Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the Whitetail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm breaking down my first deer hunt of
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty four season, and it was an Alaskan
Speaker 2: deer hunt. All right, Welcome back to the Wired to
Speaker 2: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their
Speaker 2: Camo for Conservation Initiative and the brand new Whitetail line
Speaker 2: that came out this year. I hope you've heard all
Speaker 2: about it. I won't belabor the point, but you can
Speaker 2: check it out over at first light dot com. And
Speaker 2: today it's storytime. It's just you and me. I'm telling
Speaker 2: you a story. It's one of the most unique stories
Speaker 2: that I've been able to ever share here on the
Speaker 2: Wired Hunt podcast. And it is a deer hunt, which
Speaker 2: you've heard about plenty before. But this is a very
Speaker 2: different kind of deer hunt because this is a deer
Speaker 2: hunt that took place not in Michigan, not in Iowa
Speaker 2: or Ohio, or Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Texas, Nope, I went way
Speaker 2: up north to Alaska. So today I want to tell
Speaker 2: you about why I went to Alaska, how I went
Speaker 2: to Alaska, what I was chasing, how I was chasing it,
Speaker 2: and how that hunt went down, and a few things
Speaker 2: about that location and the species up there that I
Speaker 2: think are worth knowing. So that's the game plan today.
Speaker 2: The heck of an adventure up there, was up in
Speaker 2: Alaska for almost two weeks. Just got back the other day,
Speaker 2: and so so yeah, I want to share that story
Speaker 2: with you and what I learned along the way, hopefully
Speaker 2: maybe inspire a few of you to explore this part
Speaker 2: of the country someday, maybe arm you with a little
Speaker 2: bit of insight that can help you plan and execute
Speaker 2: a trip like that and entertaining the rest of you
Speaker 2: if nothing else. So that's the game plan for today's show.
Speaker 2: A couple of house cleaning items before we do that.
Speaker 2: The Whitetail Edu series, our educational whitetail series that Tony
Speaker 2: and I have been doing on YouTube. That's wrapped up,
Speaker 2: so the first season of white Tail Edu is done.
Speaker 2: There are ten episodes now over on the meet either
Speaker 2: Clips YouTube channel. So you can watch all ten now
Speaker 2: the most recent episodes of covered topics such as choosing
Speaker 2: euromounts or shoulder mounts, what's the right mount for you?
Speaker 2: Shot placement on deer. We did a deep dive on that.
Speaker 2: We did a video on callington sure bucks a few
Speaker 2: weeks earlier, we did one about how mature bucks uniquely travel.
Speaker 2: So if you want to get some last minute deer
Speaker 2: hunting know how into your brain before the season kicks off,
Speaker 2: or maybe you're already hunting and you're just wanting some
Speaker 2: some refreshers before the next hunt, check those out. That's
Speaker 2: really the only thing other than I I guess this
Speaker 2: is just a general thing, but the rest of my
Speaker 2: hunting season is going to be kicking off here pretty
Speaker 2: soon across Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, maybe some other spots. And
Speaker 2: if you want to follow along with what I've got
Speaker 2: going on personally, if you want to be able to
Speaker 2: see videos and photos and more frequent updates on these adventures, uh,
Speaker 2: make sure you're following me on Instagram. That's where I
Speaker 2: share everything, that's my most active platform. So that the
Speaker 2: handle is wired to hunt all words at you know
Speaker 2: at wired to Hunt so head on over there if
Speaker 2: you haven't already, if you're not signed up for our
Speaker 2: white or sorry, are Wired to Hunt weekly newsletter. That's
Speaker 2: another big one. If you go to themedia dot Com
Speaker 2: website and go to the newsletter button where you can
Speaker 2: sign up for the newsletters, there's a Wired to Hunt
Speaker 2: newsletter option, and that gets you an email every Monday
Speaker 2: with a note for me, sometimes with updates on my
Speaker 2: hunts or a quick tip or an interesting idea I
Speaker 2: ran across, and then links to all of our most
Speaker 2: recent whitetail articles, podcasts, and videos put out across Media
Speaker 2: and Wired Hunt. So lots and lots of stuff coming out.
Speaker 2: You know that We've got a whole stable of different
Speaker 2: writers who are sharing whitetail how to articles. You know.
Speaker 2: On the podcast side, of course you've got this show,
Speaker 2: but then of course Tony's Foundations podcast, the ret Fresh
Speaker 2: Radio podcast that come out every Wednesday with updates from
Speaker 2: all over the country on what deer doing right now.
Speaker 2: Like all that stuff, you can stay up to date
Speaker 2: with that newsletter, so highly recommend you do that too.
Speaker 2: That's it, I guess as far as those quick little reminders.
Speaker 2: Let's talk deer let's talk Alaska, talked this hunt. I
Speaker 2: just came back from why did I want to go
Speaker 2: to Alaska and why did I want to go to
Speaker 2: hunt deer there. That's a good question, and it's where
Speaker 2: we should start, and some of it I can explain
Speaker 2: to you. Some of it I'm going to hold back
Speaker 2: because part of what inspired me to go up to
Speaker 2: Alaska for a deer hunt was a very interesting wildlife
Speaker 2: ecology phenomena underway right now. There's some interesting stuff going
Speaker 2: on in Alaska that I was interested in, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to do some reporting on it, some learning about it,
Speaker 2: some research on it, and I want to share it
Speaker 2: with you folks and many others. But that's still kind
Speaker 2: of in the midst of happening right now. This trip
Speaker 2: was part of that research process. I'm still doing some now.
Speaker 2: I want to wait to start talking about that until
Speaker 2: I have a very clear, comprehensive handle on this situation.
Speaker 2: But rest assured. We did a film. We produced a
Speaker 2: film up there in Alaska about this hunt and about
Speaker 2: this interesting ecological situation, and I will be diving into
Speaker 2: all of that, you know, in the next six months
Speaker 2: to a year, once we finally put all that together
Speaker 2: and bring that out to the world. So that's like
Speaker 2: I realized, like a ridiculous teaser to tell you there's
Speaker 2: this interesting thing and I'm not going to tell you
Speaker 2: about it, but I guess forgive me, I'm doing it anyways.
Speaker 2: So there's some interesting stuff going on with wildlife up there.
Speaker 2: That was one thing, and then as I found out
Speaker 2: about this interesting stuff, it got me more and more
Speaker 2: interested in blacktail deer and what their situation is up there,
Speaker 2: and how healthy is that population, how healthy is their habitat,
Speaker 2: what's the future look like for blacktail deer, what's the
Speaker 2: future of the landscape they live in up there? What
Speaker 2: do they need to survive and to thrive? What's going
Speaker 2: on up in this part of the world. And this
Speaker 2: part of the world is southeast Alaska. So for those
Speaker 2: who aren't familiar, and if you're watching on video, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna see if I can do this the right way.
Speaker 2: If you're seeing on video, this is kind of what
Speaker 2: Alaska looks like. I'm holding out my hand, my thumb's down,
Speaker 2: my index fingers out a little bit, and then the
Speaker 2: rest of my hand is kind of three fingers together.
Speaker 2: You've got this peninsula that sticks out to the south.
Speaker 2: That's southeast Alaska that branches down off the main body
Speaker 2: of Alaska down along the edge of British Columbia. And
Speaker 2: this is where Juno is. This is where Ketchikan is.
Speaker 2: This is where Prince of Wales Island is. This is
Speaker 2: where Steve's fishshack is. This is where, you know, the
Speaker 2: largest tempered rainforest in North America is the Tongus National Force.
Speaker 2: Is this incredible seventeen million acre rainforest in North America.
