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FISHING • HUNTING • ADVENTURE

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LING BLING! PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND LINGCOD, ROCKFISH

HAUNTED SEAS! New Book Dives Into Panhandle’s Underwater Legends

Baby’s First Ice-Fishing Trip

BEARS, BUCKS & BULLS

Arctic Bruins, Giant Peninsula Grizzlies, Kodiak Blacktails & Calling Moose

ALSO INSIDE

Steelhead Anglers Driven To Madness

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ALASKA

SPORTING JOURNAL

Volume 8 • Issue 10 www.aksportingjournal.com PUBLISHER James R. Baker ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Dick Openshaw GENERAL MANAGER John Rusnak EXECUTIVE EDITOR/RAPMASTER Andy Walgamott EDITOR Chris Cocoles ASSOCIATE EDITOR Tom Reale

WRITERS Paul D. Atkins, Chris Batin, Louis Cusack, Bjorn Dihle, Scott Haugen, Tiffany Haugen, Jeff Lund, Michael Lunde, Bixler McClure, Krystin McClure, Dennis Musgraves SALES MANAGER Katie Higgins ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Mamie Griffin, Steve Joseph, Garn Kennedy, Mike Smith, Paul Yarnold PRODUCTION MANAGER Sonjia Kells DESIGNERS Michelle Hatcher, Sam Rockwell, Liz Weickum WEB DEVELOPMENT/INBOUND MARKETING Jon Hines DIGITAL ASSISTANT Samantha Morstan PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Kelly Baker

Hair On and Leather Tanning • Taxidermy

CIRCULATION MANAGER Heidi Belew DISTRIBUTION Tony Sorrentino, Gary Bickford OFFICE MANAGER/ACCOUNTS Audra Higgins ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Katie Sauro INFORMATION SERVICES MANAGER Lois Sanborn ADVERTISING INQUIRIES media@media-inc.com ON THE COVER Want to get an up-close-and-personal view of one of these Prince William Sound lingcod? Take a charter trip a trip out of Whittier, just a 60-mile drive southeast from Anchorage, and you can get it on the bottomfish action. (KRISTIN DUNN/KODIAK CUSTOM FISHING TACKLE) MEDIA INDEX PUBLISHING GROUP WASHINGTON OFFICE 14240 Interurban Ave South • Suite 190 Tukwila, WA 98168 (206) 382-9220 • Fax (206) 382-9437 media@media-inc.com • www.media-inc.com

Englewood, Colorado (303) 293-2882 www.rockymountaintanners.com 8

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OREGON OFFICE 8116 SW Durham Rd • Tigard, OR 97224 CORRESPONDENCE Twitter @AKSportJourn Facebook.com/alaskasportingjournal Email ccocoles@media-inc.com

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CONTENTS

VOLUME 8 • ISSUE 10

Each fall, Louis and Ruth Cusack plan a trip to Kodiak Island to hunt blacktail deer. The scenery alone is worth the experience, but so is filling tags and freezers with delicious venison, though the hungry bears in the area want their share too. Hike along with the Cusacks on another spectacular hunt! (LOUIS CUSACK)

103 RACKING THEM UP

FEATURES 29

WILD DAYS OUT OF WHITTIER When you fish with a captain known as “Crazy Ray” you should expect something out of the ordinary to occur – fast limits of quality-sized lingcod and brightly colored shortraker rockfish, anyone?

Dennis Musgraves and company set out of the Prince William Sound port of Whittier for two days of fantastic chasing deepwater bottomfish.

56

WHAT LIES BENEATH Alaska’s vast uninhabited spaces, old mining towns and giant rivers and lakes are bound to contain plenty of legends. The waters off the Panhandle are no exception, and as part of Juneau correspondent Bjorn Dihle’s upcoming book, Haunted Inside Passage: Ghosts, Legends and Mysteries of Southeast Alaska, some locals swear a lot more than just whales, halibut and salmon swim in the sea.

73

OH, BABY, WHAT A DAY New parents Krystin and Bixler McClure want their infant son Lynx to get a headstart on becoming an outdoor adrenaline junky like they are. So they bundled him up and packed their heated ice fishing shelter for a family outing to a lake near their Kenai Peninsula home to fish for rainbows and Dolly Varden. While Mom and Dad had their hands full, did Lynx lend them any luck?

155 BEAR TERRITORY Field to Fire columnist Scott Haugen had ventured into the rugged Alaska Peninsula to hunt grizzly bears before, but a massive coastal bruin had eluded him. During another spring opportunity – on Friday the 13th to boot – he, a friend and a local lodge owner took to the area again and hoped to score a big bear. Would this be their lucky day on the ultimate unlucky day? Find out, and then try out Scott’s wife Tiffany’s bear-meat-stuffed pita recipe!

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE 47 The madness of a steelhead angler 87 Switching up: Float fisherman tries fly fishing 95 New guns of note from SHOT Show 2017 116 Warrior mentality needed for calling bull moose 137 Hunting the ‘king of the tundra’: spring grizzlies 163 Southeast Alaskans are tough too!

166 Ketchikan vacation accommodations DEPARTMENTS 17 The Editor’s Note: Celebrating sled dogs 21 Protecting Wild Alaska: Predicting President Trump’s impact on Alaska fish, wildlife, wildlands 23 Outdoor Calendar

Alaska Sporting Journal is published monthly. Call Media Inc. Publishing Group for a current rate card. Discounts for frequency advertising. All submitted materials become the property of Media Inc. Publishing Group and will not be returned. Annual subscriptions are $29.95 (12 issues) or $39.95 (24 issues). Send check or money order to Media Inc. Publishing Group, 14240 Interurban Ave South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168 or call (206) 382-9220 with VISA or M/C. Back issues may be ordered at Media Inc. Publishing Group, subject to availability, at the cost of $5 plus shipping. Copyright © 2017 Media Inc. Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be copied by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher. Printed in U.S.A. 12

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Wildlife Conservation and the Future of Hunting Depends on YOU!!

Join the Alaska Chapter of Safari Club International today.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

S

ome dear friends from my native Northern California are now on their second Alaskan malamute BFF. Like their previous pup that lived a long and happy life, their current dog, Fozzie, is a gentle giant that spends his idle time either plopped on the cool kitchen floor or finding some poor sap to plant with a disgusting but adorable wet kiss.

Yet both of their malamutes that were/are around or well above 100 pounds amaze me with how much energy they contain once taken on neighborhood runs or are let loose in a safe off-leash area. Fozzie might not pull sleds in Alaska like so many of these remarkable dogs in his breed, but I would imagine the big guy would fit right in on a team.

I bring this up because it’s that time of year again in the Last Frontier. The Iditarod – one of our former cover subjects, Dallas Seavey (March 2015), races for his fourth consecutive title this month – is scheduled to start on March 6 in Fairbanks, and “The Last Great Race On Earth” is a tribute to not just the human but also the canine spirit.

When I visited Finland a few winters ago, one of the highlights of the trip was visiting a sled dog farm and being a copilot with our own team and sled. Our host was in the sled in front of us as we waited for her to take off first and then our dogs could begin to mush on the trail. The anticipation was palpable as our dogs jumped and barked and howled repeatedly, just begging us to give the start command.

But when the metaphorical green flag was waved, the noise stopped and all we heard was air; the dogs were focused only on the job at hand. I didn’t hear another bark until we went back to the farm for a hot drink, when these working dogs then turned playful again.

The Iditarod isn’t an event for everyone to appreciate or understand, and I can sympathize with those who don’t approve of the dogs pulling sleds across miles of tundra in subzero temperatures. But count me in as someone who believes these amazing athletes love every step and wouldn’t have it any other way. Fozzie will be cheering them on too. –Chris Cocoles

Fozzie won’t be racing with other Alaskan malamutes in this month’s Iditarod, but he loves to run when given the chance.

(NORV LEONG)

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PROTECTING

WILD ALASKA

GUESSING THE TRUMP EFFECT ON ALASKA’S FISHERIES

BY MICHAEL LUNDE

T

he recent transition at the White House has many fisheries biologists and climate change scientists nationwide petrified over the conservation and preservation of fish and wildlife populations, as well as land management.

Recent political action undertaken

by President Donald Trump’s administration froze advancements and development of federally funded grants for fish, wildlife and climate change research. Following Inauguration Day, the White House deleted/removed all mention of climate change from its website. This has potential ramifications on funding future research projects nationwide, particularly in Alaska, which is considered the epicenter of climate change research.

Indeed, Alaskans are feeling the effects of climate change on multiple levels. For example, Interior Alaska did not record a low temperature colder than minus 30 below zero during the 2015-2016 winter. Low snowfall levels were also observed throughout the state in the same winter, resulting in below-normal water levels, making river transportation with prop-style boats a daunting task.

Threats of climate change also can be seen in Alaska’s polar relative, Antarctica. A crack in an ice shelf means a berg equivalent in size to Rhode Island could potentially break off, and this would fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Similar effects are exemplified through

intensified erosion on Alaska’s Arctic North Slope, where multiple coastal villages had to restore eroded shorelines.

Another climate change issue that is routinely researched is ocean acidification. With our dependence on fossil fuels to drive our everyday lives, increasing carbon dioxide levels lower the pH levels of the ocean, leading to an increase in acidity. This could have huge ramifications on marine food web dynamics.

All this being said, what effects will actions taken by the Trump Administration have on Alaska’s fisheries? One potential consequence that has alarms sounding off to fisheries biologists around Alaska is potential cooperation between Northern Dynasty Minerals, the Canadian mining company that’s been in a high-profile tug-of-war with Bristol Bay’s fishing industry over the Pebble Mine project, and the Environmental Protection Agency for the restoration to a normalized permitting process. Approximate time duration for this permitting process is to take up to four years and cost roughly $150 million.

With 81.5 billion pounds of copper, 107 million ounces of gold and 514 ounces of silver in the ground and the world’s largest run of sockeye in the water, it is anticipated that an allout battle for the conservation of wild salmon stocks will re-establish itself in court once again.

As important as resource exploration is to Alaskans, decimating wild salmon stocks is a risk not worth taking. Although petroleum and nat-

President Donald Trump’s policies are being scrutinized across the nation, and anglers and hunters will keep a wary eye on how they affect Alaska’s natural resources. (THE WHITE HOUSE)

ural gas are resources that are highly sought, they’re finite, while salmon annually attract hundreds of thousands from around the world to bask in remote and roadside sportfishing expeditions that contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the state’s economy every year.

With a current freeze on research grants through the EPA, it appears many fisheries research projects are at a crossroads until the Trump Administration straightens out its priorities on the environment. ASJ

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OUTDOOR CALENDAR March 1

Spring bison season opens in Game Management Unit (GMU) 19 (McGrath) Start of Iditarod race (iditarod.com) Brown bear spring season opener in GMU 1 (Southeast Mainland) Resident brown bear season opens in GMU 3 (Petersburg/Wrangell) Brown bear season spring opener in GMU 4 (Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof Islands) Homer Winter King Salmon Tournament (homeralaska.org/winter-kingsalmon-tournament) Brown bear spring opener on Montague Island in GMU 6D (North Gulf Coast and Prince William Sound) Spring brown bear season opens in GMU 8 (Kodiak) Spring brown bear season opens in GMU 10 Aleutians: Unimak Island)

March 4 March 15 March 15 March 15

March 18

April 1

April 1 May 10

Brown bear seasons in several Alaska game management units open March 15.

(DON MACDOUGALL/USFS)

March 16-19

March 24-26 March 30-April 2

2017 SPORTSMEN’S SHOWS March 1-5 Fred Hall Show, Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, Calif.; fredhall.com March 2-5 Idaho Sportsman Show, Expo Idaho, Boise; idahosportsmanshow.com

April 21-23

International Sportsman’s Exposition, South Towne Exposition Center, Sandy, Utah; sportsexpos.com Mat-Su Outdoorsman Show, Menard Sports Center, Wasilla; chinookshows.com Great Alaska Sportsman Show, Sullivan and Ben Boeke Arenas, Anchorage; greatalaskasportsmanshow.com Fairbanks Outdoor Show, Carlson Center, Fairbanks; carlson-center.com/outdoor TravelShow

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BUSTING THE BOTTOM

FISHING FOR ROCKFISH, LINGCOD OUT OF THE PORT OF WHITTIER

The deep waters of Prince William Sound have plenty of hungry bottomfish like large toothy lingcod. The author took a trip out of Whittier to chase the big ones. (DENNIS MUSGRAVES)

BY DENNIS MUSGRAVES

F

ishing for a potential world-record breaker in Prince William Sound Alaska requires some deep-water insanity.

I found out firsthand last summer just how crazy fishing can get while pursuing a chance for a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment. My odds seemed very favorable considering I had three distinct advantages: a dozen extraordinary custom fishing lures at my disposal, a skilled fishing boat captain and a reliable vessel named the Crazy Ray. This saltwater fishing trinity of exaksportingjournal.com | MARCH 2017

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Capt. Ray Nix is known affectionately as Crazy Ray, so it’s only fitting that’s what the Whittier-based guide would name his vessel. (DENNIS MUSGRAVES/ KRISTIN DUNN)

cellence is a proven combination for different monster-sized fish species, but you can only find them all together

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ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

at one port in Alaska, and that place is Whittier, a place where getting there is a small part of the adventure.

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

Driving south from Anchorage along the scenic Seward Highway towards the Kenai Peninsula had me pumped with

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ALASKA Fairbanks - Compeau’s (907.479.2271 or 800.478.7669) Anchorage - Dewey’s Cook Inlet (907.344.5092) Soldotna - River & Sea Marine (907.262.2690 or 907.262.7402) Petersburg - Rocky’s Marine (907.772.3949)

CALIFORNIA Escalon - Boat Country (209.838.2628)

IDAHO Boise - Idaho Marine (208.342.0639) Hayden - Mark’s Marine (888.821.2200) Lewiston - Valley Boat & Motor (208.743.2528)

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excitement. My journey down Alaska Route 1 was relatively short for going saltwater fishing, about 50 miles and taking a turn at Portage junction before finishing up the last few miles of asphalt, which ends at a vehicle staging area. Getting to Whittier by passenger car can only happen if you pay a fee, wait for the green light and roll under Maynard Mountain using the longest rail-vehicle tunnel in North America.

The 2.5-mile-long Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel allows one-way traffic with automobiles on an alternating schedule to reach the tiny port city of Whittier by roadway. It was there that I met up with saltwater fishing fanatics Tony Davis – he’s known as “Famous Davis” – and Kristin Dunn of Kodiak Custom Fishing Tackle (kodiakcustom.com).

Tony had invited me to Whittier for an epic two-day adventure with friends and family aboard the Crazy Ray and its infamous captain, “Crazy” Ray Nix. Other participants were Tony’s brother and sister-in-law, Bob and Twylah Davis, and Tim Delarm, executive producer of the Alaska Outdoors Television show. The agenda for the multispecies event with Capt. Ray would include fishing for tasty halibut and Pacific cod

The author (far right) caught his first shortaker rockfish on this trip.

(KRISTIN DUNN/KODIAK CUSTOM TACKLE)

OREGON Eugene - Clemens Marina (541.688.5483) Gladstone - Clemens Marina (503.655.0160) Portland - Clemens Marina (503.283.1712) Kalamath Falls - Pelican Marine (541.882.5834) Coos Bay - Y Marina (541.888.5501)

WASHINGTON Colville - Clark’s All Sports (509.684.5069) Pasco - Northwest Marine & Sport 509.545.5586) Mt. Vernon - Tom-N-Jerry’s Boat Center (360.466.9955) Port Townsend - Westside Marine (360.385.1488) Shelton - Verle’s Sports Center & Marine (360.426.0933)

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A collection of jigs created by Kodiak Custom Tackle proved irresistible to the rockfish and lingcod. (DENNIS MUSGRAVES)

– with a special focus on large colorful shortraker rockfish the first day – gigantic lingcod on day two, and an overnight stay at Port Ashton Lodge. Tim was filming the outing for an episode of his homegrown Outdoor Channel television show that features hunting and fishing in the 49th State. We would provide plenty of good footage.

