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.

Yukon River Moose Hunt 2017
My friend Bob P had been asking me to go with him on his annual moose hunt on the upper Yukon River, and this year I committed to go.  As things worked out, Bob went up by himself a few days before I did, so it was a solo drive for me.  I’d driven several times up to interior Alaska from Haines, but never taken the Taylor highway that starts east of Tok.  I got on the ferry to Haines on Sept 10 and arrived in Haines about 10am in the morning.  I’d bought a boat and kicker from a friend of Roy’s and stopped to pick that up on the way.  I’d made a custom roof rack with U bolts and 2×4’s on the GMC Denali Yukon, with eye bolts on the ends of the boards for ratchet strapping the boat down.  When I’d seen the boat earlier in August when we were up in Haines fishing, I was a bit concerned it might be too big for the car, but it fit just fine.  I ran 3 straps over the hull, tied down the front and back, and it was tight and didn’t affect driving.  I was on the road by about 1 pm.
I stopped at Canadian Customs, where I handedin my already filled-out gun transport forms and paid the $25 fee with Canadiandollars someone tipped me with on the whale watch boat last year, and was on myway.   Another group on their first trip through Canada with firearms, it seemed, didn’t have any paperwork pre-filled out so must have wondered how I was in and out so quickly.
The drive from the border to Haines Junction in the Yukon is my favorite part of the drive, with stunning scenery and little traffic.  I got fuel in Haines Junction at the PetroStop, and also an excellent homemade monster-sized spring roll sold by who Iassumed was the lady who owned the gas station.
I saw a pile of bunnies along the road as eveningapproached.  Looks like it should be agood year for lynx trapping up there. Saw some spruce grouse here and there, too.  I made it to Tok about 9 pm and couldn’t finda place I liked to just pull over and sleep so I bought a tent space at thelocal camp ground where I could unload what I needed to put down my sleepingpad and bag in the car, and slept like a baby.
Next morning I was up early and went to Fast Eddy’s in Tok forbreakfast.   I had to get a my mooseharvest ticket at the sporting goods store across the street, so I wasn’t in ahurry.  The owner opened the shop earlierthan posted because it’s moose and caribou season.  I got my ticket and a thermos of coffee and was off to Eagle.
I backtracked the 12 miles to the junction with the Taylor Highwayand headed north.  I was traveling up thehighway several days after opening day for moose and caribou in the area.  The first part of the road was deceptivelynice, made of payment and a normal width.  After awhile, the road turned to gravel, but still in good shape.  Hunting along this road is apparently done by4 wheeler, and every turn out from the road held about 5 trucks with trailers.  Their occupants were gone on their 4 wheelers for moose or caribou.    The passes were foggy and there was rainoff and on.
I got to the town of Chicken, which I realized was a miningsite, and got some coffee at the store. The road around Chicken was newlypaved, and again, a deception.   The roadsoon went to dirt and gravel.  I came tothe junction where you can go left to Eagle on the Taylor Highway or right to Dawson City in theYukon over the Top of the World Highway. The road was now mainly mud.  Itook the left, and continued on my way. The road go steadily narrower and moved along steep canyons.  Many of the turns were blind hairpin turnsand barely 2 lanes.  I had to go so slow due to the road and just hopeda person coming the other way would be going slow, too, and you’d have time toavoid each other.  The drop off down themountain to the river below was breathtaking – in a bad way – and you knew ifyou ever went off the road, death was a guarantee.  There’s even a sign noting where a borderguard had died when he went of the road some years back.  At one point, the road was down to almost asingle lane at one of the steepest and longest drops down, but at least it wasa straight section where you could see if another vehicle was coming.  Lots of squirrels and a few grouse along theroad.  And still trucks with empty 4wheeler trailers at every pull out.
When I finally reached Eagle, I was frazzled from thedrive.  I stopped at the restaurant forlunch, and told the waitress the Chamber of Commerce should have a persongreeting people coming into town for the first time with a comforting hug and tell them it’s all gonna be alright now.  Iimmediately liked Eagle.  Everyone seemedfriendly, with some neat well-kept rustic houses and buildings and several logbuildings both old and new.
Now for finding the boat landing and getting the boat downfrom the Yukon myself.  I easily found the boat ramp from Bob’s map and was able to getthe boat down with minimal damage to the rig. I put it in the water, and just like the seller told me – no leaks.   I mounted the kicker – a 1981 9.9 hp Johnsonoutboard.  I thought I’d better test theboat before loading it.  The outboard firedright up on the second pull, and  aftersome adjusting of the trim on the motor the boat and motor seemed to run justfine.  I  loaded the boat with my tent, campinggear, and food and rifle.  I parked theYukon in the lot at the ramp.  I left theextension rack holding the spare tire and gas on the back of the car andtrusted that no one would steal it as people seemed so nice in town.
