Home Mark Stopha,Alaska

Kelp Marathon

Got after the kelp today.  I was going to make salsa, relish and pickles, but after the salsa looked so good, I decided to do more of it and not any pickles.
The bull kelp stipes are very interesting.  I had peeled some to make pickles, and left the rest with skin on.  The pieces with the skin on were so slippery I could barely pick them out of the bowl to put in the food processor. The stipes left behind this clear sort of gelatin coating on the bowls – maybe that’s the stuff they use to thicken ice cream.   The recipes called for running the kelp through a grinder, but the old food processor we garage saled seemed to do just fine.
The kelp stipes turned from brown to dark green in the fridge.  During cooking, it turns from dark green to a vibrant lime green.  The stipe is very fleshy – I’d guess maybe the texture a cross between a cucumber and a grape.  It chopped beautifully in the food processor.  
It’s been an all day affair, chopping, processing, or canning since 8 ish this morning and getting done now at  830 this evening with the last batch of salsa coming out of the water bath canner.  Luckily, this is water bath canning and not pressure canning, as that would stretch it out to another day, at least. 

Upland greens

Laura and I went to the fiddlehead pasture today.  Fiddleheads were plentiful.  Nettles were sparse.  I made Tongass Pesto last in 2017 and we are on the last bag of it from the freezer, so I needed some nettles to go with equal volumes of fiddleheads and devils club buds to make more.  I need to look around for another nettles honey hole.  
A nice day to be up the hillside in the high country.  The fiddleheads at sea level are largely passed picking, but up in our pasture they were fine.  We also saw the whole top of the hillside giveway in an avalanche, which made us look up the chute we were in to be sure we weren’t in danger.  
I brought the book by Janice Schofield’s book of Alaska plants back from the cabin after I “discovered” it there a few weeks ago.   When I looked around the chute we were in, I realized there really aren’t  that many species of greens coming up in the plant community there.  One plant I noted that was growing all over the place and identified from the book was False Hellebore, which is poisonous.  Good to know.  Lots of twisted stalk coming up, too, which Chef John Cox and Hanni introduced me to many years ago, but I don’t know if there’s a way to preserve it, so I just snacked on some of it fresh, but didn’t collect any.
Only one or two other green plants coming up I need to learn and then I’ll know about all of them on the slope. 
When I got home, it was time to clean the fiddleheads.  Normally, I put them in a pillow case and put in the in clothes dryer on air fluff.  This time, I thought I’d try it in a little backpack that had a zipper that I thought would be a nice convenient closure for doing batches of fiddleheads, instead of tying off a pillow case.  It worked great until the last batch.  I put a little rock in the outer pocket of the pack to see if it helped clean the fiddleheads.  Not sure if that made the difference, but the zipper on the main compartment opened, and I had fiddleheads and chafe all over the inside of the dryer.  I put the fiddleheads back in the backpack and removed it from the dryer, cleaned out the chafe as best I could, then pulled out the lint screen and turned the dryer back on.  The chafe was sucked out the dryer vent in short order, cleaning out the dryer, and I put the lint screen back in.  Problem solved.

