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.

The washing machine leak had finally reached the point that I needed to replace it, since it looked like it was a pump replacement and the old gal wasn’t worth fixing. I’d garage-saled on Sat and saw now washers. On Sunday morning, there was a new advertisement for a rare Sunday garage sale that had a washer. I grabbed my tip money wad from the summer and headed out the door, hopeful it would still be there. When I arrived, it was still there, and looked to be in good shape. The couple said their new house had a washer and dryer so they didn’t need this pair. I paid them for the washer and the husband help me load it in the back of the Aerostar.

Our laundry room fits the washer and dryer. Barely. So first the dryer had to be disconnected and moved out, then the washer. So far, so good. After removing the washer I noticed the floor was spongy under the linoleum. Spongy like I’d felt on the Dutch Master decks when they were rotted. So I cut away the linoleum and saw there was some rot in the flooring.

No sweat. I’ll just cut out a square to the centers of the floor joists and put in a new piece of plywood. Of course when I did this, I saw that the ends of the joists and the bottom of the stud wall were rotted. Now it was getting interesting. At this point I realized I would have to go from the outside in to see what the foundation looked like and how far up the stud wall the rot went. I took off the cedar siding and tar paper, and saw I was in for a project. The wall was rotted down to the sill. When I cleared the rot out, it looked like there was no barrier from the cement foundation to the sill. Even though the sill was pressure treated, it transferred the water from the foundation cement up the wall. I could see the problem was not likely limited to this wall, either, but decided to tackle the rest next summer.

So, it didn’t look too bad. Just take out the old and replace with new, sistering where necessary. The water spigot came out this wall, too. As I was replacing the floor base under the spigot, I pulled it up to get the board under. Whoosh. The piping that teed off the line to the washer to the spigot gave way, and I had a full pressure shot of water coming out. Luckily I’d had a valve installed to easily shut off the water to the house years ago, and so turning it off was easy.

I set out sweat the spigot pipe back in. Got the flux, solder and torch and went to work. Problem was that I couldn’t get the pipe hot enough because of water still in the line. I you-tubed a solution and saw I needed to cut the line before and after the tee so I could drain the line, then rejoin and put in the spigot line. I tried doing it all like I watched on the you tube and Tommy on This Old House. Put it all together and turned on the water. And sprinkler city. By now it was late in the day, so I wrapped the pipe as best I could to keep the leaks to a drip so Sara could have water, and called it a day.

The next day, I remembered seeing another you tube about new fittings that worked for copper and pex called shark bite fittings. How could I not know about these? I recut the piece from the day before, went to Good Hardware for a length of pex and the fittings, and was back in business. You can even take the fittings apart with a simple little plastic tool, which of course I had to several times.

I finally got the piping tight, and started in on the floor joists. At 20, I might have thought this too big a job or would have tried to find a book about it. At 50, I’ve seen this stuff before. It was just a matter of sistering new lengths here and there, putting some extra blocking in between the joists so I had something to support the floor, and putting in a pony wall between the floor joist base and the section of wall that had rotted. Pretty simple work and a sense of accomplishment with every piece replaced. Of course it always takes longer than you think down the home stretch. Thought I was about done when the tar paper went up outside. Then realized I had to still put in the spigot, which meant going to buy a new one, and also a redo for the dryer venting. Then an extra piece of dry wall to cover up near the floor where the drywall on the wall was tore out. Then put the replacement floor pieces in under the units, and put in some
connecting rubber floor matting I’d garage-saled years ago under the washer and dryer. So 6 days after what was going to have been a simple replacement, we had our new washer. Mama was happy, so everybody was happy.

Went to the cabin and picked berries for a few hours in the evening and planned to hunt Admiralty the next day.  It rained all through the night and I thought it was going to be another berry picking day as I didn’t want to hunt this early in the season in the rain, but then the rain stopped about 8 am and I got my gear together and headed out.  The wind was wrong to hunt the spot I wanted to on Admiralty, so I headed over to Douglas Island.  I headed to mostly new country today, and got into some nice spots for calling but didn’t see any deer.  I wonder how many the 2 wolves that appear to be living there are getting these days.  I did find some bumper crops of blue huckleberries, and almost got so obsessed with picking I was going to end up getting out of there at dark.  Planned on coho fishing on the way home but it was too late and I was too bushed and dehydrated to stop.  My water bottle is sitting full on the cabin table as I write this.