As I got on my way, it was near 60 degrees and I was inshirtsleeves thinking – here I go, down the Yukon River, which I’d never beenon before, in a boat I’ve never driven, and everything is falling into place.  I easily found Bob downstream at camp an houror two later.  He was surprised to see methis early as I thought I wouldn’t get down to camp til the following day buteverything had gone so smoothly that here I was.
I got the tent set up oh the gravel bar next to Bob’s.  I have an ancient Thermos Prairie Schoonertent I bought from friends at ADFG back in my days in Kodiak who said theybought the tent for $25 for elk hunting and that’s what they’d sell it to mefor.  It’s a great tent that you canstand up in and easy to set up.  I set up a luxury lite cot I bought a few years ago for traveling to Sierra Leone, and put a 2 inch foam pad on it and my Wiggy’s sleeping bag.  Slept good all week and could have stayed there a month.  Or permanently. Bob told me the game plan of how he thought we should hunt.  We were at a place he thought the moose wouldcross from one side of the river to the other, and that we’d set up on eitherend of this long gravel bar area and wait for one to cross.  The river is only about a quarter mile widehere and only running in a single channel on the far side. The stream beds between the islands and the mainland on the near side were dry at this time of year. I could hear owls hooting across the river and Bob said it sounded likea great horned owl pair with an offspring just learning to hoot. They hootedday and night.  A cross fox that Bob thought was young of the year came around camp each night and had no fear of us, which was not comfortable for us.  Bob scared it away a few times and in future tours it steered a little more clear of us.

The colors were unlike any I’d ever seen in Alaska.  The hills were a sea of various shades of yellow, with some green, orange and red mixed in here and there.  The longer we stayed, the more yellow was added as the green leaves turned color.

The next morning I got to my hunting spot, and there weretracks galore.  Moose, bear, wolverine,fox, and maybe otter or beaver tracks. There were moose tracks that came across the gravel bar and right to thewater so it definitely was a spot where the moose did cross, as Bobthought.  I saw 3 swans fly over so low Icould see the definition on their tucked under feet – probably an adult pairand their fledgling.
On the second day, I saw something black from my huntingstand, which was on the dry stream bank in the crook of the roots of a tree I’d dragged to the spot which afforded me a view both ways up and down the dry streambed.  At first I thought it was a ravenhopping along the far bank, but then when it crossed the dry stream bed at thebend it turned into a blackbear.  I had no time to set up and shootbefore it was gone out of sight.  Ifigured it either would stay in the stream bed and Bob would see it from hisstand, or it would go up into the brush, so I didn’t pursue it.  I never heard Bob shoot and he didn’t see the bear.    Each day Bob would go to his stand and me to mine.  A few days in, I made a little blind of sticks to break up my outline sitting on the dry stream bank.  I read the ADFG hunting reg book to stay awake the 2nd day, but had not brought any books. Luckily, Bob had a huge novel – Once anEagle – he was reading.  The book was sobig he’d cut it into about 200 page sections, and gave me the sections he’dread so I would have something to read during the the rest of the days hunting.  I read like I never remember reading before.  Reading 150 to 200 pages a day.   Later the next day, I heard shots.  I gathered my thingsand headed Bob’s way.  He’d shot the bearI’d seen the day before.  Bob was prettykeyed up as you get when you shoot something, and he led me to the bear.  I’d never skinned a bear, so school was insession.