Speaker 2: It's it's vast, it's home to some of the largest
Speaker 2: trees in the world, an incredible breadth of biodiversity. And this,
Speaker 2: you know, huge swath of wild country too. I mean
Speaker 2: there's there's obviously some towns like ketch can do you know,
Speaker 2: you know others I mentioned, but it is wild too,
Speaker 2: and so you know, I wanted to get up there
Speaker 2: and see this. You know, I've heard Steve telling stories
Speaker 2: about this area. My buddy is you know, Yannis and
Speaker 2: Brody and all these guys have been out there, have
Speaker 2: seen these places. If hunted deer there, have experienced the
Speaker 2: fishing there, have experienced this landscape. And I wanted to
Speaker 2: see that too, And so I thought man, I can
Speaker 2: learn about what's going on with black tailed deer up there.
Speaker 2: I can go see this place firsthand for myself and
Speaker 2: learn a little bit more about why this place is
Speaker 2: so important and worth protecting. Even though I'm a michigan Er,
Speaker 2: I'm a guy who lives thousands and thousands of miles away.
Speaker 2: I keep hearing about the Tongus National Forest. I keep
Speaker 2: hearing about why some people call this the salmon forest
Speaker 2: or the climate forest, because this forest has an unbelievable
Speaker 2: set of dependencies I guess on The forest sucks up
Speaker 2: a tremendous amount of carbon, so it's helping with that
Speaker 2: whole situation. It provides much of the habitat that vast
Speaker 2: swaths of the salmon in the world depend on. The
Speaker 2: forest itself is actually built in part by salmon because
Speaker 2: salmon run up all these thousands of streams across Southeast Alaska,
Speaker 2: and as many of you probably know, salmon when they spawn,
Speaker 2: so when they lay their eggs, they then die. So
Speaker 2: salmon lay their eggs in these streams, deep into these
Speaker 2: islands or deep inside the interior of Southeast Alaska. Little
Speaker 2: baby salmon are hatched. They eventually get larger and then
Speaker 2: swim out of the rivers and streams into the ocean.
Speaker 2: They spend some number of years in the ocean. They
Speaker 2: grow and grow and grow and collect all these ocean
Speaker 2: nutrients in their bodies. They then when they are going
Speaker 2: to spawn at the end of their life, they swim
Speaker 2: back up those streams to the very exact same place
Speaker 2: they were born, They lay their eggs, and then they
Speaker 2: die there, effectively bringing all of those ocean nutrients back
Speaker 2: into the interior into these four forests, where then they
Speaker 2: provide the best fertilizer in the world and essentially are
Speaker 2: the nutrient source for these massive trees and forests. So
Speaker 2: it's a very very interesting cycle that's going on there.
Speaker 2: So that's a long winded way of saying, there's some
Speaker 2: really cool shit in southeast Alaska that I wanted to
Speaker 2: learn about and that I wanted to see. So that's
Speaker 2: what kicked all this off. I became fascinated with this
Speaker 2: idea of learning about this deer species that lives there,
Speaker 2: Sikka black tail deer. They are a you know, one
Speaker 2: of the three ish main species of deer in North America.
Speaker 2: We've got white tailed deer of course, Then you've got
Speaker 2: mule deer, and then there's like a couple versions of
Speaker 2: black tail that you've got Colombian black tail deer, which
Speaker 2: are like a subspecies ish of mule deer. I don't
Speaker 2: even know enough about how they differentiate. I remember hearing
Speaker 2: at one point that there's basically just like a highway
Speaker 2: and they say, one side of the highways a mule deer,
Speaker 2: one side of the highways a black tail deer. But
Speaker 2: then if you go north, north north, you get to
Speaker 2: a very different blacktail, which is the Sikka blacktail deer.
Speaker 2: And these deer are stout and short and compact compared
Speaker 2: to their cousins down south. They have smaller antlers, darker.
Speaker 2: They live in these rainforest environments. They're native to southeast
Speaker 2: Alaska in that region, and they're super cool, these dark
Speaker 2: black foreheads a blacktail, as their name of course would
Speaker 2: clue you in on. And they live in wild places.
Speaker 2: Not only do they live in these rainforest environments, but
Speaker 2: they also can live up in the alpine kind of
Speaker 2: like you know, like the alpine mule deer habitat that
Speaker 2: some of us are used to seeing in Colorado or
Speaker 2: Nevada or something. Well, they're up high in these peaks
Speaker 2: in Alaska too, and so I got to thinking, how
Speaker 2: awesome would it be to go see this rainforest, climb
Speaker 2: through it, get to the top of the mountains, and
Speaker 2: find black tailed deer up there. So that's what I
Speaker 2: started exploring and researching and thinking about, which led me
Speaker 2: to reaching out to someone who has written about these
Speaker 2: topics in the past, written about a bunch of interesting
Speaker 2: things around Alaska and blacktail deer and bears a lot.
Speaker 2: And that's a guy named Bjorn Dila. Bjorn is a
Speaker 2: resident of southeast Alaska, there in Juno and one of
Speaker 2: the wildest, most wilderness savvy mountain men I've ever met.
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy is a legend as far as
Speaker 2: I'm concerned. And we started chatting. I started asking him
Speaker 2: questions about his experience his hunting blacktails in this area
Speaker 2: and this habitat, and the guy was kind enough to say, Man,
Speaker 2: why don't we just spend some time together. Let's go
Speaker 2: just hunt together. I can show you around, teach you
Speaker 2: a thing or two, and so that's what we decided
Speaker 2: to do. So Bjorn and I were going to meet
Speaker 2: up and we're going to do a black tailed deer
Speaker 2: hunt together in a place called Admiral t Island, which
Speaker 2: is an island just off the coast of southeast Alaska.
Speaker 2: It's a sixteen hundred square mile island that is mostly
Speaker 2: designated wilderness, mostly public land, a super super wild place,
Speaker 2: and home to approximately sixteen hundred brown bears, So sixteen
Speaker 2: hundred square miles sixteen hundred brown bears. Brown bears, you know,
Speaker 2: those are grizzlies, coastal grizzlies, very very big grizzlies that
Speaker 2: live on the coast. Subsist in a large way by
Speaker 2: way of fish and salmon. So there's about a brown
Speaker 2: bear per square mile on this island. There's a whole
Speaker 2: pile of them. So I also had some bear questions
Speaker 2: for Bjorn leading into the strip, and fortunately he's a
Speaker 2: guy who has a lot of experience with that, which
Speaker 2: gave me some peace of mind because not only is
Speaker 2: he an outdoor writer and an experienced hunter, but he's
Speaker 2: also been a bear viewing guy, which led to some
Speaker 2: very interesting stories. We're like, you know, he was part
Speaker 2: of a company where he would take people out to
Speaker 2: go experience brown bears relatively close. And then he's also
Speaker 2: a guy who natural history documentarians. So the people who
Speaker 2: make shows like you know, like Planet Earth or One Planet,
Speaker 2: or you know, all the Netflix, BBC National Geographic animal
Speaker 2: documentary films and shows, they hire Bjorn to be the
Speaker 2: guy who goes sets up all the logistics and who
Speaker 2: guides them safely to film bears and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So the guy knows how to handle himself in big
Speaker 2: bear country and made it so I felt, you know,
Speaker 2: comfortable exploring a new place in a density of bears
Speaker 2: that I'm not used to. I've spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time in grizzly country down the lower forty eight, but
Speaker 2: this was just like another level. So so Bjorn was
Speaker 2: great to make sure I was on the right program,
Speaker 2: and then just the stories he has, I'm gonna I
Speaker 2: couldn't get him on the show this week, but he
Speaker 2: is going to come on the show sometime this fall
Speaker 2: or this winter, and we're going to talk about some
Speaker 2: of the stuf more detail with him, because he's fascinating.