DAY 1 A crisp morning breeze welcomed everyone to the boat slip, where Ray’s

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GET HERE – WHITTIER Whittier, Alaska, is a small seaside community less than 60 miles straightline distance from Anchorage. Situated on the northeast shoreline of the Kenai Peninsula, the city and its unique deep-water port is known as the “Gateway to Prince William Sound.�

Although there are less than 250 full-time residents, it’s reported over 700,000 people come to visit the area annually, mostly during the seasonal fair-weather months. They arrive on cruise ships, trains, and automobiles.

Prior to the summer of 2000, traveling to Whittier by land meant you had to ride the Alaska Railroad, since no roadway connected the port city.

Automobiles would be loaded along with passengers at the railhead for the journey. The train ride culminated after exiting a long tunnel, which bores through Maynard Mountain, bringing rail riders to the end of the tracks in

Whittier. ModiďŹ cations and reconstruction of the tunnel eventually allowed for vehicular traffic.

Since June 2000, roadway travelers simply drive themselves. The 2.5-milelong Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel is officially the longest rail-highway combination in North America. The tunnel runs on a schedule of alternating train and oneway travel for passenger vehicles. Additional information about the tunnel schedule and fees can be found at dot.alaska. gov/creg/whittiertunnel/schedule.shtml.

FISHING OPTIONS Whittier continues to grow in popularity as a premier destination for saltwater sportďŹ shing. Since the tunnel provides anglers from Anchorage the shortest driving distance possible to Prince William Sound, targeting multiple species of ďŹ sh can be done in a single day. Of course you’re going to want a sea-

What do you back in the port town of Whittier following a memorable trip catching bottomďŹ sh? Fillet them and have a freezer full of tasty ďŹ sh.

(DENNIS MUSGRAVES)

soned captain at the helm. Although my overnight saltwater ďŹ shing escapade with Capt. Ray Nix (Crazy Ray’s Adventures; crazyraysak.com; 907-315-5382) wasn’t chartered, he is certainly available for hire during the upcoming season. If you’re ready for an insane ďŹ shing adventure, just take the tunnel to Whittier and make sure you have a reservation to get on board the Crazy Ray. DM

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36-foot-long custom North River Seahawk Offshore was docked. Introductions made and safety briefing noted, everyone got settled onboard and Ray navigated the boat out of the harbor towards the Passage Canal. Once past the no-wake zone he was quick to press the throttle and head for the fishing grounds.

The ample 10-foot-by-10-foot fishing deck offered plenty of room for six anglers. However, the first part of our day would be spent fishing at deep depths and targeting shortraker rockfish. Even though we could all fit onto the deck, in order to keep lines from tangling only two anglers could fish at a time, with one on each side of the boat.

I wasn’t shy and eagerly secured a rod from Tony when he gave me the opportunity to be one of the first up. Little did I realize what I was in for.

Ray gave the go-ahead to drop in, and Twyla, who was on the opposite side of the deck, and I took turns releasing line to somewhere close to Davy Jones’ locker. Out of respect for

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the captain, I was sworn to secrecy and won’t speak of exact specifics, but I can tell you we started out very deep and it took a good amount of jigging.

All things considered, as it was the first time I’d fished such deep waters, it probably was not an unusual scenario.

As I let out line from the reel and felt my 2-pound custom-painted jig hit the ocean floor over 1,000 feet below, my senses were fully engaged. I kept a firm double-handed clutch on the rod for touch and a vigilant eye on the braided line that gave slack from bouncing the bottom. It helped to listen to the advice of a seasoned sportfishing captain as I jigged my lure. I was in the moment, the one where nothing else matters except anticipating the strike and readying to set the hook.

Fishing extreme deep depths was something I had never experienced on a saltwater trip in Alaska, but if you want to catch a potential world-record shortraker rockfish, you’ll probably be fishing where your anchor rope may not be

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

long enough to reach bottom.

In order to get a positive hookset, you have to instantaneously react to a fish taking the lure at such a depth. The long distance from rod tip to lure means a greater risk of missing the bite or losing the fish halfway to the surface if any line slack occurs.

Each time my jig tapped the bottom I would raise it up, and by the time it lowered again I needed to let out more line to reach the bottom. I began to think I would never feel a strike at such distance – and then it happened. It was an unmistakable sudden thump felt ever so slightly, but I reacted quickly. The resistance and head shaking seemed a mile away, but I shouted out “Fish on!” and began cranking on the reel handle.

As I gained fishing line back onto the spool with each painful turn of the handle, my forearm began to feel the strain. Ray reminded me not to allow any slack, and with confidence let me know it probably was a shortraker. I dug in and reeled.

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The rage in my muscles with each crank felt as if I was only gaining inches as I raised my fish. The anticipation of something really big on the opposite end of the line kept me in the battle. Slow and steady I went as I kept the line taut. Any slack could let the fish slip the J-shaped hook and leave me dejected.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a bright orange fish broke the surface and was netted by Ray, then quickly dispatched. The average-sized shortraker wasn’t the 35-pounder we were after, but I was elated to add another newcomer to my species list.

Everyone on the boat ended up jigging up a shortraker on the day. Although none of the deep dwellers were world records, a couple of the fish pushed close to 20 pounds. Ray certainly knew where to find the fish, and I believe everyone got a good workout. Our day concluded with a change of locations to fish up a few cod and halibut, which we enjoyed for dinner when we pulled into Port Ashton Lodge for our overnight.

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Our lodge stay allowed us to steady our sea legs and enjoy a comfortable rest after a long day of fishing. The community cook cabin at Port Ashton provided a place for us to gather and get some nourishment from a self-prepared fish fry. Tony created a meal fit for royalty from our catch.

With an early wake-up looming and another full day of fishing on the docket, no one needed encouragement to turn in for a restful night of sleep.

DAY 2 Refreshed from a Port Ashton good night’s sleep, everyone seemed eager for the second day of fishing. Capt. Ray loaded us up and promptly zoomed out of Sawmill Bay towards the Gulf of Alaska. Lingcod were going to be the headliner species this day, and Ray’s knowledge would put us on top of Moby Dick-sized fish.

Thankfully, water depths for targeting the big and toothy beasts would keep us in the triple-digit range. The

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

GPS got us to pinpoint locations where the skipper knows fish congregate.

Once again we would be using Tony’s Kodiak Custom bottom jigs to entice the bite.

Upon nearing the honey hole, Ray checked the current direction and positioned the boat for a good drift. This time four anglers would be fishing simultaneously, dropping down quickly and bouncing near the bottom as the boat moved with the current. A small window of fast action was anticipated. I took up a corner on the fishing deck and waited for Ray’s command.

“Drop ’em!” he shouted.

Instantly, I released my spool and controlled the descent of the jig by using my thumb, avoiding backlash in the line or getting tangled with another angler. Once my lure reached the bottom, I reapplied the spool lock and gave the handle a quick turn to tighten up the line.

With two hands on the rod, I began lifting and lowering to give the jig life, and almost instantaneously I received a big

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bite. I pulled up to set the hook and felt the beast below try and shake the hook.

At virtually the same time, Kristin, Bob and Tony all had their rods double over for a four-way hook-up. Pandemonium – in the best of ways – unfolded.

Everyone with a fishing rod was battling a fish, and from the looks of it there were four big ones below.

Orchestrating the angling chaos required teamwork and good communication. Somehow all of the lines remained untangled, and as I made the last cranks on the reel I finally got the first glimpse of my fish just under the surface. I was stunned by its size, and without a doubt I could tell it was probably the biggest lingcod I ever hooked into.

As I turned around to let someone know I needed a gaff, Ray was hoisting a huge fish over the rail for Kristin.

The lingcod was a giant, flopping on the deck with a boom. Ray immediately responded to securing Tony’s fish since he was next to her, and once again another

Tony Davis proudly displays a large ling, one of several that quickly bit the anglers’ lures, resulting in fast limits for everyone. (KRISTIN DUNN/KODIAK CUSTOM TACKLE)

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hefty one was in the boat. Ray followed up like a professional rodeo wrangler, gaffing my large lingcod, and finally Bob’s fish was also on the deck before the bell. It looked to be about 200 pounds among the four lingcod topside, and that was only the first pass.

I couldn’t believe how quickly the four of us had hooked lings, and the size of the fish was straight insanity. The “Crazy Ray” moniker was beginning to make sense as our day-two fishing unfolded.

After cleaning off the deck and repositioning the boat for a second run, everyone was back in place ready for round two. Touching the ocean floor with my jig, the first couple up-anddown motions prompted another fish to smash my lure. It was a lingcod feeding frenzy on Kodiak Customs baits. Once again rod-bending action filled the boat deck, and four more above-average fish were raised to the surface. Everyone was ecstatic.

All anglers aboard got into the fast and furious action with some great fish and lots of smiles as we headed back for Prince William Sound and Whittier.

The two-day saltwater adventure made for an over-the-top, memorable experience. Catching huge lingcod and adding a new type of rockfish, a shortraker, to my species-caught list was indeed rewarding for me. I also managed to catch a big, beautiful yelloweye rockfish, a great bonus.

When you’re fishing with perhaps the best captain in the port and friends both new and old, it’s hard not to have a great time. Although the drive from my home near Fairbanks meant a roundtrip of about 1,000 miles, I certainly don’t see myself as being foolish for making the time.

Driving back through the Whittier tunnel with a cooler full of goodness, as well as sore forearms, meant that I had gone fishing on the Crazy Ray, and there is simply nothing crazy about that, especially if you’re as crazy about fishing as I am. ASJ Editor’s note: For more on the fishing adventures of Dennis Musgraves, check out alaskansalmonslayers.com.

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A DURABLE BOAT FOR ALASKAN WATERS An interview with Cleatus Roberts III of RiverWolf Boats Alaska Sporting Journal How did you get involved with RiverWolf Boats?

Cleatus Roberts III I had been building boats for about 15 years when I heard that Larry Mercer (the original owner) was looking for a boat fabricator who may someday take over the business, as he was approaching retirement.

I met with him and got familiar with the models, designs, quality of workmanship, build processes and the company’s reputation of being an elite manufacturer of aluminum boats. After about six months, everything fit into place and we signed papers and here I am, building what I love to do and making my customers happy.

ASJ Tell me about your background in fishing with your Pacific Northwest boats.

CR I love fishing, hunting and pretty much anything to do with the outdoors. I got most of my passion for it from my father and grandfather. Salmon, steelhead, trout are pretty much my main cup of tea. To be honest, this business keeps me pretty busy and I just haven’t had the time to get out there and throw a line in. I will in time, but delivering these beautiful boats to the customer on time and perfect every time is most important to me. I mean, if I was buying a product from someone I would hope they had the passion and cared about what they were doing for me. Plus, I have a pretty good interest in making sure my business is successful, so just like a lot of people out there, I am able to provide for and care for my fam-

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Cleatus with his daughter Becky ily. We all have our lines of work, and some of us have the drive and determination to be great and not just average at it!

ASJ Your boats are now being fished in Alaska. What about RiverWolf boats make them ideal to fish in Alaska’s rugged waters?

CR They are a very well-thoughtout and tested boat – not only for functionality, but also in strength and durability. The bottom material 6061 alloy is very strong. The chine can take a huge amount of impacts and abuse; one look at our chine and it’s easy to see why!

ASJ Are there any future plans that you can share with us for the company?

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

CR I look at growing the company to be able to accommodate more people. By maintaining a high level quality of workmanship, I am mostly booked out and don’t have any stock boats available. Over the years I have met some very talented and skilled workers in this profession, and many of them are good friends of mine. There is no doubt in my mind that over time and good old-fashioned hard work, I will have a stellar team to keep bringing a world-class quality boat to its new owners.

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THIS IS

IT

The author says the mostly downs and precious few ups of steelhead fishing will cure you of any sort of arrogance, overconfidence or even general self-esteem. (JEFF LUND/JESSE KNOCK)

WHEN FISHING FOR STEELHEAD, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD DAY OR BAD DAY MIGHT BE ONE PIVOTAL MOMENT

BY JEFF LUND

T

hat was it.

You don’t want to think that the one chance you’d have had passed unsuccessfully, but steelhead fishing can be like that.

There are the days you recount your fish and think, Wow, did I really catch nine steelhead today?

Then there are the moments you

know you should focus, but after repeated fishless casts can’t help but settle into the numb routine. Then came a tug and for some reason the instinct failed you.

The hook-set came late or not at all.

You put the fly back again and again but nothing happened.

Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the one chance I had today to not get skunked.

That’s what steelhead fishing is: euaksportingjournal.com | MARCH 2017

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Steelhead, so beautiful and majestic in their sea-run colors in pristine Alaskan waters, can drive even the most logical and calm angler to the edge of madness. (JESSE KNOCK)

phoria with long stretches of failure and coping. Steelhead fishing will cure you of any sort of arrogance, overconfidence or even general self-esteem, while ridding

you of a healthy bank account balance.

SO HOW DID YOU HANDLE THAT? The common defeated angler is the

metaphorical equivalent of a volcano.

On one end you have the Mount Rainier Angler, stoic but with catastrophic potential if it blows. It never

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does ‌ But if it did ...

One summer, a friend of mine from California was embarrassingly incapable of catching a single coho salmon, while myself and another had limited in minutes. When he ďŹ nally hooked up, the ďŹ sh broke his line. He quietly reeled up, set the rod down and simply stated, “That’s it, I’m done.â€? There was no anger in the voice, just the same simple, calm declarative sentence he would have used when pushing away an empty plate at the dinner table.

On the other end there’s the Mount St. Helens guy, the angler furiously spewing vulgarities like molten lava.

But it doesn’t stop there. The heat causes ooding which in turn erodes landscape. The devastation can last generations, or in the case of a friendship, the entire drive home. If a ďŹ sh is caught in a catch-and-kill situation, you can bet the demise of the poor ďŹ sh will be epic. Hours of dormant rage freed with frightening – maybe a little comical – results. I’ve seen straight legs lifted to

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The author embraces success during a happy day on the river.

Winter/spring steelheading is often done in less than ideal weather, so if you miss your chance to land one of these beauties, it can make for an even more miserable outing. (JEFF LUND)

chest level, then brought down on opping ďŹ sh, the heel of the wading boot punishing an unlucky salmon for the transgressions of its cousins. I’ve seen rocks, sticks and ďŹ sts thrown in ďŹ ts of cathartic rage.

It’s funny when it’s not you.

With steelhead, everything is different. This isn’t a warm summer afternoon. A level of misery has been endured, so there might be a little bit of expectation involved. You know you don’t deserve one just because it’s

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30 degrees outside and you’ve had to break the ice from the guides in on your fly rod, but maybe you have earned it. At some point at least you earned it.

So maybe you did earn it but weren’t ready and can’t chuck your rod. It’s cold outside and it would be irrational to throw your rod into the frigid river because, well, it’s cold, and you’d have to go get it even if it is right in front of you. The cold air can handle expletives, but it doesn’t make anything warmer, and certainly won’t make the steelhead bite. It’s not really dignified – not that you’re worried about dignity when surrounded by nothing but river and the woods – but they do say character is who you are and what you do when no one is around, or looking. Something like that, anyway.

I just stood for a few seconds, kicked the water once, and then stripped in my line. I breathed in the nose, out the mouth. In the nose, out the mouth and looked for perspective.

Really? You’re going to throw a tantrum here?

Fortunately, I had enough self-awareness to ask myself that question. People don’t get to have their home river be a secluded creek in Southeast Alaska.

People pay money and use vacation days for this. This is an ordinary weekend for me; it isn’t the trip of a lifetime.

So I sat down, took a drink of coffee from my thermos and listened to the heavy stillness of the woods and the repetition of the cold water. The skiff ride home would be warmer than it was when I headed out, so there was a chance I’d feel my face that evening. Sweet.

