Kodiak Part 4: Loud Snoring Has Its Advantages – Keeps the Grizzlies Away

Day four of our Kodiak adventure was very enjoyable. If only we could have figured how to reel those silvers in quicker, we could have caught a plane load – all with fly rods.

In addition to silvers, we even caught a couple dolly vardon, but no steelhead. The fishing was everything Alaska fishing can be, but the mountain was calling for me to climb it and bag another deer which would include venison for the trip home if we could figure out how to hang  onto it.

During the night of following the fourth day we could hear soda and beer cans clinking in the night. Could it be that the grizzlies liked soda and beer?

We attempted to save a slab of silver salmon by inserting it into a zip-lock bag and sinking it to the bottom of the river (by putting a rock in the bag along with the salmon) in four feet of water. No luck, the bears got it too.

On the fifth day (one day before our departure) I climbed the mountain again and this time turned to the north at the top of the ridge. I wanted to hunt an area not previously disturbed.

I was a little discouraged by the lack of deer, but eventually found a decent buck in a large brush patch. Always concerned about having time to shoot, find, clean and carry the deer back to camp before dark, I decided to waste no time and shot the buck.

It went down in the brush and before long I’d recovered it.

You’ve probably heard stories about rifle shots being like ”dinner bells”  for the grizzlies of Kodiak Island. So had I, and I wasn’t a bit comfortable skinning and gutting that deer in a brush patch where I could see about ten feet.

My loaded .7mm and my .44 magnum revolver were stationed at my side. It was an eery feeling.

I reduced the deer to carrying size and moved it onto a nearby  open hillside where I could complete work on it while keeping an eye out for grizzlies.

I was a pleasantly surprized that the buck had four points on one side, a Sitka four-point buck is unusual, but it wasn’t particularly old or large antlered.

I managed to load the animal onto the back pack and carry it to camp before dark – crossing the river by raft one last time. In camp we debated our options. We decided to go with the only option that would give us a reasonable chance of saving our venison.

It was the “Lean the meat against our tent and keep our loaded rifles at our sides” option. It was a little scary (sleeping a couple feet from grizzly bait), but we figured the snoring and odors emitted from our tired bodies would keep the grizzlies away and it did.

On Saturday we loaded the Grummon Beaver and headed back to Kodiak with a couple silver salmon and one Sitka blacktail to take home to California. The venison and the fish were both excellent table fare.

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Kodiak Part 3: Just Another Day on the Ayakulak

On day three of our Kodiak adventure I awoke quite stiff and sore. Upon our return to camp on day two, Rob had wrapped his deer in a plastic bag and buried it in the dirt a few yards from our tent to keep the bears from it.

Wrong! When Rob checked on it in the morning it was entirely gone. No sign of anything. At that point we knew we were in for a difficult fight for our deer meat.

I loaded my gear onto the pack frame and headed up the mountain, with rifle in hand, to retrieve my deer. Rob stayed in camp to rest up and make a short trip to the opposite site of the valley to see what he could find in the way of deer there.

My climb was uneventful and I was eager to retrieve my buck. As I approached, I was careful to watch out for grizzlies. Sure enough, as I approached the site of my kill, I could see that it would be a difficult retrieval.

A large grizzly was laid out flat on top of my deer - asleep.

What to do now? I stopped about 100 yards away from the bear-on-top-of-blacktail pile and shouldered my rifle. Maybe a shot over his head would send him packing.

Boom. The great bear stood and hunched his back with hair on end. Not a good sign.

I knew that shooting the bear was no option and apparently he was ready to do battle to defend the large food supply beneath him.

After a few minutes I concluded that retreat was the only option. The score was now grizzlies two and Fletchers zero.

The buck we didn’t recover.

It has been a long hike to the buck and the deer herd seemed to have moved out of the area. Not only that but I was in no mood to shoot, clean and haul another buck on this day.

I couldn’t even recover my antlers which included my deer tag. Oh well, at least I had another.

I retreated back to camp and reported the situation to Rob. We concluded that we’d fish on Thursday and then I’d go after another buck on Friday, the day before our departure. That way we’d only have to figure out how to keep the bears away for one night.

We were short on ideas, but we’d figure something out.

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Kodiak Part 2: Sitka Blacktails on the Ridge above the Ayakulak River

As I mentioned in my previous post about Kodiak Island, the presence of grizzly bears was one of the most dominent overtones of hunting on Kodiak Island.

It wasn’t just that we knew they were there, they were visible. And, occationally you could smell them.

A big disadvantage to foot travel in grizzly country was the danger of hiking through brush in darkness. The thought of coming face to face with a grizzly in darkness is scary enough to keep you in camp until you can see, which means you don’t get to the top of the ridge until late morning.

