I got the heads-up call the second week of February from Doug in Bethel. The next week was forecast for colder weather and snow. The plan was to go hunting for moose or muskox on snogos. I immediately sought approval for the trip from my boss at work and my boss at home.

Doug called the following Wednesday and said they planned to go out for muskox on Friday. He had a tag and I could have lots of meat since his freezer was full. I threw everything together, bought a one way mileage ticket from Juneau to Bethel, and was in Bethel about noon the next day. Mileage tickets are my best friend for short notice travel in Alaska.

When I got to Bethel, I realized I forgot my fur hat and snowmobile pants, but otherwise looked good for proper clothing. Doug lent me a beaver hat and I planned to use rain pants in lieu of snowmobile pants if it rained.

We had a dinner of crock pot moose roasts, potatoes, canned green beans and salad. That Dougie can cook. Val made brownies for us to take on the trip. And to have with ice cream for desert.

Later in the evening, word came of a change of plans. Instead of going to the Bering Sea coast for muskox, we were heading to the Yukon River for moose because the weather was poor on the coast. Many years ago I’d sewn up a bunch of XXL game bags from used sheets, and now they might get some use.

Doug and I were both up the next morning by 430 am, excited to go, packing and checking gear and drinking coffee. When we met the rest of the hunting party – Pat, who I met the year before and took hooter hunting in Juneau, – Chris, Sam and Robert- I could tell they were excited too. It’s not everyday you take a trip 75 miles to the Yukon River by snogo to hunt moose, even if you live here. We left town in the dark at 815 am. Everyone had a 10’ heavy duty plastic sled in tow behind their snogo except me. In the sleds were tents, sleeping bags, camping gear, extra fuel and food. We were prepared.

We traveled all morning in the fog north to the Yukon River. Across tundra and lakes. Although we couldn’t see the surroundings, the fresh snow the night before made for good riding, and all the tracks we came across – wolf, fox, lynx, wolverine, rabbit and moose – were, of course, fresh.

We’d stop every 5 or 10 miles to check that loads were still tight and everyone was not getting frostbite. Even though the temperature was about 20 degrees, you make your own wind chill on the snogo and everyone had fur hats and facemasks.

I was last in line when I saw a red fox taking it’s morning constitutional out on the tundra. I’d heard the fox were big in these parts, and the sighting confirmed that.

We got to the Johnson River about 1100 am, and found fresh moose tracks leading to an isolated stand of willows. Chris and Robert turned back and followed the tracks around the stand. Chris saw two moose and got both of thm. We all drove up to the downed moose, and it was like a nascar pit crew. Pat and Sam led by making the first cuts in the moose. Pat instructed the newbies on what needed to be done after that, and soon we all found a part to butcher and our roles for future sessions the rest of the day. By 1145 am, we had both moose butchered.

The moose hides went fur side down in Chris’s sled. Then the moose parts – neck, sternum, ribs, pelvis, hind quarters, and front quarters – went on top of the hides. The forelegs and head also went in for trapping bait. The moose parts were then covered with a tarp and secured to the sled with ropes and rachet straps.

The only thing left at the site were the entrails. In a day or two, all that would be left on the ground would be the willow materials inside the moose stomach after the ravens, crows and other scavengers ate their fill. What a day already. No worry about getting the meat dirty. Just hang onto a piece while it’s cut away and toss it in the snow until it’s time to drag it over to put in the sled. No blowflies or bears to worry about in February either.

The Johnson River is still in the Kuskokwim River drainage. We traveled about an hour longer, traversed the divide into the Yukon River drainage, and made camp in a copse of small spruce trees where the group had camped before. We passed 2 others on their way back to town with a sledfulls of moose- the only people we’d see today.

As we set up camp, Chris offloaded his moose parts onto the snow. Even in the cold, the meat holds a lot of heat and can start to spoil if piled together too long under a tarp. We had the tents and camping gear in place at a leisurely pace. Then we were off to the Yukon River- another 10 miles or so.

We arrived at the Yukon River and crossed the river to an island covered with willows. Normally, willows sort of look half moon shaped from the side, with the middle stems of the tree reaching up 30 feet or more. This stand looked like a fine trimmed lawn about 7 feet high. I remember seeing the same thing in Gustavus years ago when my niece Mellissa got a moose there. Seeing willows trimmed to this level is a sign of lots (and sometimes maybe too many) moose browsing.

Soon after arriving on the island, some in the front were motioning to me that moose were ahead. I soon saw moose heads moving above the willows. There were 6 or 8 moose moving. Pat motioned me to come forward for a shot. When I caught up to him, all I could see were legs in the willows. Lots of legs. It was like looking at a herd of wild horses in the brush. I kept walking forward and there lay a moose on the ground. Robert had shot it, yet I never heard him shoot. For some reason the 30 caliber rifles we were shooting seemed to make little sound out on the wide open tundra, unlike the boom they make when hunting in the mountains of Southeast Alaska.

I moved past Robert’s moose. Others were anxious for me to get a moose, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to have a clear broadside shot with a good rest and not too far a shot. Then I saw it – a moose offering me a clear shot broadside at under a hundred yards. I got a rest, put the crosshairs a third of the way up from the bottom of his sternum and behind the front shoulder like the ADF&G site recommends, and fired. The moose just stood there. I fired a second time, and still nothing. Pat said to fire again. Then I saw the moose waver a bit and it just tipped over. It never flinched or gave any sign of being hit.

Pat moved on to stalk another moose that was initally alongside this one. A few more shots fired not far away, and we now had 3 moose on the ground.

