My wife wanted to live here.Originally Posted by Wannabe
My wife wanted to live here.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
Definitely an understatement.
GJM,
Do you fly for business too or just your own use and enjoyment? Just curious.
My wife is so cold blooded that she would probably start shivering at just the thought of living in AK.
Last edited by Irelander; 08-31-2015 at 09:08 AM.
Jesus paid a debt he did not owe,
Because I owed a debt I could not pay.
Fly jet for work, bush planes for fun.
Heart warming story of a save by a float plane. Glad it didn't happen a few hours later or the TFR would have prevented this:
http://www.adn.com/article/20150831/...sinks-knik-arm
Fall/winter is here, snow level down to 2,000 feet msl at our cabin.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
I'd previously spent a January living out of a tent a little east of Fairbanks in the early '80's during one of the Joint Exercise Brim Frost when I was in the Army. I was keen on AK even only seeing it in the dead of winter in the interior.
But in June I visited my younger son who is stationed at JBER (Anchorage area) and as great as I expected AK to be . . . it vastly exceeded my expectations. AK and the Alaskans I met; OMG. Anywhere I ever live or have lived is second place to AK.
“Remember, being healthy is basically just dying as slowly as possible,” Ricky Gervais
There are two reasons why I probably won't move to Alaska when I retire from my current job in about 4 years; grandkids in Houston. Otherwise, the wife and I would alternate between Alaska and Florida. We get withdrawal when we skip a year without a trip North.
Here is an update. In our area of Alaska, Sept 1-15 is moose season, and that is the highlight of our year. By September, weather starts taking a turn for the worse, and commonly, a series of low pressure systems roll in from the Alaska Peninsula, making flying difficult. For folks not familiar with Alaska, while we have many animals, the game density is actually quite low per square mile. Moose season in our area involves a lot of flying, trying to locate a legal bull. After you spot a bull, if it is in an area you can reasonably access, state law requires that you not hunt until the next day after you fly. Fall seems to last two to three weeks in our area of Alaska, and the bull moose become more active as the season progresses.
We have been flying, but have not spotted a bull moose in any of the regular places we fly. With a decent weather window of two days, we decided to go caribou and grizzly bear hunting. In our area, that involves landing up on ridges, and glassing for caribou, and bears that are following the caribou. We got out Thursday afternoon, on a beautiful afternoon. At least beautiful from the ground, but the air was quite snarly. Reaching our hunting area, it was so rough between northwest wind aloft and normal daytime heating, that it was hard to fly low enough to spot, without getting beat up. We decided to land on a 350 foot bit of ridge top that we have previously landed at. Here is a picture of me just before touching down.
We got the tent set-up, and then drove duckbill anchors into the tundra, to secure the planes from being blown off the ridge if the wind increased much during the night. The colors were gorgeous all around, and we spent the last hours of daylight spotting. Surprisingly, we saw no caribou, even though we saw animals the last time we were there, and it is a known good area. We did see a large grizzly bear cruising a ridge about a mile to our west.
Dark around 10pm, we were in the tent. Astro, our dog, crawls into my sleeping bag, which makes for a tight fit. Benelli in the tent for bears, and we both sleep with our pistols on -- me a USP, and my wife a Glock 29.
No visitors overnight. We woke up in the dark, to large plane traffic high overhead. We believe it was related to Obama's visit later that morning to Dillingham, Alaska in Bristol Bay. At first light, we were glassing for caribou, and started seeing small groups of 'boo, but too far off. Then, this beautiful fox showed up, and approached quite close to us and our camp. He seemed very curious and interested in our bird dog. Tail was bigger than he was!
Our dog quietly watched the fox, and vice versa. As we moved around glassing, the fox followed us around, staying about 30 yards away. The darn fox even peed on top of where our dog did. Here is the pack glassing, and our camp.
