Busy June

I've done a lot of traveling this month. I had a good time hunting and fishing with a friend from Kentucky. We didn't get him a bear but we saw plenty of wildlife. This Dall sheep came all the way down to the road. I took this picture on his way down and he was about ten feet above my head. He's not very big and he's pretty ratty looking. It's neat to watch them any way.

Meg turned ten this month. I love this picture of her. I know I'm daddy, but I think she is so pretty. We were at Grandma Young's house for the June birthdays.
Have you seen one of these before? A motorcycle with a side car pulling a motor cycle on a trailer.
This picture was taken while bear hunting. Look at that water behind me. Incredible. That's Ptarmigan Lake, about a 3.5 mile hike near Seward.
This picture was taken near Hope, also after a bear hunt. This has got to be one of the top three sunsets ever. Ever! It's also about 1130 pm. Cool.

Kentucky visit

We went to Kentucky for a couple of weeks this spring. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins and loving on grand parents. They also enjoyed the abundant local wildlife. Unfortunately, some of the wildlife enjoyed them too. That's a tick in Justice's pit. He looks quite concerned. He had one somewhere on him just about every night. Colton had a couple on his "nachos". You can guess what that is.

Is this boy handsome or what? This was at the hotel we stayed in in Chitcago where his uncle Adam and aunt Susan were married. The kids had a good time in the hotel pool and in the lobby. I'm surprised we weren't asked to leave.
Here's another critter we had fun with. It was probably the kids favorite. A couple of seconds later and I we would have captured Megan in a scream as the snake curled it's tail down into her shirt.
This poor snake got passed around quite a bit. I let Chase hold it before we let it go and it tried to back down into his shirt too. Good times.
On the drive back to Chitcago, we passed our time playing with fruit loops. We were gonna have them wear them through the airport to match their green shirts, but they kept dissolving. A good time was had by all.

Huntin', no killin'

My buddy John and I went griz hunting a couple of days ago. We stayed for two days in this cabin. Look at that view! It didn't stay like this though. It was overcast most of the time, with breaks of rain, snow and sleet, with the occasional blue sky.If we were hunting caribou, all we'd have seen was bears. But since the caribou have access to the internet, they knew they weren't legal and they were all over the place. These happen to be on top of a mountain. There's plenty to eat and they can see forever, so a bear's not going to sneak up on them. We were within rifle range. Of course the bears have internet access too, so they were scarce, we saw one. Looked to be huge. We gave chase, but he was after another herd of caribou and we couldn't keep up with either.
In Alaska, there is no closed season and no limit on these critters. I was looking for a den when I found this porcupine. He's facing a rock and had his nose tucked in a hole under it. He's pretty much bomb proof. Here, he raised his head up to see what was making the noise. I stomped the ground and he puffed up. After a few minutes of sitting still, curiosity got the better of him and he looked up.
This is his back door. You can see his quills now and part of the hole he stuck his nose in. We saw enough of these to fill the freezer. One was about 15-20 feet up in the top of a tree. Who knew they were climbers? Interesting critters.

Prince William Sound fishin' and shrimpin'

We went out for some shrimp and fish from Whittier. We were hoping to get some lots of shrimp, halibut and rock fish. We did pretty good. We got several flat fish that weren't very big. I'm not sure what they were (halibut or flounder) but they'll be good either way.

And then there's this thing. I had to do some research to find out what it was. Turns out it's a wolf fish. It looks some what like an eel. It also looks like it swam through some under water time warp from some prehistoric age. It was very aggressive when we got it to the surface, biting at everything that got near it.

As you can see, it has some teeth that could do some major damage. We took some pliers to remove the hook and let it go. I found out later on the Alaska Outdoor Forum that it is delicious. Someone also said they're very friendly and you can hand feed them and pet them under the chin. I don't know if they were on crack or they thought I was. That ain't happenin'. Later that same person showed pictures of him feeding one. They're pretty cool fish.
This is more what we were after. Red snapper! Or yellow eyed rock fish. Either way, good eats! The last three fish we caught were all yellow eye. Of the three, mine was the smallest, but I loved it more. No, that's not its tongue sticking out. It's its air bladder, they come from so deep they explode from the inside. You can't throw them back because they're pretty much dead. That's also why their eyes are bugged out.
And the climax! After fishing, we pulled the shrimp pots. Look at the size of those suckers! Those are a sample of the largest ones. About half were regular sized shrimp. The down side, after cleaning, we only got about half a gallon. But with all of the other fish we caught, we'll have a great feast.

Late April Record

Look at this crap!

It snowed for the better part of a day and broke the previous record of a couple of inches by about 8. That's right, almost all the snow was gone and we get another 10-12 inches.

It takes forever (it seems) for it to melt off because it still gets down to freezing at night. My yard's like a swamp.

DANG THIS GLOBAL WARMING!!!

Bird Ridge 2008

Kids will sleep anywhere. At least he's still in his pj's.

Our annual scout trip to Bird Creek was this past week end. It was the nicest weekend we've had

this year. It didn't even threaten to cloud up. This picture of Chase is near the bottom of Bird Ridge looking across the Turnagain Arm. Those are the Talkeetna Mountains. Beautiful.

The last half of the mountain was cover in snow. DEEP snow! If you stepped off the path, you risk sinking to your hips. We took a four foot walking stick and shoved in into the snow and never reached the ground. You can see the summit in the middle, the right side of it is a cliff and there's no snow on it.
Here we are at the summit. What a view. We had a great day.

Denali Highway hunt

This post is about our Denali Highway road hunt that we did on Saturday. The Denali Highway runs east/west between Anchorage and Fairbanks. The road parallels the Alaska Range. Our plan was to hunt snowshoe hare and ptarmigan, with the possibility of a wolf or early grizzly bear hunt. This was a long drive for just some bunnies and birds, about 267 miles one way actually, but none of the 6 of us would have changed a thing. Sometimes a man just has to kill something, and a few measly gallons of gas at 3.25 isn't going to get in the way of that. It's not only about the hunting, the view, memories and camaraderie are priceless. I got within a hundred yards of a 50 head caribou herd. It was very neat.

In this area, the limit on ptarmigan is 5/day. It looks like I limited out, but one of these was Eddie's. He got his first snowshoe and ptarmigan on this day. This is my first snowshoe. At first sight I thought these things were twice the size of our Kentucky rabbits. They're all fur! They may be a little longer than I remember KY rabbits being, but they are about the same size otherwise. I meant to keep some hide but forgot, it is so thick and soft. I was going to make a loin cloth with it. Maybe next time.
This is a view from the road north towards the Alaska Range. One lane is plowed for vehicle travel, the other is a foot deep for snow machines. This picture does not do it justice. You'll just have to see it for yourself.
This is Eric, he's a good friend, a heck of a hunter and a nut. He and Jeremy stayed the night in sub-zero temps. When they woke (cuddling I'm sure :-), there was a huge flock of birds outside their tent. They got eight, he also has a snowshoe in this picture with some caribou antlers that he found. We got out of the trucks to scout some willow stands for ptarmigan and he found a wolf killed caribou carcass. So he shouldered it up and came walking down the road holding the rack with skull, spine and part of the pelvis still attached. IT STANK! He was going to take the whole thing home and deal with it there, but I had a bone saw and he just cut the antlers off. It was a nice find.