I stood, cracked my neck and sent my pink fly toward the slot that caused all the problems in the first place. I couldn’t have missed the take if I wanted to.

The steelhead left, pulled hard and downriver, then jumped.

That wasn’t it.

This is. ASJ Editor’s note: Ketchikan-based Jeff Lund is the author of Going Home, a memoir about fishing in California and Alaska. For more, go to jefflundbooks.com.

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IT CAME FROM THE DEEP

Editor’s note: Last fall, Bureau of Land Management video footage from the Alaskan Interior’s Chena River captured a strange moving object that at first glance appeared to be a peculiar critter swimming through the current. For a brief and glorious moment, some convinced themselves to believe it was a prehistoric sea creature slithering upstream through the icy dark waters. Could this have been a long lost cousin to “Nessie,” “Champ,” “Ogopogo” or other legendary alleged sea monsters? Alas, it was deemed 56

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to be only floating debris.

Yet Alaska is full of mythical monsters of the deep. Our correspondent Bjorn Dihle has written a book about the haunted grounds around his Alaska Panhandle home base, including the offshore waters and whatever unknown sea life lurks below. The following is an excerpt from Dihle’s Haunted Inside Passage: Ghosts, Legends and Mysteries of Southeast Alaska, published

by Alaska Northwest Books (an imprint of Graphic Arts Books).

NEW BOOK EXPLORES THE UNEXPLAINED CREATURES OF SOUTHEAST ALASKA WATERS

BY BJORN DIHLE

W

hen I want real entertainment I walk into a seaside dive bar famous for the different sort of crabs you can get while using its restroom and loudly proclaim, “In the winter of ’34 I was rowing across the Gulf of Alaska when a terrible beast reared its serpent head.”

Usually that gets the pot stirring. After all, nearly every other crusty Southeast Alaskan fisherman has a sea monster story. Some mariner might remark, “Big deal, I’ve seen several sea serpents.

What’s the score between the Packers and the Vikings?” Others will start twitching and change the subject to fish prices. If I’m lucky, some peg-legged, one-eyed mariner with three testicles will tell a story so scary it’ll turn my whiskers white.

SOUTHEAST ALASKA IS ROOTED to the

What lies beneath these waters around Southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park? Sure, lots of aquatic life in the form of marine mammals and fish, but are there also stories of sea monsters and other unexplained myths that ASJ correspondent shares in his new book, Haunted Inside Passage: Ghosts, Legends and Mysteries of Southeast Alaska.

(NATIONAL PARK SERVICE)

mysteries, moods and whims of the ocean. The greatest event of the year in Juneau is the Golden North Salmon Derby. It’s kind of like a mixture of Mad Max and Christmas, set on the sea that includes certain heathen rituals I’m not at liberty to talk about.

Southeast kids generally catch their first fish right about the time they learn to walk. Most Saturday night pickup lines end with the simile “like the ocean.” Your eyes are like the ocean.

Your heart is like the ocean. Your hindquarters are like the ocean - that one gets them every time. Next thing you know, you’ll be watching little Ahab roll over and crawl toward a fishing pole.

One of my favorite ways to pass an evening is to put on an old halibut jacket, eye patch, and beret covered in fish slime, go to a bar, and tell stories about my past battles with sea monsters.

“Stop talking about your ex-girl-

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friends,” the barkeep eventually says.

“Arr, but she was the size of the Titanic, had a head of a goat and eyes like Satan!”

“You sound bitter. Would you like another Cosmopolitan?”

“Aye! Did I ever tell you of the time a giant squid was this close to my face?”

I’ll say, gesturing with my glass and spilling the pink drink on my face.

Being a commercial fisherman impresses many people from the Lower 48. Not so much in Southeast Alaska. At one time or another, the majority of the populace has fished. The job mainly consists of wearing a rubber outfit, smelling rotten and never changing your underwear. You also have to be able to drink beer, spit tobacco (I prefer grape bubble gum) and, every once in a while, commit a random act of craziness.

Some people attack each other with knives, gaffs or lead pipes. Others rub against creosote pilings and howl mournfully. I prefer climbing aboard someone else’s boat at night and waking them with a good ol’-fashioned tickling. Occasionally, there’s fishing involved, an endeavor best described as “wet and messy, a little like sex but generally less pleasurable.”

drooling and unable to speak or move.

At 2:30 in the morning it was time to head out and haul in our sets. I was having trouble walking, lifting my arms and remembering my name. Attempting to urinate was akin to trying to paddle up Niagara Falls. The wind howled off the mountains and the sea was a nasty mess. What ensued was a barbaric ballet of impotency, embarrassment and shame. For some reason, maybe because I offered comic relief or because Sandy had a history of working with kids with special needs, the Craigs did not fire me or throw me overboard.

Cross Sound has an ancient and enigmatic sense of reality. If there was anywhere in Southeast that seemed to

offer a decent chance of encountering a sea monster, it was here, where the Inside Passage ebbs and floods into the big ocean. It took a few seasons before Joe and Sandy opened up with stories so wild I wouldn’t have believed if anyone else had told them.

Weird stuff happens out there. For instance, one calm morning as we were hauling a longline set, a baby killer whale spyhopped a few feet off the stern and checked us out. I could have reached out and petted the little guy, an urge I had some difficulty quelling.

“It’s just a baby orca,” Joe said, casting a quick glance. “Let’s get back to work.”

In Joe’s more than 40 years of fish-

MANY OUTSIDERS BELIEVE FISHING is one of the most dangerous jobs in North America. More dangerous than fishing is the drugs fishermen take – they have the constitutions of Charlie Sheen, Sasquatch and Keith Richards combined.

Years ago, I flew out to Elfin Cove to deckhand for Joe and Sandy Craig in Cross Sound, at the northwestern limit of the Inside Passage. The first day, after we set out two longline sets for halibut – a groundline, with a few hundred hooks attached, stretched between two anchors – a friend of theirs showed up with a fresh batch of marijuana cookies. I figured this was some rite-of-passage sort of deal, and if I didn’t eat one they would call me names and hurt my feelings.

“Wow, very moist! Is it organic? Are these flax seeds?” I asked, as I wolfed one down. No one else partook. Joe and Sandy exchanged concerned looks.

An hour later, I sat at the dinner table 58

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The author and local fisherman Joe Craig with some freshly caught halibut. Joe, a veteran of 40 years on these waters, has experienced his share of strange encounters. (BJORN DIHLE)

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ing and living in Cross Sound he’s seen no shortage of crazy things. Sandy is the same way. For instance, one night they had a whale get caught in their anchor line and were hauled on a Nantucket sleigh ride. Joe carefully climbed to the bow and managed to cut the line with his Leatherman. When Sandy was several months pregnant, she was hand trolling by herself and hooked a large salmon shark. The shark began tearing her skiff apart, so she shoved a two-byfour board in its snapping jaws and beat it to death. One evening after a dinner of king salmon and a few beers, Joe casually mentioned he’d come across three different giant squids washed up on shore. They’d been between 30 and 40 feet in length and largely decomposed.

Sandy had the wildest encounter, a story she didn’t tell for years because she was afraid people would think she was crazy. She was hand trolling for coho near Bird Rock when the ocean began to roil.

Suddenly, what looked like a giant snake writhed out of the water. It undulated

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through the sea, not showing its head or tail. One coil would disappear under the water and be followed by another. Sandy guessed the creature’s sinewy body rose 10 feet out of the water and she could have driven her boat through the loop it made. When I suggested that it was a giant squid, she shrugged.

“Maybe, but it seemed too big to be a squid,” she said.

ALASKA’S HISTORY OF ENCOUNTERS with mysterious sea creatures goes way back. The Tlingit and Haida people, who lived in Southeast Alaska long before the Russians came, knew of several different sea creatures apparently unknown to science. One popular Tlingit story is of a sea monster called Gunakadeit, which brought good luck to a village. George Wilhelm Steller, the naturalist aboard Vitus Bering’s ship the St. Peter during the successful yet ill-fated 1741 expedition of “discovery” to Alaska, wrote of seeing a sea ape in the Gulf of Alaska. There was another report of a similar beast around

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the mid-20th century. After the St. Peter wrecked and Bering and nearly half the crew perished, the survivors subsisted largely on 30-foot-long Pacific manatees. The species was rapidly extirpated

by Russian fur hunters; its very existence might be questioned if Steller hadn’t managed to bring a skeleton of a young female back to St. Petersburg.

The Yup’ik and Iñupiat people to the north have stories of sea monsters, too.

In the last century there have been hundreds of reports of sea serpents in and near Southeast Alaska – so many that in British Columbia the alleged creature has been given the name of Cadborosaurus, after Cadboro Bay, a hot spot, on southern Vancouver Island. The general description of “Caddy” is a giant sea serpent with a horse-like or camel-like head.

The cadborosaurus cryptid made headlines in 2009 when a fisherman captured less than great footage of what he claimed to be a family of sea serpents in the Nushagak Bay region of Bristol

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Bay. Supposedly there’d been several minutes of footage, but all you can dig up on the internet is 28 seconds’ worth.

Two years later, the footage was apparently sold for a handsome sum. Someone filmed a reality television show starring some of the cast from The Deadliest Catch as they hunted the sea monster.

Bristol Bay is Alaska’s biggest commercial salmon fishery; it accounts for nearly half the world’s catch of sockeye salmon. When the fish are running strong, the boats of the drift-net fishery are akin to sharks in a feeding frenzy.

Boats gouge, ram and attack. Captains threaten to kill each other’s families.

The Nushagak is less insane than the Naknek and Egegik Districts of Bristol Bay, but still, there is no shortage of boats in the deltas.

It’s a little surprising no one else came forward to report a sighting of sea serpents. I spent one season in Bristol Bay, mostly because I wanted to see the fishery. People had warned me about the skipper I’d hired on with, but I blew

it off, confident that I could charm and get along with just about anyone. The first day the old crust stuck his hand in the anchor winch and exploded a finger.

The season ended a month and a half of madness, abuse, and stupidity later when the boat broke down in the middle of the night. Right before we were about to crash into a giant fish packer, the other deckhand, to whom the skipper had been the nastiest, saved us by jimmy-rigging a temporary fix.

TALES OF SEA SERPENTS go way back, long before white folks plied Alaska’s waters in search of fur and fish. One of the earlier recorded stories concerns a group of Haida fishermen from Skidegate, British Columbia, in Haida Gwaii, the Queen Charlotte Islands.

The Progressive, a Petersburg newspaper, related the incident in an article entitled “A Fishy Story” in 1909. “This creature which appeared to be 20 feet long and from 2 to 3 feet in circumference, wrapped itself twice about one of

the Indian’s paddle. The natives were so alarmed they dropped paddle and serpent overboard. Next day another party went out and the serpent took a double hitch about the canoe. Then one of the old warriors in the tribe drew forth his keen hunting knife and slashed the monster. It’s said of those natives that they are not seriously addicted to fire water and as a general rule, are credited with being quite reliable.”

The article’s tone might seem dismissive, but the Haida Gwaii Archipelago is, or has recently been, the home to some exceptional beings, including a rainforest caribou, a golden spruce tree, and the Kermode, or spirit bear.

In 1879 Samuel Hall Young, one of the earliest American missionaries to Southeast Alaska, reported being warned of a sea monster. In the company of John Muir, while visiting the Hoonah Tlingit on Chichagof Island, the two explorers asked about Glacier Bay. They were told numerous frightening stories. Young, a skeptic and – I’ll venture out on a limb

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here – opponent of most things Native, blew off the warnings. One creature the Tlingit warned about sounded like a giant squid. “In one bay there was said to be a giant devil-fish with arms as long as a tree, lurking in malignant patience, awaiting the passage that way of an unwary canoe, when up would flash those terrible arms with their thousand suckers and, seizing their prey, would drag down the men to the bottom of the sea, there to be mangled and devoured by the horrid beak.”

Forty or so miles west of Hoonah, near Elfin Cove, are the Inian Islands. The passageways between the islands have some of the most powerful currents in the Northwest. Perhaps it’s these cur-

rents, coupled with proximity to the big ocean that have led to a number of reports of giant squids washed up on the shore nearby. There were also a couple stories of giant squid attacks circulating among the Cross Sound fishing fleet.

One legend has it that a giant monster came into a protected cove where a Tlingit camp or village was situated.

Men who were out hunting and fishing returned to find their entire community vanished. From the signs left behind they were able to deduce a giant squid or octopus had attacked. One theory is that children were playing in the shallows when the creature showed up. Mothers and grandmothers ran into the water trying to rescue their children, but were

taken as well. The other story was of a giant squid attacking a purse seiner. Sandy Craig told me what she remembered of that tale: “The way I heard it the purse net was closed and they were bringing the bag up ready to bring the fish on board. The squid hit the bag at full speed and that is why it was able to pull the boat almost over. I think the boat was a 56-foot limit seiner and it almost capsized. When the force of the initial blow was gone, the boat righted itself and some of the crew actually jumped on the bag of fish to cut the squid and they did cut one large leg off.”

Another famous story about a different sort of sea monster, one that is well known to science and quite delicious,

THE TREACHEROUS TAKU WATERS Some sea monster tales can be explained with a little bit of research.

Teresa Busch, owner of Plant People in Juneau and a seafaring adventurer, shared a harrowing encounter with one of them. It was after Labor Day, a time of the year when the waters of Southeast Alaska are unpredictable and frequently dangerous. Teresa and her husband, Rick, fell prey to the enticements of a day of calm weather and took their 28foot sailboat to go halibut fishing. They crossed Taku Inlet, one of the nastiest bodies of water near Juneau. A lot of mariners have had close calls and many boats have gone down crossing the inlet. That night, while the Busches were anchored in Doty Cove on Admiralty Island, the weather worsened. In the morning they woke to a gale.

“I almost lost my husband overboard that day,” Teresa remembered.

Taku Inlet was impassable, but they were able to cross Stephens Passage and tie up to the public float at Taku Harbor. Located 20 miles south of downtown Juneau, Taku Harbor is where the colorful, iconic, and apparently mystical character “Tiger” Olson lived alone for decades. A trapper and prospector who reportedly sometimes communicated with spirits to pass the time, he’s become most associated with the harbor. Before Olson, there were 64

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Taku Tlingit families living in the cove – a census taken in 1880 tallies 269 Taku people living there. In 1840 the Hudson’s Bay Company tried to establish a trading post that proved unsuccessful because, according to early traders, the Tlingit were more interested in warring than trading. In the early 1900s a salmon cannery was built. Now the Tlingit villages, the trading post, and the cannery are gone or slowly being reclaimed by the land. A public dock remains, offering many mariners in distress a snug harbor to wait out storms. Teresa checked the weather on the radio; it was supposed to be calmer early and worsen toward late morning. They left in the pitch-black, at 3 in the morning, to try to beat the storm. Soon the seas were so bad there was no turning back – they were barely able to make it back to Dotty Cove.

The following day they tried again.

It didn’t look too bad from where they were anchored, but when they got farther out the ocean turned into chaos.

Teresa estimated the seas running at 15 feet and the wind blowing 65 miles per hour. A giant log popped up in front of the boat. They couldn’t back up, so they made a desperate attempt to maneuver around it. They missed the collision by a few feet on their port side. To their horror and fascination, they realized

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what they thought was a log was a living beast unlike anything they’d ever seen or heard of. It had an enormous head and huge eyes that studied the near-foundering craft.

“It was the most animated I’ve ever seen my husband,” Teresa said. The beast was easily the length of their boat. They passed the creature and it looked back, and then shot straight out of the water and disappeared. Having to focus all their efforts on staying out of the ocean, they had little time to reflect.

Eventually, the storm destroyed their boat. A commercial fishing boat picked the couple up and, when the weather calmed down, took them back to town.

Teresa approached some Tlingit elders and asked about the creature they encountered and was told it was a creature they knew of that science hadn’t identified. Awhile later, Rick came in excited and carrying a magazine with an article about elephant seals.

