Forgot to write about my hunting trip with Matt. He got a new hip a few months back and so picked a spot with muskegs not far from the beach he felt he could comfortably reach. I got the old 150 going and it ran fine down to the spot on Admiralty. The area was great but we didn’t see any deer and only a few tracks in the shallow snow. On the way out, I looked and saw what I thought was a seal not 10 yards away in the water. Then I realized it was a river otter, so I chambered a shell and the otter dove. He came up for a close shot, but I missed. The otter moved off shore and swam south. Everytime he came up he’d look back, and stayed well off shore till he was out of sight.

We got the boat loaded up. It would not start. I wore down one battery and then the other. Luckily it wa s nearly flat calm so I cranked up the 8 hp kicker and we ran home on it. I was glad I remembered the propane heater since it was not exactly wa rm out in the fading sun of late winter. We made it home without incident. I ordered a new used 90 hp Honda 4 stroke from a dealer in Port Angeles and it should be here on the barge and hopefully I can get it mounted this weekend.

Today is Jan 1 and so usually a sad day as it’s a 7 month wait till deer season opens again. But the weather is so crappy with wind and a driving rain that we wouldn’t be out today anyway.

Lost my best friend in Sierra Leone, Solomon Saidu, two days before my birthday. Seems it was not Ebola but somehow I am not so sure. His epilepsy was getting worse, and it seems something from that killed him. At least his family got him back to the village before he passed. Now his brother Francis is also sick and in Koidu for observation. Francis is the patriarch of the family and his son Alieu is in fear now of losing both his uncle and father. Francis will be under observation until results come back from his Ebola test.

Sara is in Hawaii with the Craig town family. I went to our cabin Christmas eve, borrowing Kurt and Jeff’s 16′ lund as I am waiting for my outboard to come in on the barge. It was good to get over there, and I was the only one on the island it seemed. The next day I went deer hunting on Admiralty above the salt chuck. I saw a few tracks but did not get very far up the hill with a late start and early sunset. Spent another night reading old Alaska Sportsmans magazines about polar bear hunting and deer hunting. In 1945 there was a 2 deer limit of bucks with antlers 3 inches or longer west of Cape Yakutaga and a 1 deer limit in Prince William Sound. The season was Sept 1 to Nov 15. Now the limit around here is 4 deer of either sex after Sept 15, and the season runs Aug 1-Dec 31, and there’s plenty of deer this year. With so little access other than by foot, the deer population is in little danger of overharvest.

I decided to return to town the next day as the wind was supposed to switch around to the north and could be a bit hairy coming across Stephens Pass. I met Ron’s two sons and 6 of their friends coming in on their scheduled hunting weekend out of our cabin. I made it home without incident, and the boys got a deer that afternoon and 3 more today.

I got out the high bush cranberries from the freezer and put them in a pot on the woodstove. I spent the day purging my clothing. I put a free ad on Craigslist and found a father who gladly took it all for his son. By evening the cranberries were thawed and boiled a bit and I got to making more syrup. Last year I tried making jelly but it didn’t set but the resulting syrup was so good I decided I liked it better so made that this year – 13 pints worth.

Still no snow on the ground at sea level. I awoke about 3. Don’t sleep much these days with all that’s going on with the family in Sierra Leone. I washed the dishes from the syrup making, sewed some blade guards for my skates from my old jeans, and sewed up a nice poly pro shirt I’d burned a hole in when it was too near the woodstove drying. Then set down here to print of an order sheet to send my otter hide off to Moyles. The ADD kicked in and here I am writing for the blog.

I tried the pressure washer for fleshing the otter I got last year. I’d never tried fleshing one and after putting several holes in it, stopped before I made things worse to learn now to do it properly. Then I found out about pressure wash fleshing it, and it’s nearly a miracle how well it works. I sewed up all the holes first, then got to it and thought it wasn’t working at first and then realized it was working perfectly. I plan to send it off to get tanned and sew a hat or something from it.

So this is for those of you who have hunted behind our house. If you recall, there is a muskeg up the hill towards Mike Hatch, maybe a 10 or 15 minute hike from the house.

With the first dump of snow for the year, I thought I’d see if any deer were pushed down from above the ditch trail. I moved up the hill and towards the muskeg, but with no intention of spending time there since I figured the deer would be in the woods with all the snow.

