and the flat metal strip that is attached to each terminal. I took a nail and punched a hole in the end of each of the metal strips. We noted the attachment of the + and – wires as they came to the old battery terminals, and I threaded the wires to the opposite strips of the terminals on the home made battery connection, then snapped the male to female and vice versa connection onto the battery. Permanent fix. Refrigerator lit up and ran like a dream.

By evening, we were settled in for now. I started lighting the propane lights – the same kind I had at my cabin near Juneau. Some lit easily. Others pulsed and had to be shut down. A few needed new mantles, which I replaced the next day. Chris made salad and sweet corn and brauts for dinner. None of us drink alcohol anymore, and this may, indeed, be the first group ever to the cabin where that was the case. It sure saves on garbage hauling, I noticed, when there were no beer or other alcohol containers to haul out at the end.

The next day, I was up early. I was eager to go fishing, of course, but not sure if John or Chris wanted to go as we hadn’t made a plan the night before. John doesn’t drink coffee anymore, either, and Chris has one small cup a day.  As a result, the coffee they brought from their house had been opened a good long time. When I loaded my usual amount into the perculator that first day, the coffee was way too weak for me, so I made a note to self to fill the basket right to the top in the future. I filled my thermos with the weak coffee, and headed outside to sit on the nearby deck to enjoy the morning. The other two rolled out of bed about 11 am. Chris made bacon and eggs for breakfast. After breakfast, I took care of a squirrel nest from the front wall cross beam on the inside of the cabin. The squirrel that made it was dried up on the floor below, with some of it’s nest covering it. I got it all bagged up and into the trash can so Chris would have one less thing to clean.   About 1 pm, I was getting kind of twitchy, and broached the subject of fishing to John. “Hell Yes” was the reply. Like he’d been waiting for me to ask. That’s what I wanted to hear, I told him. Chris said she’d stay put and continue cleaning and tidying. I think she was happy to spend a good bit of alone time with her memories in her cabin, none of us knowing if this might be the last visit.

I think most people fish this area by drifting and casting. Only problem with that is you need to know where to drift and where to cast. And there are so many options fishing among all the little islands near the cabin. Me, I like to troll. I especially like to fish this way when I’m fishing with people that don’t often fish or are new to fishing.   All they have to do is let their rapala out behind the boat and hang on. Then I do all the fishing with the boat. If we catch a fish, I turn around and go back over the spot. If nothing on the back tack, I turn around again over the same spot and if nothing again, I keep going.  This method usually leads to a stringer of bass and pike, and a card catalog in my head of where the fishing spots are.  We may try a new spot the next day, and add to the catalog. And if we don’t catch in the new spots, we go back to the old spots. It seems to work.

John had a “conservation license”, which he said suited him because he was lucky to catch the one bass and/or one pike a day limit on that license, fishing out of his kayak. From what I can tell, this license was added by the Canadians to accommodate catch and release fishermen. I, of course, had the “sport fishing” license, which costs a bit more than the conservation license, and has higher bag limits. After I came home from Africa, catch and release fishing was never a thing for me. Fishing was for food, and when we had the fish we were going to keep to eat, I quit fishing. Of course, there’s usually some catch and release to it to let the little ones go. There are no minimum size limits for bass or pike where we were fishing, but there was a limit to the “trophy” pike an angler can keep – you’re only allowed one pike over 86 cm (about 33 inches) in your possession. We didn’t catch any such beast on this trip.

By the end of the day, we had a stringer of bass and pike. I caught most of the fish, and think John and I realized by the end of the day why. I let out a country mile of line trolling, while John let out a lot less. And we had different crankbaits (I think that’s what floating rapala lures or similar are called). John’s lure was diving deeper into the weeds or rocks, while I think mine floated nearer the surface being back further, and so my hook stayed cleaner of weeds. John started letting out more line, and I gave him a lure identical to mine (I think this lure worked well the last time I was here, so I’d ordered several when I got home so I’d be ready for next time). His luck improved considerably the next few days.