Doug and Pat and I started butchering my moose, while Robert, Chris and Sam worked on Robert’s moose. After we were a good way along in the process, Pat and Doug told me to go look for my second moose. I did. I made a loop around a section of the island and back to them. They said to keep looking.

Sam and Robert had finished up Robert’s moose and came by, so I went with them for a ways, when we decided to split up. Sam and Robert crossed the river to another island, while I “kept turning left” as Sam instructed until I would return to Doug and Pat. I ventured left into a patch of willows and got the sled stuck. I was spinning out in deeper snow. I tried to lift the back of the sled up and out of the hole I’d made like I used to back in Bolivar as a kid. Turns out sleds are bigger now. And I’m not a kid. I strained my back trying to get it out. I tried whistling and yelling to Pat and Doug, but got no reply. I finally shot 3 times to alert them I needed help, then started walking back to find them.

Doug soon came on his sled and we returned to my sled. He showed me how to get it out by leaning the sled on it’s side and shoveling snow under it with your boot. I thought to myself I’m not going off on my own again like that since I’m not familiar with getting myself out of these situations and could easily get lost or separated from the group.

We got Pat’s moose and my moose butchered and down on the river as the sun was setting. Sometimes you have to pinch yourself when you’re standing on the Yukon River in the middle of winter watching the sunset with your first moose in a sled.

Pat and Chris went to look for Sam and Robert, who we figured got another moose when they crossed to the other island, although we never heard any shots. Doug and I stayed with the sleds of moose meat. Chris soon returned and said Pat sent him back to get me because there were 6 moose just down the way. Pat wanted me to get a second moose. When I got there, I saw three moose standing in a line broadside to us, and 3 others that had moved off into the brush out of sight. A huge moose was on the right, with what looked like a yearling in the middle and a calf on the left. I asked Pat which one I should shoot. He said the little one, which I did. Pat now decided he’d take a second moose, too, and so shot the yearling. The big one walked off. When we got up to our moose, it turns out they were not a yearling and calf, but adult moose. The huge one just made them look small.

The four of us rolled my moose onto the sled whole and Chris ran it up to the other sleds we’d left with butchered moose on them. He returned and we did the same for Pat’s moose. It seems like it takes a bare minimum of 3 people to roll a whole moose at all, and even then it’s iffy.

As we were offloading Pat’s moose to start butchering, here comes Sam and Robert. Sam HAD got moose, which he and Robert had butchered and had on their sled. They joined in and the six of us soon had the last two moose butchered by headlamp and onto the sleds. It was now about 930 pm and we’d shot and butchered 8 moose in the 14 hours since we left Bethel. Pat said he’d never done this many before. The first moose of the day was a cow, and the rest were bulls. Of course, all bulls had dropped their antlers so we didn’t know what sex we’d shot until after the fact, but that’s the way it worked out. It looked like the bulls were in bachelor groups and I’m not sure why there seemed to be no cows here. Maybe just chance.

We were bushed but very satisfied on the journey back to camp, which took about an hour. Everybody got the moose they came for. Doug didn’t get one, which was what he wanted. Doug lit his coleman lantern and hung it on a tree, and the rest of us had our headlamps on as we took the tarps off all the sleds, and pulled the moose parts out of the sled and into the snow to cool overnight, just like Chris had done with his moose. We were too tired to cook anything for dinner and ate snacks and sandwiches.

Doug had borrowed a tent from a friend but we didn’t check it before we left and the little woodstove that went with the tent did not come with it. Doug, Pat and I had no stove and so slept in our sleeping bags in our hunting clothes. Doug brought in the lantern to heat up the tent before we went to sleep, then turned it out. Doug was the subject of extensive ridicule and verbal abuse the rest of the night by Pat and I, but we all seemed to sleep just fine in about 15 degree weather. I got up once to take a leak, and when I got back in my bag, I could hear a critter bothering Chris’s moose meat, which was laying in the snow next to our tent. Pat went out to look and saw it was a red fox. He tried to shoot it but his gun jammed and the fox ran away. As soon as Pat got back in his bag, the fox came back, and Pat again went out but could not get a shot. When Pat got back in his bag, the fox returned and we conceded that a fox could not eat all that much in one sitting. We let him have his fill and went back to sleep as a couple of snowgos came through in the dark on their way to the Yukon River.

We got up about sunrise I guess – 9 ish. My back was killing me. I could hardly stand up. It was either from the strain trying to get the sled unstuck, sitting on the sleds driving for 5 or 6 hours, bending over to butcher 8 moose, or being 54 years old. Or all 4. In any case, I was a hurting puppy. As the others slung meat back onto the sleds, I started to take down the tent to at least do something. And I could hardly do that. I tried doing the cow-cat yoga exercise but it didn’t help. I then laid down flat on my back on a tarp. At first I couldn’t even lie flat, but eventually the muscles relaxed until I could lie flat, and then I lie there in the snow for about 10 minutes. That was all it took. My back muscles let go, I got up, and was a new man.

As we broke camp, a trio of camp robbers – gray jay birds- showed up. Some of the boys started cutting off pieces of moose meat scraps and tossing it in the snow in the woods. The gray jays seemed to know this game, and soon were carrying chunks weighing almost more than they could carry up into the branches to stash, and then returned for more.

The trip home was under a high overcast and the temperature in the 20’s. It was like a new trip. After fog all the way in yesterday, now we could see for miles. It hardly seemed possible we only came in the day before.

About half way home, we found a guy wandering around on the tundra. Turned out his sled conked out and he was trying to get to a trail where he could flag down a snow go, or perhaps walk to a village. We fed and watered him and took him to town with us. He was lucky we came along. He had on jeans and had no food with him.