Speaker 2: He is, lack of a better term, just legit, Like
Speaker 2: he is one of the most legit wilderness I don't
Speaker 2: know how to subscribe wilderness savvy. The dude has done
Speaker 2: some wild stuff and I want you guys to hear
Speaker 2: about it at some point. He's also a phenomenal writer.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna plug one of his books right here while
Speaker 2: we're talking. The beginning this book, A Shape in the Dark,
Speaker 2: Living and Dying with Brown Bears. I don't care if
Speaker 2: you never plan on going to Alaska, if you have
Speaker 2: any interest in grizzly bears and brown bears, if they
Speaker 2: fascinate you or they terrify you, or you just think
Speaker 2: they're really cool, or you want to hunt him someday,
Speaker 2: or you just want to see him. I just want
Speaker 2: to learn about him. This is an excellent book about
Speaker 2: brown bears and the history of brown bears in America
Speaker 2: and his many, many crazy stories with them. It's just
Speaker 2: really well done. So go buy that book right now.
Speaker 2: Highly recommend it, A Shape in the Dark. Okay, So
Speaker 2: Jorden's the guy who I spent time with. That's why
Speaker 2: I spent time with him. Admiralty Island is the place
Speaker 2: that I went to at the beginning of the trip.
Speaker 2: I went and spent some time with a biologist with
Speaker 2: Alaska fishing game talking about this ecological phenomena that I'll
Speaker 2: be sharing with you guys. At a later date I
Speaker 2: went and hiked and checked out a massive glacier from
Speaker 2: the Juno ice field to see some stuff going on
Speaker 2: with that glacier, which was really interesting and eye opening
Speaker 2: to see that was cool. But all that was kind
Speaker 2: of the preamble to the actual hunt. The plan for
Speaker 2: the hunt was that we were going to fly in
Speaker 2: a beaver I think it was super beaver. This one
Speaker 2: was called from Juno to Admiralty Island and get dropped
Speaker 2: off at a lake there, and then from there we
Speaker 2: would load up our backpacks and spike out make a
Speaker 2: spike camp up in the alpine on top of a mountain.
Speaker 2: The problem was that the day we're supposed to fly
Speaker 2: out it was rainy, foggy, cloudy and nasty mess and
Speaker 2: it pushed back our flight. So we went to a diner.
Speaker 2: Pushed back another hour, so we had a second cup
Speaker 2: of coffee. Pushed back another hour, so we ate lunch.
Speaker 2: Pushed back another two hours. So we went to Bjorn's
Speaker 2: house and hung out for a while and worked, and
Speaker 2: long story short, they eventually at like four four thirty
Speaker 2: something like that, they called and just said, hey, we're
Speaker 2: not going to fly today. We're gonna try again tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So that was a bummer. But my camera operator Colin,
Speaker 2: and I went and went fishing, went for a hike,
Speaker 2: so it was cool. Made the best of our off day.
Speaker 2: Saw some beautiful stuff. So hundreds and hundreds of hundreds
Speaker 2: of eagles, all these bald eagles congregating around this river
Speaker 2: where all these salmon were coming in. If you've never
Speaker 2: been to the Pacific Northwest, especially to Alaska or British
Speaker 2: Columbia where we still have salmon runs, just this incredible
Speaker 2: flow of life in and out of these river systems
Speaker 2: is just unbelievable. You have to see it and experience it.
Speaker 2: The the fecundity of it. I guess, it's just so alive,
Speaker 2: there's so much going on. You're like seeing the world,
Speaker 2: like mother Nature, playing out right in front of you
Speaker 2: in a very tangible way. It was just very very powerful,
Speaker 2: I guess to see that that's neither here nor there,
Speaker 2: not related to the deer, but that's something I kept
Speaker 2: seeing over and over again. That just kind of took
Speaker 2: my breathway. Anyways, the flight got delayed twenty four hours,
Speaker 2: but luckily the next day, even though it's pouring rain,
Speaker 2: they said Hey, we can do it. We're gonna give
Speaker 2: a shot. So we kind of race to the plane.
Speaker 2: It's a float plane. We load everything up in the rain,
Speaker 2: hop in the plane. I'm in the front seat, takes off.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, I was a little bit sketched out
Speaker 2: because it was still pretty darn cloudy and windy and rainy.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, how's this guy gonna get us there? Because
Speaker 2: these planes, these guys fly by sight mostly maybe entirely
Speaker 2: with these guys, and we were at times like to
Speaker 2: flying blind and then you'd come in and out of
Speaker 2: clouds and he's weaving his way across like gaps in
Speaker 2: the mountains and overwater bodies where there's a little bit
Speaker 2: more visibility. But it was also really cool, beautiful, and
Speaker 2: we did make it to the lake. Dropped us down
Speaker 2: at the lake and there was a four service cabin
Speaker 2: there that we'd rented as like a as like a
Speaker 2: backup base of operations. If we couldn't be in the
Speaker 2: alpine or if we needed to have someone to keep
Speaker 2: stuff dry, we'd have this little one room cabin. So
Speaker 2: we had that and we got dropped off, but the
Speaker 2: weather got worse and it got socked in and based
Speaker 2: on the forecast it looked like the rest of the
Speaker 2: day it was going to be like that. So we
Speaker 2: decided to kind of unload, reorganize, chill at the cabin.
Speaker 2: That first day do some fishing. There was a lake
Speaker 2: like I mentioned, and then a really cool creek coming
Speaker 2: out of it, so we fished and caught a pile
Speaker 2: a coastal cutthroat trout, which was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: And then the next morning the weather was supposed to
Speaker 2: clear and we would be able to hike up the mountain,
Speaker 2: up into the alpine and actually start the deer hunt.
Speaker 2: So we did that. The next they got up, loaded
Speaker 2: everything in the backpacks for like three or four days
Speaker 2: up there in the mountains. Had to take a boat.
Speaker 2: We had like a little John boat in a pack
Speaker 2: craft that we had to take across the lake to
Speaker 2: the side where this mountain was that We're gonna hunt. Unloaded,
Speaker 2: and then started hiking. And you know, the crazy thing
Speaker 2: about this place is the terrain and the actual vegetation
Speaker 2: is just so different than anything that I'm used to
Speaker 2: deer hunting. Of course, the vegetation is the biggest thing.
Speaker 2: Like I mentioned, this is a rainforest, This is an
Speaker 2: absolute jungle. And so you'll go through some stretches where
Speaker 2: it's just open timber, like big old growth timber, and
Speaker 2: that's beautiful and not so bad to get through, except
Speaker 2: for the fact that there's dead trees everywhere, and so
Speaker 2: you're constantly going over dead falls and you're constantly falling
Speaker 2: into holes. Because if you can imagine like a thousand
Speaker 2: year old forest with all these dead trees falling down
Speaker 2: and slowly rotting away from all the moisture, you get
Speaker 2: just like a spongy floor of and you'll fall through
Speaker 2: that floor sometimes because it's rotten wood. So sometimes there
Speaker 2: would just be like a little bit of moss covering
Speaker 2: a hole or a thin veneer of rotten wood, and
Speaker 2: then as soon as you step on it with a
Speaker 2: heavy backpack on, you fall through. So you'd be hiking
Speaker 2: and walking and then all of a sudden, it's like
Speaker 2: you're post hauling in deep snow, but you're just falling.