“This is it!” he said, gesturing at a picture. Scientists have documented elephant seals diving more than 5,000 feet.

Teresa believe the contorted features of the creature were from pressure changes. Southeast Alaska is not home to elephant seals; however, around the time of Teresa’s sighting, a handful of other mariners encountered a large bull elephant seal south of Taku Inlet. BD

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is of an old man who was fishing alone when a huge halibut took his bait. The incident was said to have taken place near Kupreanof Island in the early 1970s.

The old man brought the leviathan to the surface, gaffed it, and managed to haul it aboard. Later, the skiff was found washed up on shore, with the two lying dead next to each other. In its death throes, the halibut had broken the old man’s ribs and legs, perhaps severing an artery.

One version of the tale has the halibut being served at the old fisherman’s wake.

I was a small child when I first heard the story and every time I dropped a bait down to the ocean bottom, I prepared to go to war with something akin to Moby Dick. Years later I was longlining with Joe and Sandy when we landed the largest fish I was ever involved in catching. The halibut – we estimated it at around 340 pounds – didn’t have much fight when we hauled it to the surface, although getting it aboard took some creative thinking and heavy lifting. According to the Alaska Dispatch Newspaper, the largest halibut ever caught and weighed in Alaska tipped the scales at 533 pounds. There are stories of

fish brought to the surface and lost that were likely much bigger.

Once, in The Office, a bar in Hoonah, I heard whisperings about experienced longliners from Petersburg decades ago hauling a fish to the surface they estimated at around 1,500 pounds. It hovered just off the stern for a few moments before spitting the hook and sinking back into the depths.

IF YOU FISH WITH someone long enough you get to know them pretty well. Imagine being on a 30-foot boat for days with someone, with a bucket to poop in and only fish, Jiffy peanut butter and pilot bread to eat. As our friendship progressed, Joe and I both confessed to having what some might see as odd phobias. For Joe it was snakes. The first time we brought a wolf eel aboard, the battle-hardened sea captain screamed and ran for the cabin. Granted, the 5-foot-long creature eyed me with an unnerving intelligence. I, on the other hand, only had two phobias: yoga and giant squid. Joe preyed mercilessly upon them both. One spring I talked

with him shortly before I set out to kayak around Admiralty Island.

“Kayaking around Admiralty, eh?” Joe said. “There’s giant squid out there. A kayaker would be just a piece of popcorn to one of them.”

As I paddled out of Auke Bay I could already see the newspaper headline.

“Giant Squid Suspected in the Disappearance of Novice Kayaker.” According to karma I had it coming. I’d never eaten calamari, but I’d chopped up a lot of little squids for bait. My family and friends were more worried about me getting eaten by a bear (the island supposedly has the densest concentration of brown bears in the world) or caught in stormy seas and drowned. Their concerns were just too damn rational to scare me.

The trip was intense in a good sort of way but passed without too much horror. I bobbed around in 3-foot seas watching a pod of killer whales attack a humpback whale. When the humpback tried to breathe, the black fish would push it back under. A week later, in Chatham Strait, I was almost swallowed by the sea during a violent storm that man-

Sure, this is just a whale’s tail in the waters off Yakutat, a common sight in this corner of Alaska. But what else is sharing the deep with this cetacean?

Tales abound. (WENDY ZIRNGIBI/USFS) 66

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ifested suddenly.

Two days before I made it back to Juneau, I had my last adrenaline rush of the trip when a pod of more than 30 killer whales passed by. Three young sea lions had been trailing me for the past hour. With the black ďŹ sh approaching, they nervously pressed closer until they were just a few feet away. When sea lions are being hunted by killer whales they’ll jump onto anything – dock, buoy or kayak – in the hopes of escaping. A number of whales approached within 20 yards or so. The sea lions nearly rubbed up against my kayak. One killer whale came toward us, its ďŹ n slashing out of the water, before it dove under in what almost seemed like a jest.

I like to think that Joe was relieved when I showed up on the ElďŹ n Cove oatplane dock a week later. He, Sandy and I hauled groundlines, anchors and buoys down to the Njord. We drank beer, cut bait and baited hundreds of hooks. In the predawn darkness, I stood on the dock waiting to untie lines, listening to waves gently lapping and the engine warming up. Joe sat at the helm and Sandy walked down from the house with a mug of tea steaming in her hand. “Great day!â€? she said, smiling. She said that almost every morning, no matter what sort of miseries lay ahead. The Njord chugged out the narrow entrance to ElďŹ n Cove into Cross Sound. We yelled back and forth while lines and hooks ew overboard as dawn slowly illuminated the Brady IceďŹ eld and the massive Fairweather Mountain Range. Humpback whales sounded and a pod of killer whales appeared in the far distance.

Afterward, Sandy and I baited hooks in the back of the boat. I took a break to stare out on the ocean. Even if my chances of growing a third testicle were signiďŹ cantly better, I still had hope of encountering a sea monster. ASJ Editor’s note: Bjorn Dihle is a Juneau writer. Follow him at facebook.com/BjornDihleauthor and check out his book Haunted Inside Passage: Ghosts, Legends and Mysteries of Southeast Alaska on Amazon. It’s scheduled to be released in the next month.

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You know you’re an Alaskan baby when Mom and Dad take you on an ice fishing trip a few months after your birth. A well-bundled Lynx McClure watches while Krystin McClure fishes for rainbows and Dolly Varden inside a hut set up on a frigid Kenai Peninsula lake earlier this winter. (BIXLER MCCLURE)

BABY STEPS

BY KRYSTIN AND BIXLER MCCLURE

T

he Kenai Peninsula is home to countless lakes, many of which are excellent for ice fishing. As much as we like to drive long distances in hopes of catching lunker fish, sometimes the best lake for fishing is close to home – especially when you have a baby in tow.

Our son Lynx was born in November, right on the cusp of one of the coldest winters in a few years. Sure, we’ve

NEW PARENTS BUNDLE UP THEIR NEWBORN FOR AN ICE FISHING OUTING NEAR SEWARD

bundled him up like the poor kid on A Christmas Story and dragged him out onto lakes in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, but when the temperature in that area dropped to 20 below, we had to consider other options.

Down the street from our house is a lake full of rainbows and Dolly Varden of all sizes. Every now and then a 20inch trout gets pulled from the lake, but most of the big fish cruise by your lures, skeptical of the food dangling in front of them. We have secret homemade lures

that will occasionally fool a large Dolly, but the rainbows have continuously stumped us. It is a wonderfully frustrating place to fish.

A few months after Lynx was born, the Kenai Peninsula dipped into a deep cold spell and we had a hankering for some ice fishing.

SOLDOTNA AND COOPER LANDING were both 25 below and Sterling was even colder, around minus 35. Seward was a balmy zero degrees that morning when

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we decided to head to our local lake, our only feasible option in these temperatures. Bixler loaded up our ice fishing gear – now including a shelter with a propane heater – while I prepared the little man for the outdoor temperatures.

Lynx popped into his car seat and immediately fell asleep. A whopping five minutes later, we arrived at the lake, which was free of any signs of other anglers and coated with a fresh crust of ice. Bixler wrestled the ice fishing sled down the steep bank to the lake, while I grabbed Lynx in his carrier, a blanket covering the top to keep out the biting cold.

When you have a baby to worry about, you can set up an ice shelter in a matter of seconds. Soon we had two holes Yes, the temperature was still well below freezing on this relatively balmy winter day near Seward. But a heated ice shelter kept Lynx nice and toasty.

(BIXLER MCCLURE)

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drilled, a heater fired up and a baby fast asleep in his car seat in the cozy shanty.

I grabbed my favorite lure for rainbows (the last one in our box) and dropped it through the hole. Bixler grabbed his homemade rig to lure the large Dollies that overwinter in the lake and we started fishing. Immediately, I had a strike.

I had not ice fished in so long that I was caught off guard and the fish stripped my lure. I was thankful that Lynx was still too young to understand the English language, because what I said afterwards would have landed him in detention if he were to repeat it at school.

Frustrated, I thumbed through the tackle box to find something else.

When I made my selection, Lynx was starting to stir. In the cramped quarters of the shanty, I stripped off his layers to change his diaper and started to feed him after I redressed him. Bixler handed me my rigged rod and I fished while I fed Lynx.

As usual, a large rainbow lazily checked out my lure then headed to-

After she lost a nice fish right off the bat and took care of Lynx’s wardrobe change, the author managed to get a strike from this nice rainbow. (BIXLER MCCLURE)

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wards Bixler’s hole. I whispered my sighting to Bixler, who saw the same rainbow swim off after ignoring his homemade rig too. “I wish I could catch one of those giant ďŹ sh!â€? Bixler grumbled. “Me too,â€? I said. “It is so frustrating to see them swim by all day long.â€?

Trust us when we say that Lynx stayed warm and toasty throughout the trip, but a true Alaskan can handle a few seconds of the elements to document the moment before heading home for the day. (BIXLER MCCLURE)

I PUT LYNX BACK in his car seat after he ďŹ nished feeding and he stared at me with ennui. I started to tell him about the amazing luck we had at this lake last year at around the same time. Seward was in the midst of a warm winter and this lake was a sloppy mess with a few inches of water over 12 inches of ice.

The water was oddly murky and I was using the lure I had just lost. That day I’d caught a respectable-sized rainbow and Dolly Varden back-to-back. The story was enough to lull Lynx back to sleep right before Bixler yelled “Fish on!�

I reeled up my rod and helped center his line in the hole. We were hoping that one of the giant ďŹ sh had ďŹ nally nabbed

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Antelope also are plentiful. What a “way of life” opportunity!

The property qualifies for land owner preference tags for elk and mule deer. Normally these tags are valued at for $4,000 each or more for elk and $2,500 each or more for mule deer.

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YES SIR, THAT’S MY BABY When fishing (especially with babies), flexibility is a must. Expect shorter, more disrupted and cuter trips! Bring plenty of warm clothes, even if you have a shelter. A car seat sits perfectly on the ice and provides some insulation above the frozen surface. Be sure to secure the child in a safe location away from the heat of the heater, splashing water or the hole itself. And take lots of pictures – they grow too fast! KM our lure, but instead Bixler pulled up a decent-sized rainbow. Bixler proudly showed his catch to our sleeping baby, noting that this was his first successful ice fishing experience since birth.

I tried my hand at fishing, but unfortunately Lynx was starting to fuss.

Bixler tended to him as I watched a large Dolly Varden ignore my latest lure selection. Lynx was not calming down and Bixler mentioned that he might be hungry again after thumbing through the layers to check his diaper.

I grabbed him and coordinated feeding a baby while fishing, a necessary skill in Alaska. Soon I felt a familiar tap and set the hook. Lynx hardly flinched, but I had to hand the rod to Bixler to fight the fish. Another solid rainbow had taken the bait and was soon in the bucket for dinner.

I set Lynx back in his car seat. He drifted off to sleep once more as the sunlight dwindled from the Alaskan winter sky. Bixler managed to grab one more rainbow before we called it a day.

He again showed the fish to Lynx, who slept through the whole explanation of rainbow trout and their deliciousness, before throwing it into the bucket.

On my last drop as Bixler started packing up, I saw both a big rainbow and lunker Dolly Varden cruise by below. I looked over at Lynx who was fast asleep, enjoying the cold and comfort of the shanty and said, “When he’s older, I think he’ll be the one who will finally catch these giant fish.” ASJ

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You know Terry Wiest as a float fishing fiend, but he’s been shaking things up to keep his angling fresh, including taking up the fly rod. While he has yet to catch his trademark fish, steelhead, he’s landed a couple Chinook so far. (TERRY WIEST)

SWITCHING UP

BY TERRY WIEST

A

s some of us have been fishing for a few years (or more), I feel that sometimes change is good, even if we’re successful in the way we’re fishing or what we’re fishing for. In my case I’ve made several changes in the past couple of years that have really renewed my enthusiasm towards fishing, almost back to how I felt about it as a kid.

One major change I’ve benefited from has been to go back to my roots as a young steelheader, a time I knew of no other technique than drift fishing. This was my only method for the majority of

my early steelheading career, until I was introduced to the art of float fishing by a guide by the name of Bret Stuart down in Oregon. That was back in 1990.

After that introduction there was no turning back. I was a firm believer in the power of the jig, confident it would outproduce any other method when fished correctly. Float fishing has never let me down. I loved the technique so much and became so extremely proficient at it that I use it literally 95 percent of the time on the river. In the early days I became known as “the jig guy.” I’d stumble across holes lined with drift fishermen and wait for them to clear out so I could give my jigs a try.

More often than not there was a fish that hadn’t seen that presentation before and stomped on it.

My belief in this system and continued success led to the writing of my book, Float Fishing for Salmon and Steelhead.

A FEW YEARS ago while fishing with my buddy, guide Mike Zavadlov (mikezsguideservice.com), I once again pulled out the float rod and begin to hook fish.

We were having such a banner morning that I decided to switch it up a little. I had a brand new drift rod that I’d only brought to the river, but never tried. I figured since we were doing so well, this

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was as good of a time as any.

So I cast out with the drift set-up and it felt good. Wow, I thought, I remember this! The rod was so sensitive it brought back many memories. With the telltale sign of a steelhead sucking in the presentation, I set the hook. That’s something you never forget, as the feeling is cemented into your brain and instinct takes over. Dang, that felt good.

Mike and I continued the day drift fishing, ending up with an incredible 23 fish.

I since have committed myself to using the drift rod more and not being so focused on one technique. The advice I give beginners, however, is to learn one technique, learn one body of water until you become proficient at it, and then expand your horizons.

ANOTHER THING I’VE done is to take the advice of my friend Bill Herzog. It’s a wise idea to listen to anyone who has hooked as many trophy fish as this dude has over the decades.

“Dude, you gotta learn to fly fish,” Herzog told me. “It will open up so many more opportunities.”

You know what? He was correct – as if there was any doubt.

So I begin learning to fly fish with the help of buddies Mike Perusse and Ron Camp. Perusse got me set up with a beautiful G.Loomis 9-weight rod and size 7/8 reel and the fundamentals to get me started. Then I had the pleasure of fly fishing with Camp on Alaska’s Situk River for sockeye.

Many will laugh at the mention of fly fishing for sockeye, because as we know the majority of the red salmon do not actually take a fly and are lined instead. But the experience was unbelievable in two ways. First, it taught me how to handle the rod, cast correctly and handle a fish once hooked. And second, these fish are a freakin’ blast, I don’t care how they’re hooked!

We caught and released so many sockeye that I have no idea of the actual final tally. My casting became bet-

ter and better, and my confidence level rose by the fish.

I’ve now caught several species on the fly rod – sockeye, coho, cutthroat, Dolly Varden and Chinook. Two Chinook, in fact, both on the 9-weight rod.

Never bet a steelheader they can’t land a fish on light gear! I drank for free that night, thank you.

The one species I have yet to land on the fly? Steelhead. So far I’ve only targeted them once, and my record is 0 for 1.

Another technique I really enjoy because I’m able to float fish at the same time, is using a center pin. These are a blast. They may look like a fly rod setup but are far from it. The main thing to remember, though, is that there is no drag! Wait until you cast the first time and don’t stop the reel from rotating – huge bird’s nest. Pro tip: Cut the line.

Also beware the first time you hook a steelhead and it runs – bloody knuckles.

But land that steelhead and you’ll grin from ear to ear, even more than normal

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as this is the closest thing to just you against the fish. Awesome.

WITH FISHING OPPORTUNITIES for salmon and steelhead are lacking, maybe a look at some of the other species available might keep you in the groove.

I mentioned Dolly Varden. These can be a blast and you can use the same gear as steelhead. When imitating eggs, orange seems to be best in Washington, but for some reason Alaskan Dollies like pink. If you find some, have some fun with them.