We passed a total of 21 people going out while we were coming back We didn’t see anyone hunting when we were there and I was glad not to be there with a lot of other people in the fairly small area where the moose were. The whole trip was lucky like that. The new snow, the moderate winter temperatures, moose everywhere, and a group of guys who could take care of a downed moose quickly.

We came back to town on a different trail – ending up on the Gweek River. When we got to the confluence with the Kuskokwim it was rush hour. Snow mobiles and SUV’s and trucks and 4 wheelers using the frozen river as a highway to go to other places or to go fishing. Doug pointed out willow trees seemingly growing out of the ice in pairs about 30 yards apart and said the willows held gillnets under the ice for pike. When we got to town, a dog sled passed in front of us.

We said our goodbyes one at a time as each person peeled off to their homes. When we arrived home, I helped Doug build hanging stands in his shed out of two by six lumber and stud hangers. We hung the meat on the stands to cool and age the meat. The temperatures were just right- in the 20’s at night and 30’s during the day.

The quarters took two of us to hang, as they weighed close to 100 lbs each. After all the meat was put away, we ate a dinner of muskox steaks, potatoes and salad. That Dougie can cook.

The next day, Doug sent me out with Pat, Sam and Chris to check Chris and Pat’s trapline. We met at the gas station. As we left for the river, Pat was in the lead with me bringing up the rear. When I got to the river, I saw Pat’s sled at a slant into the water at the river’s edge. The sled was in the water about half way up the skiis and just covering the hood. Pat said he was done for the day because the engine had taken in water and would need to be drained before it’s run again. Sam tied off a line to the back of Pat’s sled and pulled it out of the water and back up onto the parking lot. Pat called Doug, who came and got him with a trailer to take the sled to the mechanic. Sam, Chris and I continued on to another spot to get on the Kuskokwim river and were soon on our way across the river.

We rode about an hour and came to a village seemingly out of nowhere – Kwethluk. A 10’ sled was in front of town on the Kwethluk River with about half a dozen spruce logs about 8 inches in diameter destined for sale in Bethel, where there are few trees bigger in diameter than an inch or two. We continued on til we turned off into another tributary. We rounded a bend and stopped. The spot was Chris’s favorite place to fish in the summer for coho salmon, trout and pike. I see a hole in the river ice with blood around it and wonder what made the mess. Later, out of nowhere, two girls on a fourwheeler pass us. Where did THEY come from I think? I soon realize there are villages not far off but we can’t see much running the river bed. We stop every 5 miles or so like we did moose hunting, and have a bite to eat or sip coffee as we like. We’re in no hurry.

We continue on and we’re soon checking sets for wolverine, wolf, fox, otter and lynx. Most of the sets are snares. I’ve primarily trapped with conibears in or near the water, so this upland trapping is great to learn. We get nothing in the first few sets, and then I see a fox in a snare set for wolverine. The fox is not happy to see us. Sam shortens up the leash of the snare lead, conks the fox on the head to stun him, then kneels on it’s chest till it expires. A quick death.

We get one more fox on the checks. We get to all the traps but the one furthest away and can’t get to that one because there’s too much overflow on the river ice. We’d gone 67 miles when we turned back to town.

When we get back to Chris’s favorite fishing spot, there are a bunch of four wheelers and people fishing. Some are are fishing in the hole that I saw blood in, and there’s a live pike in a little puddle of overflow. That answers that question. Another group is across the river checking a whitefish net set under the ice. Everybody is happy. Winter time is fun time here. It seems like the season people look forward to here, as long as it’s cold enough for the rivers to freeze. Winter is when the most country is accessible, and when snow conditions and fish and game populations are good, it seems like a happy time to hunt and fish.

We return to town. Sam leaves me with the two fox at Doug and Val’s, and Doug takes the two fox to the skinning shed for Pat to take care of. I start butchering the moose after a dinner of specklebelly geese stuffed with apple and raisins. That Dougie can cook. I butcher till late in the night listening to old country songs on KYUK.

The next day was blowing and raining. A perfect day to butcher. Doug and I cut meat all day. We carved the meat from all the bones except the ribs and put it into game bags. Pat’s wife wants the femurs. The rest of the bones we rehang to keep clean in case someone wants them for soup. We break for lunch and eat chili with muskox burger. That Dougie can cook. We continue cutting into the night, listening to the Yupik language call in show on KYUK. We both enjoy the show, especially the laughter, even though we don’t know the language. We finish the meat cutting after 10 pm. Then we get a scale to weigh each bag so we can load the boxes near to their maximum allowed weight of 100 lbs each. I’m lucky to find waxed fish boxes at the AC store, and buy 7 of the last 8 in town the next day. We decide I’m leaving day after tomorrow, and I order a one way mileage ticket to Juneau.

The next day, we checked Doug’s trapline near town. As Doug and I check empty trap after empty trap, I yelled words of encouragement like “Is this your first year trapping”, “Do you know what you’re doing”, and “Are we ever gonna catch one”. It was a beautiful sunny day. Part way through the trap checks, we cross the Kuskokwim and travel through Napaskiak, with it’s beautiful Russian Orthodox Church and graveyard of brightly painted crosses and lettering nextdoor. We cross a small river and travel through Oscarville, with it’s above ground outdoor basketball court made of wood. We check several more traps on the way to town, and Doug takes me up on a hill where we can take in the vastness of the lower Kusko and surrounding wilderness. It’s a whole lot of the middle of nowhere here.

