Month: March 2020

Prince of Whales – Part 6

Travel

This is part six of our journey to Prince of Whales island. If you missed out on part five, you can catch up in quick fashion here. It also happens to be our 100th post on TSY. We want to pause to say thank you to all of our readers, and hope you’ve enjoyed our many adventures! We’re always interested in hearing about your travels also, so feel free to share in the comments anytime.

Edgar and Leigh left the lodge early in a light rain and cool temperatures. I stayed back, not in a hurry to get out of bed but still up by six thirty. In Alaska time, that counts as sleeping in. I cooked the rest of the salmon that was in the fridge so I could make a quick salmon patty supper, roasted the two remaining apples and made Bisquick biscuits, as the bread was nearly gone.


The son of the father/son hunting team next door gave me four little strips of his deer already cooked. I said I should wait until we shot our own, but he insisted. In addition to my thanks, I gave him the remaining vegetable soup and two huckleberry pancakes. He invited me to go halibut fishing the next day. I wasn’t sure how much movement we’d get at sea, and if I’d get sea sick, but it sounded fun. I wanted to ask Brent, the lodge owner, how far the boat they were taking would go out. I was really entertaining the idea.


Edgar and Leigh came back for lunch around 1pm. I served them bacon and eggs and fresh biscuits. Nice for a change.


After the warm meal we went back to the hunt. They were walking a lot of rough miles, and seeing a lot of does, but no shootable bucks. The terrain varies drastically from soggy, muskeg bottoms, to deep rain forest, clear cuts, and tall pine forests. It is hard hunting; there are thousands of acres and bucks that stay hidden, especially this time of year. After giving it our best effort all day, we pulled into the lodge at dark again, exhausted and empty-handed.


Dinner was mac and cheese with broccoli and leftover bacon bits with salmon patties, and baked apples for desert. We were all in bed shortly after ten.

On day seven we got an insider’s tip on where the big bucks were hiding, but getting there proved quite the adventure.

~Kate Riley

Prince of Whales – Part 5

Travel

This is part five of our trip to Prince of Whales. If you missed part four you can catch up quickly here.
The kids left early again for hunting. I stayed back and played camp cook. I prepared a beef vegetable soup as the day was rainy and cool. I wanted to warm them from the inside out when they returned for lunch. I also whipped up fix-ins for huckleberry pancakes with some of the berries that I had picked while out in the mountains. Of course there was a little leftover salmon salad – good on crackers with the soup. (What’s a meal without salmon?)


After lunch we cleared the table and left the dirty dishes for later so we could get going out scouting/hunting. We drove up one logging road and Edgar and Leigh left walking to circle up and around and I drove the truck a couple of miles down to wait for them. I was apprehensive about driving on those narrow, steep, gravel logging roads, but it was all just fine. Not even really exhilarating like I thought it would be.


It had been steadily raining all day and it never let up, like a quintessential Prince of Whales forecast. The creeks and rivers were gurgling to a loud roar, very different than the little meandering streams of the day before. Water was running across the roads in several spots. Edgar and Leigh walked right up and around and down to the truck but saw no deer. Lots of sign, deer and bear, but no sightings.


We continued to drive with Edgar at the wheel, checking out other logging roads. There are hundreds of logging roads, some quite old, some blocked off, and some new, with silent logging machinery waiting for a dry day. Numerous clear cuts barely concealed a few does, fawns and spike bucks. In one lovely green grass clearing Edgar spotted a deer, and after glassing decided it truly was a buck.

(A buck like this one, but not this one)


He tip toed then belly crawled to get within a comfortable shooting distance and discovered it was a small forked buck. Just a few days into our trip, it wasn’t big enough to take home. Edgar came back and got me and took me up where the little buck was. No sneaking required. He just stood and looked at us, munching grass. He must have had a feeling there was no danger.


We were loosing our shooting light so we headed on home. Back at the lodge we ate left over vegetable soup, huckleberry pancakes, salmon nuggets and cabbage salad. I tried to come up with interesting meals, using what I had in the cupboards. Fun but challenging. Poor little Leigh had blisters on both heals. She didn’t complain but it was obvious she was uncomfortable.
We all showered and crawled into bed after ten, hoping to rise before the deer in the morning. Day six would bring a drizzling rain, and a welcome visit from a next-door neighbor.

-Kate Riley