Speaker 2: So that was interesting. And then you'd get to other
Speaker 2: spots where you didn't have the old trees, you had
Speaker 2: like younger growth spots where sunlight came in. Then you
Speaker 2: had like the low underbrush, just absolute nightmare. Jungle kind
Speaker 2: of situation that you're bushwhacking through it. There's no trials here,
Speaker 2: so we're just bushwhacking finding our way through this stuff.
Speaker 2: And the worst stuff was something called Devil's Club, which
Speaker 2: is like a I don't I gotta, I gotta go
Speaker 2: look and find like something I can compare it to.
Speaker 2: But it's like a long, tall, stocky plant with a
Speaker 2: big leaf at the end and then just spines all
Speaker 2: the way up and down it, and there's some kind
Speaker 2: of toxin in it because it causes you to blister
Speaker 2: different than like the regular thorns and stuff we have
Speaker 2: in the Midwest. These thorns would create these nasty, big
Speaker 2: red and then eventually white pussy blisters everywhere you got poked.
Speaker 2: And I got them all over my hands, and if
Speaker 2: you're watching the video, you can still see, like, I've
Speaker 2: got these blood blisters all over my hands that are
Speaker 2: just kind of the remnants of them. There's one right there,
Speaker 2: but it was like white pussy blisters all over my
Speaker 2: hand and parts of my shoulders and back and stuff.
Speaker 2: So just made it, you know, an adventure. And then
Speaker 2: you'd get to spots where it would just be so
Speaker 2: steep that you were basically, you know, using your hands
Speaker 2: to climb up the mountain side. It wasn't even like walkable.
Speaker 2: You were just like hands and feet and knees and everything,
Speaker 2: pulling your way up with a you know, fifty to
Speaker 2: sixty pound pack with your rifle, with all this stuff.
Speaker 2: So it was an adventure getting up there. It was
Speaker 2: obviously all wet still and muddy, so you're slipping and
Speaker 2: sliding to and this was an easy approach according to Bjorn,
Speaker 2: So you know, what I thought was kind of a
Speaker 2: death march. He's like, oh, this isn't that bad. So
Speaker 2: these guys, these guys are used to some tough stuff,
Speaker 2: and I definitely admire them for that. I thought I
Speaker 2: was pretty mountain you know, experienced in mountain savvy, and
Speaker 2: you know, I did fine. But it definitely was you know,
Speaker 2: it worked me, I guess, is what I'm saying. So
Speaker 2: we did that for how many hours and then punched
Speaker 2: out finally into the alpine a tree line, and then
Speaker 2: you're going up big like rock faces and shale slides
Speaker 2: and avalanche shoots and different stuff. So now we're like
Speaker 2: up in the mountains and we come finally up this
Speaker 2: steep cliffy side and get over top, and we'd get
Speaker 2: into this finally alpine plateau and right away, stay deer.
Speaker 2: There's like two little does and a spike buck and
Speaker 2: my first black tail deer of the trip. So really
Speaker 2: cool to finally see them, this beautiful deer. And I
Speaker 2: don't think they saw us, or if they did, they
Speaker 2: just weren't too terribly concerned. And that was one thing
Speaker 2: we found was that, you know, this is one of
Speaker 2: those kinds of places and one of those kinds of
Speaker 2: honey that you know, because of how hard it is
Speaker 2: to get there, they just don't see many people. So
Speaker 2: I do think that the deer were a little bit
Speaker 2: forgiving of our presence, definitely forgiving of our of our
Speaker 2: presence compared to like whitetail deer down here where if
Speaker 2: you know, if they see you walking across an opening,
Speaker 2: like they're gone. These deer, like if they saw a
Speaker 2: walk across an opening, some of them, at least the
Speaker 2: doughs would just stare at you for a while and
Speaker 2: think like, what's that about. So that was an interesting
Speaker 2: difference there, just you know, a totally different set of
Speaker 2: you know, just just they've learned different things over the years,
Speaker 2: right they have not been exposed to humans over and
Speaker 2: over and had negative interactions with them. So we get
Speaker 2: up there, these deer eventually move away. We go find
Speaker 2: a place it's got water and kind of hidden from
Speaker 2: the rest of the cliffs and mountain side that we
Speaker 2: can get hidden away and set up tents, set up
Speaker 2: our camp, and then after that we kind of regroup,
Speaker 2: talk about strategy, and headed out for the first hunt.
Speaker 2: The name of the game for this kind of hunt
Speaker 2: was that we would get high. It kind of approached
Speaker 2: like a like a mule or hunt, I think, in
Speaker 2: that we would get up high in glass and check
Speaker 2: different bulls like we would actually were going to the
Speaker 2: very summit of this mountain, and there's all these different
Speaker 2: like hanging valleys, like these different glacial cirques, I guess,
Speaker 2: these bowls coming off of the different three or four
Speaker 2: different sides of the mountain. And then you can get
Speaker 2: to the summit and then walk one direction, peer down
Speaker 2: to that bowl for a while, and then walk another
Speaker 2: fifty yards to one hundred yards to the other side
Speaker 2: and peer down there, and walk fifty yards another direction
Speaker 2: and peer down that side. And so you could see
Speaker 2: all these different little valleys that were still all above
Speaker 2: tree line, and there was different groups of deer in
Speaker 2: every one of those. So the first one we went to,
Speaker 2: we saw what was in there. We saw I spotted
Speaker 2: a bed of buck and a couple of beded does
Speaker 2: and a few other dos up and feeding, and that
Speaker 2: was exciting just to kind of see some deer doing
Speaker 2: deer things. In that first buck, you know, looked like
Speaker 2: a decent one, you know. I spent some time talking
Speaker 2: to Bjorn about what I should expect as far as
Speaker 2: the deer heard up there, you know, as far as
Speaker 2: like what's the deer you should take. And Bjorn was
Speaker 2: very much like, if you see antlers, shoot because you're
Speaker 2: not guaranteed anything up in these places. And he traditionally
Speaker 2: has been you know, hunting up here just you know,
Speaker 2: just for meat and getting as much meat as he
Speaker 2: can get, and you know, not much for passing up
Speaker 2: bucks and waiting to see what else was out there.
Speaker 2: So he was very much all about, like, man, take
Speaker 2: a crack if you can get one, which I respect him,
Speaker 2: was not opposed to. At the same time, though, like
Speaker 2: this is my first time seeing blacktail deer, this is
Speaker 2: my first time in this place. I didn't really want
Speaker 2: to just like rush to get over with. I wanted
Speaker 2: to kind of savor it a little bit and see
Speaker 2: some of these critters and learn about some of these
Speaker 2: critters before I, you know, hunted and killed one. So
Speaker 2: that first valley we explored and glassed. You know, we said,
Speaker 2: all right, that's cool, let's let's keep looking, let's keep exploring.
Speaker 2: So then we hiked up this other big ridge line
Speaker 2: heading to the summit and peeled over and looked on
Speaker 2: this other side and on this other side the orange
Speaker 2: spotted dough. And then I started glassing. And as I'm glassing,
Speaker 2: I finally spot antlers. Here's a buck, a beded buck,
Speaker 2: and it looks like a pretty nice one. It looks
Speaker 2: like a pretty nice one to me, but I don't
Speaker 2: really know what a nice one is. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think it's a nice one, but yeah, I don't have
Speaker 2: that context. So I'm like Bjorn, what do you think
Speaker 2: about this deer? And he's like, oh man, that's a
Speaker 2: that's a really good buck. That's top shelf. And you
Speaker 2: got to you gotta know, like siic of black tailed
Speaker 2: deer much smaller antlers than mule deer or white tailed
Speaker 2: deer or even black tailed deer down on the west coast,
Speaker 2: these are smaller antler deer. And then even as far
Speaker 2: as Sika black tail deer's deer go, the ones on
Speaker 2: this island are small, antlerd than the ones on somewhere
Speaker 2: like Kodiak Island. So yeah, we're just not dealing with
Speaker 2: big racks here. But they're like stout body, super cool deer. Still.
