Winter is holding tight here. Temps between about 20 and 40. Cross country skiing is still excellent on a couple trails after we got 6 inches of snow last week. This weekend is sunny, mostly clear, a little north wind, and keeping things nice – not too cold. Got some snowshoes on Craigslist so I can get to the early season hooters this year. The male blue grouse will start hooting for their females in the coming weeks.
Is Your Face Hurting You?
A question all my nieces and nephews have heard. Multiple times. But mine really does hurt today. I was Xcountry skiing last evening by headlamp. We have a beautiful cross country trail at the base of our downhill ski area Eaglecrest here in Juneau. The trail is groomed for skate skiing with a classic trail alongside. I was in the classic trail, gaining speed around a curve, and could not hold my balance. Next thing I know the ground is coming up in a hurry, and I broke my fall with the side of my face on the hard corduroy snow of the skate-ski trail.
It was cold so I didn’t notice the abrasion I’d received till I got back to the truck and looked in the mirror. Put some ice on my eye when I got home but have a full-blown shiner today to go with a scraped forehead.
Old Friends
I returned to Starkville, Mississippi for a reunion of graduate students to celebrate the retirement of our major professor, mentor and friend, Don Jackson. John Jackson, a professor at Arkansas Tech, organized everything. We had barbecue and fried catfish on Friday night at the hotel and did some fishing and shot some clays on Don’s farm the next afternoon. John and I attended church at the Presbyterian Church with Don and John on Sunday, where I met Frank Davis, a professor promoting insect production for everything from reducing problem insects by producing massive amounts of sterile males of the species (bowl weevils and fruit flies) as well as producing insects to replace fish meal in fish feeds. Got so enthused I signed up for next year’s workshop. Might be appropriate technology for growing fish feed onsite in Sierra Leone. We’ll see.
John took me to and from the airport in Memphis, so got a lot of time to catch up and also to cross most all the rivers we worked on while at MSU. A lot of important southern fisheries biologists in the room that weekend and Don was duly proud.
Furless Friday
Went to check the traps on Friday on a flat calm day. Nothing in 6 sets! Looked and looked for otter after seeing so many on Tuesday but did not sight a single one. Lighting for seeing seemed poor, or it’s just 50 year old eyes. Got into the cabin after a long spell of not being there. I took the 3 marten and otter I got trapping so far this year to skin. I tried getting in from one side of the island and after post holing and losing the trail in the deep snow, I back tracked around to the other side of the island to go in, and that was mostly better, except there had been some wind event that snapped a bunch of seemingly healthy 12″ spruce trees down over the trail. Perfect for firewood, though, and I’ll have to get those later this winter. I was sweating up a storm when I finally reached the cabin with a pack on my back and the 30+lb otter and another pack in a plastic sled I dragged behind. Deep heavy wet snow is no fun.
Skinned my first otter after watching an 8th grader skin 4 in one night over Christmas in Craig. Their fur is like nothing else I’ve seen except for sea otter. Still puzzles me why the little marten garner such high prices compared to something like an otter.
A little windy and bumpy coming back today. I put the otter skin in a bag and in the freezer. The marten I fleshed and put on the stretchers in hopes to make the February auction, but I might be too late.
Crappy rain/snow looks like it’s going to continue for another week but it keeps more people from moving here.
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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
www.GoodSalmon.com
Otter Harvest
Reset my marten traps today. Got my first river otter, and a big one. My guess is about 4 feet head to tail and maybe 30 lbs? Saw a bunch of others but they were too slippery. Deer season ended today so from now to mid-Feb when trapping season closes I have the Admiralty coast pretty much to myself. About everywhere I set traps I saw hunters tracks but we didn’t hear a shot all day. We saw a deer on the beach but Matt decided it was too small. Lots of snow on Douglas and Admiralty. Could be a rough winter for deer, plus there’s a few wolves on Douglas and they will have a field day. I reached 50 and finally realized I can wear my chest waders trapping so I can anchor the boat far enough off to get the traps checked without the boat going dry. Who knew?
My Alaskan Life
Today, we went and checked a longline, then checked shrimps pots and baited them with some of the carcasses of fish from the longline. Found a deer that had been either shot through the hind quarters or perhaps had been injured by wolves. The deer was still alive but I could see through the openings right down to the muscles and there was puss-like stuff on the meat. We put it out of it’s misery. We came back and cleaned the fish and headed the shrimp, then had rockfish and halibut burritos for dinner. Then off to put the remainder of their trapline marten on stretchers. When we got there, there was a pile of otter and a mink. The 8th grader who had been trapping with his dad skinned all 4 otter while we worked on the marten, so I got to watch him and learn how that is done.