This remote Alaskan island delivers adventure as raw and rugged as the landscape.
May 2, 2008
Powered by the northwest winds that roar unimpeded across the Shelikof Strait, the rolling waves charged into Spiridon Bay and hammered the bow of the 50-foot Sundy. Below deck, several of the half-dozen passengers secured coffee cups, soda cans and other tumbling objects as braver souls stood onthe rear deck clutching poles or other handholds and reveled in the cold blast of salty spray.
I slid onto a bench at one of the tables inside and peered through the smeared window at the jagged peaks across the bay. They flashed into view intermittently between glimpses of black water or gray skies, as the boat pitched. Pathetically susceptible to seasickness, I was determined not to puke. Meanwhile, photographer Matt Hage sat across the table from me, laughing and aiming his digital camera at my face, hoping to capture the moment when I did.
From the front of the small cabin, somebody began humming Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." There was something about being on a madly rocking boat in icy waters that brought the song to mind. I struggled to remember the lyrics, thankful for a diversion from the nausea that gripped my stomach.
Capt. Mike Flores, owner of Ninilchik Charters, ducked his head in from the bridge and asked if everyone was all right. For the most part I was. The Sundy—followed a half mile back by Flores's other vessel, the 43-foot Arctic Explorer, which was transporting the latter half of our hunting party—was already turning into the more sheltered waters of the bay.
Storming Ashore Several of us still had to check the zero on our rifles' scopes. I was toting a Remington 700 XCR in .30/06 and hadn't had time to get the gun sighted-in to my satisfaction prior to the trip. As the Sundy and Arctic Explorer plied the waters of Spiridon Bay, Flores scanned the shoreline, looking for a spot where we could set up a makeshift range. As we neared a gravel beach beneath an expansive black outcropping, Flores stopped engines on the Sundy.
"This is as close as I can get. We'll ferry you to the beach in the inflatable," Flores said, "but you'll need to be quick." Tides change fast, and once they began to drop, it would make boarding the Zodiac more difficult.
Those of us who needed to shoot geared up quickly and headed aft. After we climbed into the inflatable, Greg Brush sped the boat forward through the chop. We were still 10 yards from land when he ordered us out.
"I can't take you any closer. The water will dash the prop on the rocks. You have to get out. Hurry," Brush implored as he struggled to hold the boat steady in the surf. I looked at my feet. I was wearing a pair of 7-inch leather boots. They were top-notch for hunting the high country, but lousy for a beach landing.
"Hurry up," Brush again yelled over the surf. So, like Special Forces operatives, we peeled over the side and dashed landward through the icy water. I was soaked from mid-thigh down.
The extraction was even more thrilling. As feared, the tide had dropped. With the submerged rocks closer to the surface, the waves were all the more violent. Brush approached as close as he dared, and we dashed through the frigid water in his direction.
"Get in quick," he screamed. "I can't hold it for long." We were barely in the boat when a wave lifted it sideways, twisting the aluminum bottom against the rocks with a crunch and tilting it at an angle.
Brush began barking orders. Like a misfit squad, we plunged back into the cold water and righted the boat. Brush twisted the throttle to the stops and powered the raft seaward as we grabbed the sides and pulled ourselves in and headed for the Sundy.
The Search for Antlers Before going afield on any outfitted hunt, the guide always gives the usual talk on safety, how the hunt will be conducted and so on. The one warning that makes the discussion before a hunt on Kodiak different from anywhere else is, of course…the bears. Kodiak has big bears.
Capable of growing in excess of 1,000 pounds, these bruins are among the largest in the world. Statistically speaking, they pose little threat to visiting hunters—there's been only one fatal attack on the island in the past 70 years. However, the mere idea that they're no longer the highest-ranking creature on the food chain can make many a hunter ambivalent—they want to see a bear but they don't want to see one too close.
As Matt Hage and I finally set off to hunt on the third day of our journey, thoughts of hulking brown bears took a backseat to more pressing concerns—like finding my first blacktail buck. Seasons are liberal by nonresident standards, and each hunter had three tags to fill as part of the trip. The abundant bucks and does were both legal.
Hage and I moved deliberately from slope to slope, climbing ever higher through tangles of alder and willow and scanning stands of the timber and weed-choked meadows as we went.
As Hage worked higher, in search of a good vantage point from which to take scenic shots, I paused to scan the hills with a 10X binocular. The hunting was going to be trickier than normal. Usually by this time of year, snows in the higher elevations push deer toward the beaches, making them easier to find. Snows had, in fact, come early this season. But then the weather had warmed. As the snow melted, the deer headed back into the mountains. To make matters worse, the bucks were prematurely dropping their antlers, an annual occurrence that doesn't generally take place until after the season's close. Finding antlered bucks was going to be a test of patience, perseverance and, ultimately, luck.
Luck certainly played a hand in my first one. As I scanned a wooded bottom below my hillside perch, I caught movement. Hage and I were barely two hours into our hunt when I pulled the deer into focus. A quick check confirmed it had antlers. The buck moved up through the bottom, bearing in our direction. I scrambled through the grass to set up where the buck would pass just below me and flipped my shooting sticks into an X.
Suddenly, the 3 by 3 spotted one of us and quickly turned back into the bottom at a jog. As the buck angled through an opening 127 yards away, I aimed and fired.