I busted out into a little clearing and saw another hunter’s track. The track was angling uphill towards the bridge, so away from where I was going, but it still meant others were in the area. I also spotted a pile of high bush cranberries on a bush, then looked around and saw several other bushes with lots of cranberries, so I decided to switch to berry picking as I figured the deer hunting wasn’t going to be so great with others hunting the hill. I picked all the berries in the area, then continued up the hill to find more and soon busted into the lower part of the muskeg. I saw more tracks and thought there might be one or two other hunters on the hill, in addition to the tracks crossed earlier. As I worked my way around the muskeg berry picking, I noticed people had walked all over it earlier this morning. After working the edge of the muskeg, I headed towards the brushy area in the middle of the muskeg.

And there she was. A large doe. Standing broadside. 20 yards away in an opening in the brush. With snow on her back. Looking at me, but not alarmed.

I chambered a shell, brushed snow out of the scope, clicked the safety off, aimed as the deer turned to walk away, pulled the trigger, and nothing. I thought the safety was frozen shut as it had been dumping snow all morning. I finally realized what I thought was the safety was actually the bolt release, and is located where the safety is on the .243 I’d been hunting with on Prince of Wales for 3 weeks. On the 30.06 I was holding, however, the safety was right under the back of the bolt. And it worked easily when I finally figured it out.

As soon as I figured this out, off I went, easily following the deer’s track. She didn’t run hard. Stopped to pee and poop in a spot. Looked like she stopped and looked back at one spot. She led me down the hill to the left, then right across the hill, then left and uphill again right back to the muskeg where we’d started. The whole time in the brush.
She crossed my track where I first started tracking her, as well as the tracks of the other hunters. The only time she ran was when she came into the wide open part of the musket and took a few bounds into the big woods above the muskeg. I quit tracking her there as I figured I wouldn’t be able to catch up to her to see her again. It looked like that deer was in the brush in the muskeg the whole time the other hunters came through, and as I was just going from tree to tree berry picking, maybe she thought I was not a threat until we locked eyes, and I jacked in a shell and aimed. Had that been a bear coming at me, he’d still be eating right now as I’d never have figured out the safety thing in time. I got a half gallon of berries for my effort and know there are more berries I left when I started after the deer so I’ll get back up there for more.

Next time I’m taking the 30-30 with open sights. I don’t think after that first chance I had that I would have even been able to see through the scope as it was iced up, so a smaller gun with open sights will work better.

The best stories are always about the ones that get away.

Oct 31 we hunted my favorite bay. I had required John to take Hunter Education in PA before I would take him hunting here, even though it’s not a requirement in Alaska. PA does not include shooting with it’s hunter ed, so the first thing we did when we were dropped off and hiked up to the logging road was to have John shoot the .243. I shot first and showed him how the gun worked. Then he shot. He hit the paper from 50 yds and said he was good to go.

Hunted all day in the pouring rain and saw nothing. This spot can either be on fire or dead. Seems the deer come in here in November during the rut and they just weren’t in yet. On our way back down we almost tripped on a buck with tiny fork antlers. The deer just looked up at us, then continued to feed. I asked John if he wanted the deer and he was trying to get off his scope covers and load a bullet. I got nervous and asked John if he wanted me to take the deer and he said sure, and one shot to the neck and that was it. I wondered if I should have waited for John to take the deer, but hoped we’d find him a bigger one. This gave me the chance to show him how to field dress a deer, as well as good shot placement for a quick kill. John was not real impressed with removing the innards from the deer. Neither the blood, organs, or smell. I don’t think being an emergency trauma doctor is in his future. I moved some of my gear from my pack to John’s pack and tied the deer to my pack to carry it out. Again, it sucks to be 50. Sister Julie had gone to hunt with Ellen and they got trapped in the same bowl surrounded by cliffs I did last year and didn’t see any deer. We set dungy crab pots on the way home. Later that evening, Brian’s brother and nephew stopped by and picked us up to fish cohos in the river. I’ve never seen so many coho spawning and jumping. They caught fish till dark.

