Bound for Afognak Island in the Kodiak Archipelago: April 16th 2008 (Day 0)
Having flown into Anchorage on the evening of the 16th
(a day earlier than was originally planned--It got pushed up a day in due to excitement and fear of getting fogged in at Kodiak) and spending the night at Josh Brown’s apartment, I arrived in Kodiak at 7:00am on the 17th. Jacob Gondek came and picked me up in the dull orange State of Alaska, Parks and Recreation truck
(he works for Parks as a civil engineer) and we went to the little hotel by the small boat docks where dozens of commercial halibut boats were moored up to drop off my gear and sort through our stuff for a bit. Shortly we were off and out around town in the Orange pickup making a good half dozen stops at various scanty sporting stores and likely the smallest Wal-Mart ever created trying to get last minute items. With our gloves, stove fuel, fishing lures, bear tag, and of course, bacon & eggs we loaded up on our last greasy fast food meal at McDonalds and drove out to the edge of town where we sat at the Parks and Recreation cabin for a couple hours just letting everything soak in. We even took a good mile and half walk up in the woods just to get out and about and kill a little time. Our flight time was approaching so we headed back to the hotel to grab our bags and I managed to drop the one beer I had packed for the hunt in the parking lot heaving my fifty pound pack into the truck on our way to Andrew Airways
(the charter service we had hired to drop us off). We laughed it off as a bad luck to start an adventure and yet neither one of us cared. In two hours we would be on our own until someone flew in some eleven nights later to pick us up. We loaded up the plane and were air-born. It was only then we started to talk with our pilot in the headsets about where we
specifically wanted to go. The microphones cut in and out but we managed to chit chat a bit and decided on Paramanof or Malina Bay on Afognak Island. About thirty minutes later we were buzzing low over the valley floor scanning the snow for bear tracks. This valley was littered in track. They were here. Jacob and I wasted no time in saying, “drop us off here”. The pilot buzzed the bay and creek turning in tight circles a few hundred feet off the ground finding a long enough track of water that was ice free to land on, the low tide didn’t make this effort any easier. He landed and we taxied up to shore, spun the plane around and we threw our gear on the softball sized gravel beach. The pilot wasted no time leaving us on a small outcrop of forested land on the beach to realize what we just got ourselves into. We just looked at each other. Whew! We are here and there was no one else. It is an odd feeling to be alone standing there watching your plane fly away, leaving you somewhere you’ve never been with nothing but what you stuff into your bag. It is bad enough to be out in the woods in a bad storm or if you get hurt but, your hunting partner can always manage to get back to the truck or find someone to help. This wasn’t the case here because we were officially stuck on an island surrounded by the World’s largest and most concentrated bear population with no satellite phone
(which we would later regret not having but, we had blown it off by saying that hunters didn’t used to have them, so we don’t need one). The first order of business was to load the guns. The Browning .375 H&H Magnum with three in the clip and one in the chamber
(this was to be the primary hunting rifle), the Marlin 45.70 four in and one in the chamber
(the close encounter rifle), and the Smith & Wesson .44 six shot Magnum strapped to my belt
(a last resort). We walked around a bit and found a decent camp site with good vantage of three sides, looking up and down the beach on both sides and across the bay. We spent several hours getting camp set up, gear situated, day packs ready for the next day, and our bear fence up and running
(the fence is pretty much a joke, two D-cell batteries hooked up in a series attached to a wire that you string around your tent).With camp up and running and a couple hours of daylight left, we walked a mile up the beach and around the first bend in the creek just scoping out the terrain before returning to the trusty old North Face tent I’ve had since my dad bought it for me in high school. When I think about what that poor little tent has seen and been through over the years, I’m always impressed that it manages to fight off another gust of wind or snowy night without collapsing into a pile of weathered fabric completely spent. It was surely a chilly night under clear skies and a breeze off the mountain tops dropped the temperatures down into the teens.