We travel through willow patches looking for ptarmigan on the way back to town, but the birds apparently haven’t migrated through yet as we see no birds or tracks. When we reach the house, I walk down to Pat’s trapping shed. I watch as Pat deftly skins four fox, fleshes them, and puts them on stretchers to dry. He does it methodically, with no wasted motion. He could do it in his sleep. We talk as he processes the hides without thinking. It was interesting to see how few cuts/slices are actually made when skinning a fox. There are a few cuts getting at the hind end, pulling out the tail, then working the hide down the body like a sock with only hands, pulling the ear cartilage through with a screwdriver, then cutting through the eyes and nose. Pat’s caught about 140 fox for the winter, and gets most of them right near town. He said some years there are 700 fox taken within a few miles of town. He described how they come through in waves. He’ll get double digits after opening day, then nothing for several days, then 8 more, nothing for a few days, then 6 more, and so on. Sounds a lot like salmon trolling.

When he finishes pinning the last fox on a stretcher, we head for Doug and Val’s for dinner. We sit around and yak for an hour until Pat’s significant other, Louise, can join us. We have salmon patties, cold canned green beans with Italian dressing, and salad for dinner. That Dougie can cook. Val breaks out her favorite desert – ice cream – and Doug brings on some chocolate syrup and pecans

On the last day, I got up a little after 630 am and got to packing all the meat. I got 6 boxes filled to between about 85 and 95 lbs, and the 7th box was about 30 lbs of ribs. I return to the house about an hour later and get some coffee on. Doug stirs and comes downstairs and we drink coffee in the dark. A little after 8, we load the back of the truck and go to Alaska Air cargo to ship the meat.
Like everything here, it’s all casual. The two agents are cousins and Yupik, and one says the other acts a little blonde sometimes so you have to excuse her. She sees I have about 550 lbs of meat to ship and says – “That’s a big moose”. I tell her it’s two moose. Doug asks her if her mother needs any meat and the daughter replies they’ll always take meat. Doug says he still might go muskox hunting and he’ll drop some off if he does. Then I think of all the bones we kept clean at Doug’s and ask her if they’d like the bones for soup and she said they’d love them. I pay for the air cargo – about $350 – and we returns to the house happy we have a home for the moose bones.

After I pack my gear to leave, I help Doug dismantle the hanging racks and we put the bones on the sled for the granny and her daughter. There’s a pile of meat scraps trimmings and bone cartilage to store for trapping bait. We pull up the tarp that was under the hanging meat that apparently wasn’t all waterproof, and Doug puts water on the shed stove, then pours it onto the blood stain, then puts sawdust ontop of that to soak it up. I ask if I should scrub it with a brush. He says it’s a shed. For butchering. Don’t worry about it.

A week in Bethel and I feel like I’ve been to a paradise. Climate warming is bringing changes to the area. Willows are growing in more abundance, making more feed for moose. The houses built using permafrost construction techniques are sagging because the permafrost is melting, creating headaches for homeowners. Less snow and warmer winters mean less snow, sorter winters, and probably more dangerous river ice conditions than in the past. Who knows what it’ll look like in another couple decades. My guess is people there will adapt as they must always have.

Doug and Val and I head to the airport after Doug makes us salad omeletes for breakfast. That Dougie can cook. We say our goodbyes and I pass through security. I look at my air cargo bill and note that under contents it reads “moose meet” and think – it sure was.

It looked like fair weather so Kurt and I took off work and Jeff and Bob are retired, and we headed out in the Boy’s boat to go deer hunting. We had to break ice in the harbor from their stall almost to the harbor entrance, and then we were free of it. I stood on the bow with Bob and we each used an oar to punch holes in the 1/4″ thick ice on either side of the bow and Kurt idled it through. We headed down the channel and there was even some skim ice here and there in the channel. It was an unexpected pleasure having Jeff aboard as he never hunts with us. I told him he could drop us off and fish and that was all it took for him.

We headed down the channel about 8:30am, just a little before a spectacular sunrise. Kurt dropped Bob and I off and he and Jeff then went to cruise the beaches for deer while Bob and I hiked up to a place I saw on Google Earth that looked good. I’d been there before but we were going to try to hunt more in this area. We hunted for about 3 hours. Although we saw lots of what we thought was fresh sign that looked recently deposited but was frozen, we didn’t see a deer. I called to Jeff on the VHF and he and Kurt about 1 pm and they were not far away and soon we were headed back to town. We hadn’t seen any deer, but it was a bluebird day, about 30 degrees, and almost calm. The kind of day you can hunt all day and it’s not too hot and not too cold.

Jeff has a king crab pot out so we stopped to pull that. Jeff had it in about 150 feet of water, and pulled it by hand. No king crab, but lots of tanner crab – my favorite. Seems like not that many people go for tanner crab and I don’t really know why. They taste better than dungeness crab or king crab to me, and easy to clean and cook. We looked up the minimum size for tanner crab to be sure, then measured and kept the males that were large enough and pitched the rest of the males back to grow and the girls to make more males. We had to do some more ice punching to get back to the stall in the harbor, but not as bad as going out as our trail was still mostly there. When we tied up, a trooper was there to check our haul, but when we said we didn’t have any king crab, he moved on to others coming in. Lots of people have been cited for king crab violations, I suspect because it’s so rarely open that people don’t remember to write down their catch or try to keep more than they are allowed because of the rare season. I cleaned our crab and none of them had bitter crab disease, which is a condition Tanner crab have that doesn’t seem to bother them but makes their flesh taste – you guessed it – bitter. When you pull off the carapace, the body fluid will be milky instead of the normal clear. I think I remember it used to infect 20 percent of the crab, but we had not a one, so good for us.