Nov. 1 we were all bushed. I was sore all over. But mid-morning we got around to hunting and I felt better after a couple ibuprofen and moving around. John and I went to a small island you could walk around in a couple hours. I was calling in a muskeg for about 20 minutes when a big buck came in. I think I immediately thought I was happy I’d taken the small buck the day earlier as this was a big deer. I saw him coming and tried to get John in position. I was between John and the woods where the buck was coming. John had a hard time seeing the deer through the scope from the sunny muskeg into the dark woods. John said when he did find the deer in the scope and was ready to shoot the deer moved and he could not pick it up again in the scope. Had the same problem shooting at a buck on Douglas a couple years ago with Matt. That time it was just plain dark in the woods with the 4 power scope and when the deer finally moved from behind the tree I couldn’t find him and he walked off. I got the big 3 point that same day, though. Anyway, I was on my back and didn’t have my gun and never saw the deer again. It was a great time for both of us to see that big deer. Later in the day we were in some thick woods and I called in a doe exploded from the spruce trees and just about bowled over John.

Nov. 2 we hunted in a logged off area and walked a road in from the beach. We called in 2 doe on a bench but saw no bucks. I cut up the first deer that night and we got it vac packed and into the freezer.

Nov. 3 we hunted an island across from the house. On our way to our spot, we saw a buck on the beach. John and Spencer rowed the punt to the beach to take it. By the time they got to the beach, the buck had walked up into the woods. John and Spencer walked up into the woods where they rowed in to see if they could see the buck. Not long later we heard a single shot. Then a phone call. John had his first deer. After a while, we saw them emerge from the woods with Spencer dragging the deer. They got into the punt to row back, and John almost rolled out out the beach but kept his balance. I’m sure Brian was thinking of my rolling the same punt 2 years ago when I went to shore after a buck. John had made a perfect shot in the neck. Again, he’d seen me take the one 2 days earlier so that may have helped.

We continued to our drop off spot. We only had one tag for John, so now was doing the calling for Uncle Mark. The first place he called, in came a doe. I said to watch the direction from where she came as a buck might be trailing her. I looked up and there was a buck. I waited for it to walk towards John and into a small opening so I could take it. It stopped when it saw John, who did not have his gun as he’d got his deer and had no more tags. John said later he could see the whole deer and could have easily taken it. I got one more look at it and when I raised my gun to fire it hopped away. We could see parts of it later but not for a shot. We saw another doe or two but no more bucks that day.

Nov 4 was a homework day in the morning. I got up at 4 am and butchered John’s deer. John worked on his homework. In the afternoon, Ellen took Later in the day, Ellen took John and I to the range to practice shooting. He shot a .22 rifle at several different positions that Ellen coached him through. Then a few shots with the pistol. Finally, we moved to the long range and .243. John was a crack shot at targets at 100 yards. He now had alot more confidence and it paid off the next day. In the evening, I took him to catch some coho in the river. We got some rods from Brian and stopped at Black Bear store to buy some vibrax lures. I bought 2, and John quickly lost those, so we drove back to the store to get some more. He hooked several and landed a few. Fish were jumping everywhere in the river. Never seen coho like this before in Nov when they are ready to spawn. We also bought John another deer tag.

Next day was Nov 5, and we went back to the same island John got his first deer. Spencer and Ellen got dropped off at other spots and John and I at about the same place we missed getting the buck 2 days earlier. We got to the first good spot to call, and John, with a fresh tag, still did the calling. He called once, then said he had a doe to his left. Next thing I see he’s raising his rifle to look, brought it down, brought it up again and fired. I heard a deer running through the salal but never saw the deer nor heard it pile up, and we were only 10 yards apart when he shot. He said the deer was not a doe but a buck. He said he was going to shoot it in the neck, and when he went to fire it moved so he shot it in the body. We went over to where it had been standing and started putting up flagging. We followed the trail out where John thought it went, and saw no blood or hair at the impact site or the trail. When I got down the trail about 20 yards, there were some deadfalls and I thought maybe John had shot it further away than he thought, so I started back to the impact area a little further away. I saw a log with just some faint blood on it, and a salal leaf with a single drop of blood. Bingo. We had a trail of sorts. I then thought I heard some thrashing – but just barely over the sound of a nearby creek. Had it not been a sunny dry day, the creek may have been running harder and I wouldn’t have heard the thrashing. i called to John that I had found blood, then headed on the trail, which showed the deer actually went downhill from the shot, then had backtracked uphill. I found the deer about 20 or 30 yards up the trail. When I saw it, it was with it’s back to me, and was my first sighting of the deer. It had a wide rack and a wide shoulders. A big deer. It was not dead so I shot it in the neck where it lay. John came along and when the neck shot did not suffice, I shot again at the base of the ear and that put the deer out for good. It was a nice wide fork horn buck with eye guards. Turns out John had shot it in the back ham. It hit no bone but perhaps the femoral artery since it went down so quickly. I told John later when we talk about hip shooting, it’s shooting the gun from the hip, not shooting the deer in the hip. He didn’t think it was all that funny of a comment. Brian and Ellen did. I told John I have a million of these jokes.