Many times there’s also steelhead mixed in, as I found out during a recent trip with Zavadlov and Camp. After hooking several I thought I had another, and while it seemed bigger, heck, I was up for that. That is, until it flashed its side and Zavadlov went to grab the net.

Yep, got fooled on that one, as it sure wasn’t fighting like a steelhead, but I’m glad it was.

You should also try sockeye, whether in Alaska or Washington. For those

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We can get bogged down chasing just steelhead or salmon, but swimming alongside our faves are other species. On an exploratory midwinter steelhead trek, an angler purposefully ran his spoon through bull trout water and was obliged by this colorful specimen. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)

who may not know it, there are sockeye in Forks, Wash.

“Oh, heck yeah, we catch sockeye all summer,” says Zavadlov.

They aren’t big like those in the Last Frontier, but they’re fun as heck on light gear and small red jigs.

After you see what these little dudes can muster up in a fight, book yourself a trip to Glacier Bear Lodge (866-4256343) in Yakutat and really find out what damage sockeye can do. I’ve nev-

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

er had so much fun fighting fish. OK, so fighting coho is as much fun. Oh, steelhead too. And kings!

Heck, just fighting any fish is fun! So go do it. ASJ Editor’s note: Terry J. Wiest is the author of Steelhead University: Your Guide to Salmon & Steelhead Success and Float-Fishing for Salmon & Steelhead, and is the owner of Steelhead University, SteelheadU.com.

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Longtime gun writer Dave Workman had a chance to shoot Browning’s new Hell’s Canyon Long Range Rifle in .300 Win. Magnum at January’s SHOT Show, and he found it to be deadly accurate. (DAVE WORKMAN)

NEW RIFLES, AMMO SHINE AT SHOT

BY DAVE WORKMAN

M

edia Day at the Range once again preceded the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas, and it gave outdoor and gun writers – including yours truly – the opportunity to press a lot of triggers.

One experience I won’t soon forget is the all-too-brief time I spent at the Browning display because the centerpiece of that exhibit was a brand-new entry in the X-Bolt family they call the Hell’s Canyon Long Range rifle. It’s a gem.

Keep in mind, this is the 100th anniversary of the famous Browning Automatic Rifle, and the company chose the occasion to introduce a BAR Safari model, a handsome self-loader chambered in .30-06 Sprg. Only 100 of these guns were made to commemorate this centennial anniversary, and they’re likely all gone by now. So, for the people who want a rifle to shoot rather than admire in a display case, the Hell’s Canyon Long Range is just

the ticket.

Browning chambers this rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor with a 22-inch barrel, .270 WSM and .300 WSM with a 23inch barrel, and 26 Nosler, 7mm Rem. Mag., 28 Nosler and 300 Win. Mag. with a 26-inch barrel. MSRP on the Hell’s Canyon ranges from $1,229.99 to $1,299.99.

So, what’s the big deal? Well, for starters, from a sandbag rest at 200 yards, I hit everything I shot at, including a small steel plate. Since an elk, deer, moose, goat, sheep, caribou,

black or brown bear are much larger, I’d say that at double the distance, they’re all in big trouble. Translation, this rifle was dead-bang accurate, and it had been fired by at least a few other people before I got my grubby little hands on it.

The sample gun I fired was chambered in .300 Win. Magnum. Thanks to modern recoil pad technology and materials, this baby is a delight to shoot. I was wearing a lightweight nylon jacket and felt recoil was no different than with my own ’06.

The author also was able to put a couple rounds through Winchester’s XPC bolt-action tactical rifle. He reports that with a suppressor attached, the .308 Winchester round sounded more like a .22 rimfire. (DAVE WORKMAN) aksportingjournal.com | MARCH 2017

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Browning put some eye-catching cosmetics into this model. It’s got a burnt bronze Cerakote finish that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It wears a fluted heavy sporter contour barrel, and the composite stock is finished in A-TACS AU camo with Dura-Touch armor coating. The grip has a palm swell and gripping surfaces are textured, which is important to anyone who hunts in the Pacific Northwest, North

Idaho or Western Montana, and especially in Southeast Alaska.

While the other cartridges are dandies, especially the 26 and 28 Nosler, I think the .300 Win. Mag and 7mm Rem. Mag are probably the two most popular long-range big game cartridges now in common use in North America. I like that .30-caliber pill for any number of reasons, and being a handloader, if this was my rifle I’d already

be tinkering at the loading bench with a good supply of Hodgdon powder and an assortment of 180- to 220-grain bullets from Nosler, Hornady, Barnes, Speer and Sierra.

ANOTHER ENTRY THAT IMPRESSED the hell out of me is Ruger’s brand-new GP100 in .44 Special. I’ve never owned a .44 Special, or even a .44 Magnum for that matter. I’m a fanatic for the .41

PTARMIGAN PLINKER Even though virtually the entire firearms community finds itself glued to blogs and social media entries to see what’s hot at the annual SHOT Show, held at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, some folks have already introduced firearms that will be on display For example, Sturm, Ruger’s (ruger. com) hottest new handguns were unveiled late in 2016, and I happen to have had my hands on one as the hunting season opened for a test and evaluation.

It’s the Mark IV .22-caliber semiauto pistol, the latest incarnation of Bill Ruger’s original that began life as the Standard model. I liked this one so much I bought it.

Unlike the other models in what has become the “Mark” series, this one is easy to disassemble and clean. Press a button at the rear of the grip frame and the barrel and upper receiver pivot up and off, the bolt slides out at the rear and you give it a bath of Hoppe’s No. 9.

Workman tested Ruger’s new Mark IV pistol last fall, and was so impressed he bought it – high praise from a man with more than a few guns. (DAVE WORKMAN)

Ruger offers this pistol in a Target version (my gun) with a 5.5-inch bull barrel, and a Hunter model with a 6.88inch fluted bull barrel. DW

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Magnum, and I have a couple of Ruger single-actions in .45 Colt.

That said, when I cut loose with the GP100, which is all stainless steel with a Hogue Monogrip, adjustable rear sight, smooth double action and crisp single-action, I was impressed.

The .44 Special can be handloaded to fairly stout levels for defense against bears and other predators. The fiveround GP100 no doubt will handle factory and recommended handloads, and I happily discovered that it is also a comfortable and accurate shooter. You can find several good loads in the various loading manuals.

With any luck I’ll round one of these wheelguns up for a more extensive test and evaluation. With a 2.75-inch full shroud barrel, this will make a terrific trail gun for backpackers – frankly, it’s a revolver that will be right at home in the backcountry. If you’re a fisherman who hits rivers in bear country, this could be a perfect handgun because it’s just about impervious to wet conditions.

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chester’s new XPC rifle, a hot little bolt-action number with a tactical stock, steel receiver wearing a Permacote black finish, button-rifled free-floating barrel and a Cerakote-finished machined alloy chassis frame.

The one I fired was fitted with a suppressor, and chambered in .308 Winchester. It was a kick in the pants to shoot, with a good crisp trigger and was very quiet. For hunting in areas that might have seen human encroachment, or for gun ranges that are now falling victim to suburban sprawl, suppressors might be the answer.

There is legislation before Congress called the Hearing Protection Act that would remove suppressors from the red tape that currently includes registration, background check and payment of a $200 tax under the National Firearms Act of 1934. ASJ Editor’s note: Dave Workman is a longtime gun writer and a columnist for Alaska Sporting Journal’s big brother magazine, Northwest Sportsman.

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WE’RE HERE FOR THE DEER

BY LOUIS CUSACK

T

oward the end of October, when many folks are picking out a pumpkin to carve for Halloween and buying candy to hand out to the trick-or-treaters, my wife Ruth and I are usually packing for Kodiak Island in preparation for our blacktail deer hunt.

This is a special trip for us because it’s usually our last hunt of the season. It takes place primarily from a single base location, with enough gear to make for a big cozy camp. No freeze-dried meals or spike camps on this hunt! No sir; we bring plenty of food and gear.

There had been three mild winters in a row on Kodiak Island, and the reports we were getting was that there were plenty of deer around and lots of good mature bucks being brought in. So we were especially excited about this year’s hunt and anticipated a great adventure.

With gear shipped and staged, we jumped a flight to Kodiak, where we were greeted by a typical fall morning, which on this island means a big easterly wind that blew 35 mph with sideways rain. Our transporter met us at the terminal for a quick trip to the store and a stop at their hangar for the bulk of our gear. From there, it was over to the office for an update on our departure to the field, which was looking good since the weather reports were pretty decent out toward our hunting area.

Flight schedules and routes on Kodiak are dictated by the weather, and weather patterns on an island this size can be very different from one location to the next. We were also informed that the fall salmon run was pretty weak, thus the bears were hungry and deer hunters were seeing a significant increase in the number of problems with bruins. That meant it was time to double-check the bear fence and throw in an extra can of bear spray.

FOR BLACKTAIL HUNTERS, KODIAK MIGHT AS WELL BE FANTASY ISLAND

THE FLIGHT INTO THE field went off like With a load of deer meat and a buck’s head packed away securely, Ruth pauses for a moment in front of a glorious Kodiak Island setting.

(LOUIS CUSACK)

clockwork, and about halfway to our destination we broke through the rain and arrived at our hunting area in the sunshine. There are few things that

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Ruth and I hate worse than setting up and breaking down camp in the rain, but that wasn’t the case today, so we hit the ground running in hopes of getting camp set up with time left over for a few hours of hunting.

Unlike most big game hunting in Alaska, deer hunting does not fall under the same-day airborne regulation, which requires that you to wait until 3 a.m. the day following the one you are flown in to begin hunting (2016-2017 Alaska Hunting Regulations, Page 19).

After setting up camp, we managed to get in a couple of hours of hunting and spotted several deer, but none that we were interested in taking on our first day afield.

During this time of the year there is roughly a nine-hour period between sunrise and sunset, with a little over 10 hours of useable light from dark to really dark. This meant we had plenty of time to enjoy a great meal in camp, spin a few tall tales from previous hunts and get a decent night’s sleep before it was time to start hunting the

following morning.

We were up and out of camp early, catching a few smaller bucks and does down pretty low on our way up to hunt in higher elevation, which on Kodiak is where the more mature bucks like to live. The way we prefer to hunt is to climb up the mountain above the heavier cover, work our way around on a well-used game trail, and glass and scout patches of alders that blacktail will often bed down in.

Our first few days were warm and windy. We saw a lot of deer and a ton of sign, fresh tracks, rubs and scraps all over the mountain. Just about every tree next to a game trail held a fresh rub, but the bigger bucks were not out chasing does as heavily as we would have expected.

Ruth spotted our first shooter, a really nice buck way toward the top of the mountain in a steep drainage that was surrounded by alders and a lot of heavy brush. We took advantage of the cover and it was not long before she was in position to make a great shot and punch her first tag.

Did I mention that this drainage was

steep? It was really steep! In fact, it would have been a waterfall if there had been any water in it! Taking a deer down a steep drainage has its advantages, but it can be dangerous if you are not careful. I use a piece of 1-inch webbing strap about 6 feet long. This lets me control the deer while coming down and makes it easier to step out of the line of fire if the deer starts tumbling down the chute.

If you’ve ever been tangled up with a deer, goat or sheep, then you know what I’m talking about – it’s not fun.

We were able to get Ruth’s deer down the chute to an open area to clean and

Author Louis Cusack checks the landscape with the aid of a spotting scope. Not only were bucks everywhere, but several does in the area also alerted the hunters to hidden ones.

(RUTH AND LOUIS CUSACK)

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dress him for packing out. I like to put some space between the brush and myself just in case an old mama bear decides she wants our deer more than we do. We passed on several more animals and

hoped for another good buck as we returned to camp that evening to celebrate with fresh deer tenderloins for dinner.

THE WEATHER WAS STILL not as cold as

what we had hoped for, and that night the wind really picked up. This might explain why we never heard that bear come into our meat tree. Ruth thought she heard something at about 2 a.m.,

A bright moon over the Cusacks’ tent one evening signalled colder weather that would make blacktail more active, leading to improved hunting. (LOUIS CUSACK)

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but with the noise from the wind and the surf she wasn’t certain. The next morning when I went to check on our meat, it was gone – all of it except for the blackstrap we had in our ice chest.

Judging from the tracks and the way he was able to get up to our meat, he looked to have been a smaller bear.

Nonetheless, he had wreaked havoc on our meat tree, tearing off limbs and

leaving empty game bags scattered up to 300 yards down the trail. I guess that dang bear had to eat too!

There wasn’t much we could do about the bear taking our meat, so we cleaned

Kodiak Island is famous for its bear population, but this rugged and beautiful corner of Alaska is also known for quality blacktail bucks, as Louis and Ruth Cusack have found on their annual hunting trip to Kodiak.

(LOUIS CUSACK)

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up the mess he left, loaded our packs and headed out hunting. We had not gone very far before Ruth spotted a really nice buck. He was standing on the skyline just above a bowl that was plastered into the side of the mountain with a steep ridgeback we later named the stairway to heaven, which ran straight up to him.

We climbed up the backside of the ridge, using the ridge line for cover and side-hilling just below the rim into the bottom of the bowl. Once we got a look into the bowl, we saw six deer: five bucks and a single doe that must have been in “season,” since she sure seemed to be getting a lot of attention.

It was my turn to shoot and the buck I wanted was standing at the head of the bowl with the doe. We were stopped cold in front of six sets of eyes and over 600 yards between him and us. After watching them for a bit, I decided to try and circle around them and left Ruth at the bottom of the bowl in hopes that at least one of us would get a decent shot.

I had just started making my ascent when that buck turned and walked right into the center of the bowl. I was not in a good position, but Ruth had a perfect shot opportunity and we still were within each other’s line of sight, so I gave her the hand signal to take him.

She made an excellent shot, drop-

ping him instantly to again put us in the process of skinning deer and looking forward to more tenderloins for dinner.

We were still not in any hurry to fill tags and it was pretty entertaining to watch those four bucks try to work that doe, but she wasn’t having any of it! Ruth’s shot did not seem to bother them at all.

Hmm, maybe they had something else on their mind!

That night the weather broke, the wind died down, a bright moon rose up over the mountain and the temperature dropped well below freezing. This is notable because blacktail deer are not very big; adult does average about 80 pounds and bucks are around 120 pounds. I’ve always been told that during cold temperatures an animal this size has to get up and eat to stay warm. There must be some truth to that, because the next morning there were deer up and moving about every place we looked. We were out of camp for no more than an hour before we spotted two nice bucks and a doe. Ruth and I each took one, both of them really nice mature bucks.

Both deer were dragged down to a flat clearing where they could both be skinned and we could keep a sharp look out for bears. There was already one bear problem and we were being pretty wary, considering we’d spotted a small boar

IF YOU GO TO KODIAK HUNTING INFORMATION Kodiak Island has a blacktail deer season which runs from August 1 through December 31, with a liberal bag limit of three deer. With access via the road system, fly-in, boat or one of the many remote lodges on the Island, chasing deer here is a great way to introduce new hunters to the sport.

SITKA BLACKTAILS The Sitka blacktail deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis) is smaller, stockier and has a shorter face than other members of the family. Sitka blacktails are closely related to the larger Columbia blacktails of the Pacific Northwest, and both are considered subspecies of the

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(even larger) mule deer of the American West. Fawns are born in early June and weigh 6 to 8 pounds at birth.

The average October weight of adults is about 80 pounds for does and 120 pounds for bucks, although males over 200 pounds have been reported. The deer wear a summer coat that’s reddish brown and is replaced by dark brownish gray in winter.

A Sitka buck’s antlers are dark brown with typical blacktail branching. Normal adult antler development is three points on each side. Antlers are relatively small, as very few score more than 110 points in the Boone and Crockett system. The average lifespan of a Sitka blacktail is about 10 years, but some live as long as 15. LC

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On a windy night early in their hunting trip a bruin raided the Cusacks’ meat-hanging tree and made off with almost all their venison, leading them to keep their game in plastic totes kept inside a bear fence. (LOUIS CUSACK)

near our location just the day before. As quickly as we could, we got both deer cleaned and bagged, then loaded up most of the meat for our hike back to camp.