The shot struck the animal just behind its vitals. Not enough lead. As the deer began to parallel me, I fired again and missed. I ditched the sticks and settled into a more natural sitting position, my elbows resting alongside my raised knees. This time I swung ahead of the deer's body. The shot connected perfectly, and the blacktail tumbled into a heap.
Rapid Descent My next buck required much more effort. Doug Jeaneret of the U.S. Sportsman's Alliance, which works to protect hunting across the United States, joined me on the next day's hunt. He had made the trip to Kodiak before, so I welcomed his experience. We spotted several deer shortly after making the shore, but none with antlers, so we continued our climb.
On Kodiak in the winter, the sun doesn't rise until after 9 a.m. and starts setting by 4 p.m. The amount of time a hunter has to sleep and socialize on the boat makes the trip feel like an off-season cruise, but you also have less time to make something happen on land.
By 3 p.m., we were more than 1,000 feet up. Glassing the snowline above us, I spotted three deer halfway up the tall peak. Two were does and the last was a racked buck. Farther up the slope, perhaps 400 feet higher and nearly a half mile away, stood two jaw-dropping bucks. One of them sported a wide, heavy rack that would rival that of most Iowa whitetails.
"We don't have much time left," Jeaneret cautioned. "Trust me, you don't want to get stuck up here in the dark dragging a dead deer around." I glassed the animals again and again. Then I looked at my watch.
"Let's see how much distance we can close in thirty minutes," I suggested. Jeaneret agreed and we headed up. Near-vertical inclines and thigh-deep snowdrifts slowed our progress. Thirty minutes later, we had barely covered half the distance. Peering over a ridge, I spotted a doe followed by a nice 3 by 3 not 60 yards away. It was the buck I had first spotted. The other deer were still too far away. I slowly rose and made a perfect off-hand shot, the force of which collapsed the buck and sent its loose antlers flying to the ground.
The sun was already dipping below the horizon, so we wasted little time dressing the deer. We had to descend 1,400 feet and had less than an hour before we'd be engulfed in darkness… in bear country…dragging a bloody carcass. With each of us holding a hind leg, Jeaneret and I powered through a waist-deep snowbank and then down brush-laced hillsides with slopes so steep we often lost our footing and slid 10 to 20 yards through mud and briars. In the fading light, we finally broke out on a cliff overlooking a 40-foot drop to the rocky beach below.
Just moments before, we had stumbled through a scattering of deer bones that showed unmistakable evidence of having been gnawed by a griz. There was no way down and we were three quarters of a mile from where we had been dropped off. Neither of us had the energy to drag the deer that way, a route that involved traveling uphill back through the boneyard.
Peering down a cut in the steep wall, we decided to slide the deer down the natural chute to the beach below. I marked the coordinates on my GPS so we could pick it up once Dan Knight, another guide, arrived in the Zodiac.
We then worked our way along the hills above the shoreline until we heard the motor of Knight's boat. Using a two-way radio and several flashes from a Surefire tactical light, we alerted him to our location. Monitoring the flashes from our makeshift beacon, Knight guided us to a closer pickup spot. Using my GPS to direct us, we swung by the beach to pick up the deer. It wasn't long before we were back in the warm, dry cabin of the Sundy. On the rear deck, numerous deer hung from the canopy frame and twisted in a macabre dance to the soft rocking of the waves.
Watch What You Wish For Two days later, I got what I wished for. I set out that morning with Hage and Derek McDonald on what would probably be my last chance to hunt deer. The next morning would be our final one of the trip, and I had agreed to go waterfowling so Hage could get pictures of ducks and duck hunters. Barely an hour into our hunt, we came upon a swath of torn-up ground at the edge of a clearing.
"You think a bear did this?" I half-jokingly asked Hage, a veteran of several bear encounters.
"It has to be," he replied as we stared at the ground. McDonald and I confessed that we were both a little disappointed that we hadn't seen a single bear on the trip. I continued up the hill as Hage and McDonald lingered to inspect the shredded earth.
Then it happened. Off to my side in the woods a limb popped. Expecting to see a blacktail, I was shocked to spot the biggest bear I've ever seen, a mere 40 yards away. It was easily 51⁄2 feet tall on all fours. Its head was the size of a medicine ball. The bear charged. I spun to face the animal and grappled for my rifle, which snagged on my pack frame and twisted out of my hand.
"Bear, bear, bear!" I shouted as I foolishly began backpedaling toward Hage and McDonald. The monster before me was gobbling up real estate fast, and if I didn't get my gun free in time, I damn sure wanted to be behind McDonald's. Wisely, an unarmed Hage grabbed McDonald's shoulder and kept him steady while screaming for us to hold our ground.
As Hage waved his hands and shouted at the bear, McDonald dropped to a knee and steadied his 7mm Rem. Mag. I finally pulled my rifle free and also took aim. We had been warned that shooting a bear was permitted only in cases of an imminent attack. The situation had gotten as imminent as we were prepared to let it.
We would have time to take one shot before he was on us. But then, as quickly as he had bored toward us, the bear, now 40 feet away, pulled up, turned and disappeared into the bush.
We kept the terrain covered with our guns until we felt the danger had passed. Then laughter swept over us, and we began to kid one another about what might have happened.
"Human beings are the only thing that can be faced with total destruction one minute and joke about it fifteen seconds later," McDonald observed. We headed in the opposite direction from the bear and unsuccessfully hunted out the rest of the day—the air smelling a little sweeter, the scenery appearing more vibrant and our guns always at the ready.
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