John had watched me gut his first deer and this time he had to do it himself. I tried to get him started and going, and he kept implying he couldn’t do it and that I should show him how to do it again. I said I had all day and night if necessary and he would be doing it or it wouldn’t get done. It took awhile but he finally got the deer gutted. I explained numerous times about reaching up through the severed diaphram to feel for the heart and lungs, then cut above them. When he finally reached up far enough and felt the organs his eyes lit up as the light bulb went on. I dragged it down to the beach and marked the spot with flagging so we could find it later, and put a waypoint on the GPS. We didn’t see another deer all day. Ellen and Spencer also got a deer that day.

On the way back we checked the crab pots, and they were full. We got home and I skinned John’s second deer.

Nov 6 was another homework day. I butchered deer during the day. At mid day, we went to check the shrimp pots, which had lots of shrimp. We’d hoped to go to the range another day but it didn’t happen.

I can’t remember what we did Nov. 7. Nov 8, John and I took the ferry to Ketchikan in the morning to meet his dad, who is a commercial pilot. He came up on Alaska Air from Seattle and met us in Ketchikan. I walked them back to the airport ferry, then went to the sporting goods store to kill some time before catching the returning ferry in the evening with some more friends of Brian and Ellen who they went bison hunting with last winter.

Nov. 9 I went back to the same spot John got his buck. I hiked in the same way, but moved up the hill to the right instead of the left. I did not call any deer. It got to be about noon and thought I’d better start back. I came down out of the woods and came into a clear cut. I thought I’d eat lunch here in the sun and try calling. It was a spot that deer could probably only come in below me due to the slash arrangement in the clear cut.

I called in a doe from my right. I could see her coming up the hill by the trees wiggling like a downhill skier going through slalom gates. She finally came into view 15 yards away. She stopped. looked up, kind of hopped across to my left, and I never saw her again. I thought like the buck we’d seen when John called and I missed that a buck might come up behind her on her trail. I kept calling and in maybe 5 or 10 minutes, I see the trees wiggling again. A small buck came and stopped in the same spot the doe had, and I dropped it. It was not an easy drag back. When I got to the spot the deer lay, I couldn’t even tell how either of them made it around all the slash to get to the spot. The drag out was over and under logs of felled logs and deadfalls. I took my time since I had it, and called a few more places but saw no more deer.

Nov. 10 I was dropped off at a new place. It was an area of logged off land and I was to climb up to a road, then walk the road and look for deer. It was pretty tough walking. Not far from the beach, the dead falls and slash from logging started and I had to climb over and under the trees. When I broke into the clear, I saw a big buck lumbering up a creek wash. I was on felled trees at the time, and tried to find a rest as the deer was 200 yards away. I called and stopped it on the road but was trying to balance on the trees and find a rest for a long shot and the deer didn’t wait long enough and walked out of sight. There was a patch of woods to my right going up to the road, and I continued to call hoping the buck might come down. I did call in a few does but not the buck. I worked my up the wood patch and called again and probably spent 1.5 hours getting up the short distance to the road hoping to see a buck.

When I got to the road, I walked as directed and soon came to logs in the road, and it was hard to tell if I was even on the road anymore. I saw some unlogged woods to my right as I rounded a point, and made my way down the road until I could find a trail through the clear cut up to the woods. In reality, I had just rounded a point on the road and by going up to top of hill where the woods were I was headed back over the top to the spot where I reached the road. I got up into the woods, which bordered a clearcut that was uphill from where I’d come out of the woods onto the road when I first came in. It was a great place to call and see and I settled in on a sunny day in the dark woods. I called a few times, and saw a doe come up from the edge of the clear cut, but she did not come all the way over to me. Not sure if she winded me or what but I never saw her. I kept calling and same as the day before, 5 or 10 minutes later here comes a buck, but this time, a big buck. I got ready to shoot and it stopped behind some trees along the trail about 20 yards away. I waited and then gave a soft mew on the call. The buck couldn’t take it and took a couple steps forward, and I dropped it with a neck shot. A nice big fork horn.