Bob placed a tarp next to the bear, and took out a knife hisparents had given him in the 60’s. First, he pulled out the intestine and I got to show Bob now toremove the intestine from the crotch area since we do this on deer.  He’d primarily only harvested bigger big game animals like moose, where youleave the guts in and simply take the quarters off as you go.  When he got the intestine out, he had me holda bag while he removed what he called the “mezzanine fat” from between thesections of intestine.  Apparently, thismakes the best fat or lard.  When he gotto the end of the intestine at the stomach, he sliced open the stomach to seewhat the bear had been eating.  It lookedlike a bowl of fresh berries, ready to eat. The greater section of the stomach was packed with high bushcranberries, and there was another small section where the bear must have founda patch of low bush cranberries.  Theberries were undigested and if you didn’t know they were in a bear’s stomach,they looked fresh and ready to eat.  Bobthen deftly skinned the bear out where it lay on the sand, leaving not a hairin the meat nor letting the skinned meat get into the dirt.  As he went, he cut off the quarters which hedropped into the game bag I was holding. I put each filled bag on the tarpuntil all the quarters were removed. Then we put the remaining torso in a game bag.  School was still in session, as Bob showed mehow to make a meat hanging pole.  Hefound two about 12 foot sections of small diameter beach logs, and tied themtogether side by side as tight as he could. He then crossed the tied sections into an “X” standing up off the ground, and in the top of the Xplaced a third log that extended down to the ground.  The two tied logs supported the third log andwe hung the game bags on the third log.  Bob then covered the logs with a tarp to keep the meat dry, and he putthe hide skin side down over the top of the tarp to dry the hide and keep thetarp in place. Brian bought me a Jet Boil for Christmas and I put it to work on this trip.  He’d bought me the coffee press attachment, too.  Every morning I filled the pot with water and put in some Folgers on top and brought it to a rolling boil.  Then turned off the heat, plunged down the grounds, and filled my thermos for the day.  At night, I cooked pouch meals Sara had sent, putting in some smoked sausage from Jerry’s meats to taste.  The Jet Boil is the best stove I’ve ever owned.  You can pack the stove and fuel cannister right in the pot and it boils water very quickly.   At night fall, we usually had a campfire and I’d share cookies Sara made with Bob and wait for the northern lights. One night in particular the northern lights were as spectacular as I’ve ever seen.  They’d go from nothing to a streak across the sky and right over our heads.  At one point, they looked like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with a billowing cloud of lights that looked like candle ice in the sky directly overhead.   It looked supernatural.  Maybe it was.   The last two days in camp we picked high bush cranberries.  I picked about 4 gallon bag fulls.  Bob picked about 10 gallons in a honey-hole he’d found.  Unlike here, the berries there seem to all have wild roses growing alongside them, and I got a few hips from the bushes, along with an annoyingly large number of thorns in the top of my hands while picking the cranberries. We hunted the rest of the week and never saw a moose.  The glorious dry weather that was warm in the day and cool at night may have had something to do with it.  Bob said the moose move more when it’s colder.  We found out the ferry was full from the 21st to the 25th, so I either had to make it down to Haines by the 20th or not get my vehicle back til the 25th.  Bob had a reservation for the 21st, so we decided to leave on the 19th.  I packed up camp and left first thing in the morning since I had to be in Haines a day earlier than Bob.  I was soon loaded up and on my way.  The outboard ran about a 1/4 mile and quit.  I thought maybe the fuel can wasn’t venting, so cracked the cap a bit more and got another 1/4 mile and again the outboard quit.  I then looked to see if the water pump was discharging water, and sure enough, the old outboard had the discharge hose going through a tiny nipple out the back of the outboard that a grain of sand could clog.   I removed the hose from the nipple, then removed the nipple altogether and just ran the hose out the hole the nipple was in. I had to jam a stick next to the hose to keep it going out the hole, but that did the trick.   I got back out in the river and was on my way.  The I was moving slowly upstream and didn’t have any more outboard issues.  The boat was plowing and going slowly, and I just thought that’s the way it would be.  I tried moving gear forward but that didn’t help.  About an hour or two into the upstream trip, I was coming by the ADFG sonar site, where they were busy test fishing along the shore.  I was going to stop and chat and dropped to idle for a second before changing my mind and speeding up.  That was like cutting off an anchor.  The boat planed right out and I was now going twice as fast as before – another lesson learned.  I probably could have cut an hour off my return time if I’d done this earlier. I got to the ramp in due time.  Now for unloading the boat and somehow getting it onto the Yukon myself.  Another guy came in in his jet boat with wife and two young kids.  I asked him how it went and he said it was basically a camping trip because of the two kids, who looked to be having the time of their lives.  He beached his boat then was up in his truck with trailer eyeing me like he wanted to back down to the spot I was at.  I asked if he wanted me to move and he said he wasn’t  in a hurry.  I moved to the other side of the ramp anyway and he backed down and loaded his boat.  I think it was then that he saw my roof rack and no trailer and asked if I needed help putting the boat on my car.  Did I!  I quickly unloaded the rest of the gear and he and I had it on the roof in 5 minutes with no harm to the car.  That was a Godsend.   Turns out he’s a logger on Afognak so we talked about elk hunting out there.  I got the car packed, stopped at the restaurant for a thermos of coffee, and was on the road at 1 pm.  It was a beautiful day and the road was dry and no fog.  The good luck just kept coming. When I saw all the vehicles and hunters along the road on the way to Eagle I wondered how the moose population could support such pressure – which I know, compared to lower-48 public land, is probably no pressure at all.  