As we hauled our gear up the dock, a lad of about 11 was standing by the boat he just came in on, at the handles of a cart with a buck and a doe in it. I asked him if he got the deer and he said yes, and I said congratulations, you’ve just won some donuts, and I handed him our box with 3 big donuts left in it. I’m not sure he realized what was going on until he lifted the cover and saw the donuts and then said and enthusiastic “thanks!”. What a place to be an 11 year old. I got up to Bob’s truck and Jeff doled a crab out each to Bob and I. I went to work after I unloaded my gear at home, and returned to the house about 6. Sara wasn’t home yet. I got out a pot, put about 2 inches of water in the bottom, and put it on the stove on high heat, then dropped in the crab. When the water started to boil, I steamed the crab for 8 minutes, then drained the boiling water off and replaced it with cold water to cool the crab and stop the cooking. Cooling it makes the meat come out easier, too, so they say. Sara still wasn’t home, so I took a half a crab in a big bowl, put a paper towel in my collar for a bib, and started in. Wow. Crack the crab and pull out the meat. Take the pointy ends of the legs to draw out meat from the joints and the body sections to get every last morsel. No adding butter. It’s as good as it’s gonna get just like this. Sara came home later and was skeptical to my saying it’s better than king crab until she tasted hers. She likes to pull all the meat out first before she eats any. That’s just plain wrong but I don’t judge. She ate quite a bit with her fingers, then put some on bread with some cheese into the toaster over to have some like that. Hard to have a better day than today.

Took my 2nd trip duck hunting to the Stikine River. The first time, I was the hunt leader in unknown country. Now, I’m married into brothers that grew up there. A high school teacher became like an uncle to them, and they have a cabin with him up the river. Each year, they have to take the dock out at the cabin because river ice would take it away in the spring. Then, they put the dock back out in the spring after ice out for the teacher. So, we were on the take-the-dock-out trip. The whole trip started when I was cleaning the garage, and came across a case of number 2 steel shot shotgun shells Ron had given me when he moved. I asked my brother in law if he wanted them. He said sure – why not, deliver them in person in Wrangell and we’ll go take the dock out and do some waterfowl hunting. I told my boss there was a waterfowl overpopulation emergency on the Stikine, and she said I better go help take care of it. I bought tickets to get to Wrangell on Thursday morning. No need to get a return ticket, since we couldn’t know how long the trip would take or the weather, nor care for that matter.

Bob picked me up at the airport. As usual, he begged off going with us. At least this time he had a good excuse. He was going deer hunting with his wife. He dropped me at Dave’s dock, where B and K were waiting in a jet boat loaned to them by their hometown friend. We loaded food and a few decoys and two labs into the boat and were on our way. The weather was windy conditions and intermittent rain. Also called perfect duck hunting weather. It took us less than an hour to get to the tide flats. The place all looks the same to the unexperienced eye. We dropped the decoys and other gear at what looked like a random snag on an island.