I found a place to hang the deer because although it wasn’t all that far to the beach, I already knew it was a crap fest for walking. It was a little after noon and I had plenty of time. I skinned the deer and butchered the deer. Cut off the quarters, back strap, and tenderloin. Then filleted off the neck meat, and filleted the rib meat. Probably took 1.5 hours and I took my time. I put the meat in my pack, checked where I was on my GPS, then headed for the beach. I came to a very nice muskeg that I was on the edge of in the woods but I didn’t know it at the time. I blew for awhile in the muskeg thinking if I got another buck, I could field dress it and hang it and come back the next day to retrieve it. But I didn’t see another deer.

When I came down from the muskeg I was much closer than I thought to the road, and I hit the road near where I’d come up to it. That’s when I realized the buck on my back may well have been the buck that I saw coming in. I butchered the Nov 9 buck that night, and hung the bags of deer parts from today.

Nov 11 was deer butchering day. I butchered the deer, vac packed all of it, put it in the freezer. Heading home tomorrow. What a great time here. One of the best weeks ever with John. Hope the nuns like his story back at Catholic middle school in Pittsburgh and keep his detention light from all the new words he learned in Alaska.
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Kurt had Friday off and wanted to go deer hunting. We headed out about 8 am, figuring to hunt the south end of Douglas as it was pretty windy for getting across to Admiralty. Our first choice was taken and like so many other times, that was a good thing, it seems. We rounded the south end of the island where there was the north wind blowing that we expected. We cruised along the shore line until we found a tiny bite that was protected from the wind. The tide was high so we knew as long as the wind stayed the same, the boat should be fine as the point behind the bite would increase the wind protection as more of it became exposed as the tide dropped. I used Sara’s gift to me of a small punt made at Juneau Douglas shop class she bought for my birthday. I dropped Kurt, the gear, and one end of a shore line, paddled the big boat out into 20 feet of water, dropped the anchor with the other end of the shore line tied to the anchor, then gingerly piled into the punt and pulled myself to shore with the line. It was a blue bird day with blue sky. This stretch of the mountain was great hunting. Nearly all of it was open woods and the leaves were gone from the blueberries and devils club. We steadily climbed the fairly gradual ascent for an hour or more before we tried calling. I’d guess we were about 2/3 of the way to the top of the mountain when we called for the second time. I saw the top of a blueberry tree shake and knew it was a deer coming. I was in a position for a shot in a prone sitting position when the deer appeared above me about 50 yards. I should have been more ready to have a tree next to me so I could have used it for a better rest. I snapped off a shot, and the deer just stood there. I chambered another shell and “click”. The bolt did’t chamber the next round. By the time I did get another round in the deer had retreated. As we learned later we should have taken off after it rather than try to call it back. I also should have waited to see if it would have come in closer to me but was too anxious. We worked our way to the top, where we found the only really brushy conditions, but still not too bad. We could see the channel down one side and Stephens Passage on the other. After hunting around the top for awhile, we decided to head down. I was in the lead and almost took us down the channel side. I let Kurt take the lead to at least get us down the right side of the mountain. We would call at good looking places on the way down, and at one stop, I called up a deer, Kurt tried to get off a shot but could not find the deer in his scope, and it retreated. He said it was a big doe. I did not see it. We were coming down the middle of a valley, so Kurt went down one side and me the other as we figured the deer would not go far and it was pretty open country. Not long after we split up, I saw the deer, retreating back up the hill in a little side valley, standing just past a big rock with a tree on top of it. It looked like a big deer. This time I got a solid rest against a tree, fired, and saw the deer wheel around and out of sight as if it went right down. A few seconds later something caught my eye moving down the gully in the center of the valley. I told Kurt to come over below me in the valley. I went to where the deer had been standing, and there was no deer. I looked all around and no deer. No fur. No blood. Nothing. Then Kurt yells “here’s your deer”. Somehow, a deer with a 30.06 through the wheelhouse had not gone right down. When I got down to Kurt I was relieved. The bullet had gone through one lung and out further back. Must not have hit any bone. The deer ended up being not a very big deer – a button buck. I dressed the deer, gave my soft pack to Kurt, and loaded the deer whole on my BullPac. It was mid-afternoon, and probably took us another hour to get down the mountain. Being up the mountain is very deceptive. It looks like the water is right there, and you forget it took several hours of climbing to get to the top. We finally got to the bottom, only to find we were perhaps a mile down the beach from the boat. Always hard to tell just how far you are from the boat since you think the next point on the beach is where the boat it, only to find it’s not and it’s a long way to the next point to see if that’s the right one. We decided to get back up into the woods to try to walk the beach trail, but that wasn’t much better either, as it was mostly along cliffs to the beach. We finally found a small creek through the cliffs that allowed us to get back to the beach, and I left Kurt and our packs there and headed to the boat along the beach. It was like using a doughnut on a baseball bat in the on-deck circle. Once freed of the pack weight, it was so much easier walking. Plus, knowing there was PBR from last week’s hunt made the walk even easier. I got to the boat, pulled in the anchor, loaded the gear, and tied off the punt with the groundline piled inside. I did not want to take the time to wind it on the spool. After starting for Kurt, I noticed the punt wasn’t riding right. When I got back to see it it was filling with water and the ground line had come out. I was not able to save the ground line and it was gone. I pulled the punt on board like I should have done from the get go, then went on for Kurt. I knew after about 5 minutes I’d passed him, so turned back for another look. It’s amazing how hard it is to see someone on a beach, even when you’re looking for them, and especially if they have on drab colors or camo. His pack was lime green, and he was waving that back and forth and I just caught a glimpse of it. I picked Kurt and our gear up and we headed home. By now, it was calm in Stephens Passage but really blowing across the channel. I’d not closed the front door as both of us were still hot from the walking. Next thing I know we take a wave directly over the bow which hit me right in the waist. Still learning about the new boat! We closed the door, but didn’t secure the canvas roof. By now we were taking on waves full on the side so I had to get dripped on from the roof the rest of the way home. I couldn’t see out of my side but Kurt could out of his, so we limped through the waves about half way down the channel to Juneau, when we were finally out of the wind and in calm water for the rest of the trip to Douglas Harbor. Both of us were exhausted, and drank fluids the rest of the night, trying to hydrate. I was glad not get get any cramping overnight. Today will be butchering and listening to the college games on the XM.