All we had left in the field for our second pack-out were antlers, two front shoulders, a small bag of neck meat and a little gear. We made it back to camp, hung our deer and grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading back for our second load. We had only been gone a couple of hours, but when we returned the bears had already gotten to our deer. The place was practically wiped clean. From what we could tell by the tracks, it looked like it was a sow with cubs. They ate or carried off almost everything. They even chewed the rubber handle off my saw and crushed a metal water bottle we had left for our return. It still held water, but for some reason I could not seem to convince Ruth to drink any of it!

Back at camp that evening, we hung our meat until we were ready to call it a night, but we cleaned out a couple of Action Packers, packed meat in them 112

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and placed them behind the bear fence for the night. This started a daily cycle of hanging in the evening and storing our meat at night that we would continue for the remainder of our hunt. I am not sure if it was just luck or if this simply worked, but either way we did not have any further bear problems.

I’m never one to be short on words, and I could likely write a novel about the weather we experienced toward the end of our hunt. It was perfect hunting weather, with clear cold nights, and near the tail end of the hunt the waxing gibbous moon lit the place up like it was daytime.

We also experienced crisp, sunny days with little to no wind. It was coming toward a full moon, which I usually try to plan our hunts around; I believe that deer tend to go nocturnal during this period, and this trip was no different.

I had even swapped a few workdays, so that we could finish our hunt before the moon was completely full. I’m not sure if this is real or superstition, but with the weather we were having the moon just didn’t seem to matter. The hunting and

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the weather was great and the forecast was calling for a whole lot more of the same, so Ruth and I decided to stay.

In the past, we’ve been weathered in a lot and had to stay several extra days a number of times because of snow, rain, flooding, wind or mechanical problems.

Once a long time ago, I even had a pilot simply forgot to pick me up. However, this situation was a first for us.

We were weathered in simply because it was just too nice to leave, which is kind of like calling in well instead of calling in sick. I actually did that once: The powder was deep, my snowmachine was running like hell, the weather was perfect and I just felt too dang good to go to work. My poor boss didn’t quite seem to know how to take that, but that’s another story.

THE NEXT MORNING I set up the spotting scope and managed to find a really good buck feeding between two alder patches about a mile from camp. Ruth was already tagged out but I still had two to fill, so we loaded up and headed after him. I

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figured we could relocate him if nothing spooked him or a hot doe didn’t pull him away before we got there. I managed to find him again once we were there; he was lying down in the clearing right at the edge of an alder patch. He was a very good buck and I was really looking forward to getting a crack at him, but just as I was setting up for the shot a brown bear stood up on his hind legs. He was in an alder patch just to his left and about 75 yards from him.

The bear didn’t seem to be bothering our buck any, but he had dropped back down on all fours and we couldn’t see him. Having already had two bear encounters, neither resulting in anything other than hurt feelings and lost meat, and not wanting the third time to be the charm, I decided not to shoot. We had tried waiting him out, but we never saw that bear again. There were just too many deer around to take a chance on creating an incident, and hopefully that buck will be even bigger next season. I shot a decent buck on our way back to camp that evening and we ended the day with only one more deer tag to fill.

We woke up our last morning of hunting to another perfect day; we had just started making our way up the ridge when I spotted a little buck walking almost beside us. I did not want to take him, so Ruth and I just walked right up that ridge with him walking just alongside of us. It was a really cool encounter. The three of us walked right into another buck with a doe, and we just sat down and watched them. Later that morning, we worked our way over to the same drainage that Ruth took her first deer in. After another steep climb and a quick shot filling our last tag, we were once again taking a deer down the chute and hoping it wasn’t going to take us down first!

With the deer back to camp and with all of our tags filled, it was time to fire up the satellite phone and call for a ride home. We had a great time that night, eating a good dinner, prepping/packing gear and reflecting back on our hunt.

choose from. You can use a transporter to fly in for a remote do-it-yourself hunt or pick one of the many outfitters that provide lodging and field transportation from either a boat or land based camp. Or you can even take a fully guided hunt that provides everything you need except for your personal gear and a hunting license. Last but not least is the option to simply go to Kodiak and hunt off the road system.

COOK A BETTER BACKSTRAP Here’s a tasty recipe that makes Sitka blacktail backstrap even more delectable:

INGREDIENTS 1 backstrap, trimmed, cleaned and cut in half Kosher salt to taste 3 tablespoons avocado oil 2 cups organic vegetable stock 2 cups organic beef stock 1 cup fine ruby port ¾ cup homemade cranberry relish (see recipe below) or canned cranberry sauce 6 tablespoons organic butter Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously sprinkle kosher salt to taste on each piece of backstrap. Using a cast iron skillet on the stovetop, heat the avocado until it is very hot (375 degrees) and then brown until you have a nice char on all sides of the meat.

Remove from stove and place the entire skillet into the preheated oven.

Bake until the internal temperature reaches 140 degrees. (Note: It will keep cooking after removing from oven, but do not overcook). Remove from oven and let the meat rest for at least 30 minutes (we like ours on the rare side of medium-rare and we pull it at 130 degrees).

SAUCE KODIAK ISLAND IS A MAGICAL place, with many different hunting options to 114

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Hunting the road system is my least favorite option, considering that the season is shorter, the limit is only one buck per season, and with the ease of hunting access you can expect this area to get a lot more hunting pressure than most.

Whatever option you choose, hunting Kodiak Island for blacktail deer is a great way to introduce a new hunter to hunting. The deer are plentiful,

While meat is cooking prepare the reduction sauce. In a saucepan combine

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Backstrap is the tastiest cut of venison, and using a cranberry-based sauce provides a hearty meal. (LOUIS CUSACK)

vegetable and beef stock. Gently boil and reduce the liquid to half, which takes about 20 minutes. Add the fine ruby port and cook down to half again which would be about 1½ cups. Mix in cranberry relish and cook until sauce thickens and add the butter.

Cut the backstrap into about 1-inchthick serving slices. Put about ⅔ cup of the sauce in the center of your plate then place a couple of meat slices on top.

EASY CRANBERRY RELISH 12 ounces fresh cranberries ¾ cup fresh orange juice ½ cup honey Combine cranberries, orange juice and honey in a saucepan. Simmer over medium heat, until the berries pop and sauce thickens, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Let cool to room temperature.

Bon appétit! LC

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Although hungry bears got to some of their butchered deer (and reduced the capacity of a water bottle), the Cusacks ended up with plenty of freezer-filling venison as they filled multiple tags during another successful adventure on Kodiak Island. (LOUIS CUSACK)

fairly easy to hunt and with a liberal bag limit of three per season on most of the island, it’s a great way to keep it exciting for hunters both young and

old alike. I know we look forward to every season. Heck, Ruth and I were ready to go back before we even left the island! ASJ

Editor’s note: For more on the “The Rajun Cajun,” Louis Cusack and his wife, Ruth, like and follow them at facebook.com/ AdventuresofLouisandRuthCusack.

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Hunters head for the moose pastures, in high alpine, to call in trophy bulls.

The author writes that moose calling is the language of warriors. It takes skill to embrace the mindset of a challenger herd bull, and good hunters learn to become a dominant bull in thought and action. (CHRISTOPHER BATIN)

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WARRIOR MENTALITY

CALLING MOOSE MEANS CHANGING YOUR MINDSET AND GETTING INTO A BULL’S HEAD – HOW ONE VETERAN CALLER DOES IT

BY CHRISTOPHER BATIN

T

he historical feud between the Hatfields and McCoys can’t compare to the squabble in Alaska between the Shooters and the Callers.

The Shooters take moose at 275 yards because the only sporting aspect of game meat is eating it in meatballs and sausage during MLB or NFL games. Once a moose is down, they round up the four-wheelers to haul it back to camp, hang it, and start their card-playing marathon of all-you-can-eat moose steaks and free-flowing beer, whiskey, and man-cave talk. The shot and celebration is what they like most about moose hunting.

Their claim in the feud is that Callers are no-good, sneaky bandits who enjoy courtin’ their big bull moose away from them. Callers argue that it takes a variety of skills to harvest a moose, which is why they prefer the heady, thrill-seeking indulgence of enticing big bulls to come a callin’.

After four decades of hunting Alaska moose, I side with the Callers. aksportingjournal.com | MARCH 2017

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Two hunters compare notes and talk strategy after a long day of glassing for moose. Once a bull is spotted, then the fun part of calling begins. (CHRISTOPHER BATIN)

CALLING IN TROPHY MOOSE is not a sport for the faint of heart. It begins with a quest to learn the necessary skills while simultaneously acquiring enough toughness to embark on big game hunting’s most exciting rite of passage, in which hunters go head to head against the largest deer in the world. And what a deer! Big bull moose stand up to 7 feet tall at the shoulder, can weigh up to 1,800 pounds and sport racks that are wider than most men are tall.

The north’s fiercest predators – grizzly bears and wolves – are fearful of a prime bull. No predator in its right mind would challenge, face to face, a 70-inch, 50-pound rack with 28 palmed spear-points and two, massive, 120

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brow-tine shields. This headgear is supported by 80 pounds of intimidating neck and powered by two wilderness-toughened, 150-pound rear legs that push, gore and chase off similar, massive-bodied bulls. During Alaska’s moose wars, dominance is the reason for the rut.

Additional moose deterrents include two rear hooves, a single kick from which can smash skulls and break bones. When moose rear up on their hind legs for an aggressive frontal attack, the two front hooves become angled ax heads that slam down with guillotine force that can slice, dice and tear apart any aggressor. Cow moose use their hooves to defend their new-

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born calves each spring. Despite such a formidable deterrent, cows lose up to 50 percent of their newborns to hungry bears.

Standing face to face at 15 yards with an enraged, rutting bull – with nothing more than a moose call and rifle – is what separates the men from the boys in North America’s ultimate deer hunting experience. While whitetails, elk, mulies and blacktails are challenging to hunt, they can’t compare to a do-or-die challenge with a battle-ready moose in full rut.

The danger aspect is only one of the draws. Moose calling is the language of warriors. It takes skill to embrace the mindset of a challenger herd bull,

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and good hunters learn to become a dominant bull in thought and action.

A dominant bull hunter uses scraping sounds and grunts as a taunt to challenge a bull into a showdown, or evokes a lonely, amorous cow call to fool the bull into thinking the hunter is a bull enticing cows away from the harem. And, of course, territorial calls announce you are the meanest, most virile bull in the wilderness.

Whatever call you use, you best have the guts and stamina to follow through with the challenge.

Mike Citrone holds a scapula he uses to establish a challenge to spar, and also to engage in high- or low-intensity brush thrashing. (CHRISTOPHER BATIN)

I REMEMBER A FLY-OUT drop-off moose hunt in Alaska’s remote Mulchatna River country. Using a variety of calls and challenges, I coaxed a 61-inch bull to leave his harem and meet me in a nearby valley to “teach me a lesson.” At 70 yards, the bull let out a roar that shattered the wilderness silence and raised my arm hairs to full mast. I responded with name-calling thrashes and grunts.

The bull swayed side to side, like

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The author’s moose hunting tent at nightfall, in an alpine area at about 3,800 feet in eastern Alaska. Good moose hunters will stay out until dark, and be out hunting before daybreak.

(CHRISTOPHER BATIN)

a high-seas navy destroyer, its multitined rack zeroing in on me in a visual challenge to spar. The antlers on the rut-swollen neck twisted and yanked a 10-foot sapling out of the ground and flung it into the air as easily as if it were a blade of grass. Hail-like dirt clods pelted me as I stared him down.

His eyes were now bloodshot orbs that bulged out of his skull and rolled wildly as he grunted his disdain.

I scraped again and grunted, “Wauuuggh! Waaauggh!” and pawed the ground. A snotty shower burst out of his nose and long ribbons of drool 124

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and saliva bubbled from his mouth.

At 15 yards, pungent tarsal and urine scents stung my nostrils, which served to both simultaneously intimidate yet embolden me. It’s a hunting scenario where one can reach maximum heart rate by being absolutely still.

Images from previous moose hunts flashed through my mind, especially the hunter who faced a similar, 62-inch moose that we had called to within 12 yards. He missed the first shot, and then couldn’t shoot again because his leg was shaking out of control.

The adrenaline and euphoric rush

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often makes the details of these final moments a blur in the retelling, but my actions are predictable. Training kicks in, and I see myself not as a hunter but rather the dominant bull. I forget English.

My mind is all moose. I become a rutting bull and gradually feel the rut pulse in my veins. Thoughts and feelings become guttural disdains, grunts, and roars. I stomp my legs and scrape a scapula on a branch; the taunts emphasize, “Leave now, or your hindquarter is mine!”

As a challenger bull, I am battling for dominance until either the bull attacks or bolts first, ’cause it sure won’t

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be me goin’ anywhere.

MY ARMS AND LEGS went numb, not from fear, but rather from the euphoria of battle with no safety switch, no end-game button, no wife calling me to dinner. I was in a place where even the brave dare not go, a metaphysical portal where courage is but a stepping stone to that higher platonic realm of absolutes, where the hunter becomes the hunt of pure energy that ebbs and flows with every breath.

Pressing against a tree to avoid detection, I reached out with a battle-worn scapula and scraped it against the tree, ripping and peeling bark to eke out “The Call.” I had issued an auditory and visual challenge to spar. The mudcaked hair on the bull’s back bristled to attention, and after pawing the ground a few times, he swung his rack back and forth like a sword-wielding samurai.

It was truly David versus Goliath: me with a 13-inch-wide scapula and rifle, challenging a rut-crazed bull that could

trample, maim and kill me. It was time. I grunted once again, and the bull busted through some brush to my left. I bolted through the brush after him, weaving and darting like a heat-seeking missile.

We both burst into a small clearing and stood in a face-off. I took the shot, and the warrior dropped. Our predator-prey dance was complete.

Learning to call moose effectively can take years of practice, and is perhaps the most dangerous time to interact with moose. But even when you botch a call, as I did the first time I tried talking dirty to a cow moose, the excitement can be electrifying.

My brother Bill and I were hiding near a lone spruce in an open field in the Alaska Range. In the distance, we watched a bull with 55-plus-inch antlers disappear into the brush. I moaned a lovesick cow call to draw him out. The brush exploded in a cacophony of snaps and crackles. I flipped off the safety on my .338 Ruger. Suddenly, an enraged cow moose charged out of the brush

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and made a beeline straight for us. A 6-foot-long ridge of erect back hair made her 7-foot height intimidating.

Bill and I bolted upright and pressed our backs against the small black spruce.

The ground shook as muscular, stilt-like legs braked her to a stop. Her bulging eyes were blinded with jealousy, and her normally cautious nature and brain were temporarily disengaged. We faced extreme danger. She darted around wildly and reared up on her hind legs. I watched her axe-head-like hooves impact the ground with a thud, and slice size 14 craters into the tundra. Seeing that we were no threat, she ran off, not wanting another amorous cow to entice her lover bull. The experience left us thoroughly intimidated and a bit wiser.

Even after the bull drops, use caution. After taking a nice bull with her 7mm Remington Magnum, one hunting partner approached her downed trophy with me at her side. Her exuberance overpowered her sense of caution as she walked up to the bull. I caught a glimpse

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of the bull’s eyes looking back. I reacted by quickly grabbing her by the collar and snatching her back, just as the bull’s antlers slashed the air, missing her midsection and a possible disembowelment by inches. A single shot from my .338 finished off the ol’ boy, which was the lesson here. Learn to shoot a .338 or larger rifle and leave the lightweight firesticks for coyotes and blacktails.

Once your moose is dead, you can return to being human and unpack the whisky flask for a swig to calm the nerves, vomit, defecate or clean your pants. There is no shame in the aftermath, because if you have what it takes to successfully entice moose to come a callin’, you’ll have graduated from the most intense, big game hunting interaction that any North American hunter can experience.