I got to filleting the fish when I got back. So little fishing goes on here that there was not a fillet knife, or sharp knife of any kind, nor a sharpener to be found. I sharpened one knife as best I could on the honing steel rod, and got to work. We keep our fish on a live stringer during the day. These warm water fish are extremely hardy, and keeping them alive all day negates the need for keeping them on ice. I forgot, however, a critical step in fish care as a result. I forgot to properly bleed them before I filleted the. It took a lot of rinsing to get all the blood out of the fillets, but luckily, we’d eat all of this first day’s catch fresh the rest of the week. Chris made great lasagna and salad for dinner.

I was up after sunrise about 8 am. Chris and John got a couple hours later. Chris made breakfast of bacon and eggs. John and I headed out fishing about 130 pm. Where do you want to go, I asked. Back to the bass hole, he said. We motored out to it – it’s in sight of the cabin, mostly – and after awhile John said I wonder where we are with fuel in the tank. The fuel gauge was still pegged at full, so didn’t seem to really work. How many gallons does the tank hold, I asked. I dunno, said John. How much fuel does it burn an hour, I asked. I dunno, John said. Uh boy. We had a little Jerry can with maybe 2 gallons of gasoline in it – not always enough to run an outboard if the pick up tube in the fuel tank does not reach all the fuel in the tank. By now, we’d fished our way out away from the cabin and could see the cottages near the mouth of the Key River, where the lodge was that sold fuel. John suggested we just fish our way over there and fuel up. A great plan.

There’s lots of rock piles we ran up on on our way to the lodge. That’s why, of course, the navigation channel is marked well out towards the open Georgian Bay from where we were now. After the wind picked up a bit, and we caught a fish or two, we picked up and idled out towards the navigation markers and away from all the rocks just under the surface where we were now. We’d caught what I think is the 3 biggest bass I’d caught in a day. Another great day of fishing.  We got over to the lodge to fill up. I went in the store and picked up a fillet knife with sharpener and a 5 gallon jerry can. We filled the boat up and then the Jerry can. No more running around without spare fuel. And, we found out the 125 2 stroke Mercury was pretty dang fuel efficient. We’d only burned 5 gallons getting to camp, trolling 2 days, and back to the lodge. I also determined the fuel tank was likely 23 gallons from the info I could find online, so 5 gallons of spare fuel was plenty. We returned to camp. On our way in, I hit something not far from camp. It felt like a log and not a hard strike of a rock, but neither John nor I had seen any logs floating around. So not sure what it was, and the prop wasn’t dinged up bad or bent.

At the dock, I remembered this time to bleed our fish first. I just broke a gill on each fish with my finger, and put the fish over the side of the dock. We took gear up to the cabin, and by the time I got back, the fish were ready to fillet. What a difference bleeding the fish and a sharp blade make. I was done in 5 minutes. After reading the regulations, I butterfly filleted the bass, keeping both sides of the fish connected at the belly in one piece, with the skin on, to individually freeze in zip loc bags in the freezer, so an enforcement officer could tell both how many bass I had, and that the fish were bass by the skin. The pike were different. For pike, unless you’re only going to keep 2 fish, you have to keep the fish whole so they can be measured because, as I mentioned earlier, you’re only allowed one big pike as part of your possession limit. I can’t remember ever cleaning pike (I’d always filleted them) and they were surprisingly easy to clean in the same way we clean troll-caught salmon here, first removing the gills, then the innards.

I cooked up a mountain of fish from yesterdays’ catch. It was a big hit, and we continued eating it as a side dish for breakfast and dinner the rest of the week.  In the past, I’d dredge the fish in flour, coat the fish in an egg and milk batter, dredge the fish in Ritz cracker crumbs, then fry the fish in Crisco. Like my Grandmother taught me. The fish always come out great when eaten hot. Not so great as leftovers, however.

My diet now is carb- and refined sugar-limited. So, I tried something different. I lightly coated the fish in a equal mix of corn meal and flour, seasoned the pieces with Lowerys Season Salt, and fried the pieces in butter. Simple. Easy. And fantastic. Both hot, and as reheated leftovers. A lot easier and quicker from start to finish. And a lot easier cleanup afterwards. Everyone had seconds. And thirds. And lots leftover as side dishes for the rest of our week’s meals. One thing I didn’t have was ketchup for the fish. Luckily, I grabbed a small jar of mayo and Chris a jar of sweet pickles. I’d also bought a jar of bull kelp pickles I made this summer. I combined the mayo and pickles to make tartar sauce, which was also a hit.