Went hunting this weekend with my college buddies Todd and Keith. Keith is a guide on the Kenai, and Todd and I dipnet with him on the Kenai River. Todd has been here twice before with his son Alec, and both times were monsoons. This weekend looked like more of the same. On Friday, we launched the boat and first checked the crab pot. A pile of legal crab were in there. I rebaited, and then we took off for Admiralty. We hunted some large muskegs I’d seen on the map but could not remember hunting. It rained. And blew. And rained some more. We saw no deer. But back at the cabin we settled in for the weekend in a nice warm, dry place.

The next morning when we headed out to the boat, it was gone. I looked down the channel and saw nothing. Then I saw the boat. About a 100 yards down the beach. Nestled above the big rocks, right in the small gravel, at the high tide mark. Luckily, the evening high tide was the lower of the two, and we saw that it would float again in the afternoon. I said we could take the kicker off the boat and use my skiff that lives on the beach there, but they were having none of it. Both were apparently wore out from the day before and voted to go back to the cabin and listen to football games. Mississippi State was playing Auburn, and could potentially go to number 2 in the polls, I thought, if they won. Oh, and by the way, the line from the boat to the pull out didn’t break. My know came undone. Yikes.

So back at the cabin, and football all day. Minnesota (where Keith is from) won. Then Mississippi State won. Even Ole Piss beat A and M. We went back to the boat about an hour before high tide and it floated easily and I putted back to the anchorage and put a better knot to hold it tight. Saw some real rain again on Sat. I managed to pick a coffee can of huckleberries still hanging on.

Yesterday, we went to my best known trail and up we went. We called at all my usual spots and it was a great day of weather. Todd and Keith got to see all the skunk cabbage uprooted by bears, and some fresh deer sign, but we could not call in a deer. I think they are still at higher elevations as it’s still so dang warm – about 50 here in the middle of October. And the fog was running just a few hundred feet up the ridge from the top muskeg so we didn’t try to climb the steep stuff.

This morning was another dry day, with little wind. I did the dishes and tidied up, then we headed out around low tide. We ran the beaches on Admiralty and Douglas and not a deer to be seen. I saw one humpback whale just as it dove.

A great weekend all the way around.