The Stikine River delta is a place you don’t want to go for the first time alone. The tide was flooding, and we had enough water to get all the way to the cabin dock. A jet boat only needs a few inches of water to run if you’re on step, but if you ground, well, you could be there a while if the tide is falling, or you could be in trouble if the water and wind are blowing the wrong way.  We packed the gear into the cabin, then went to visit a couple who lived out on the island full time. The man was from Wrangell, and his family owned the local hardware store. He commercial fished and trapped for income. His wife was from Petersburg. They had a beautiful log house with a wood burning cookstove that also heated their water. Solar panels and a wind turbine charged batteries for power, and they also had a generator as needed. They can shoot moose from their porch. They had a library of Alaskana books. Many titles I’d never seen. We got back to the cabin and Brian lit the barbecue and made pork ribs for dinner. We listened to KFSK on the radio and relaxed and told stories. Next day we headed to the duck flats. I’ve not done much duck hunting and I’m not a good shot. I set up a few decoys while B and K each took their dogs and jump shot honkers and mallards. It’s really a beautiful sight to watch a good waterfowl hunter shoot, and even more when his dog retrieves the birds. I tried after a few ducks and geese but hit nary a one. We gathered at the boat when there was still time to have enough water to get back up to the cabin dock, with a pile of honkers and ducks. B and K know my wife loves ducks, and they don’t, and  they told me all the birds were for me – they just wanted the carcasses for trapping bait. At the ramp, B showed me how to cut out the breast and thighs of the birds without cleaning the entrails – a new skill for me. We soon had the meat in bags, and I put it all in water from the rain barrel and salt to draw out the blood, just like I do with hooters. The next morning it was windy and rainy as the forecast predicted. The plan was to hunt in the morning, return late in the morning, clean up the cabin, move the dock to the slough for the winter, then head back to Wrangell. There was a window of lesser winds on Sunday between gales for B and K to get back to Coffman Cove across Clarence Strait. When we got to a slough to hide the boat, Brian showed me how to properly use the geese and mallard decoys. The geese sat on a tripod with a shock cord such that the wind could move the decoy side to side to draw attention from passing birds. The mallard had wings that rotated in the wind like a whirligig. This really draws in the ducks. I set these up in front of a snag on the island, while B and K again went jump shooting with their dogs. K worked his way back to me and we talked for awhile. I’d not had much action at the decoys, but K had got a double of honkers in the first group of birds that he shot at. We saw a group of ducks pass and land in a slough not far away. He told me to go get them. I asked him how to do it, and he said to creep along the slough and peek over the edge to find the ducks. He said they always take off into the wind. So, I worked my way over to the slough. These islands looks like flat grasslands, but there are numerous sloughs that must be crossed along the way. I tried to get well above where I thought the birds had landed, and then work my way back to them with the wind at my back, knowing they’d take off towards me into the wind. It took me a good 30 minutes to maneuver across the little sloughs and get to where I thought I should be getting close to a spot on the big slough where I could work my way back down to the birds. Then there was the flock. They lifted of the water and crossed in front of me. I aimed at the flock, fired once, and two birds dropped. My first of the trip. My second shot was a miss. I hurried across yet another little slough to get to the birds. It took awhile of walking lines in the short marsh grass to find the first one. A drake mallard. Awhile later I found the other – a hen. I worked my way back to the decoys and snag blind. The tide was coming in and with the big wind, the birds were not going to want to be in the river so they started looking for either higher ground or a protected pool in the big sloughs. Flocks of ducks started coming into the decoys. I missed bird after bird. Then I forced myself to wait longer, and here comes a small flock. I fire once, and see a bird drop. Same thing with the second shot. Another double. I ran out and gathered the birds and got back to the blind. The birds started to come in more frequently but I just could not hit one. Four mallards would be my day. But for me, the most mallards I’d got in a day. B and K returned with braces of mallards and honkers and a sprague or two.  Back to the cabin. The brothers got things ready to close up while I packed and swept the floors. Then we loaded the boat and got the lines tied off to the dock. It was really blowing now, with 1 to 2 foot waves on the river. But the wind would be at our backs and help us, except for the turn right into the slough. We pulled into the river, with K on the dock with an oar pushing himself back into the river if he got close to the beach. We ran a mile or two downstream when we came to the slough we wanted to put the dock in. We really needed to make the turn and get the dock in the slough. If we overshot the slough, the wind would really be working against us. Brian turned the corner and the get boat skidded on the water into the brush on the far side of the slough. He quickly reversed, which slacked the line to the dock, and got turned up the slough just as the dock drifted by the slough entrance, and when we powered forward, the dock followed us up the slough. We’d made it. We boated up the slough and tied the dock off on both sides of the slough, where apparently it would ride fine through the winter as it had last winter. I’m sure I’ll think of that float sitting there in the slough this winter. We got back out into the river and headed for the bay. As we passed one island, flock after flock of honkers that were near the bank got up. Soon there were a hundred or more in the air. And more birds kept lifting. When we got to the front end of the island, we stopped and cut the motor. There were honkers and other ducks all around, and the honkers were really raising a racket. We left for town, but didn’t go directly to town but instead headed behind High Island to avoid the chop. Once at the other end of High Island, we headed for town and took the chop on our starbard for about 30 minutes till we reached town, and it wasn’t bad at all. B and the boat owner took the boat to the owner’s home on the trailer, and K and I took the day’s birds and dressed them on B’s boat. Bob’s wife Chris came for K and I and they put us up for the night while B stayed with the teacher. Bob cooked moose steaks and potatoes for dinner and it was excellent. I took the morning plane home the next day. As soon as I got to the house, I took out all the bird meat, cleaned it from feathers and bloodshot meat, rinsed it, and put it in collanders to drain. I’ll vac pack the meat tomorrow.