Endless patches of wild blueberries provide another tasty reason to be afield in fall. (CHRISTOPHER BATIN)

BUT HERE’S AN ADMONITION: If rutting bulls are dangerous, Alaska weather can be even more unpredictable. After a week of blue skies and cool temperatures, I

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watched the alpine sky blacken over the Alaska Range. The temperature plummeted, and the wind screamed its icy fury. I finished the meat-bagging chores from a moose and caribou that I had bagged earlier in the hunt and scurried across the tundra to my two-man tent for warmth and protection.

Little did I know that I was about to experience what philosophers call “The long night of the soul.”

For the next eight hours, I used my back as a brace to keep the tent from becoming a suffocating shroud. Severe gusts bullied me to the tent’s center, and I kicked back repeatedly to anchor myself. A tent pole dislodged and sliced open the outer fly but I could do nothing. My back shivered against the onslaught of freezing rain and sleet. I dared not light my stove for heat, for fear the billowing tent would erupt in flames. On the open tundra, there are neither gullies nor forests in which to seek refuge.

Keeping my back rigid against such

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Mike Citrone, the author’s hunting partner for over 26 years, with a moose he called in while on a late-season moose hunt in alpine country in Northwestern Alaska. He used a variety of scrapes, calls, and grunts to entice the bull to within 20 yards before making the shot.

(CHRISTOPHER BATIN)

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force exhausted me, and I finally gave in to the sleep of exhaustion. Hours later I awoke, startled to find myself at the center of the tent floor. The silence was eerie. I pushed out of the collapsed tent. A foot of snow had fallen and the wind had died. The radio reported that a severe Arctic storm had blown through Southcentral Alaska. Its 90 mph winds generated 20- to 40-foot seas that had sunk boats and kept a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in a Kodiak Island port.

My caribou and moose meat had frozen solid, and took days to unthaw.

I climbed out of my tent and stood amid the silence. My emotions boiled victorious for having toughed it out, but I soon settled into a simmering peace.

I had a chore to finish.

At the moose kill site, I honored the bull by placing his head to face the rising sun, a shared symbolism of life after death. I placed a few strands of grass in his mouth to signify his last meal, and to serve as a reminder that all creatures live, die and become nutrients for life to

renew itself again.

I thought about the bull and made my promise. When having moose steaks, roast or stew, I will recall my interaction with him. Yet the bittersweet twin of this euphoria is the sadness I feel for the millions of people who know nothing about the personality of the faceless factory animals they eat each day. The only interaction with them is the blood money paid for a portion of their butchered carcasses.

I’m also guilty of such sins, and yet, find partial redemption in interacting with the animals I hunt so I can feed my family, and embrace the wisdom learned from each trophy. Each meal teaches me lessons that embolden me to meet the challenges of everyday life head on.

If I’m knocked down, I’ll have what it takes to get back up and win, no matter the outcome. It is the way of the moose, and the way I must be in life, and in the wilderness.

I returned to my tent, confident that

the warrior spirit of the moose and I would meet again one day in the vast wilderness arena among the stars. When that day arrives, the reunion of our two warrior spirits will be so grandiose that it will defy human comprehension.

Such an experience might even prompt a Shooter to reconsider his hunting style and become a Caller, because in the scheme of things, it’s the right and proper thing to do. ASJ Editor’s note: Chris Batin is a 42-year Alaska resident, and wrote the foreword for and is featured in the new book, Alaska’s Greatest Outdoor Legends. He is also the editor of Alaska Hunter Publications and author of the award-winning, 416-page book, Hunting in Alaska: A Comprehensive Guide, which includes a detailed chapter on hunting and calling trophy moose. Alaska Sporting Journal readers can receive an autographed copy of these books from the author, with free shipping, by ordering online at AlaskaHunter.com, promo code ASJ.

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HUNTING THE KING OF THE TUNDRA

AS WINTER BIDS ADIEU TO THE ARCTIC, HUNTERS HEAD OUT IN SEARCH OF SPRING GRIZZLIES

BY PAUL D. ATKINS

T

he bone-crushing ride across the ice was exhausting, especially since it was the umpteenth time I’d made it. It was cold too!

Old Man Winter was still trying to hang on and was letting me know it. The steady cold Arctic wind blasted against my snowmachine and had frosted the windshield, making it hard to see. The beaver hat and goggles I had on helped some, but eventually the cold found my cheeks and I began to feel that old familiar burn. It didn’t really matter, though, so I ignored it. On this day we

Spring spurs animals in Arctic Alaska into action. Grizzlies emerge from their dens, while herds of caribou head towards calving grounds. The ungulates are off limits for the time being, but hunters with tags can pursue griz. (PAUL D. ATKINS) aksportingjournal.com | MARCH 2017

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Glassing is the key to all hunting in the Arctic, and it will pay to watch for unusual lines, blobs or other signs of a bear on the landscape.

(PAUL D. ATKINS)

were bear hunting and I was about to kill a grizzly!

Here in northern Alaska, late March and early April are incredible. The long days of spring start cold but end warm and comfortable, especially for those who like to get out in the country and see what the land has to offer. Whether it’s hunting or ice fishing, the extra eight minutes we get each day allows more time to pursue our passion and fuels our fire. For me, that fire and passion is bear hunting.

I’ve made the trip across the ice into the mountains many times, each with the hope of finding a bear or at least cutting a track. Starting in late March, when the sun hangs a little higher in the sky and temperatures begin to rise, the search for the tundra “king” begins.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find a den and the telltale sign of a bear – fresh tracks making an exit. Bear dens are not caves, 138

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as some might think. They’re small, and when cut into the side of a mountain they look more like a cocoon caked in mud and rock than anything else.

Most dens, or at least the area around them, are usually used by the same bear or bears over time. If you’re lucky, you’ll find one or two in the fall.

There have been several instances where I’ve been out hunting caribou and moose and run into an old den or a recently used one. Marking it on the GPS and going back in the spring has been the key to a lot of my bear kills. When spring does arrive and those same dens are empty, the searching begins.

A good place to start finding bears is by glassing mountainsides, especially where the sun has warmed rock, shedding the snow and ice. Those same rising temps melt the ice inside the dens and provide the ongoing drip of water that seems to wake bears from their

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

slumber. In turn, it will bring them down into the valleys in search of food.

But what the sun gives it also takes away. An increase in temperature makes traveling tough, trails disappear and what once was white becomes brown. That’s when those big old nasty tussocks start to show themselves.

Overflow, or water on top of ice, can be a problem as well, especially when cutting tracks or crossing one of the many creeks that flow through the landscape. Picking and choosing how you get from point A to point B can be tough for the bear hunter.

ALASKA BASICALLY CONTAINS TWO time frames for hunting bears. Either you do it in the fall, when the berries are ripe and the caribou are moving south, or in the spring, when the long days spread across the tundra and the sheefish begin to bite. I’ve hunted both seasons

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with success, but I prefer spring. There is nothing better than cruising through the hills and valleys and then glassing that first track in the fading snow.

I remember my first bear. It was many years ago and we were snowmachining up a deep valley where we discovered a dead moose. Like four-wheelers or quads, snowmachines are the normal mode of transport in the Arctic and are used for just about everything, including bear hunting. It’s also quite normal to come across a dead critter every now and then, especially on one of the wellworn trails that line the backcountry.

Because winters are hard here, if you come across carrion of any kind, you should probably stop and take a look.

If you find tracks and they’re fresh, you probably better try and locate the bear that made them.

The moose we’d found had been dead for some time, and what was left was hard to identify. However, it was a moose and the ground surrounding it was covered in bear tracks, along with a mixture of various wildlife; a wolf, fox and even a wolverine had spent some time there.

We immediately started glassing the side of the barren hills that surrounded us. I noticed something up in the loose shale as soon as we started to glass: It was a bear spread across a warm rock.

The bruin seemed not to notice us or even care that we were there.

There was no shot at that distance, so I decided to circle around to the backside of the hill and try to come in from behind. I didn’t know if it would work or not, and assumed the bear would be long gone by the time I got there.

As I peered over a large rock that was in front of me, I could see the top of his back shining in the sun. A couple more steps and the bear came into view. As a boy who grew up in Oklahoma, seeing my first wild Alaskan grizzly bear was surreal, if not more like a dream. I found a decent rest and after feeling the recoil of the .300 Win. Mag., the bear was mine. Walking up to him was nerve-racking, but he was down and I had my first grizzly.

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Fresh tracks can tell a hunter the size of the bear, roughly when it passed and in which direction it went – not to mention provide inspiration to keep hunting.

(PAUL D. ATKINS)

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MOST PEOPLE THINK THERE are bears everywhere in the state, but this just isn’t true, especially here in the Arctic.

Bear hunting is so tough that in some seasons you may not even cut a track.

This is big country and it takes persistence day in and day out, plus hours and hours of glassing to make it work.

Usually the big boys emerge first due to hunger or whatever else makes them tick, followed by lesser boars, then sows and cubs.

My second grizzly didn’t come until five years later, coincidentally on the same calendar day I took my first. The conditions were the same too: bright sunny skies with temperatures in the 30s. About the only difference was that this bear was bigger. The 8-foot boar was in deep snow and staring at me until he couldn’t take it anymore and exited over the top of a small hill. I pursued on foot, but my “bunny boots” were no match for the deep snow. At this point I wished that I had snowshoes but decided to take the long shot. My rifle was

Many of the author’s spring bear hunts begin in the fall while out hunting caribou or moose. Finding a recently used den or even an old one can provide pointers for where to return after winter. Marking these locations on your GPS and then checking again in April can produce success. (PAUL D. ATKINS)

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Snowmachines are the packhorses of Arctic bear hunters. Sleds hitched to the back are packed with tents, food and all the necessary gear for surviving spring’s stillharsh conditions. (PAUL D. ATKINS)

dialed in, and at the sound of the bullet I knew he was down.

That was long ago, but the passion still burns each spring. However, over time I’ve become pretty picky when it

comes to taking bears. I’ve seen plenty and have passed on more than I can remember, mainly due to size or the presence of sows with cubs. I’ve had more encounters in the fall than spring,

and most of those occurred along rivers choked with salmon. Spring bears are harder to find but easier to see and hunt, in my opinion, especially after you cut a track. Conversely, fall bears

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are tougher due to their surroundings – they seem to perform a vanishing act every time you get within bow or rifle range. Either way, I know seeing a brown bear against a white landscape or seeing fresh tracks in deep snow is pretty special.

But the last couple of springs have been tough. My hunting partner Lew Pagel and I have made the run across the ice to the rolling hills and barren tundra more times than I can count.

We’ve set up endless camps and have had glassing sessions that lasted for days. We searched areas the size of small states for anything resembling a bear. The only thing we got out of it was sunburned faces and a touch of snow blindness. We saw bears, but they were either too small or had children in tow.

But each year is different, and even though hopes dissolve when the ice breaks up, the thought of next spring and doing it again still lays heavy on our minds. The old adage “wait till next year” keeps us motivated. Now, next

With each day adding eight minutes of light, as April rolls around you can get out earlier and stay out later to glass for bears. (PAUL D. ATKINS)

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year was here.

THE COLD AIR HUNG onto its wintry roots and the trail across the frozen ocean was a bumpy one. The bolt on the Sako 7mm Mag. strapped to my back was digging into my shoulder blade, but it didn’t bother me as much as the frostbite that was developing on my cheeks.

This was our third trip over, even though it seemed like the 50th.

We were headed to a familiar place – one of the same areas we always hunt when looking for bears – 13 miles across the frozen Chukchi Sea and then 40 miles up the trail into the valley where the tundra turns to trees and the hills become a little more mountainous. The trail was good and the deep snow provided a pleasurable ride as we cruised along.

Our first stop was through a small group of trees that took us through soft powdery snow that was more like sugar. It was deep in the willows, making it hard to navigate the big Skidoo. As usual, Lew was in front cutting trail, with me following behind.

For those who have zero experience driving a snowmachine, I have to tell you it’s a difficult task to do, especially when you’re trying to watch the trail and look for bears at the same time.

I was doing the latter when I took a nosedive into deep powder, burying the machine with me under it. Lew circled back, and after an hour of digging out we were on our way again. It was hard, sweaty work, which can be dangerous in cold weather. But we were on a mission now.

Two is better than one, and if you have a great bear hunting partner, you’re very lucky.

Lew Pagel and the author have hunted bruins for years, and each time out has been adventure. This grizzly wasn’t their largest, but it was taken the right way and provided an incredible hide and meat that was put to good use. (PAUL D. ATKINS)

WE CONTINUED UP INTO the valley and stopped on a high peak to glass. The wind was brutal, but through the spotting scope I noticed a track. It was a ways off on an adjacent mountain across the horizon. We headed that way and we came to the track after a rough downhill ride. At first I thought it was muskox due to the high population in the area and it being a place where I had taken several ox before. But the track wasn’t muskox; it was a bear and a decent one at that. We were happy to find the track, 148

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but it was headed into a national park, an area where we couldn’t hunt.

We ventured onward to stop and glass at every high point along the valley. Our last stop brought us to an old familiar spot overlooking the river. It’s a beautiful spot for glassing and also a place where many bears have been taken. You can see for miles; if anything has four legs, you’ll see it.

We were just about to call it a day when I glassed a far peak to see what I

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

thought were tracks coming down out of the rocks. We broke out the spotting scope for a closer look, and sure enough it was a track leading down into a group of trees on the backside of the mountain. With the light starting to fade we loaded our gear and headed in that direction.

Lew was in front and I was behind trying to navigate the side of the mountain the best I could. Lew stopped and started pointing up. At first I didn’t

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know what he was pointing at. I thought maybe muskox, but Lew mouthed the word bear.

He was a man of his word: a bruin stood on the steepest part of the mountain. He must not have been too concerned due to the fact that he just stood there staring in our direction. We immediately turned off our machines and begin to glass. He was hard to make out in the dim light and the brown rock he was standing on made it tough to gauge him.

IT IS IN THESE MOMENTS that you have to make a choice, and I had made mine.

I got off my machine, unslung the rifle and began to walk in the bear’s direction, hoping he wouldn’t bolt. He didn’t, and each step brought me closer and closer until finally I was within 200 yards. I found him in my scope and carefully slipped off the safety.

He continued to stare straight on to give me only a front shot. I didn’t want to take it as it was too risky, so I waited and waited. Finally, he made a move

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to his right like he was ready to leave.

As soon as he did I touched the trigger and I promptly missed, the bullet hitting behind him and to the left. He got nervous and completely turned to his right, a decision he shouldn’t have made. The bullet found its mark and made that old familiar sound of a bear dropping where he stood.

We were elated until we saw where he was: hard against the steepest part of the mountain overlooking a cliff.

To top it off, it was getting dark. How would we ever get to him?

But a miracle happened. Like a mountain goat or one of the many sheep I’ve taken, the bear began to roll down the side of the cliff and drop into the snow and ice below. How lucky could we get?

I came up behind him like you should do on all bears to make sure they’re actually dead; he was. We knew we were lucky to find him this area, but the fact that we did our homework and followed our instincts paid off with a nice trophy.

Persistence is the key to hunting for

MARCH 2017 | aksportingjournal.com

Arctic grizzly, especially in the spring when they are so hard to find.

He wasn’t a huge bear by any means, close to 8 feet with gorgeous fur and a big skull. It took us almost two hours to get his hide off due to the angle we were on, but with a good foothold and a lot of grit we got it done.

We took the hide, loins and other choice cuts, strapping it all to the back of my machine. On our way home, evening gave way to complete darkness and it was bitterly cold again, but this time I couldn’t feel it. As we cruised across the shimmering white tundra, the northern lights in their blue and green waves danced in front of us, making this bear-hunting trip an adventure of a lifetime. ASJ Editor’s note: Paul Atkins is an outdoor writer and author from Kotzebue, Alaska.

