We put our tree up last night. No rush for that. The kids have been begging for a week. The photo quality isn't the greatest due too the lighting. I'd blame it on Cathy, but I took the pictures, so it was the lighting.

Colt wanted a watch for his birthday. Cathy's mom got it for him and he always has it on. I don't think I regularly wore a watch until I was in high school.

It looks like Justice is posing in this picture. I think he's supervising. Wear's the cup of coffee?

After I took the pictures, this is how I contributed to the tree trimming. I don't remember putting my tinsel tiara on, I usually don't wear it in public or photo ops.

Colt Ice Skating

Yesterday I went to help tie skates for Colt's class. Every year they go to the ice rink that is just up the hill from the school. The first year he went was no fun. You wouldn't think he'd ever want to go back.

But he likes it. I love this picture. With the tooth missing, he looks like a hockey player.

This video may take a little while to upload, sorry, but it shows how well he can skate... and then not. He falls at the last instant of the video, but before that he maneuvers around a little girl that skates into his path.

A bit of this and that

Chase is taking Alaska Studies in school. He had to do a native art project and he chose to do a Button Blanket. It's about 6x6 and almost complete in this photo. He free handed the eagle cut out and did all of the sewing himself, except for about half of the more than 120 buttons.

The kids take their report cards to the BX and get free stuff. Justice wanted something so Cathy got him an activity magazine. She said he'd do it all in one day if she didn't stop him. So he does two pages a day. He has wanted Colt to read a story to him since he got it. So, today he got his wish when Colt got home from school. Loxi really loved it, it's a Scooby-doo story.

Meg and Loxi in the back yard. They're so pretty.

Now Them's Edlin Ears!

Uno Night

This was the night of my birthday. It looks like we were gambling for sweets, but we weren't.

Check out that hot chocolate mustache.

I don't know what Justice is doing but you'd think he has a handful of wild cards.

Very neat moose behavior

Occasionally I'll see a tree that a moose has rubbed, but I have never seen one actually rubbing! This is the small bull that was running with the one I shot.

And finally...

My first Moose. He's no whopper, measured in at 43 inches, but I'd have been happy with a spike. I left work at 0700 and headed out, I had just walked into the woods and saw a moose. It was still dark and it took me a while to realize it wasn't a bull. I tried to see how close I could get and ranged her at 20 yards. She didn't care that I was there. I took pictures until I was bored, and heard several crashes, like trees being snapped further into the woods. I didn't think it would be a moose, but decided to see what was making all the noise. I started walking and in no time saw moose legs under a spruce tree. As I got closer, I saw another moose, and then another, and finally another! I knew my odds were good that one of them would be a bull. I identified one as a small bull and headed toward him. As I closed the distance, I saw that the first moose I spotted was a much bigger bull. I shot him at 31 yards with a bow. Notice that it is November 6th and we have no snow yet!

The pack out.

My buddy Jon and I took a similar picture last year with his moose.

While I was starting to field dress my moose, another bull of the same size walked right by! If that's not crazy enough, another larger bull came by when Jon and I were field dressing mine. 4 bulls in one day! Incredible!

Moose Hunting

While walking many, many, many miles hunting for moose, I always run into interesting things in nature. This is a cottonwood tree that a beaver started working on. That's a huge tree. What was he thinking?

I always expect that I could see bears while in the woods. I went out 25-30 times since Sept 8th and this was the closest I got to a bear. I believe it made these prints earlier that same day. Pretty neat.

Moose Hunt So Far

I drew the ultimate archery only tag for any bull moose on Ft. Rich and have been hard at it for nearly a month now. I've been out 15-18 times and had seen 1 cow on my first outing until 3 days ago when I saw another moose. It was high tailing it into weeds and I never saw its head to i.d. it. I wouldn't have been able to get a shot off as there was an 8 foot chain link fence between us, so I decided it was a cow. Problem solved. The next day, I saw a bull! Awesome! It scared the crap out of me. I didn't get a shot off because the area I was walking in was like a field of giant pick-up-sticks. Only these sticks weren't colorful smooth plastic twigs. They were fallen pine trees with sharp broken limbs sticking out in all directions to trip you up or gouge a chunk of leg or prostate out. I saw the bull one time w/i my range but wasn't positioned to take a shot and he was walking away. I ducked under a tree and when I stood up, it was gone. How a 1000 plus pound animal can evaporate like a puff of smoke that quick w/o making the slightest noise will always amaze (and frustrate) me. But, I'm hunting. And that's what I like to do. It gets me in the woods away from traffic and cell phones and people in general. I found a nice shed and I'm seeing lots of animals. I don't recall ever seeing a coyote before, but look how close this guy is. That's bow range on a coyote! Why can't I get this close to a moose?