Forecast for Tuesday was for clear sky and high 40’s.  Weekend forecast was wet and windy, again, so time to start hunting as weather allowed.  I was idling in the Yukon with the boat behind in the driveway about 620 am wondering where Kurt was.  He’s never late.  I check the time on my flip phone and there’s a text sent at 250 am.  He’s sick and not going. Well, what to do.  I used to hunt by myself all the time.  Maybe he can go tomorrow.  But maybe he can’t.  What ifs.  I pull away for the boat launch.  If a bear gets me today, it’ll be a good day to go. I launch the boat and head out in a light northerly chop.  Supposed to be fog this morning but the wind blew it out I guess.  As soon as I get on step, I know it’s gonna be a great day.  And that I’ll get a deer.  I get to the anchorage about sunrise.   The raft I bought is just the ticket.  An 8 foot used Zodiac that only weighs 56 lbs and will float my fat ass.    I offload my pack, cased gun, xtratuffs, and ditch bag.   I coil enough line off the spool onto the beach to reach out to the anchor, tie the end off to the anchor, and back offshore.  I anchor the boat, put on hip boots and a life jacket, put the raft over the side, tie a piece of plastic pipe under the front of the raft so it will hit first before the raft bottom does on the barnacles, put in a pail for a seat, and climb in the raft with a kayak paddle.  It doesn’t paddle very well with the pipe under, but I’m not in a hurry.  The hip boots allow me to get out before the boat touches bottom so didn’t really need the pipe under there but it’s nice to have the extra protection.   I put the raft on my head and take it up above the tideline and tie it off to the logs.  I take off the hip boots and put xtrafuffs on.  I uncase my .30-06 and put the case in the raft and tie it off so the wind doesn’t take it away.  I find a clip in my pack and load it into the rifle.  I shoulder my pack.  It’s sunny sky and in the 40’s. The weather could not be better. I head up the hill and blow the call in the first muskeg I come to, but no takers.  I check the google earth map I printed out and vacuum sealed in a bag and note where I’m at and get my bearings to get to the big muskegs on the top.  I climb through the woods another 20 minutes or so.  As the trees give way to muskeg with bull pine and cedar bushes I slow down.  I creep along, looking for deer and an area where I can see but has cover enough that a deer will more likely come to the call. I find a downed tree for a good seat.  When I sit down, it doesn’t look good for shooting.  I see another seat 20 yards away, and this one is better.  I duff my pack, get comfortable, chamber a round and call. I hear something coming straight away.  I think “I hope it’s a deer” (and not a bear).  Soon the deer is in sight, and keeps coming fast.  I make a sound, and it stops.  I fire.  And miss.  The deer takes two bounds away and stops and turns broadside. Funny how I can miss a shot so close.  I’m the master of buck fever.  The second shot I hit the deer.  It hunches up and takes of quartering away from me.    With my heart pounding, I shoulder my pack and get on the path I think is where the deer went.  This is not country for tracking deer by hair or blood.  Too many red plants in the muskeg at this time of year.  I walk about 100 yards away and randomly look here and there.  No deer.  I know I hit it, and just about any hit with a 30-.06 on a blacktail deer is fatal.   I calm down, and walk back to where I was when I shot, then to where I think the deer was standing 30 yards away.  I tie flagging in a tree there, and then try to walk where I thought the deer ran, and tie flagging every 20 yards until I get 60 or so yards away without finding the deer.  I move a little further away and start back towards the hit area, paralleling my line of flags.  I then think – maybe the deer is a lot closer to the hit sight rather than further away.  I see a depression in a copse of cedar bushes near the hit site, and there’s my deer.  I’d hit no bone and the deer had not gone 20 yards from where it was hit.  You can walk right by your deer in this country.  It’s such a relief when you have to search like this and finally find the deer because there’s usually so little sign to track unless there’s snow on the ground. Next comes the longest hour of my life.  I dress the deer and leave the gut pile.  I start dragging the deer away from the gut pile and briefly consider dragging it back, and realize that is way too much work.  I find a tree in the open so I can see bruno coming.  I watched a you tube last week about skinning a deer by hanging it from the head rather than the hind legs, and think I’ll try it.  I tie the rope around the neck, throw the other end over the tree, grab the end and put the line through the loop around the neck, over the tree again, hoist the deer up until it’s the right height, and tie the rope off.  I take off the forelegs, then slit the inner side of each leg to the center.  Then skin around the neck and down to where the two front leg cuts meat in the chest center.  Then I started pulling down the hide from the neck.  This method worked pretty well once I got past the neck.  The hide pulls off of the legs easily and easy to cut through the tail.   After I got the hide off, I realize I didn’t have a saw.  I cut through bone as best i could at the waist with my knife, and twisted the top and bottom parts till it broke.  I put the hind half into the game bag.  I did the same thing at the neck, and put the top half in the game bag.  I loaded the bag into my pack’s main compartment, then put the knives, punched harvest tag, and other gear into the cover pouch of the pack.  I put fresh black tape over the muzzle, then shouldered the pack and headed for the beach.   The trip down was not bad.  About half a mile or so.  I got to the beach and had to back track about a 1/4 mile of beach to the boat.  This can be miserable walking on a big-stoned beach but not bad today.  The north wind had picked up a bit but the boat was neatly tucked behind a protective point.   I duffed my pack near the water line, and packed down the raft and gear to the same spot.  Then I pull in the anchor tied to the shore line, loaded the gear into the boat, and idled off shore.  I took both halves of the deer and sloshed them out in the ocean to cool them down and remove any remaining blood and offal.   I left the anchorage for the boat launch about 1230.  I got home, offloaded the boat and parked it, put the deer in new game bags and hung them in the garage, took a shower and was back to work at 230 pm.    A perfect day.  Except for the going back to work part. 

Not sure why you don’t discover simple things till you hit 50 but there it is. I’d never done anything with the bones and meat scraps left on them after butchering a deer till recently. Turns out this really extends the amount of food you get from the deer, plus it’s also some of the best parts to eat from the deer because Sara is so good at making soup or stew from it.

Making stock from deer bones is pretty simple. After removing the meat from each quarter, I roast these bones, along with the neck and back bones, in the oven. There’s always some meat left on the neck and back bone and that’s good. Roast on a baking sheet for 20 minutes at 450 degrees. When the bones come out of the oven, I let them cool. If the bones of the front and hind quarters weren’t cut through with a saw when I butchered the deer, I cut through them now. The bones are pretty soft after roasting, and I use a serrated bread knife or the like to cut part way through the bone, then wack the bone at the cut on the counter when Sara isn’t looking and they break easily. This will expose the marrow, which is some of the good stuff you’re after for the soup stock. I put the roasted bones in a pot and cover them with water. I don’t add any vegetables to the stock as we add them later when we make soup or stew. I bring the pot to a boil on the gas stove and let it simmer for an hour or two. When it’s cold enough outside that we have the wood stove going inside, I’ll get the pot boiling on the gas stove, then transfer the pot to the wood stove and let it simmer there.

I don’t have a specific time to let the thing continue boiling. At some point it’s going to look like like soup broth, and I take it off the heat, pull out the bones, strain the liquid through a fine meshed strainer, and put the liquid outside to cool. If there’s any fat in the stock, it will harden to a solid white lid on top of the broth when the broth is cold. This is easily pulled off in a few pieces and discarded to the ravens. From here I pour off the liquid into 1 quart-sized yogurt containers or just freeze it in 1 quart volumes in baggies.