The Hunt; Kodiak Brown Bear: April 18th 2008 (Day 1)
We woke early on the 18th eager to find bear and learn the terrain. I cooked up some bacon and eggs on the MSR stove and we were off, carrying about twenty pound packs excluding our guns. Walking the beach for the first mile at low tide, we spotted numerous deer feeding on the seaweed. Eventually the tidal flat gave way to meandering creek with a heavily used game trail about twenty yards off up in the trees. One goes from a beautiful sunny day to a dark and dreary world with trees covered in moss and little light finding its way to the ground. We stepped on iced over bear tracks along the creek for about two miles until it gave way to a series of interconnected meadows
(which we later found out, were actually ponds/lakes) . We found large bear track working the tree line here and were glad to step out into the sun again for a while before heading back into trees for another couple miles further weaving in and out of the trees into open “meadows” and back into the dark mossy woods. We stopped and had a little lunch and decided that since it was our first day out, we didn’t want to have to make the walk back in the dark
(a bit spooky even carrying three loaded large caliber guns). We returned to our tent about an hour before dark and had dinner. There wasn’t much talk, we were both excited
about having seen so much bear activity up creek and were confident that we were not too early we had previously wondered prior to flying in if the bears would be out of their dens by now. Crashing quickly, Jacob was snoring ever before I had finished winding the day down in my head. I’ll tell you, it is hard to sit and try to listen to the soft beeping of our bear fence telling us it is still working over his snoring. I was tired, we had hiked at least a ten miles and some of it was falling through to our knees and occasionally thigh deep in snow.
April 19th and 20th 2008 (Day 2 and 3)
These two days were long hikes, leading up the creek and into the surrounding hills, trudging up softening spring snow, getting wet, and covering a lot of ground. We had conflicting beta from two credible people who have hunted/work here. One, a fish and game officer who said that moving around wouldn’t disturb the bears so it wasn’t a big deal
(bears have one of the best noses in the animal kingdom, up to a hundred times better than Blood Hound) while the other, a guide, said that the best way is to just get in and sit tight letting the bears move around offering a shot. Having covered thirty miles on foot thus far we had been eating well into our provisions
(more than we should have been). It was decided that we would have to be more careful with food so we started splitting meals into two rather each of us getting our own Mountain House meal. We glazed the hillsides and valley bottom from high and low. We walked and walked. Sneaking up on a bear was virtually out of the question, the cracking snow and thick forest did not yield for a silent walk. Our hopes were that the creek would cover our noise and I think it largely did. We spooked numerous deer, sometimes popping up less than fifty feet in front of us so I wasn’t too afraid of spooking bears away. We even managed to come up on a jet black fox a mere thirty feet way. We’ve seen a different fox nearly every day. A fox rarely ever stops moving, natures natural speed addict. We’ve seen the same half red half gray fox come out by our camp every evening and dig for clams at low tide while the deer grazed a hundred yards off. Hopping and digging frantically as the clams try to dig down
(he was essentially our camp fox and by the end of our trip we got within maybe twenty feet of him even though he had seen us) he would leave the tidal flats pock marked with shin deep holes within a couple hours. Everywhere we went, it was but ten or fifteen minutes before we would see another bear track. They were here and they were working the area hard. I’ve got Devils’ Club thorns all in my hands and forearms. The forest is lined thick with them, especially along the creek. We decided to abandon the creek system for a day and look the other direction. I was having a blast seeing all the wildlife. We must have been seen over fifty deer by now, at least three different foxes and close up too which is unusual. These Island animals just were not very afraid of people. Given, fox are naturally spooky and skiddish, we were still getting closer than normal by a long shot. As day three wound down we meandered back to camp after our third day in a row of over ten miles on foot.