Speaker 2: So what I was looking for, and what I eventually
Speaker 2: explained to Bjorn was, you know, I'm looking for a
Speaker 2: good representative of the species. So Biorn's like, gay, man,
Speaker 2: that's a good one. But let me just peek over
Speaker 2: this last little bowl and see what else is there.
Speaker 2: So I sit there with the digits scope. I start
Speaker 2: filming this buck. He's I think in Michigan we would
Speaker 2: call him an eight pointer or a nine pointer. These
Speaker 2: guys were calling him like a three by three because
Speaker 2: they subtract the brow times and make it all confusing.
Speaker 2: But it was, it was, It was a cool buck.
Speaker 2: Biorn comes back eventually, after I watched this deer for
Speaker 2: a while, he says, man, there's like four or five
Speaker 2: bucks on the other side within two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: yards so maybe you should go take one of those.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well what about this one. He's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're probably smaller than that one. I said, well, I'm
Speaker 2: kind of falling in love with this dear. I've been
Speaker 2: watching him and like really cool, wide, big brow times
Speaker 2: obviously a big body. So we kind of think about
Speaker 2: it a little bit and then decide, hey, you know what,
Speaker 2: they're separate, like they're in different bowls. I could stalk
Speaker 2: and try to hunt this deer, and if I blow it,
Speaker 2: I could always go back to the summit and go
Speaker 2: to this other group and hopefully they would still be there.
Speaker 2: So that's what we end up deciding to do. To
Speaker 2: get around on this deer, we had to drop down
Speaker 2: off the summit and do a big, wide stalk, like
Speaker 2: a big loop to get down wind and behind him,
Speaker 2: and then to try to be able to creep in
Speaker 2: and get an angle and come over the crest of
Speaker 2: the mountain to be able to see him because he
Speaker 2: was bedded down next to a patch of pine trees,
Speaker 2: and so I kind of, you know, looked at stuff
Speaker 2: as best I could, took some pictures to try to identify,
Speaker 2: like to have like reference points visually so I could remember, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's what this bush looks like, that's where he was.
Speaker 2: I used ONYX to try to look at the aerial
Speaker 2: view and try to match up the aerial view with
Speaker 2: what I thought I was seeing in front of me,
Speaker 2: and then I tried to mark where I thought he
Speaker 2: was on the map. So I tried to have all
Speaker 2: these different reference points so that when I re you know,
Speaker 2: when I circled around and relocated, I hope I could
Speaker 2: find him again. So we get over there after that
Speaker 2: big hike around to get there, and as I'm creeping
Speaker 2: into where I think I should be able to see him,
Speaker 2: I spot other deer. And what ended up happening was
Speaker 2: that there was a whole bunch of deer in between
Speaker 2: me and him that I never saw earlier. I think
Speaker 2: there was I don't know, five dos, two or three
Speaker 2: little forks, a bigger like six point buck, a bunch
Speaker 2: of deer in there, and basically one of them had
Speaker 2: me kind of pegged, and the others, you know, I
Speaker 2: was worried that they're going to see me if I
Speaker 2: moved any more. And I could never get an angle
Speaker 2: to see this big buck. So for a while it's
Speaker 2: laid on my belly until it's seen that those deer
Speaker 2: will calm again. And then I realized, all right, I
Speaker 2: gotta reposition do something different here to try to you know,
Speaker 2: get closer or get an angle on the big buck
Speaker 2: without those deer seeing me. So the new plan was
Speaker 2: to belly crawl backwards out of sight and then do
Speaker 2: another loop back behind this set of pine trees and
Speaker 2: then try to come in like right above where that
Speaker 2: big one was. So we try to do that and
Speaker 2: make the move, me and Bjorn, and then we're followed
Speaker 2: by Colin, who is our camera operator, who is also
Speaker 2: awesome guy. He's produced some really good films. This isn't
Speaker 2: a side again, I'm going off another one of my tangents,
Speaker 2: but I want to plug him because he's produced some
Speaker 2: great work. He just had a tremendous film called House
Speaker 2: of School of Fish that is exploring the salmon situation
Speaker 2: up in Bristol Bay. Would highly recommend checking that one
Speaker 2: out if you want to learn more about the Tongus
Speaker 2: National Forest. He had a great film called The Understory.
Speaker 2: I'd recommend that one. Those are two pieces of work
Speaker 2: that would definitely suggest you check out from Colin so
Speaker 2: great dude, great camera operator, cinematographer, photographer, whatever you want
Speaker 2: to call him. So he's with this too. So we
Speaker 2: do this second loop, get into these trees, trying to
Speaker 2: edge our way out to try to see something, and
Speaker 2: again I get into a spot where I can't get
Speaker 2: around them enough to see down to him without this
Speaker 2: other group of deer seeing So I've kind of stuck there,
Speaker 2: edging forward a little bit every time that these other
Speaker 2: deer look away. But it just it wasn't a good situation,
Speaker 2: and I just kept thinking to myself, like I want
Speaker 2: to push forward to see this buck, but I just
Speaker 2: don't see how I'm possibly gonna be able to pull
Speaker 2: that off without him seeing us or without them seeing us.
Speaker 2: And then as I'm kind of debating that in my
Speaker 2: head and thinking like, is there any third option, I
Speaker 2: hear b you hear kind of like leaping away, and
Speaker 2: I look over a Bjorn he like points down beneath
Speaker 2: us and like mouths that, like there's a deer running
Speaker 2: with So in that moment, I was hopeful that that
Speaker 2: wasn't the end of our hunt and the end of
Speaker 2: our stock. But what I found later over the course
Speaker 2: like the next hours I continue to try to slowly
Speaker 2: squeeze or slip my way up. There was that I
Speaker 2: had ended up stalking him because of having to take
Speaker 2: this second like two different loops to try to get
Speaker 2: different angles, and ended up getting much closer to his
Speaker 2: bed location than I realized. And I think what ended
Speaker 2: up happening is that we end up getting within like
Speaker 2: seventy yards maybe of where he was betted. And I
Speaker 2: think that our wind dropped or swirled enough that it
Speaker 2: spooked him because we hear this deer run off, one solitary,
Speaker 2: big sounding deer, and then all the other deer look
Speaker 2: over in that direction, and then they just stayed latched
Speaker 2: on that area for like half an hour, and they
Speaker 2: didn't spook off, but they just kept staring over there.
Speaker 2: And then finally after thirty minutes or whatever it was,
Speaker 2: they finally started like moving off. There's like one bigger
Speaker 2: buck in that group, which maybe I mean, he had
Speaker 2: a much bigger buye than the other year, so he
Speaker 2: might have been mature compared to the others. I was
Speaker 2: still like trying to figure that out. He moved off,
Speaker 2: and then the two or three other little four kis
Speaker 2: moved off, and then the dos slowly over the course,
Speaker 2: like ten fifteen minutes, all kind of followed him away,
Speaker 2: and then I got up and moved and tried to
Speaker 2: look where it was, but there was no deal there,
Speaker 2: so blew that first stalk, which was disappointing, but at
Speaker 2: the same time, it was really cool to see a
Speaker 2: bunch of deer. It was fun to have my first
Speaker 2: attempt at one of these deer, and it was you know,
Speaker 2: especially nice to know that there was a backup option,
Speaker 2: there was a fallback plan. So we regrouped, talked about
Speaker 2: what happened, and then you know, decided, hey, let's try
Speaker 2: to go back to the sum of the mountain, hike
Speaker 2: back up there and get over to that other bowl
Speaker 2: and see if those other bucks are there. So that's
Speaker 2: what we start doing. But up to this point, I
Speaker 2: should point out, you know, it was cloudy and rainy
Speaker 2: all the day prior, and then as we were hiking
Speaker 2: up the mountain in the morning, it started to clear up.