The next day. I was up at dawn, made coffee, and enjoyed the sunrise on the deck. I saw a squirrel bound across the rock across the little harbor below me. Then I saw something big swimming out of the little harbor. A big. Freakin’. Beaver. I thought at first it might be a bear until I saw it go under and then resurface. Bears don’t do that. It rounded the corner, and after awhile, a bald eagle flew right over head. Then a mink scurried along the rock across the little harbor below. It got to the waters edge, and looked up at me a few seconds. Then it plunged into the water and swam across to my side of the harbor. It went out of my sight about half way over, and didn’t climb up to my level so must have run along the rocks at the base of the little cliff in front of me. I checked the time: 950 am. What a morning already, I thought.

Chris and John got up awhile later. I told them I was taking a walk around the island, as I needed some exercise. I wandered around the perimeter of the island as best I could. Some places you can’t walk along the edge because of brush or it’s too steep. There was lots to see on my walk. I found some tiny red cranberries low to the ground that were very good eating. I tried some other berries that were not. I found where a beaver – probably the beaver I saw – had cut down a tree and was now cutting up the tree further, with big wood chips all around. I found some surprisingly wet areas that held some bog grasses, etc. When I found some moose droppings, it now made sense where a moose might find some groceries in what I thought was an otherwise dry, rocky habitat. I came out to the channel behind the cabin, and there was Mr. Beaver’s house.

John and I headed out fishing early in the afternoon. I decided we’d try up the Henvey Inlet, as we’d not gone that direction yet. We came to a big cove I remember one of the nephews catching a pike in, and trolled around there, but no luck. We crossed the channel to another bay by a cabin owned by a person one of my cousin had befriended years ago. The bay was full of weeds, and eventually we found a pike. Then another one. Then a third one. All in the same little area. The fourth pike was a little one that I was about to turn back from the net. Neither John nor I remember just exactly what happened, but one second I’m getting the fish out of the net, and the next second one of the three hooks on one of the two treble hooks on my rapala is buried in my pinky. And I mean buried. Right up to the curve of the shank. Well past the barb.

Well, panic set in right away. Then I calmed down a bit. First, I got the small pike out of the net. Then I cut the lure off the line. Then I took my pliers and worked the hook in my finger off the key ring holding it to the lure. I handed the net with the lure to John, who was now in the stern, trying not to hurl. He recounted the time he had to push a hook all the way through his brother’s finger to remove it, and it was not a pleasant memory, nor was it a current pleasure seeing this hook buried in the palm side of the last joint in my pinky.

Luckily, I have been the fishing merit badge counselor for the Juneau scout troop, where I helped out when my nephew Samuel was in the troop. Part of the merit badge was learning and practicing how to remove a hook embedded past the barb into the skin. The technique calls for tying a string to the curve of the hook right where it enters the skin, pushing down on the eye of the hook to try to roll the barb of the hook towards the center of the puncture, and then pulling on the string to hopefully free the hook. I used the needlenose pliers instead of the string for the pulling part, but could not push down on the eye enough to free the hook. John told me about running the hook the rest of the way through the skin of his brothers finger, and when I tried that, the pain was too much. Then I thought about how when I get a hook into the twine of a landing net, I have to work it back and forth to form a larger hole in the threads of the twine, and then pull the barb through the hole. So I started to move the hook side to side in my skin, and I saw it was making the hole bigger each time. I finally got the hole wide enough and the hook pulled out. Oh, what a relief. More from the situation than from the pain, which wasn’t bad, actually. I let the wound bleed a bit as I got out the first aid kit, found the antiseptic wipes, and got to slathering the wound with that. Then I put some antibiotic ointment on it, and wrapped the wound in a band aid and more first aid tape.  Good as new.

I told John I was ok. And did he want to go back to the cabin, or to the bass hole. Bass hole, he said. I sure like fishing with John. We traveled back by the cabin and on to the bass hole. We only caught one there. I figured this was the last day of fishing, as we’d be closing up the cabin tomorrow to leave the following day, and a perfect way to end the trip with John catching this last fish and his biggest of the trip.