April 21st 2008 (Day 4)
We went high this morning, up onto the hillside trying to gain vantage of the valley floor but, you couldn’t see into the trees so it was nearly useless other than to make us heave through the snow and silently bitch to ourselves. We were getting frustrated by now with the lack of bear sightings. The tracks are just teasing us. I made a cup of coffee and sat in a pile of budding willows up on the hill and dozed off while Jacob went up a bit higher to climb a tree and take a look. I awoke fifteen minutes later to him plodding back down falling waist deep in snow every other step. We wanted off the damn snow
(once the morning sun hit it for more than an hour, we would start falling through the crusted top to our waists making us wet and crabby) so we snaked our way back down into the thick undergrowth of the forest and back to camp for lunch all pissed and frustrated. A little food gave us some energy and we walked the beach for a couple miles in the opposite direction of the creek with a stiff tail wind and incoming tide. Sitting to glaze the hillside we could see what we believed to be den areas way up on the mountainside. The heavy tracks damn near blazing straight down with an occasional zigzag as if a bear had caught a
scent and took a couple steps off course to get a better whiff before returning to his direct lumbering path toward the beach. We walked a few hundred yards into brush and worked the edge of the hillside and forest where we had a good view up into the willows. It wasn’t long before, even here, we were finding huge bear tracks. A lot of times you see bear track on smaller deer and elk trails but we found, actual bear paths padded into the ground. Bizarre, it was the first time I had ever seen anything like it. These animals, when adults range from 1000-1500 lbs and can really beat a path. Each step was nearly a yard and a half. It was really neat to see. The path hadn’t been used in a couple days at least due to the ice built up, but had been used this spring because the snow has been packed in hard. We continued on, eventually ending up back at camp late in the evening. Aggravated, we sat by our tree with a small camp fire nestled between us and in a full of bitch festival, we decided that we were doing something wrong. Perhaps we were moving around too much and just kept missing the bears or maybe our scent had spooked them out of the valley. The strategy changed and tomorrow we would be breaking out the spotting scope and staying close to camp just glazing the mountain sides. If we spot a good bear we can actively hunt it, as of now, we have just been walking and carrying our scent all over the valley. It was time to say goodbye to the fish and game biologist advice and start listening to the guide who hunts for a living. Jacob went down at low tide just before dark to set up the tripod and look for activity in the willows up high. I joined with the binoculars but looking across the bay. I said to him, “Well do you notice something strange over here? It is low tide there is not a single deer or fox out in the bay grazing or digging clams and it is nearly night fall”. We talked about it briefly and it was unanimous, there had to be a bear moving through that area keeping the deer pinned down in hiding and making the fox too weary to venture out into the open. We sat and watched until it was dark but saw nothing. We had talked about that a couple days earlier, with the amount of deer that we have been seeing that we should really pay attention when we stop seeing deer. There had to be a bear in our neighborhood. We were surely excited by that prospect but utterly wiped out from the first four days. We turned on our bear fence
(it at least makes you sleep a little better) and got nestled into our sleeping bags. It looked like another chilly night. We had been completely blessed with great weather thus far and would gladly deal with a chilly night over infamous Kodiak rain or snow. We were exhausted with the fourth day said and done pushing a total of forty-five miles on foot.
April 22nd 2008 (Day 5)
The plan was to get out of bed pre-dawn and make breakfast and be set up for glazing by dawn but I kept hitting snooze on my alarm, the last four days were surely catching up with me, and it was a cold morning. About an hour after the first hint of day, Jacob decided it was time and got out of the tent and went down to the beach about fifty yards away to set up the tripod and spotting scope. I managed to move about ten minutes later except I went directly to the trusty MSR stove to boil up some creek water for the last of my coffee. I was dreading this. It looked like plenty of coffee but, it only last me five days and now I’m going to be out of my two favorite things while camping, bacon and egg breakfasts and instant coffee. With my last cup in hand I walked the thirty yards or so to the other end of our little spit to look across the bay opposite of what Jacob was spotting. I took a few sips and noticed the tide was going out and saw fresh sheets of ice slowly creaking along the shore, a few sea otters were clanging clams together making a racket, but notably, still no deer grazing across the bay nearly a quarter mile away. I took a few more sips and meandered back over to the bank overlooking Jacob and saw him still