Hooters gone silent

I took Nick, the son of my inlaw’s cousin, hooter hunting today.  He had deckhanded on his uncle’s seiner for several years, and just finished his marine biology degree at UAS.  
A glorious day about 70 degrees, sunny and a slight breeze.   We went to Admiralty Island where Bob and I got 2 birds and missed out on two others a few days earlier, when birds hooting all around us.  Not sure why, but we couldn’t hear any birds hooting as we climbed up the hill.  Usually, you can hear birds up on the ridge, but if those birds were calling, they were barely audible.  I noticed (again) I’m getting old, as Nick could hear birds further away that I could not.
About half way up the hill, we stopped to listen, then took off our packs for a drink of water.  We started talking- one of the joys of hooter hunting, because you don’t have to be quiet as the birds don’t care – and sat there a good half hour or more.  And then a bird hooted about 50 yards away.  And another one answered 100 yards up the hill from that one.
We had to negotiate a train wreck of dead falls to get to the tree the bird was calling from.  As we got close, I could see ahead there was a deadfall across little swale I could duck under to get to the tree the bird seemed to be in. As I neared the deadfall, the bird exploded from his perch on that deadfall, to a nearby tree, landing low in the tree.  Nick saw it right away.  It was still so close that when we tried to get in position for a shot, it exploded again, flying to a nearby tree below us to a low branch.  We moved down in the bird’s direction, and Nick soon saw him, again in a low branch. 
Nick had my .22, and was getting a rest for a shot.  I had the 12 gauge further down the slope and would be back up.  Nick kept trying to shoot, but the gun wasn’t firing.  I asked him to look at the shell from the chamber to see if it had a dimple in it so we’d know if the problem was the ammo or the gun.  No dimple, he said.   He finally, told me to take the bird, which I did.  
As soon as I shot, Nick realized he was actually moving the safety in the wrong direction.  I felt bad for him as I know what it’s like to use an unknown gun for the first time.  I should have checked the gun when it wouldn’t fire but we were too anxious to get the bird.
I showed the bird to Nick, put it in my pack, and we climbed half way from our position to the upper muskeg at the base of the mountain to try for the second bird we’d heard.  We spent another 30 minutes waiting there, and eating some smoked salmon Nick had made with cohos he caught from the beach in Juneau last summer, using his mom’s smoking recipe.  It was very good.  The bird never piped up.
We worked our way up to the lower muskeg. We could hear birds rather softly hooting further up on the ridge, but there wasn’t time to get to them as I had to get back for scouts.

We saw a lot of scratching on the muskeg up there.  Just barely scratching of the surface, and not deep down digging.  Don’t remember seeing this before.  There were lots of these little ~ 3 ‘ x 8’ scratches.  Seemed like a brown bear would have scratched deeper but maybe they have that dexterity.  Nick noticed a last little patch of snow, so I plucked and cleaned our bird, and packed it with snow to cool it down.

We headed back down to the beach.  The mountain greenery had exploded since being here just a few days earlier.  We came across some skunk cabbage dug up by a smaller brown bear.  It was one of the first times I’d actually seen the foot prints in the mud of these digs, as it was a recent dig and there had been no rain for a week.   I wondered if this was the young brown bear that was terrorizing some residents of a nearby island with summer cabins.  Not really for any bad deeds, but merely by it’s presence, much of which has been discovered on web cams. Bears have been coming and going from the island long before people put their cabins there,  and long after the cabins were built, but were not under the modern surveillance, so they went unnoticed from the cabins that are used only part time by all but one of the island residents. 

I was happy to see the boat floating nicely at anchor when we got back.  Finally, a trouble free end of trip.  Just pull the anchor and go.  Except the anchor was hung up.  We could budge it a foot or two once in awhile, but it would not come free.  Finally, Nick stripped down to his boxers and tee shirt and waded out.  The anchor chain had fouled in a tree on the bottom.  I saw the tree on the beach when I set the anchor on , but didn’t figure it would be a problem – why didn’t it float?  He freed the anchor and brought the boat to shore.  I told him to just hop on the boat and I would hand him his clothes and gear.  But, too late, he realized why I was telling him this – all the barnacles on the rocks.  He felt a pain in his foot.  As we were motoring away, he saw he cut his foot in the meaty pad underneath the base of the toes pretty deeply, but it did not bleed and was incredibly clean.  He got out his first aid kit and dressed the wound. 
Back at the launch ramp, I handed Nick the bird.  He thought I should have it since I shot it, but I told him shooting isn’t the tough part – seeing the bird is, and he’d done that.  He looked excited to try his first grouse.
Andrew and I were to go hunting on Friday, the last day of the season.  I got a text from him when I got home.  He said more Covid 19 had been discovered at the prison, where he sometimes works as part of his job.  The state was going to test all the staff and prisoners, including him, and he did not know who the infected people were so he could not guess if he had been in contact with them.  Did I still want to go hunting with him?  We decided it would be better to wait to do something else, as the birds had gone largely silent.  I also told his son not to attend scouts tonight until we had Andrew’s results back.  Andrew seemed relieved with my answer.