The next day, we all were up early and started taking care of chores to close the cabin. It seemed like we just got there. We boarded up most of the windows. I started the water pump, filled the water tank, then John and I brought the tank up to the cabin, where I changed the oil and wrote down the spark plug number so more could be purchased. By mid day, we finished all the chores we needed to. Why aren’t we out fishing, I asked. John did not answer in the allotted time, and away we went – this last day with cousin Christine.

Back to the pike hole, I thought, as we already had all the bass we could keep in the freezer. On our way up the Henvey, not far from the cabin, there was a black bear on the beach. Our only bear sighting of the trip. As we rounded the corner, we put our lines out. Over by the shore, I saw something making a wake in the water. Then three river otters were up on the shore and trotting away. We soon were catching pike. We could keep a total of three. We had 2 on the boat, and released some small ones.  As we trolled back up the little channel, I looked up, and there it was. Something I’ve seen many times, but never outside of Alaska, and certainly not expected here in the east. A moose. And a big one. It was standing with it’s front feet in the water, looking at us. About 100 yards away. It didn’t seem too concerned.  We didn’t approach it and now were whispering. John and I had trolled up this channel further yesterday and ran out of water, so we knew it was not very deep where the moose was. The moose than sauntered across the channel in water up to its knees and then up the bank of the island on the opposite side. Wow. Just wow.

When the moose was out of sight, I had to the boat what would have been our final pike for the day, and tried lifting it aboard. It came off. I’d lost that fish and one or two others, unlike other days, where I hadn’t lost any. I’d knocked all the barbs down on my hooks after my finger incident, so some of the fish were now self-releasing, which was okay, as that just meant we got to fish longer in the beautiful afternoon weather. Then fishing seemed to go dead. So, I headed out to deeper water towards the channel. I planned to fish to the channel, and pull up our lines and go home.

As we entered deeper water, John said he had a snag. He’s said this often during the week, as his lure seemed to fish deeper than mine and he’d get down in the weeds when I wouldn’t. I looked down and could barely see the weeds way down in the deeper water- but saw line was coming off his reel, so I turned the boat back towards the snag so he wouldn’t lose all his line. Luckily, we’d changed out the line on his reel earlier in the trip after he got his line wound in the prop and lost much of it. Otherwise, he might have got spooled here. John reeled in the slack as we caught up to the snag. I noticed the line was now under the boat for some reason. Must be I crossed over the snag and not paying attention, I thought. Then his rod doubled over, right into the water.  We had not a snag, but a big fish!

I grabbed the net, and waited next to John. Christine clicked on her phone’s video. The fish was pulling the line dangerously close to the prop, then rubbing the bottom of the boat. I hope it doesn’t break off, I thought. I was so glad now we’d put fresh line on. The line was coming up, but from under the boat, so we couldn’t see the fish. John knew how to fish. He played his fish well, and didn’t horse them in, letting the rod and reel drag do their job. When the fish finally appeared from under the boat, it was just a few feet below the surface. Oh, it was a nice square headed pike with John’s lure in his mouth. The fish made one more run, and John let him go, then played him back to me. We got it in the net on the first try. As it fell into the basket of the net, the hook came out, caught on the webbing.  There was screaming all around. Mostly by me. John said I can’t believe you’re bringing that fish into the boat with us. Like it was a dangerous snake or something. So, for the second day in a row, a perfect end to the day and trip, with John catching the biggest fish of the whole trip on the last day. I pray it’s not our last time here.

I’m back in Juneau to help Sara with her new knee. My Temne brother from Sierra Leone has been catching lots of fish this summer. When he catches so many – all from shore – that his home freezers are full, he brings overflow fish to our freezer. That’s when I know fishing is good. Really good. I went down to watch him fish on the Juneau waterfront this morning. Right in the middle of Juneau. He had one in the bucket when I got there, and landed a second as I arrived. Big, bright coho salmon. What a treasure our hatchery is to local folks without the means or ability to fish from a boat. Andrew has learned where to fish along the waterfront according to the tides and seals from his own experience and the many others that fish.

I watched Andrew clean his first fish, then gave him a few tips on cleaning for his second, which he appreciated. We left after about 45 minutes, not long after sunup. What a place we get to live in.