gazing through the spotting scope. I didn’t even say anything. We have spent the last sixty some hours next to each other, I didn’t mind having my coffee before wondering down the embankment
(about a five foot drop). I retreated back over to the other side and enjoyed the first couple beams of light as the sun popped up over the mountains into Paramanof Bay. Nearly through my last cup of coffee I noticed something in the bay about half way across. It was dead silent now except the huffing, I took a double, then a third look. Sure as shit, it was a massive bear head sticking out of the water. He was swimming directly at me about four hundred yards out and moving pretty fast. I figured he was swimming and he was past half way so he wasn’t going to turn around. I yelled out to Jacob and trotted over because he was on the beach only about seventy-five yards from where this bear was going to hit land and last I saw, he was looking through a scope in the opposite direction! I looked down at him and saw that he had taken up position behind a large rock on the beach and had his rifle ready. He had heard, the bear puffing in the quiet morning and had spotted him. Jacob yelled at me to get my rifle. Are you serious? I thought, the bear is swimming, I’ve got time to go brush my teeth after my coffee but, the urgency in his voice spooked me. I dropped my last half of cup of coffee right where I
stood and grabbed the lever-action Marlin 45.70 cocking the hammer as I ran back over to where I was (
to the left is the bay the bear was swimming across).This was probably a bad idea because the bear had heard all the commotion and yelling between the two of us. He knew we were there and would probably make a direct run for cover which put me between him and the forest. Nonetheless, I pointed my rifle out and popped my head around the last tree on the embankment. It’s only twenty yards from here to the water. I looked out and didn’t see the bear then, I looked down. The bear was half way out of the water already and he was looking straight at me. He was swimming a lot faster than it looked when he was halfway across the bay. I was glad I had the lever-action on me because I could shoot twice as fast with the Marlin than I could the Browning Jacob had on him. I had remembered numerous conversations with Jacob and him saying he wasn’t going to shoot unless the bear was at least eight feet. All that ran through my head was that I was in a bad position and regardless if he fired or not, I might just have to. A split second decision had me taking three huge steps back to the next tree so I would have a clear shot no matter where he stepped up that embankment
(it didn’t really matter because he was going to step up on the embankment with the most direct path he can take which would be three steps in front of me). As I took my last step back, Jacob opened up on him with the .375 H&H Magnum perfectly broadside at seventy-five yards. The bear hadn’t even taken three steps out of the water before Jacob saw that was indeed, a large boar
(bears, like most animals look a lot smaller when wet. It’s a good rule of thumb that if the bear looks like a decent sized bear wet, he is probably in actually a big bear). He fired consecutively, one after another, four rounds in a matter of seconds which isn’t too shabby for an A-bolt rifle. All of which had this thick bone crushing thud, the sound every hunter knows when his bullet lands home. Great! My bad position was now worse, first I was in the way of a spooked Brown bear and cover but now, I was in the way of a spooked wounded Brown bear and cover. A couple seconds passed and he didn’t pop up those last five feet. I stepped up to the edge of the embankment ready to unleash five additional rounds. I figured he was either down or running down the beach instead of up into the trees because he would have plowed over me by now. I looked down and less than three bear strides from the embankment lay a nine foot Kodiak Brown bear that hadn’t gone ten feet from where Jacob’s first shot was fired. He was still alive and I knew that Jacob had to reload. My rifle was shouldered and finger on the trigger pointed directly at his shoulder
(the Marlin has awesome bone crushing power, and if a bear, wounded or not, charges, never aim for the heart or head because the skull is thick and will likely deflect the bullet and even with lethal heart shot, the bear may have thirty seconds to move which is more than enough to tear a person apart). I took a couple precarious steps down the embankment without blinking or looking where my feet where going and circled around in front of him about ten feet away. I was going to put another round right into his heart to finish him off because I hate to see a wounded animal. His thousand pound or so body clenched up and seized as he took one last breathe while I stood there ten feet away. A final round in the heart wasn’t needed, that was his last breathe and he died. From the moment Jacob opened fire to me standing in front of this bear was less than thirty seconds yet it felt like twenty minutes. Every step was calculated subconsciously and split second. I heard Jacob yelling from up on the embankment. He had apparently forgotten to put in his ear plugs and could hardly hear and having retreated from the open beach to reload. He didn’t hear me or see yell that he was down. Ten seconds past and then Jacob showed up exactly where I had been standing on the embankment. I have no doubt