That’s what happened on our first morning  climb to the top of the ridge. After paddling across the river in our tiny raft, we began our climb through the brush to the ridgetop.

The path was uncertain, but it appeared that the bear trails would lead us to the top. Wandering through the head high brush, we came to a point where a strong odor stopped us in our tracks.

Rob was leading the way and he turned to look at me. As I recall, we came to the same conclusion pretty fast -  grizzly.

Needless to say we made a hasty retreat.

After a serious climb, we reached the top of the mountain and that’s when we found blacktails. By the middle of the day, Rob spotted a nice buck a ways down the ridgeline and we pursued it.

Sneaking and glassing, we found the buck asleep and Rob shot at it in it’s bed from about 35 yards while it was still sleeping. it was a nice buck for a sitka blacktail, but Rob pulled to fine on the bucks heart and actually missed it.

His second shot was more effective and the buck dropped just before it went over the ridge top. It was probably 2:00 PM and there was more time to hunt, so Rob stayed with the deer and I continued down the ridge in search of another buck.

We carried a bow, my Browning 7mm mag and a .44 mag handgun. I left the bow and handgun with Rob and took the Browning. Within a half hour or so I found more deer and observed to bucks sparing. One of them was a nice buck, so I got prone at about 200 yards and shot the buck.

I gutted, tagged and photographed the buck. Since we had only one backpack with us, I elected to return the next day to pick it up. It was now late enough in the day to hasten our return to camp.

Returning to Rob and his buck, we strapped the carcass onto the pack and took turns carrying it along the ridgetop to the trail down the mountain.

Since most of the hillside was covered with bear brush, there were no alternative routes or shortcuts. As we stood on the ridge above camp, we could see a sow grizzly and cub approaching our tent a few hundred yards below us. A couple rounds from my .7mm fired into the river turned her around.

I wonder what she would have done?

Shortly thereafter, while climbing down the mountain, we spotted bears in the brush below us. The were about 100 yards away and on the same trail as us – heading our way.

Needless to say we climbed up and found another route through the brush, making it back to the river just after sunset and relieved.

The bears were definitely making our hunting more difficult, but there was more to come.

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Kodiak Part 1: Blacktails, Silver Salmon and Grizzlies on Kodiak Island

One of the top hunting trips of my life took place about ten years ago in Alaska. The original trip was based upon a caribou hunt I purchased at the MDF Convention in Sacramento.

Ironically, it was the self-guided blacktail hunt on Kodiak Island (which  followed the caribou hunt) that topped the list for excitement.

We arranged for a float plane to fly us from Kodiak (on the Island’s east end) to the Ayakulik River on the Islands west end. The plane, a Grummon Beaver, was quite loaded with our gear as we climbed over mountain tops of the central island and then landed on the river at a remote location.

Although we were not alone (a fishing guide occasionally drifted past us while guiding salmon and steelhead fishermen and one other camper joined us for a few days) most of our company was grizzlies, silver salmon and blacktail deer.

We spent the first day of the trip hunkered down in our tent as 50 mph winds battered our site. It was a good thing that we were prepared and had “tarped” our tent down in case of bad weather. After many games of cribbage,  the weather finally settled enough to allow us ta catch a couple silvers in the afternoon.

Note the well worn trail in this photo. It was made primarily by grizzlies not humans.

On day three we used our small raft to cross the river and climbed the ridge to the west of our camp. Although we spotted no deer from camp, we were surprised that the ridge top was well stocked with sitka blacktail bucks – and also grizzly bears.

More on the deer and the bears later, but here are a couple fishing photos. We were using nine weight fly rods and steelhead flies. It took twenty to thirty minutes to land each fish as they were fresh and strong combining their efforts with the current of the powerful river.

Day three produced blacktails like the one below. But there’s much more to the story.

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Hunting Along Alaska’s Pipeline Haul Road

On September 11, 2001 Rob and I were packed and ready to fly to Fairbanks. As we approached Oakland Airport, we came to realize that our trip would be delayed. It was four or five days later that we finally boarded a different plane and flew to Fairbanks.

Our trip was to be a self-guided archery moose and caribou hunt along the Alaska pipeline road to Prudhoe Bay. We outfitted ourselves and rented an SUV in Fairbanks. A day of driving later we crossed the Yukon River and headed into what seemed like no man’s land.

Archery hunting is permited along the haul road, but rifle hunters must travel 5 miles to be legal.

Along with sheep, musk ox, caribou, moose and black bear we observed several grizzly bears along the way.

