How do you sum up an entire week? I guess pictures are worth a thousand words. I'm a wordy guy, though, so you'll get some of both.
We spent the first couple of days in Anchorage where my parents live. First evening, driving around town, we're treated to this sight:
If he'd been out of town, someone might have been taking shots of him. But, because he was right in Anchorage, these were the only shots taken of him. One afternoon, we traveled down to Seward and stopped at Portage Glacier on the way. One of the pesky dekes insisted on a swim.
Finally, it was time to fly to Cold Bay and start the serious hunting. We flew out and met my Uncle and cousin who live in a small town 40 miles from Cold Bay. We stayed at a friend of my Uncle's while we were there. Once in Cold Bay, we had to get to the hunting spot. Here's Vader and I loaded up:
Yeah, we took borrowed 4 wheelers to our spots. Vader had to learn a new skill. He only tumbled off the bike 2-3 times! My cousin, surveying the scene:
We'd been hunkered in our spot for a couple of hours and had a few shots when we stood up and looked behind us:
Note the brown spots in the picture. They ambled off. We spent the rest of the first day—and the rest of the trip, actually—keeping a close eye out behind us! A typical decoy spread:
It was a switch from hunting over DSDs, that's for sure! Notice the raft of birds in the background—mostly brant, tavs, cacklers, and emporer geese. Another angle from the same spot:
That mountain in the background is an active volcano. Here, my cousin and I are heading back up to the bikes for more ammo (you'd think 2 boxes would be enough?). We decided we might as well carry a few birds with us:
On the way to or from our hunting spots, we'd occasionally stop and go for a hike.
We'd usually end up with a handful of these guys:
Of course, there's gotta be the carnage shot:
For those of you who've never seen one—these are Pacific Black Brant:
We hunted for 3 days and then went to King Cove to visit my aunt. Alaskans, of course, can't just build a road to connect the two villages. It seems a road would have to go through a wildlife refuge, so instead, they have a ferry that goes around it. But it's not a typical ferry:
King Cove is a town of about 400 people—a fishing village for sure. I guess they occasionally have bear problems, though:
While we were there, we did some silver (coho) fishing:
Alaska trip (pic intensive--20 megs or so)
MarshBum
very cool
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