that I can recall probably on a dozen or so occasions where I’ve been told to never approach a wounded bear. I did so without even flinching, in a very pro-active manner. Kind of frightening afterwards thinking about it because at the time, I just did it, and I did it swiftly, I wasn’t going to let him get away. I think this stems from my Brooks Range Dall Sheep incident a few years back but, that’s an entirely different story. We stood here for a few minutes just gathering what had just happened and then we both went back up to camp. We were going to back and sit down for breakfast and then go back down and do what needed to be done. However, we were both too excited for food and I had already spilled the last half a cup of coffee I had. So we got out my skinning knives and gloves and went to work. We hadn’t been skinning for twenty minutes when an Ermine came down out of the forest and laid in the grass five feet away to bask in the sun patiently waiting for a scrap or two. Jacob threw him a five pound piece of meat and he promptly dragged it back up the embankment and disappeared. We spent all day just casually skinning and fleshing the hide and skull. We were after all, a thirty second walk from our tent. We stopped and ate lunch on the rocky beach. Our only rush was to have this said and done in under about ten hours when the tide would have gone all the way out and returned to almost cover the bear. We enjoyed the sun on a beautiful spring Kodiak day. We barely moved from camp today but by the time we had the hide and skull wrapped up and salted for the day we were pretty beat. We figured, hey we get five extra days to just go explore the island and have fun screwing around and hiking. Making a nice fire, I busted out two shooters of Crown Royal and a couple Backwoods cigars to celebrate. Jacob has two shooters of Crown as well courtesy of Joshua Brown so we actually had a decent buzz going and were yapping warm by the camp fire about girls, family and the day’s events for a couple of hours before wiped out we crashed even though we seriously considered moving our camp away from the carcass on the beach so close. However, in the end, we didn’t get past talking about it. Both of shrugged it off and said tomorrow. Little did we realize or would we have cared to know that our great weather streak was beginning to end and our exploration time was limited and even our plane wouldn’t arrive on the day it was supposed to.
April 23rd, 24th and 25th 2008 (Day 6, 7, 8)We spent day six at camp getting the bear hide laid out to dry and salted heavily
(we had brought fifty pounds in on the De Havilland). Jake spent a good deal of time getting the last few bones out of the claws, splitting the nose and lips so that they would dry. When you are in the woods for upwards of a week after obtaining a hide, it becomes tedious work to keep it from going bad. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon moving camp and the electric fence about a hundred yards further away from the carcass. We have had a hard five first days so we took a couple to relax and get some energy back. We took mid-day naps up in the sun on the grass and just absorbed Afognak Island. The wind would pick up early in the afternoon and last until six or seven in the evening before it died off. The wind was bitter cold of the snowy mountains and you can go from just wearing a T-shirt to full on coat in minutes. We took a couple walks up the river a mile or so and looked at deer and spooked a couple more foxes and even a Marten late in the evening. The fox and bald eagles were having a field day with the carcass and the racket was overwhelming. Sometimes upwards of a couple dozen eagles would be swarming the bear and we would eventually get interested and sneak over and try to get a good picture. I got pretty darn
close to some of the eagles and managed to even take this picture on macro settings on my camera. We tried crafting fishing poles from sticks but didn’t hook into any fish because it was windy and we couldn’t cast more than three feet out with our light weight lures. We had even dug clams by this point determined to have a nice big meal but, after boiling them, they surely did not look appetizing so we decided to leave the clam eating to the foxes and bears. We saw lots of deer and essentially hung out. Our energy was low since we had cut back on food and were still exhausted from nearly fifty miles on foot and two full days of working on the bear and hide. I’m not sure who did it but, I’ve narrowed it down to three culprits. It was an Ermine, Marten or Fox that grabbed my frying pan from camp and wondered off with it into the woods. So when we were bored we would look around the hill side for my MIA frying pan. Jacob eventually found it nestled up in a bunch of Devils Club not too far away. I was getting a little crabby that I couldn’t get decent fox pictures. The damn thing won’t sit still for three seconds! I was tempted to shot it, then, I could pose him. I really want a good picture of the black fox but, I only saw him twice and once was across the way. This first time would have been great but, by the time I fumbled my camera out of my pocket he had took off. We explored as much as we wanted to with what energy we had and enjoyed moving around checking things out. We glazed some more for bear and elk and eventually our eight days of awesome weather ended.