Hunker Down Day in Douglas

Well, there’s now a statewide hunker down order.  Which for me basically means to carry on and business as usual.  
I got up early to check on the bagel dough I made last night. It looked ready enough to me.  So I made it into a dozen bagels and put the dough in the fridge.
Then I found the smallest pair of cross country skis we had – some old hickory wood skis with 3 pin bindings that were Sara’s.  I hoped these would work for skate skis for Sam.  I removed the old bindings and mounted NNN bindings I just got in the mail for another pair of my skis so they’d fit Sam’s boots.
I made salmon berry jelly later in the morning from some juice I didn’t see when I made cherry and high bush cranberry jellies earlier in the week from other juices saved in the freezer.  
Later in the afternoon, I made my first batch of sourdough bagels using starter from Laura.   Wow, are they good and seem pretty hard to mess up.  They just take a couple days to make and they aren’t gonna last long so I need to make several batches at a time and freeze the rest.
Then my daily cross country ski at Eagle Crest.  The groomer was working the trail as we got there and it was fantastic.  Unfortunately, the skis didn’t work for Sam as they acted like classic skis, even though I scraped off the old kick wax and put glide wax all the way down.
I got home and got a message from Sara that she’d be home from the legislature between 830 and 9 pm so I took out some ling cod from the freezer, planning to make deep fried.
Then the Juneau Police dispatcher called.  Did I want to get a deer for the Salvation Army Foodbank?  You bet I do.  Where is it, I ask.  She gives me the address, and it’s literally walking distance from the house.  So I get knives and tarps and buckets together in the garage, and head out to find the deer.
It took me awhile to find it in the waning daylight, but there she was in the ditch.  Still warm.
I put her on a tarp I keep in the car for this purpose and drove the 100 yards back to the house.  
When I open the deer up to remove the innards, something looked out of place.  Like there was something extra.  And there was.  A fetal buck and doe.  Twins.  And not far from being born.   
Sara pulls up from a long, long day at the Capital, and when I tell her about the twins, she calls her former colleague at the high school who is a biology teacher to see if he wants them.
I pile the innards into a bucket, and save the heart and liver.  
I pull the deer up by the neck on at rope through the pulley mounted in the ceiling that lives there for that purpose, and soon have the hide off and into another bucket.  Then I yard the deer all the way to the ceiling so it should be out of the reach of any weasels or marten around the house.  The temperature is perfect for hanging, and the deer will be fine there for days.
Back at the house, I put the heart and liver in a bowl of cold water and add salt to draw out the blood.  Then I email Shane, the current Salvation Army major here with his wife, and tell him I’ve got a deer for the food bank.  I tell him about the fetuses, and am sure to copy the former major Dana, who gets squeamish just by the word blood, and her husband Lance, who will be happy I did.  
The deer meat could not have come at a better time with so many people suddenly out of work.

Deer Hunting 2019

Went to Craig to deer hunt in late October.  Weather was lots of wind and rain much of the 3 weeks I was there.  The rain was a blessing after a dry season that left many of the hydroelectric lakes in the region in a desperate situation.

This was the first time I’d hunted down here out of my boat.  It took a few trips to gain some confidence with anchoring the boat and going to shore in a punt.  Turns out it’s a lot easier than in Juneau. The tides are smaller here, and lots of coves around the numerous islands to get out of the wind.  Since the weather was crappy during the first two weeks, not many friends and family wanted to go out in the boat and I wasn’t confident enough to go myself so I hunted spots from the big road system.  Didn’t see much.

The first trip in my boat was with Brian and Howard. It was exciting to be the boat driver for the first time in 20+ years of hunting, and Brian remarked how great it was for him to just get dropped off and picked up, instead of having to be the last in the woods and first out, along with worry about the boat, when he did all the driving.

I dropped the two of them off at one spot, then traveled down the beach about 5 minutes to my spot. I carefully anchored the boat, rowed to shore in the punt, changed out to cork boots, and headed up the hill. At the first spot, I called in more deer than I think I saw driving the roads all week. I think there were 4 deer that all came in from below me. I saw a medium fork stop, and took him. There was at least one doe, and another deer that sure looked like a big buck that came closer, but I never could see the head of the big deer and it walked away up the hill and wouldn’t come back. I dressed the deer, turned it over so it could continue to cool and drain but not be open to scavenging from ravens, and continued hunting up the hill. I didn’t get another deer further up the hill, and so about noon, I returned to my deer. I hung it up in a tree, got the hide off, then cut off both front quarters, the torso at the hips, and kept the hind quarters together. I stuffed the four sections of meat into the big game bag I sewed from a sheet that lined my pack, put the pack up on a stump, sat down under it so it sort of fell onto my back, and headed down the hill.