I have seen wolves before. But never this close. When I first saw him, he was in bow range! Why can't I get this close to a bull? It looks like he has a collar on. And he does. Fish and game has one wolf with a radio collar, this is it. Pretty cool.

Oh look, I can get close to a moose! The problem is, this guy is in an area I can't hunt. I 'm convinced they have a copy of the regs and maps along with some kind of teletransportation abilities.

He's laughing at me.

It's Coming!

Winter that is. This is the time of year we pick blueberries. We only went once this year and it rained all day. It did stop while we were there. You can't see the mountains for the clouds, but they have snow one them.

Then of course there's leaf clean up. The kids actually like this. I can't help worry about Loxi's hidden Easter eggs. As far as I know, nobody found one.

He is so happy!

Colt has wanted to be a scout for a while. Well, we finally got him in. I came home from work one morning and he was in Chase's room reading his new Boys Life. I asked him why he was in there reading (Chase was asleep) and he said because Chase was a Boy Scout, and that's pretty cool. Chase has a set of very impressionable eye's on him. I hope he remembers that.

Sheep Hunt...again

I managed to get 5 days off and I wanted to try again to get a sheep. I started at the same drainage that I went to in August. Very little sheep. Maybe 15. One of those was a half curl ram.

So I moved to Caribou Trail after one night at Lost Creek. This is a panoramic view of one of the valley's on the other side of the mountain from Caribou trail. You may not be able to see them here, but there's 12 sheep in this one valley, one is a near 3/4 curl ram that would be legal, IF it's a 3/4 curl.

You can see forever.

That's a ewe and 4 lambs 209 yards away. Easy shot. Good eaten'. Jail bait.

No meat on this hunt, but I did find this trophy.

Meg's Bear Mountain hike

Meg's school takes the sixth graders out every year on a hike up bear mountain. We had overcast skies, but it was clear north. You can see Mt. Mckinley pretty well.

Looking down from here, you can see Mirror Lake and her school, Mirror Lake Middle School, on the other side of the Glen Highway.

This is just sweetness. Colt sleeping.

And Justice with a "Two Dog Sleeper Hold".

Sheep hunt

This is where we stashed our extra food and other supplies. We started hiking from the entrance to this valley about 2-3 miles away. We had very little time that was this pretty. Most of our time was rain and clouds on the deck.

One nice thing about the trip was this pair of caribou sheds. Very nice. We found lots of shed, but didn't see a single caribou.

I didn't get completely skunked on the trip. I got this ptarmigan with my trekking pole. That's why the tip is broken on my pole. We cooked it over fire for breakfast the next morning.

This is John's pack. I call it, "The Clampetts Go Sheep Hunting."

And this is the ram we harvested. Very nice specimen.

The climb!

This picture shows two things. First it shows the mountain we climbed in the background. Second, you can just see bill in the bushes. That's where Meg was walking back from when I saw the moose and calf and then the bear that I shot. You can see how a bear could get around without being seen. Kind of nerve rattling.

Mmm, blueberries.

We're taking a break here. My truck is on the road just to the left of Bill's shoulder. You can see Bill's camera on the rock by Bo. That's where he left it. We had to come back for it.

Takin' a break at the top. Lots of caribou sheds.

Awesome picture.

Whittier fishing trip

Just a quick break in the family visit to bring you an update on Edlin6.

A family we go to church with took us halibut fishing on their boat in PWS out of Whittier. Turns out nothing is free, they made Colt drive. Justice was navigator. It's a 36 ft cat. with twin straight 6 diesel engines. It's alright for a starter boat.

While we were out we caught some shrimp (about 150). But these are the biggest "shrimp" I've ever seen.

I got a little kiss from this Irish Lord fish. Talk about a face only a mother could love. I'm talkin' about the fish!

Meg caught her first halibut. She brought it up all on her own.

And Colt caught his first halibut. 93 lbs. I might have helped a little.