April 26th and 27th 2008 (Day 9 and 10)
We awoke today to blowing winds, howling up the bay at us sustained probably around forty in the open gusting threw the tree tops around sixty probably. It made going outside the tent miserably cold. We stayed in the tent most of the day, only to get out and stretch a little or pee. Night fell and I had only been out of the tent twice. Jacob seemed content just sitting in his sleeping bag and reading his book. I figured, “whatever”, our charter flight was scheduled to pick us up at 1:30pm on the 27th so no big deal. One lousy night, fine, I can deal. We awoke to even stronger winds in a full on blizzard. I was so pissed off. We hit a storm on the day we are supposed to get picked up? We are down to sharing one meal a day now in efforts to conserve food incase this storm lasts for four or five days. My stomach was growling all day. It was miserably cold and visibility was virtually zero at times and yet we were still convinced that the Beaver would swoop down at 1:30 on the dot and pick us up. Ironically right around 1:30pm, the wind died down to a breeze and we were able to get out of the tent and move the bear hide to a different shelter we had made with the hatchet a couple days prior incase of rain. It didn’t seem all too bad but, I realized that the trees broke the brunt of the storm and the snow so the forest was actually pretty quiet. The second you stepped out onto the beach, you were hit with strong winds and sideways snow pelting your face. 1:30pm came and went and then we then decided that my clock was wrong or they were running a little late. With not even the faintest roar of a propeller in the distance our realization that we were spending another night at least here was quietly accepted by the two of us. We went to bed pissed off, hungry, and wondering how long this storm would last. We have barely left the tent in two days and now a third night. I mean I like Jacob and all but, seriously man… I need some Wenzel space, it is getting cramped up in here and I’m sleeping in soggy clothes and there is some stupid lump under the tent trying to give me an enema every time I shift at night. Being in a tent stuck there for even a couple two
days and three nights makes a person think. You have nothing but time and Jacob had the only book. I covered a lot of subjects, most of which I care not to share but, one thought I particularly have returned to over and over again over the years when I’ve been stuck in a tent in a snow storm or have to stay out an extra night miserable, wet, and cold; How the hell did I end up here. I come to the same conclusion every time. It is my Dad’s fault. As a kid, whether I was hiking high in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico or flingin’ trot lines for catfish in the murky waters of the Rio Grande, I was generally on an excursion with my dad. At lunch we would sit for a breather often dozing off for an hour
(him more often than I of course) and afterwards it never failed, he would ask me which way the old beat up red GMC was. I’d point and say all cocky, “down the valley, over that hill, and two miles up the second logging you cross”. Mid-afternoon would come and we would began head back. Magic hour followed suit
(magic hour is what most people refer to as dusk, but to a hunter/fisherman, that last hour of fading light, the deer and elk come out to graze, the fish start to feed, and the bears begin their nightly stroll down the creek bank. Magic hour is what every hunter waits all day for) and he would make me show him the way back to the truck with the last couple miles using a flashlight in the dark. I was always thrilled to see the faded red pick-up come into beam for as not to go home but, because I had remembered my way. As I got older I wondered if he would just have let me lead him further into the woods if I had been wrong all those times. Seems like something he would do just so he could make fun of me later. We explored all over the country on our near annual summer road trips
(we as in me, him, and my brother). From trying to catch Water Moccasins with a fishing net or diving into a pile of poison ivy for a frog in Oklahoma
(yeah that landed me in the emergency room in Tallahasee, Florida two days later), camping and fishing on the backwaters of the Mississippi in Louisiana, deep sea fishing for Grouper and Red Snapper off the coast of North Carolina or even taking the ferry out to Catalina Island, California to go check it out, or spinning for Brook Trout in Colorado or Browns in New Mexico. I loved every minute of it, however, my favorite is the time he farted while sitting on a fallen tree. It was only the kind of fart a dad could do. Reverberating down the tree until, I could swear to it, becoming and echoing roar, spooking the entire herd of elk we had just spent the better part of a day stalking into a thunderous mass exodus from the valley floor. Perhaps it is the Boy Scout in him, or because he would rush to the television every Monday and Tuesday evening my entire childhood to watch Nature and Nova but, for some reason, the enthusiasm he has for nature and being in the woods couldn’t even be matched by late loud mouthed Australian, Steve Erwin.
My dad didn’t raise a chemistry and mathematics junkie. My dad didn’t raise a kid who trips over concrete blocks in front of a girl. My dad didn’t raise no girly boy or some kid to can solve the Rubiks cube. My dad didn’t raise a guy who is smart with money, pinching a dollar from a dime.