The closest caribou got was a few miles, but that was further than we wanted to pack meat, this early in the season. No bears spotted, and soon we got some light rain. We decided to beat feet back to our cabin. The wind had shifted, making the departure a little tricky. After pacing it off, we decided to depart slightly down terrain with about a five knot tailwind. My wife went first, with our dog, and reported she used every bit of the available strip. I knew that was code for it was a little hair ball. I departed, hit the end of the ridge top right about flying speed, and rolled off the edge and wobbled into the air, taking advantage of the drop off to convert altitude into airspeed. The air was great, and we spotted for an hour, seeing surprisingly few caribou. This was a surprise as the Mulchatna caribou herd is rebounding, and we had seen a pod of about 1,000 animals only a month previously.
Approaching our cabin, we split off, to go our separate ways, spotting for moose. I flew a lake that has always interested me, and while the air was rough there, took another pass. I spotted something white, and thought it was the antler of a bull moose. After they drop their velvet, they are much easier to see. Made a few more passes, and confirmed he was a very nice bull. I radioed my wife, and headed back to our cabin. We decided to motivate and go after him. We were both pretty tired, and had a quick nap, than went into overdrive getting ready. Got our inflatable canoe and camp loaded into our float plane and headed off just after 5pm. The water was glassy, making the landing harder, and my wife made a great landing. I saw the moose lift his head as we flew by.
We pulled into a cove about a mile down the lake and started getting organized. First, we got the Aire canoe out and inflated. That boat has been key to a lot of our moose hunting success, as there is little upside of tromping around in thick brush, when you can quietly paddle the lake. We often sleep in the back of the Cessna when moose hunting which is a good thing on account of not worrying about bears, and the scarcity of places to put up a tent in moose country. We have spent nights in a small tent on the edge of lakes, rolling in sand, hoping the water level doesn't rise, and none of that is conducive to a good night's sleep. The bugs were really bad, and we made Mountain House, and all got into the plane to get away from the bugs. While we were eating, our dog let out a bark, and I saw two cow moose were coming down the shoreline. Great sign, and hopefully girlfriends of our bull.
It rained hard most of the night, and we got up in the dark. I exited the plane first, and then continued to encourage my wife to get going, as I was getting cold out standing in the rain. We paddled the canoe across the lake in the dark, and worked our way to a point across the lake from the general area of the bull. It worked out to right at 300 yards on the topo map, so with my .300 WM, we figured we could shoot across the lake. It was 40's and rainy, and hard not to get chilled. After we stopped paddling, I started chilling, and stripped my goretex shell off to layer up underneath, as I knew a 300 yard shot with a cold core and hands were not a good combo. Here is our rig.
After a while, with no sign of the bull, we climbed some terrain across the lake to try to glass into the thick cover. It felt great to move, and warm up. No joy spotting, and then we started softly calling. No response, and we discontinued calling, as we didn't want to chance spooking him this early in the season. After five hours, we gave up and canoed back to the plane. All three of us piled into the back of the plane, and had a big, warm nap. We considered staying another wet night, and then decided to return to our cabin. The visibility was down under two miles with a two hundred or so foot ceiling. We decided that would work, for our flight down terrain to our cabin. My wife flew, and I helped by constantly wiping the inside of the windshield with a rag, trying to clear condensation that had accumulated from our overnight in the plane. My wife left partial flaps out, to have a more favorable deck angle in the crappy weather, and soon we were landed at our cabin. It was really nice to get out of wet clothes and a wet plane, and go inside.
So, lots of activity, and not much result, but a great few days. It is like a campaign, and we have another ten days.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
Great post and pictures, thanks for sharing G!
Thanks for taking the time to write that!
Thanks for the write up, George. Looking forward to hearing you complain about a four day pack out.
Ignore Alien Orders
It staggers me the amount of "overhead" in time, gear and general logistics to get into position to actually hunt!
“Remember, being healthy is basically just dying as slowly as possible,” Ricky Gervais
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