Then my friend from Kodiak, Charlie, decided to come down.  He had only hunted from the roads here, and showed me some new spots. But when the weather broke and we got out in the boat, that sort of changed everything.  Now I had a captive audience to go every day. We hunted alot in pouring rain and wind. We ran into a nice 4 point one day – a deer just in the wrong place at the wrong time, as no bucks were coming to our deer call.  Charlie got the deer, then made the mistake of thinking it would be a good idea to drag it back to the beach. We were some distance from the beach, with lots of woods and dead falls between here and there. I’d advised him to bring a frame pack when he said he was coming down, but he only had a little day pack on.  I’d been in this position before, packing out someone else’s deer in my frame back because they didn’t bring one, and had decided I wasn’t gonna do that again. It was a long, wet, up and down hill drag for Charles. But he made it. The next day was a gale and we weren’t gonna hunt anyway so lucky for him we just slept in.

I wanted to go to a spot we’d gone to 10+ years ago with the brothers Bue, and we tried there next.  As great a place as I remember, but we didn’t see much. Then we picked out another spot on a new app my sister in law showed me.   It’s called On X. You can download satellite maps to a smartphone or tablet that has GPS capability. Then you can use those maps to show your location via the gps, even if you don’t have cell phone reception.  Some simple high tech stuff that sort of changes your whole operation.  

Although I can tie up my boat to my inlaws dock, I like to keep my boat on its trailer, especially when the weather is so windy I’d need to move it off the dock anyway.  The boat launch is located about 3 miles from our place, and so places I normally hunted with my inlaws dockwould mean considerable back tracking from the launch to get to. I used the On X maps to find some promising deer hunting closer to the boat launch, and we headed there after sleeping in til past 8am.  It was a little lumpy in some of the exposed weather, and when we were just about in the lee of an island and calmer water, I realized we’d forgot the guns in the truck, so back through the lump to the truck. By the time we got to the spot I’d picked, it was getting on 10 am. Days like this where things don’t go as planned sometimes produce the best memories.

I dropped Charlie and our packs, survival gear, and guns on the beach, then backed off the beach, anchored the boat, and rowed the punt to the beach.  As I swapped my regular extra tuffs for corked extra tuffs – rubber boots with golf spikes – our friend cruised by hunting the beaches.


We saw some deer and got one small fork horn late in the day about a mile from the beach.  This time Charlie had a pack I’d loaned him, and it was a lot easier for him getting back to the beach.  We cruised the beaches looking for deer on the way home when I spotted a downed evergreen I thought might be a cedar that my brother in law might want. As we idled to the beach, we saw a deer near the tree.  And it was a buck. As we touched the beach, the deer walked into the woods. Apparently, when I blew the deer call it stopped him, as he was just inside the beach fringe and we got our second deer. Since we’re not rural residents, we can take 2 bucks each here on federal land (which most of it is in this hunting area) as the deer hunting success for the local hunters has not been good.  Normally we could take 4 bucks each. And that’s okay with us. We’ve now got our deer for the season here, and can take a couple more up in Juneau if we want.

By the time we got the deer dressed and into the boat, it’s about dark.  I white-knuckle it in the darkness by GPS through the rockpiles back around the island in front of town, and once we see the town lights, I relax as I see the boat launch in the distance.

I got up the next morning at 5 am and had my deer butchered and packaged by 9 am.  Then Charlie started in on his and he was done in the early afternoon. We both wished we had more deer to get because we were just getting the hang of it but we’ll be ready to go next year.

Getting home to Juneau is an all day affair. Howard and Michelle pick us up at 630 am for the 40 minute ride to the ferry in Hollis. After a 3 hour ride to Ketchikan, we take a taxi to another ferry that crosses to the airport. Then it’s a 5+ hour wait til our flight to Juneau, which stops in Sitka on the way. We get home on time at 8 pm. After 3 weeks of sleeping on a futon, it’s a simple pleasure to be back in my own bed.

Protect the young

On my last whale watch trip, right at sun set tonight, I witnessed two orca bulls trying to kill a humpback whale calf.  The calf was surrounded by 4 to 6 adult humpbacks, though, and I think they may have been on all sides of the calf and even underneath it.  The orcas were driving all around the group of humpbacks.  I had to leave to get my group back to the dock before it was settled, but I never saw any blood and think the humpbacks were successful in protecting the calf.