My dad raised an outdoorsman.
For this I am grateful and will be until I am surely old with a big belly sitting by the lake on a lawn chair having a beer and watching my bobber on a glossy day. Springing into action, if that bobber even as much twitches in the faintest way giving everyone a good show as the old man reels in a trout wearing speedos with a grin simply plastered to his face. Oh and I intend on working those bright yellow skin tight trunks too, throwing in a little hip action with every tug of the line, grunting with my tongue out if he pulls a little line out. I have no intentions of dying without a weathered face full of wrinkles with stories to match each and every one of them. I seem to always come to the same conclusion. As miserable, wet, cold, and flat out crabby I am at that very moment to be where I am and not at home in front of a computer on Myspace or typing a paper or crunching numbers in excel for work, I am happy to be on an excursion, I am happy to be in the woods. With that, I generally just fall back asleep shivering yet fully content. However, I stayed up all night because I had been sleeping for nearly two days already. I laid and thought about all kinds of things and made some interesting conclusions.
April 28th (Day 11)About five a.m. the wind died off and the snow only lightly pelted the tent. That snow turned to rain in an hour and by dawn, a glossy bay was in view as far as Ban Island. We were lucky. There was no way our plane wouldn’t come pick us up today. This was only a two day storm. The only excuse they would have today was that they forgot. However, being weary of it maybe still storming over in Kodiak we didn’t cross our fingers and instead skipped breakfast and kept to our rations which wasn’t until dinner time and started by tearing everything out of the tent and hanging it up to dry on the nearest branch available. This maybe only a break in the storm and we were going to take full advantage of it to dry out our gear as best we could. We got a fire going and I started to dry out my gloves, boots, and socks. While my tent was still hanging from a tree branch on the rocky beach we both sat up by the fire. There was no mistaking that sound, A De Havilland. We were all giddy after we verified that the Beaver was coming for us, not just passing overhead and immediately threw our wet clothes and stench into the nearest pack and tossed them off the embankment. It took him a while to weave through the ice to get to shore but we wasted no time tossing our gear and nine foot Kodiak Brown Bear hide and skull at the pilot to load for us. We were done with Kodiak. Surely the hunt in itself was odd in that the hunt was a success with the shooting of a large bear but, a failure in the sense that we didn’t find him, he came directly to us. I’ll take it. So we managed to escape the land of the big bears no worse for the wear and am eager to begin planning another trip. Joshua Brown has already mentioned Mexico’s Volcanoes or Dall Sheep above the Arctic Circle and Joshua Coghill, I know, is planning
a yet another stellar adventure rafting down the Gulkana River fly fishing for trout and Arctic Grayling with beer in hand. Summer is around the corner. We shall see, we shall see. As we flew out it was easy to see our creek that we had worked so hard looking for bear. The surrounding hills that we had zigzagged across over the last eleven nights and nearly eleven days all blanketed with a foot of fresh snow from our spring blizzard fell behind us I sat back and enjoyed the thought of a warm shower.
I was told a little trip Haiku was in order for trip reports from here on out so here it goes….
Kodiak Brown Bear
Almost Wet My Under-roos
I Want To Go Back
FYI, I get a kick out of the fact it looks like my neck is really long in that picture.. reminds me of one of those Africans you see on the Discovery Channel... Damn I want some gold rings now...