The Brooks Range was quite scenic.

 

 

The pipeline was sometimes an impressive sight. This is the North slope.

 

We camped at the Arctic Circle and had lunch the next day in Coldfoot, supposedly the coldest place on the North American Continent. We finally found some caribou to hunt after passing the Brooks Range and arriving at the North Slope. We hunted caribou for a few days and had some close encounters, but failed to get off any shots. Since our trip was cut short by 9/11, we didn’t have long before we needed to head south to the Arctic Circle to hunt moose.

While camped at the Arctic Circle, Rob fed this gray jay.

Unfortunately, the unseasonably warm weather precluded typical moose rutting activity and we went home without seeing a single bull moose.

This was the Prudhoe Bay gas station where we filled up. Next gas, Coldfoot, a few hundred miles south.

It was a great adventure.

Musk ox sleeping a few yards off the haul road on the North Slope.

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The Grizzly of Avalance Lake

I’ve had a few grizzly bear experiences over the years, mostly in Alaska, but one of my most memorable grizzly bear experiences took place near Yellowstone Park in 1986.

 

If you’ve been to Yellowstone Park and taken any hikes into the woods, you may recall that the area is littered with grizzly bear warnings. And, if you hang around the locals for a while, you’ll be told all the latest about human and grizzly conflicts including at least a couple stories about people who were killed and eaten.

 

While shopping, a store clerk reminded that during the previous summer a lone woman camper had been killed and eaten by a grizzly, but of course it was an isolated case.

 

I don’t remember exactly what other stories I was told in 1986, but there were others.

 

As I prepared to take an overnight hike to a destination called Avalanche Lake, I stopped in at a USFS office and it was suggested to me by one of the ranger types that I put bells on my shoes, aptly called bear bells. I also recall another Montana native telling me about finding little bells in the piles of bear scat he found near his home.

 

I couldn’t imagine hiking around in the hills listening to the constant jingling of little bells, so I elected to hike silent.

 

Prior to this hike, I had made many hikes with friends and camped out many times, but almost always in the company of other hikers. There’s something about having company that gives one a sense of security. Hearing so much about grizzlies was giving me a case of the willies, but I was determined to go it alone on this very simple six-mile hike and overnight stay.

 

Having property worried about bears, I loaded my pack and arranged for a nearby group of campers to watch over my excess gear, and headed for Avalanche Lake. In addition to the six miles of hiking would be about 2,000 feet of climbing. I left the trailhead at approximately noon so there would be plenty of time to complete the first leg of the trip before dark.

 

I was into nature and stopped to sketch a yellow-rumped warbler and also some glacier lilies. The lilies were quite beautiful with their yellow flowers. Seeing them was an invitation to test my sketching skills, which were limited.

 

A man and a woman came hiking down the trail in my direction. They stopped to chat and informed me that the bulbs of the glacier lilies could be eaten. Naturally I pulled out my knife and tried one. It wasn’t bad.

 

Eventually I realized that it was getting late, and the trail was getting steeper as I approached the lake. A rapid cloud buildup soon produced large rain drops and I realized that I’d better set up my tarp, or get wet.

 

I was fairly close to my destination, but the rain was making a decision for me. I’d be spending the night by the side of the trail.

 

As lightning flashed and thunder echoed off the nearby mountains, I spread my tarp and tied it between several trees to provide shelter from the heavy rain. With my gear safely stashed under the tarp, I found a dry spot under a large pine. I built a small fire and cooked some brown rice for dinner. Nearly paranoid about bears, I made sure that I didn’t get food on my clothes and hung my small bag of food out of reach. I climbed into my sleeping bag, laid down under the tarp and listened to the lively storm.

 

The heavy cloud cover eliminated all light sources except for the bright flashes of lightning. It was not peaceful and all the grizzly bear stories I’d heard over the past couple days were replayed in my mind. Music from my harmonica soothed me and finally I drifted off to sleep as the storm continued to pound the mountains around me.

 

Once I finally slept, it was a deep and satisfying sleep, reflecting the workout I’d had the day before.

 

I don’t know how long I was out before it happened, but it must have been at least a couple hours before I huge crash from my right brought me suddenly to the sitting position while I screamed in bloody terror.

 

I was sure that I had met the badest grizzly on the mountain. Fortunately it was not the grizzly at all, but a large fir tree that had lost it’s footing in the saturated soil and landed on the ground only a few yards from where I slept. Fortunately, it had not landed directly on top of me and ended my life right there underneath my tarp.

 

Having survived the “grizzly” attach, I pulled out my harmonica and serenaded myself back to sleep one more time.

    

                       

 

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