Sara does the ribs in the same way, only with the ribs, we’re after both the meat and the bones. I cut each side of the rib cage into about 3 sections, and trim as much fat as I can, but you never can get it all it seems.  Then roast the ribs for a short time in the oven, like the bones. After roasting, we boil the ribs. When the meat is falling off the bones, they’re done. We separate the meat and bones and toss the bones. Sara makes “pulled pork” from the rib meat, and we freeze it in portions to make sandwiches. The water left in the pot is soup stock from the ribs, and we handle this like the bone stock. There definitely will be a white lid on the rib stock for sure, so don’t skip the step of chilling it down and removing the fat lid as deer fat can be kind of strong tasting. Making stock from the bones of your deer is a healthy way to use more of our harvest. Eating venison is great, but there’s something about eating a soup or stew from the stock by the wood stove on a cold day that’s even better.

I picked Bob B up about 6 am. The forecast was for sunshine and light northerly winds. We got to the ramp, and it was foggy, but not pea soup fog. There was some visibility, so we headed out and kept wiping the windows inside and out, and our heads on a swivel for any opposing traffic as I navigated by GPS. Cruiseship season is over so that made us a little more at ease. As we got out into Stephens Passage we could see the lower 20ft of Admiralty Island and knew we’d be fine now.

We were the first boat in to the bay we wanted to hunt – and why we left before sunrise. Even in the wilderness there can be competition for a hunting spot near Juneau. For most hunters, if you see a boat anchored near shore during deer season, you find another spot to hunt. I bought a little Zodiac raft at a garage sale to use to float to shore after anchoring the boat. It only weighs about 50lbs and it worked great. The only issue with rafts is beaching on the barnacles so I noted I need to take waders so I can get out of it before it touches shore. Bob caught the nose of the raft at the beach where I’d offloaded him and our gear. He took the spool of line tied at the other end to the anchor. He payed out the line up the beach and I put the raft on my head and we carried our cargo up above tideline. We took a compass bearing for returning to the boat, shouldered our packs and guns, and headed up the hill.

Fog was still settled up above the trees but we could see fine in the woods. We hiked uphill and called at some great looking muskegs and no deer. We crested the hills and headed down the backside that drains into Chatham Strait. The sun finally broke through the high fog about 11 am. We got to a muskeg with thick cover on both sides, and dropped our bags to call and have lunch. I had just put the granola bar into my mouth when Bob said “hey”. And pointed to the cover on the opposite side about 75 yards away. I looked to where he was pointing and there was a deer looking straight at us. The granola bar dropped out of my mouth so I could put the call back in, and we got our guns ready. Hearts were pounding. I almost called again when here the deer came, right towards us. Too many times I’ve been impatient. The deer was clearly on it’s way to us and all we had to do was sit and wait. I could intermittently see it working through the trees and grass. The deer kept moving towards us and at about 60 yards, we had a clear shot, and dropped it. I stood up and could see some slight movement in the grass on the ground and after we saw no movement otherwise, figured we had a deer down.

We walked over and saw a nice blacktail deer. I think the first deer of the season is always the best one. Especially when our freezer is bare of venison, having eaten and given away all of last year’s deer. Turns out a lot of non-hunters like deer and they don’t forget the favor. Bob and I are a good team and he’d seen me butcher a deer last year and knew what to do. I cut off the scent glands on the hind hocks, cut around the butt hole to free up the large intestine, and cut slits through the back hocks which we’d slide a stick through. Then I slit the abdomen and removed the innards, removing the heart from it’s protective sac for burger and the liver for my mechanic friend Izzie. I found a suitable cross stick, and Bob climbed a scraggly bull pine and threw the line over a branch. I lifted up on the stick that had the other end of the line attached in the middle between the deer’s legs, and Bob pulled his end around a nearby tree and when the deer’s head cleared the ground, he tied it off. After cutting off the hocks and slitting the hide up the front forearms to the chest, we set to skinning each back leg until we got down past the tail. Then the hid simply pulled off the rest of the way with minimal cutting. The deer had so much fat the hide just stripped right off. It was the easiest hide removal I’ve seen.

We cut the deer in half at the “waist” just forward of the pelvis. I took the ribs, front quarters and neck in one piece, and Bob took the rest in one piece. A group of ravens were now in the surrounding trees, squawking up a storm, and there was a magpie too. We looked up often, as we both guessed any bear in the area knows what the raven racket means. We shot the deer about noon and were on our way about 1 pm. We had to climb back up over the hill to the boat, and we took our time, which was easy on such a sunny day. We called at a few spots on the way back, but didn’t take the time we’d taken at each spot the way we did on the way in – duffing our packs, getting a comfortable spot, and taking our time. We just sort of came up to a tree, leaned against it, I’d call a time or two, and we’d move on. Of course, this cost us a deer.

Not too far from the beach, as we were moving after I’d called, Bob raised his rifle to a deer I could not see. He said to call again, which I did. He did not fire. Bob said the deer was coming to the call, but we’d already started walking again and when the deer saw us it turned around and walked back where it had come from, and when I called again, it took off. I never saw it. Instead of using my gps, I simply used my compass as I did before I had a gps, and this took us directly back to the beach within a couple hundred yards of the boat. The boat was floating and right side up. Not the way my previous boat was found last Nov. I told Bob there might be a few barley pops hidden somewhere, and after loading up and idling out, I found the secret stash, which never tastes better than after a full workout. We got back to town and I dropped Bob off. We decided I would cut off one of the backstraps on my piece, and call it good for dividing the meat, so when I got home, I took off a strap to take back to Bob as he planned to have it for dinner. Sara went with me back to Bob’s and when his wife got home, we decided we might as well all have dinner since Sara had just baked a pie with Haines cherries from Roy and Brenda’s.   That was a great meal. I never really thought about how good fresh meat is – like fresh fish. I think that’s how I’ll try to celebrate future successful hunts.