Prince of Whales – Part 5

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.

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