He has written hundreds of articles on big game hunting, fishing and surviving in the Alaskan Arctic. Paul is a monthly contributor to Alaska Sporting Journal.

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LUCKY DAY BRUIN

Chris Stewart’s brown bear is one of the largest ever taken by a bowhunter in Alaska. Squaring over 10 feet, 6 inches it’s a true bear of a lifetime and speaks to the caliber of bears roaming this part of the state. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

A FRIDAY THE 13TH HUNT FOR ALASKA PENINSULA COASTAL BROWN BEARS

BY SCOTT HAUGEN

I

n the fall of 2009, I traveled to the upper end of the Alaska Peninsula and took my first brown bear on my third hunt for these giants. I’d taken grizzly in the Brooks Range when my wife and I lived in Anaktuvuk Pass, but the coastal bruins had eluded me.

In spring 2014 I returned to the same spot, taking a smasher 10-foot, 9-inch brute within a couple miles of where I got the one in 2009. That bear was spotted moving across the tundra just seven minutes into the hunt. It took 11 hours to reach him, but reach him we did

and fulfilled a lifelong dream of taking a 10-plus-foot brown bear.

I was hunting with Bruce Hallingstad of Becharof Lodge, near the village of Egegik (becharof.com). Just about every season Bruce seems to get at least one 10-foot bear, which is remarkable. So, when a buddy asked where to book a bowhunt for brown bear, I suggested going with Bruce.

Bruce had hosted bowhunters before, including some of the biggest names in the bowhunting fraternity, but none ever filled a tag. Then Chris Stewart, an Oregonian and one of the best hunters I know, came along.

Chris and his guide, Carl Adams,

found themselves sitting on the tundra and searching for brown bears. It was Friday, May 13, 2016, and if you know Chris, he welcomed the challenge of trying to fill a bow tag on this most superstitious of dates. Chris has always dreamed of taking a brown bear with his bow.

“It was day four of my 10-day hunt, and Carl and I sat overlooking miles of tundra,” Chris recalls. “At 6:30 p.m., Carl spotted a wolf in the distance. It was raiding duck and gull nests but moving our direction. Soon, the wolf closed from 800 to 350 yards. That’s when I let him have it with my 7mm Ultra Mag.” Though Chris had a rifle, he made it

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The terrain on the upper part of the Alaska Peninsula is vast, making the rare high spots all the more valuable for glassing. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

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clear to Carl that his priority was to get a brown bear with his bow. Less than two hours later a big bear appeared, not far from where Chris had taken the wolf.

“The bear came running from a low spot in the tundra and sprinted over 500 yards, right to the beach,” Chris says.

“When it hit the ocean it turned and fed straight away from us. We tried catching up, but it quickly went from 800 to 1,000 yards, so we had to just sit and watch.”

Minutes later the bear turned and headed inland. Between the beach and the tundra was a sea wall of sorts, a rise in the terrain built of eroded sediments.

The ground atop it was 5 to 10 feet higher than the tundra and beach it separated and paralleled. This was where Carl and Chris sat. And when the bear reached the sea wall, it turned and began walking directly toward the hunters.

“There was a low spot about 150 yards in front of us,” Chris describes. “I grabbed my bow and sprinted along the backside of the sea wall, out of sight from the bear. Carl followed. The bear was still heading our way when we looked up.”

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FIELD

Spring black bears like this one harvested

by Tiffany Haugen make for a fine meal, especially this pita-inspired dish infused with lemon juice. (TIFFANY HAUGEN)

INVITATION TO A

PITA PARTY

BY TIFFANY HAUGEN

S

pring black bear taken in Alaska is one of our favorite game meats to eat. Lean but juicy, the meat cooks up more like beef than venison. The key to optimal flavor is found in the field care. As soon as that bear is down, get to work right away. Remove the hide as soon as possible and get the meat off of the bones. Cooling the meat quickly will preserve the flavor and keep gaminess at bay.

The first time we had a traditional pita with hummus and tzatziki was while traveling through Europe. It was a memorable experience, one we wanted to bring home. The amazing spices and flavors compensated for the fact that we had no idea what kind of meat we were eating. We later learned it was goat.

We’ve since had it with both black bear and grizzly, and both were excellent.

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1 pound bear, cut into small chunks ⅓ cup fresh lemon juice ¼ cup olive oil Four cloves garlic, pureed 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, finely chopped 1 teaspoon fresh marjoram, finely chopped 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and marinate meat in refrigerator up to 24 hours. Heat a medium skillet on medium-high heat and add bear with all marinade. Bring to a quick boil, letting marinade reduce for five to 10 minutes.

Strain off marinade and discard. Serve bear in a warm pita with lettuce, tomatoes, hummus and tzatziki.

TZATZIKI 1 cup Greek yogurt or sour cream 2 cups cucumber, diced Four cloves garlic, minced

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1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil 2 teaspoons vinegar or lemon juice 1 teaspoon dill weed (optional) Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste Dice cucumbers and place on several paper towels. Pat dry to remove extra water. Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl and keep refrigerated.

HUMMUS 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained 3 tablespoons tahini Two cloves garlic 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil ½ teaspoon cumin Dash of cayenne or hot pepper sauce Place all ingredients in a food chopper and puree until smooth. Add water if necessary to reach desired consistency and keep refrigerated.

Editor’s note: For more bear recipes and signed copies of Scott and Tiffany Haugen’s popular cookbook, Cooking Big Game, send a check for $20 (free S&H) to Haugen Enterprises, P.O. Box 275, Walterville, OR 97489, or order online at scotthaugen.com.

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Author Scott Haugen’s massive 2014 brown bear squared 10 feet, 9 inches, and had a skull measuring 29 4/16 inches, making it the third largest taken by outfitter Bruce Hallingstad’s (left) hunters at this camp. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

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Soon the bear cut the distance to within 600 yards, then 300 and then 100.

The bruin was coming from the left, and Chris knew he was going to have to let it pass by before he could draw his bow.

“I didn’t want him to see me, and needed the vitals totally exposed,” he says.

When the bear got within 20 yards of Chris, he was already laying down so the bear wouldn’t bust him. When the big boar slowly sauntered by Chris at 12 yards, he could hear the bear breathing and dared not move.

“He walked right by me, and when I came up he was 22 yards away,” Chris says. “I raised high on my knees so the arrow could clear the grass between us, and the shot hit perfectly, passing through both lungs. The bear ran less than 70 yards and fell over. It was incredible to see!”

“Walking up on that bear, I was speechless. I couldn’t believe how massive he was.”

Carl whooped and hollered with excitement. His was the ninth bear he’d guided for Hallingstad, and his first bowhunter. The bear’s hide squared over 10 feet, 6 inches.

“I didn’t care how big the bear was,” Chris admits. “It was just an awesome experience, and so close. The amazing thing about bowhunting is when one little thing goes wrong the hunt is over. But on this hunt, every single aspect played out perfectly, making this Friday the 13th one I’ll never forget.”

Later that spring, a rifle hunter of Hallingstad’s also took a bear over the coveted 10-foot mark, putting the finishing touches on another successful season for the outfitter.

While Kodiak Island and other regions of the Alaska Peninsula get much attention for their big brown bears, Bruce’s little honey hole, and relationship with the villagers, have allowed him access to prime land. It’s on this ground where the bears grow big, allowing many happy hunters fulfill their dreams. ASJ Editor’s note: To learn more about booking a guided brown bear hunt in this part of Alaska or to order signed copies of Scott’s popular Alaska hunting and fishing books, visit scotthaugen.com.

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HEY,

WE’RE TOUGH TOO!

Alaskan Panhandle residents might not be considered as rugged and resilient as those further north in the state, but this guy seems ready to throw his hat in the ring as the Toughest Alaskan, the author’s pitch for a new reality show.

(BJORN DIHLE)

IN A REALITY SHOW PITCH TO DETERMINE ALASKA’S BADDEST, DON’T FORGET ABOUT SOUTHEAST’S BEST

BY BJORN DIHLE

D

ear National Geographic, Please produce my reality show idea, Toughest Alaskan.

Today, I offer a proposal more inspiring than your feature on the first ascent of Mt. Everest, more dramatic than your television show Wicked Tuna and even sexier than the December, 1995 magazine cover shot of a chimpanzee looking for lice in Jane Goodall’s hair.

Before I delve too deep into our future award-winning show, let me give a brief history of how Toughest Alaskan came to be.

A number of years ago, while attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I realized the rest of the state didn’t think much of Southeast Alaska. When someone asked where I was from, they would often repeat “Ju-nooo!” like it was the cross between a satanic invocation and a swear word so terrible that if you muttered it too loud a bar of soap would just miraculously appear in your mouth.

My greatest point of contention wasn’t the constant snickering, or being refused every time I asked a girl out; no, it was the realization that people in the rest of Alaska believe that I, Juneauites and other Southeast Alaskans weren’t as tough as them.

Which, if I’m being honest, kind of hurt my feelings. After several weeks mostly spent writing poetry and sobbing on the phone to anyone who would listen, I set out to prove that we Southeasters are just as rugged and hard as any mad trapper living alone in the farthest reaches of the Arctic, where the sun doesn’t rise for 364 days each year.

This led to many interesting and fruitful conversations, such as with the old placer miner who was sucking down rotgut when I met at the Howling Dog bar in Fox. “Give me a Mike’s Hard Lemonade! No, I changed my mind – make it a Cosmopolitan!” I growled to the barkeep.

“You’re from Southeast, aren’t you?” the old miner asked and laughed. I slammed my drink down, cursed when it spilled on my Patagonia jacket and pointed to a scar on my face.

“You see this scar! No? Come closer then,” I said until his tobacco-stained whiskers were just inches from my face.

“You mean that pimple?” he asked, confused.

“That’s from the seventh time I was attacked by a bear in Southeast Alaska! How many times have you been attacked by a bear?”

“Once, and I’ve never been able to walk right since.”

“That’s nothing!” I said. “The fifth time I was attacked, after I headbutted the bear to death, a giant boulder fell on my arm.

After several days of being trapped, I had to saw off my right hand with my right hand.” aksportingjournal.com | MARCH 2017

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“Why didn’t you just use your left hand?”

“Because I’m from Southeast Alaska!” I laughed. “And besides, I’d injured it doing yoga. You ever shoot a wolf while pissing in the Yukon River? I have. How about save a seal pup from a burning igloo, or sleep with a wolverine or crash a small plane into an alien spacecraft bent on destroying Earth?

I don’t like to talk about it but I’ve done all those things, and let me tell you another thing about Southeast Alaska – with all the rain my thighs frequently chafe and my hair is always oily! I just can’t seem to find the right pomade ... what sort of products do you use?”

You probably get the gist of the dialogue, but I had countless conversations like this during my time in the Interior and the North. After a while, I got so tired of all the hot air folks from up north were spouting that I decided to do something about it.

That’s where Toughest Alaskan comes in.

The basic premise is that the toughest people from each region of Alaska are sent to compete against each other. I’m thinking seven episodes each season.

The first episode will be a simple meet-and-greet potlatch, in which each contestant brings their favorite dish.

On the second episode, contestants will be subjected to a spaghetti-eating contest and voluntary wrestling match involving giant foam fingers.

For the third episode, I’m thinking KY Jelly wrestling with endangered marine mammals. This is a perfect way to make

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educating the public on climate change fun.

The fourth episode will definitely involve roping musk ox and “slapping the bear.” If you fail to agree to this, I’m dissolving our contract.

I’m thinking a combined hunt for Sasquatch and a 60-degree-below-zero dance-off for the fifth episode.

The sixth episode will be a watercolor painting contest.

The grand finale will be a mixture of the movie Hunger Games and David Attenborough’s Planet Earth. Contestants will be forced into a wilderness coliseum, where the audience can enjoy the spectacular Alaskan scenery while people are forced to fight to the death. The last person alive will be the Toughest Alaskan – which I’m sure will be Team Southeast – and will win something like a new iPhone with a free birdwatching app.

Please respond soon. If I don’t hear from you, I will be forced to ask TLC or the Discovery Channel, and we both know they’ll accept any idea as long as it has the word Alaska in it.

In fact, TLC and my lawyers are currently going over a contract for a reality show about a secret society that gets together once a month and juggles a variety of types of wild Alaskan animal droppings.

Sincerely, Bjorn. ASJ Editor’s note: To commiserate with the author, or discuss show pilots, contact Bjorn Dihle at facebook.com/BjornDihleauthor.

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KETCHIKAN-AREA ACCOMODATIONS COMPANY NAME Almost Home Vacation Rentals WHAT THEY DO Provide vacation rentals near world-class fishing spots LOCATION Ketchikan CONTACT (907) 247-5337; almosthomevacationrentals.com; facebook.com/KetchikanRentals

Alaska Sporting Journal How did you get involved in this business venture in Southeast Alaska?

Owner Wanda Vandergriff (operates with her husband Darrell and family): In the spring of 1986 a charter captain, John Joyer, who was a friend of ours, asked if we would be interested in housing his clients in our apartment. At that time we only had one two-bedroom apartment. So we furnished it and outfitted it and prepared for our first guest. At this time we operated under D&W Bed and Breakfast. As time went on, we added onto our home and made this apartment into a three-bedroom, two-bath unit, and added a two-bedroom apartment over the garage. We now call this property Totem Bight Inn, since we are located across the way from Totem Bight Historical Park.

In 1993, we purchased a property on the water overlooking Knudson Cove Marina. It was 1½ acres with a large single family home that we converted into a duplex. This gave us two more units for fishermen and vacationers. The upstairs is a one-bedroom apartment and the downstairs is a large three-bedroom, two-bath apartment. We named this property Knudson Cove Retreat.

In 2006, we subdivided the 1½ acres into three lots so we could build a five-bedroom, five-bathroom, two-story vacation rental on one of the lots. This property is called Knudson Cove Lodge. We changed the name of our business to Almost Home Vacation Rentals.

ASJ What are the advantages of staying in one of your units compared to staying in lodges or hotels closer to Ketchikan?

WV Ketchikan is known for its sportsfishing for five species of salmon and various bottomfish (halibut, rockfish, lingcod, etc.), and our properties are located near both Knudson Cove Marina and Clover Pass Resort. All of our units are outfitted and furnished with just about everything our guests need to feel “almost home,” including a fully outfitted and stocked kitchen, linens, washer/dryer, gas barbecue grill, HDTV, wireless internet, and more. Why would anyone stay in a hotel that just gives them a bathroom and TV? ASJ The photos of the properties on the website look fantastic. Tell us more about the accommodations at Totem Bight Inn, Knudson Cove Lodge and Knudson Cove Retreat?

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WV There is write-up on each property on my website (almosthomevacationrentals.com), including a list of amenities. If you click on the tab Vacation Rentals, you will see the list of all five units. Using this list, you can get the information for each unit separately, including pictures. If you want to see just the three property locations with the duplex units combined, click on the name of each property at the top of the page.

ASJ There are so many beautiful places in Alaska to visit.

What’s the best part for Lower 48ers visiting your rentals in the Ketchikan area?

WV They have comfort and privacy in their own separate apartment, with everything they need to have a memorable visit to Ketchikan.

ASJ I would imagine anglers will have easy access to some of Ketchikan’s spectacular fishing. What’s that experience like?

WV We have experienced charter captains who can take anglers fishing, or they can rent a skiff from one of the marinas to fish on their own. With an abundance and wide variety of fish in our area, they will have a wonderful time fishing the waters around Ketchikan. With the spectacular beauty and wildlife – whales and more whales – they will enjoy their fishing trip in between catching fish.

Ketchikan also offers freshwater fishing in Ward Lake and streams in the area, or they can fly into a remote lake for a different fishing experience.

ASJ Is there anything else you want to say about Almost Home?

WV Darrell and I have been sharing our Alaska lifestyle with guests since 1986 and enjoy meeting new people, as well as having guests return year after year. We have some that have been coming over 20 years. ASJ

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