Speaker 2: So everything was still muddy and wet, but at least
Speaker 2: it wasn't pouring rain anymore. And then by the time
Speaker 2: we got out to the alpine, it had cleared up
Speaker 2: enough that we were starting to see the mountains around us,
Speaker 2: and we could see sunshine and ended up getting really nice.
Speaker 2: So it was very pretty and open and visible for
Speaker 2: that first and for you know, when we first went
Speaker 2: to the summit. But now we're hiking back to the
Speaker 2: summit and now clouds rolling and it's like you're completely
Speaker 2: socked in, like you're in a cloud. So my worry
Speaker 2: as I was hiking up there was did I just
Speaker 2: blow my only opportunity to be able sea deer? Even?
Speaker 2: Like are we going to be stuck in this stuff
Speaker 2: for the rest of the day and the rest of tomorrow,
Speaker 2: you know, because we missed a day of the hunt
Speaker 2: because of the flight. You know, our hunt time was
Speaker 2: now significantly shortened because not only did we get our
Speaker 2: our day a flying was pushed back twenty four hours,
Speaker 2: but then when we finally did get here, we had
Speaker 2: to wait another day because the weather was too bad
Speaker 2: to get up into the mountains. So, you know, I
Speaker 2: was working with much less time than I originally thought
Speaker 2: it was going to So we're hiking up, we're in
Speaker 2: the clouds. I'm worrying a little bit about you know,
Speaker 2: what's going to happen now? And we hike up up up, up, up,
Speaker 2: get to the top of this mountain. It's like a
Speaker 2: knife edge ridge, very thin ridge that we're climbing at
Speaker 2: this point, and we get to the spot where I
Speaker 2: see these big, deeply imprinted round tracks on this ridge.
Speaker 2: And the ridge, like the tops of the mountains, is
Speaker 2: like like tundra, which you would imagine thunder like lichen
Speaker 2: and moss almost on the surface of the soil. And
Speaker 2: I asked the Armley, so what's this and he explains
Speaker 2: something that is one of the absolute coolest things I
Speaker 2: have ever seen out in the natural world, one of
Speaker 2: the coolest things I've ever seen. This was something that
Speaker 2: he called in what is known as a grandfather trail,
Speaker 2: and a grandfather trail is a spot on these knife
Speaker 2: edged ridges throughout Alaska and maybe other brown bear territory
Speaker 2: where grizzly bears, where brown bears will step into these footprints,
Speaker 2: the same footprints year after year after year. So imagine
Speaker 2: like seeing bear tracks, right, you were to imagine the
Speaker 2: path of a bear, and you would see each bear
Speaker 2: track in the dirt or the mud, but instead of
Speaker 2: it being in the dirt or the mud, it is
Speaker 2: pressed like twelve inches deep into the moss into the
Speaker 2: mountain's surface, into the soil, but like a foot deep,
Speaker 2: and just like perfectly laid out tracks, so it's not
Speaker 2: like it's a trail. It's just like track track, but
Speaker 2: twelve inches deep, pressed into the surface. And what these
Speaker 2: bear do is they step into those prints every year
Speaker 2: and they push their paws down there and they leave
Speaker 2: scent deposits. I'm imagining it's kind of like a buck
Speaker 2: making a scrape. They're leaving a chemical signature, a message
Speaker 2: of sorts, to communicate their presence, their dominance, anything else
Speaker 2: like that. And so all sorts of different bears come
Speaker 2: up and they walk these trails, and when they walk
Speaker 2: these trails, they carefully press their feet exactly into those
Speaker 2: steps as they walk across the ridge to leave this message.
Speaker 2: And what Biorna explained was that in these places is
Speaker 2: these same trails have been used since the glaciers melted away,
Speaker 2: so thousands of years, these trails, these prints have been
Speaker 2: pressed into by different brown bears over the course of
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of generations of different bears. So I
Speaker 2: was standing there on top of a mountain looking at
Speaker 2: the tracks that thousands of different brown bears over the
Speaker 2: course of thousands of years, had pressed their paws into
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just a wild thing to consider
Speaker 2: and to see. I mean, as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 2: grizzly bears are the epitome of wildness. And here was
Speaker 2: a place to see and touch something that had been
Speaker 2: created by and touched by that emblem of wildness for
Speaker 2: thousands of years. It was like one of the most
Speaker 2: direct connections I've ever had to something that happened so
Speaker 2: so so long ago. It connected me back to I
Speaker 2: don't know. I don't have the words yet. I have
Speaker 2: not had the time yet to think about exactly how
Speaker 2: to explain this, except to say that it was a
Speaker 2: powerful experience and something to see and something to be
Speaker 2: near and to imagine all the wild stuff that happened
Speaker 2: right there where I was standing. So very cool moment,
Speaker 2: and I kind of was talking to Biorn about this.
Speaker 2: I went, manly, this is one of the coolest things
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. And then he says to me, well,
Speaker 2: what's also really cool is that there's probably still some
Speaker 2: bucks on the other side of this cliff, so maybe
Speaker 2: we should go check that out before it gets dark,
Speaker 2: which was a good point, and so We kind of
Speaker 2: sneak our way over to the edge and then eventually
Speaker 2: have to lay down and belly crawl up to this
Speaker 2: cliff because there's a sheer cliff drop down into one
Speaker 2: of these bowls, and just as we're getting there, the
Speaker 2: clouds parked and the sun setting just this beautiful light
Speaker 2: is kind of shining in now from the side, and
Speaker 2: we creep over the edge and look down to this
Speaker 2: bowl and here is like, I don't know, like an
Speaker 2: Alaskan Eden, this perfect landscape, bright green, open meadows with
Speaker 2: scattered trees and boulders and deer everywhere. There's does feeding
Speaker 2: over here. There's bucks feeding over there, there's does better there,
Speaker 2: there's a buck better over there, there's two bucks fighting here.
Speaker 2: There's just every different place you looked there was deer
Speaker 2: doing their thing, and you're viewing it all from like
Speaker 2: a bird's eye view. I'm way at the top of
Speaker 2: the mountain looking down at the deer. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was like being a drone looking over all top
Speaker 2: of her beat. Like I said, a bird's I view
Speaker 2: an eagle flying over top of this scene. It was
Speaker 2: really kind of bizarre to experience and see deer from
Speaker 2: this perspective and just absolutely beautiful. So we're up there
Speaker 2: and I'm just watching. Bijorn's like, well, you're gonna shoot one,
Speaker 2: and I know, I was kind of like, I don't
Speaker 2: know if I want to shoot one. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what I want to do in this situation.
Speaker 2: I just kind of want to watch right now. So
Speaker 2: I just pulled up my binoculars and just watched for
Speaker 2: a while and looked at all the different deer and
Speaker 2: started wrestling with, you know, whether or not I wanted
Speaker 2: to shoot one. And I'm trying to also figure out, like,
Speaker 2: you know, are these young bucks, are these mature bucks?