On my return trip, I changed me mind.  The weather was beautiful and the road now was dry and my apprehension of driving the road again was much less.  And I didn’t pass another vehicle going north for 55 miles.  Nearly all the hunting vehicles were gone from the pullouts.  As I looked over the country on either side of the road, all I saw was rolling hills and wilderness.  Not a sign of human design like roads or buildings or runways.  As far as I could see.   Just moose and caribou habitat – much of it burned black spruce that was replaced by willows and other deciduous trees and grasses.  Lots of country for a moose to hide and with so much country it could support a lot of moose and hunting pressure.    When I got to the Alaska Highway junction, I automatically went right towards Tok.  In less than a mile, I turned around and headed towards the border and assumed a gas station would be open between here and Beaver Creek in the Yukon. Plus I had my spare fuel still onboard.  I stopped at the station at Northway.  I asked the clerk how moose hunting was going and she said her boyfriend had gone towards the border and seen a cow and planned to try to get it the next morning but that a pack of wolves had beaten them to it.  I told her I was going to stick with deer hunting because of my lack of luck with moose, and she was surprised there were deer in Alaska.  She thought maybe they were introduced but didn’t know there were indigenous deer on the coast.  Just shows what a big state we live in.  I got through the border and headed for Haines.  I saw two sets of cow and calf moose, and several lakes still had swans in their last few days of young-rearing before they fly south.  I committed somewhat of a crime of driving through the northern part of Kluane Park and sheep mountain after dark, but I was wide awake and thought I’d drive as far as I could that night.  Wow, my 53 year old eyes cannot see at night.  The gravel parts of the road had no center line or line along the curb and I almost stopped several times when other vehicles passed me as I couldn’t tell where I was on the road.   I pulled over about 15 miles out of Haines Junction.  It took a little while to remove enough gear from the rear of the Yukon to put my pad and sleeping bag in but I slept pretty good once settled.  I awoke not long after sun rise.  I started the car and got out to take a leak.  The Bob Dylan CD was playing “When the night comes fallin’ ” and right on cue a small owl flew low overhead  and landed at the top of a spruce tree across the road.   I was soon in Haines Junction and not a restaurant is open at this time of year for breakfast.  After checking with the lady at the Petro Gas station to be sure I wasn’t missing an open eatery, I headed to Haines.  Back through my favorite stretch of the trip.  I stopped about half way and put in my 10 gallons of extra gas plus about 4 gallons of boat gas, emptying all my fuel containers so it would be easy to put them under the skiff on the roof when I got to Haines and then take off the rear basket that goes into the receiver hitch and put that on top of the boat so as not to have to pay for the extra length of my vehicle on the ferry. I stopped at Pete’s on my way in to Haines to get the boat registration that I forgot when I picked up the boat, but no one home.  Lots of high bush cranberries along his road.  I got to town and went straight to the ferry terminal to be sure my tickets were there and I was good to go on the evening ferry.  I called Brenda and she invited me out to her office for her birthday cake at noon.  I had breakfast at the Bamboo Room, then dropped off the egg containers Roy had given me duck eggs in earlier in August at the house, and went to the party.  Brenda works with a bunch of nice people and I even met their person who was in town from Craig and whose kid went to high school with my niece there.  I gave Brenda a gallon of my cranberries from the Yukon River.   I got out to the ferry early, and there were lots of moose hunting rigs there.  I put the gas jugs under the boat on the roof, then put the basket on top of the boat on the roof and tied it tight.  Then I got to looking at the other vehicles.   Every one of them that was moose hunting had a moose it seemed.  Everyone but me.  I talked with a guy I knew from Juneau and he got what he thought was a 1500 lb bull late in the last day he was hunting so I guess there’s some luck to it after all.  They had a small freezer in the bed of their truck running off a little Honda generator, and they were rotating the meat in and out of the freezer to keep it cool but not freeze it. I made my first batch of high bush cranberry ketchup on Saturday morning.  It’s the first time I remember using a manual food mill to remove the seeds and extract the pulp and juice from the berries, and the product was beautiful.  I had about 48 cups of berries plus about 12 cups in the freezer from last year.  I put the berries in the pot and added a few cups of water so the berries wouldn’t scourch.  When the berries were hot and soft, I started culling them out and running them through the food mill.  The 60 cups of berries made about 23 cups of pulp.  There was a quart of juice left in the pot after pulling all the berries and I saved that separately.  I put the pulp in the pot, and added 12 cups of diced sweet onion, 10 cups each of cider vinegar and sugar, 15 teaspoons each of salt, allspice, ground cloves and cinammon, and 5 teaspoons of pepper.  I put the pot on the woodstove to boil down.   After a few hours, the onions softened up and the consistency looked right.  I canned 48 half pint jars.  I tried the sauce with tortilla chips, and as a salad dressing and it’s all good.  Should be good on venison, too.    Bob had checked in via text.  He’d made it back just fine and got on the last ferry out of Haines as after his ferry got back, it broke and so no ferry for 3 days to Haines and they already were backed up and booked solid. Yikes.  The tent is hanging in the garage to dry it fully before putting back into the bag, and the sleeping bag is airing out near the woodstove.  I did a few repairs to the boat hull, put a new longer hose for the water discharge on the outboard, and put the hunting gear back up in the garage. This is one of those trips I’ll always remember.    With no moose, time to start getting serious about deer hunting.