I went to go visit Jenny in the bush oasis of Atqasuk for a little R&R with some fishing and hunting on the side and ended up completing what is essentially an arctic circuit tour visiting several Eskimo/Inupiaq towns and villages including Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse, Barrow, Atqasuk, Point Lay, and Wainwright. After arriving in Atqasuk via flights through Deadhorse and Barrow, I met up with the plane greater (Mel) who gave me a lift to Jen's Apartment where I unpacked the groceries I brought in and took a nap. A few hours later Jen came home and we went out for a walk on the tundra. This was of course not just the two of us. About ten children followed us for nearly an hour and half, talking and asking questions. "Is Jen your girlfriend"? "Who is your father"? "Do you have a gun"? "Whats your favorite Honda"? It went on and on until eventually I was completely frustrated and just wanted to go back to the apartment. We planned on getting up early the next morning and go up the bank of the Meade River to do some fishing all the while hoping that if we left early enough in the morning, the village children will still be sleeping and not follow us. It worked perfectly, the village was quiet and we bucked into a stiff wind for several miles until we got up to where a small creek fed into the Meade River. The Grayling weren't biting much (we only got a couple hits) and it was likely in the mid-thirties with good twenty mph wind so we 
were cold and decided to keep moving. Walking further away from the river and out into open tundra I can easily see how one can get lost. There are no vantage points, there is no sun direction, everything looks the same. We hadn't walked but a mile from the creek until we spotted three caribou (tuttu in inupiaq) off in the distance. We closed some ground and Jen leashed up her dog and I went ahead with the .300 Short Magnum. I had come prepared incase we saw some caribou but this was by no means a hunting trip, I had even left my camo back in Fairbanks. These caribou just so happened to wonder within a couple miles of town and I wasn't going to pass up some free easy meat. We wanted meat for the freezer and I didn't really want to deal with a hide and rack from a bull in the middle of the tundra anyway. I sat for a good five minutes watching and waiting for a shot. I wanted to make sure I shot the cow that wasn't weaning a calf. Eventually a shot was available at about a 100 yards at the cow (Kulavak in Inupiaq) and I was confident that the calf belonged to the other cow which worked out well since the mother was the smaller cow. She promptly fell cushioned by the sponge like tundra. It took us an hour to gut, skin and put the meat into my pack. Meanwhile, her dog enjoyed running across the tundra trying to catch the other caribou which were just casually staying away from him. We carried the meat back to town where I do believe some of the kids were surprised two white people walked out on the tundra and took a caribou (white people and no ATV's = no caribou in the bush). we spent a couple hours cleaning the meat up and packing it into the freezer before we decided to try our hands at fishing again. This just was not they day for Grayling. We got nothing. The next day we left early again and went for a long walk out on the tundra weaving our way along the frost heaves and ATV trails that led to lush hunting grounds. This was our day, spent walking outside and talking a nap afterwards. We repeated this again the next day (by now Jen was complaining about hiking) covering even more ground with about 14 miles across the tundra. My vacation time dwindled and I hopped aboard a Cessna Grand Caravan and left just to land in another village an hour later (Point Lay) I seriously do not 
understand living in Point Lay. There is literally nothing here but a small whaling and seal industry and a few caribou here and there. The picture you see is the bustling town of Point. Lay / Camp Culley Area. Not much to miss. We left shortly after landing and went to Wainwright where I didn't even leave the runway. I got off the plane took a piss on the runway and got back on. Eventually we took off again we flew about 1000' along the coast of the arctic ocean until we reached Barrow and within an hour and a half I was back in Fairbanks. I had apparently missed a shooting of a Polar Bear in the village of Atqasuk by about a week. The bear had come inland towards the village and they were convinced it was not going to leave (the dumpsters have no lids and have plenty of entrails and hides from caribou) so one of the villagers had shot it twelve times with a 25.06 rifle which is sad to me. Not that they shot a bear but, rather they choose a rifle that was inadequate for the job of taking a large animal. A 25.06 is perfect for little caribou 
but not a 1500lb bear. The Arctic bush communities amaze me but at the same time, I can do nothing but shutter. I truly enjoyed the trip but I know for certain, that I would not want to experience a long dark, cold winter in the arctic bush. A place where -50 to -60 degree weather sets in and the sun does not rise for 60-70 days. A place where rabid foxes rule. Hell, even the Caribou know that you have to leave during the harsh winters. Uhm, so yeah, best of luck to all of those who stick out a winter in the arctic bush. I surely tip my hat to you and your resilience to cope survive and continue to live where nature has surely meant
occupation. I had to add this last picture in here for two reasons. First, its absolutely halarious. Second, it encapsulates bush mentality. A picture of a plane in Point Hope. The story behind this plane is that many years ago it broke down and the pilot and crew had to leave it on the runway at Point Hope until they could return with a mechanic and the parts to fix it. When they did, the villagers had already dismantled the plane and somehow managed to move the frame into the town where it still sits today. This is bush mentality, you left it, now its mine. Ownership is not paperwork, it is possession.
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