Speaker 2: Or these big bucks? Are these small bucks? Is this
Speaker 2: you know, is this the right situation to shoot one?
Speaker 2: Is it not? Is it too soon? Is it just right?
Speaker 2: Is it? You know? Am I running out of time?
Speaker 2: All of these things started, you know, rushing through my head.
Speaker 2: After I first was taken aback by the whole thing
Speaker 2: and took it in, that next phase was like, okay,
Speaker 2: now what I had all these different things I had
Speaker 2: to think about, And so I'm looking at deer and
Speaker 2: Biora was kind of joking about how he never watched
Speaker 2: deer so much in his life as he does when
Speaker 2: it's with me. Because again, I'm taking my time with this.
Speaker 2: And as I'm sitting there thinking about stuff and debating
Speaker 2: about whether or not I want to take one, clouds
Speaker 2: rolled back in and we're just completely and everything's invisible again,
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, like, ah, geez, I guess like mother
Speaker 2: Nature might just made the decision for me, because this
Speaker 2: looked like a big cloud. It looked like everything was cloudy.
Speaker 2: And it's funny how when you're in it, it feels
Speaker 2: like everything is cloudy and socked in. It kind of
Speaker 2: looks like, okay, this is everywhere. But somehow, every time
Speaker 2: I ever got to thinking that, relatively quickly it would
Speaker 2: open up and then you realized you were just in
Speaker 2: this little world that felt that way, but there's a
Speaker 2: much larger world around you that was open. And so
Speaker 2: as we're all stocked in it's cloudy, I start to,
Speaker 2: you know, chat with Beorn about kind of how you know,
Speaker 2: just started verbalizing what was inside my mind, how I
Speaker 2: didn't want to end it too soon, but at the
Speaker 2: same time I want I knew that we were running
Speaker 2: out of time, and really what I wanted was ah
Speaker 2: as I said earlier, like a good representative of the species,
Speaker 2: a mature buck. I didn't really care about the antlers.
Speaker 2: I wanted a deer that was relatively mature, that would
Speaker 2: you know, have, you know, a good bit of meat
Speaker 2: and you know, be a good average illustration of what
Speaker 2: blacktail deer are all about. That was kind of my
Speaker 2: realistic goal for this trip. And so he says, well,
Speaker 2: you know there's probably at least one, if not two
Speaker 2: down there that would be at least four. I was like, oh, really,
Speaker 2: like a four year old. That's you know, in my
Speaker 2: world of white tails, like a four year old is
Speaker 2: a pretty damn good deer. So he kind of explained it, like,
Speaker 2: you got to remember these are different, obviously different than
Speaker 2: white tails, even different from black tail deer and Prince
Speaker 2: of Wales Island or kodiak. These are smaller antler deer
Speaker 2: up here because of the habitat and the elevation and everything.
Speaker 2: So you know, you gotta don't assess too much by
Speaker 2: the antlers, which is a good reminder for us down
Speaker 2: here in the lower forty eight two. So lucky, luck luckily,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm trying to say. Luckily, the clouds part
Speaker 2: again and we can see everything again, and Jorn's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: like that one right down there, I bet you he's
Speaker 2: a four year old. I have all this deer and
Speaker 2: he is what I would call this, Well, they were
Speaker 2: calling a fork. I would call a six pointer, almost
Speaker 2: a seven pointer, because you kind of hang a ring.
Speaker 2: You know, in Michigan we say if you can hang
Speaker 2: a ring on it, you can count as a point.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna call him a seven pointer. But like
Speaker 2: you could tell, the antlers were heavier and darker than
Speaker 2: the other deer. His g twos were kind of thick
Speaker 2: and bladed, which I thought was pretty cool. And then
Speaker 2: he's got this pudgy belly and these deer, like I mentioned,
Speaker 2: they're short and stocky, and they're like they've got pot bellies.
Speaker 2: So that kind of ended up being the way you
Speaker 2: could tell if it was a mature deer because the
Speaker 2: fat ones were those older bucks. So there ends up
Speaker 2: being one of these pot belly deer that is relatively
Speaker 2: close to me broadside and feeding, and two bucks are
Speaker 2: like sparring right in front of him. It was like
Speaker 2: very cool taking it all in. So when I see that,
Speaker 2: and Beorna explained that was a mature bouck. Guy just said, okay,
Speaker 2: you know what, that's that's the deer I want. Then,
Speaker 2: so got lined up, got comfortable. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: a perfect shooting position. Again, this is a rifle hunt,
Speaker 2: which is something I don't do a lot of, but enough.
Speaker 2: But was nice that I could be laying down. I
Speaker 2: was like in a prone position, elbows on the ground,
Speaker 2: I had a little bipod in the front of my rifles.
Speaker 2: I had like great support and yeah, got a shot
Speaker 2: in broadside, dropped him in his tracks. Absolutely gorgeous. You know,
Speaker 2: the whole thing was just gorgeous, and it was pretty wild.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just like a marathon of a day.
Speaker 2: Shot this blacktail got a really good, quick ethical kill.
Speaker 2: We hiked down off the mountain down into that bowl.
Speaker 2: We're able to recover the deer, do some work, and
Speaker 2: then we kind of got to realize and like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: it's gonna get dark really quickly here and this is
Speaker 2: super thick bear country. We're gonna have to either figure
Speaker 2: we're going to figure out how to get this deer
Speaker 2: out here quick and ideally not after dark. So we
Speaker 2: just got to work skinning, quartering, packing, you know, gutting
Speaker 2: ahead of all that, and you know, from Bjorn's perspective,
Speaker 2: the best thing would be to just get the deer
Speaker 2: back to camp and then just do it fast and
Speaker 2: you know, make some noise, have your gun close to you,
Speaker 2: have a bullet chambered while you're doing all this because
Speaker 2: you don't want all this smell and blood and gust
Speaker 2: to be around you, and then have your back to
Speaker 2: a bear approaching. So you know, he chambered around and
Speaker 2: just kind of kept an eye on things while we
Speaker 2: got to work. And fortunately, no bear problems, no issues.
Speaker 2: We got that deer all packed away. After dark. We
Speaker 2: ended up having to hike in the dark, but that
Speaker 2: was fine. Traversed around this mountain, got back to camp,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's no big trees up high in
Speaker 2: the alpine. There's that kind of scrubby stuff. So we
Speaker 2: basically just had to hang the meat on these little
Speaker 2: scrub pines like three feet off the ground, which was
Speaker 2: not gonna help with bears at all, but it would
Speaker 2: hopefully help with Martin's American Martins, which I guess can
Speaker 2: be kind of aggressive and get into your food. So
Speaker 2: we did that. Turns out that didn't help. We did
Speaker 2: not have bear problems, but we did have a martin
Speaker 2: get into my meat and eat some of the meat,
Speaker 2: and he actually stole my knife. I had a Montana knife,
Speaker 2: like one of their ultra lights that has the handle
Speaker 2: wrapped in para cord, and I'd use that to gut
Speaker 2: my deer. So that paracord had soaked up a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, just blood and bile and who knows
Speaker 2: whatever else's liquids and stuff. So I'm sure it smelled
Speaker 2: really bad and there's some dangling cord off of it.
Speaker 2: So instead of putting that in my tent or something,
Speaker 2: I just left it there with the meat on the
Speaker 2: ground because I didn't want that in my tent and
Speaker 2: attract bears. So the next morning that when I go
Speaker 2: over there to check the meat, not only was the
Speaker 2: meat bag chewed up, but my knife gone. So my
Speaker 2: assumption is that that martin took it, dragged it off somewhere,
Speaker 2: and it's hidden underneath some bush or in a hole
Speaker 2: or something. But we actually follow the martin up in
Speaker 2: the tree over top of us, just hanging out there watching,
Speaker 2: which was interesting. Cute little critter, but that was a hunt.
Speaker 2: That was the hunt well, the next morning we actually
Speaker 2: hiked back up to the summit because we had a
Speaker 2: little more time that day. Hiked up there and just
Speaker 2: glassed that bowl and watched to see if a bear
Speaker 2: would come on the gut pile. Nothing did, but we
Speaker 2: saw a bunch of deer still in there, so I
Speaker 2: got to watch some more deer, have some good chats,
Speaker 2: got to check out that Grandfather trail again. And then
Speaker 2: that afternoon did the hike down the mountain back to
Speaker 2: the cabin. And that was a death march because now
Speaker 2: I've got a full deer in my back. Bjorn actually
Speaker 2: shot a deer that morning too, so Bjorn had a
Speaker 2: deer in his back and all of his backpacking and
Speaker 2: hunting gear. I had a deer in my back and
Speaker 2: all my backpacking and hunting gear, so heavy packs. Going
Speaker 2: down this super steep, wet jungle mountain. Every step you're
Speaker 2: like falling down and something or tripping on one of
Speaker 2: these bushes. Your gun stuff, Your gun's getting caught up
Speaker 2: in the Devil's club and hanging up on things. It
Speaker 2: was just kind of a It was a trip, but
Speaker 2: made it down and survived it. Just find grilled up
Speaker 2: some backstrap and heart on the open fire that night.
Speaker 2: Back of the cabin told a lot of good stories.
Speaker 2: Colin and Bjorn had a lot of fun stuff to
Speaker 2: share from their previous adventures, and it was just a
Speaker 2: hell of a trip, a great experience. I learned that,
Speaker 2: you know, there's some things about deer that like deer deer, right,
Speaker 2: like white tails, black tails, mule deer, that there's some
Speaker 2: things they share in common, you know, like they lived
Speaker 2: by their noses. That was a big one, right, That
Speaker 2: was something that kicked me in the butt on this
Speaker 2: first stock. But at the same time, it's so interesting
Speaker 2: to hunt these different versions of deer in these different
Speaker 2: kinds of places, to see how they operate differently. You know,
Speaker 2: in this case, you know, these deer felt very comfortable
Speaker 2: on the open because they're not used to humans messing
Speaker 2: with them. So basically, if you could get to this place,
Speaker 2: you could find you know, virgin territory where deer were
Speaker 2: being deer hanging out in these wide open meadows because
Speaker 2: they weren't threatened by us, And that was cool to see.
Speaker 2: I think one special thing about traveling to these still
Speaker 2: wild places is that you get to see deer operating
Speaker 2: as they did before they learned to associate, you know,
Speaker 2: humans with danger, and so I found that to be
Speaker 2: really special and valuable and worthwhile to see. So I
Speaker 2: just came await from this trip with a new found
Speaker 2: respect for sick of blacktail deer, a new found respect
Speaker 2: for the terrain they live in. I felt like when
Speaker 2: I had seen previous blacktail deer hunts, like on you know,
Speaker 2: people in Kodiak or Steve's hunts on Prince of Wales,
Speaker 2: it never looked that rugged. Maybe I just hadn't been
Speaker 2: paying attention enough, but it always kind of seemed like
Speaker 2: there's some kind of like nice easy hills and it
Speaker 2: didn't seem like tough country. But at least this hunt,
Speaker 2: I felt like we were in some you know, we're
Speaker 2: in some stuff. We're up there, you know, we're traversing
Speaker 2: ridgeline that if I took one wrong step, I'd be
Speaker 2: sliding down along ways. We are steep stuff with heavy packs.
Speaker 2: That you just had to respect the territory and respect
Speaker 2: the deer that lived there, And that was eye opening
Speaker 2: and impressive. So I took that away from this hunt too.
Speaker 2: And I think if I were to, you know, provide
Speaker 2: any kind of guidance for somebody who wanted to do
Speaker 2: a black tail deer hunt themselves, you know, still having
Speaker 2: relatively little experience myself, I would tell you a couple
Speaker 2: of things. Number One, if you can find a way
Speaker 2: to get to one of these places away from people,
Speaker 2: I think you're going to have a really special experience.
Speaker 2: That's first and foremost. So I talked to, you know,
Speaker 2: the people I talked to mentionally, Hey, it's different when
Speaker 2: you're on a road system, and there is there are
Speaker 2: places you can hunt black tails on the road system
Speaker 2: in southeast Alaska and you can have success, but they're
Speaker 2: they're going to be more like your white tails. They're
Speaker 2: much more edgy, they're much more cover dependent, they're pressured,
Speaker 2: and so you would have to hunt them like you
Speaker 2: hunt pressure deer down here. But if you can find
Speaker 2: a way to get a floatplane trip or a bush
Speaker 2: plane and get dropped off into one of these places,
Speaker 2: and yet that does take some extra money and resources
Speaker 2: in time, so that's not realistic in every situation. But
Speaker 2: if you can get some bodies together and pull some
Speaker 2: money to get that and go into one of these
Speaker 2: places that's really off the beaten path. Even if it's
Speaker 2: once in your lifetime to see these deer in their
Speaker 2: natural environment doing the things they were doing three hundred,
Speaker 2: four hundred, five hundred years ago. It's, as far as
Speaker 2: I'm concerned, worth seeing once. And maybe it's not blacktail.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe you are going to do one hunt like
Speaker 2: this in Alaska or Canada or somewhere. Maybe it's caribal,
Speaker 2: maybe it's moose, maybe it's black bear. Whatever it is,
Speaker 2: I would say that every hunter an angler, it would
Speaker 2: be worse while if you could somehow save up the
Speaker 2: money to go up to one of these places and
Speaker 2: experience it just once, at least once in your life,
Speaker 2: just to see how it used to be. I think
Speaker 2: that was one of the biggest epiphanies. I had. One
Speaker 2: of the greatest things that kept coming up over and
Speaker 2: over and over again during my couple weeks up there.
Speaker 2: It was that we used to have this, We used
Speaker 2: to have some version of this down in the lower
Speaker 2: forty eight, whether it be millions and millions and millions
Speaker 2: of salmon running up our rivers every year, or whether
Speaker 2: it was great, big herds of deer that were relatively
Speaker 2: comfortable in the open and feeding and not constantly on
Speaker 2: edge and not constantly threatened. We used to have places
Speaker 2: you could hike out and hunt in where there was
Speaker 2: the most impressive predator in the world present all over
Speaker 2: the place. We used to have grizzlies and brown bears
Speaker 2: all over the lower forty eight states. This was a
Speaker 2: wild country and you had to respect that. And when
Speaker 2: you walked across North Dakota, you were in grizzly country
Speaker 2: and you were respecting the land and the wild critters
Speaker 2: out there, and your senses were turned up to eleven
Speaker 2: because you weren't at the top of the food chain.
Speaker 2: And I don't care what you think about that. It
Speaker 2: changes the dynamic. It makes it more electric. And if
Speaker 2: you've never spent time in brown bear or grizzly country,
Speaker 2: I can tell you that it changes your relationship with it.
Speaker 2: And I personally believe it changes it in a positive way,
Speaker 2: in a way that you are humbled by the landscape
Speaker 2: and the animals around you, and because of that, you
Speaker 2: appreciate it more. I don't know how to describe this
Speaker 2: in any other kind of way, but imagine that kind
Speaker 2: of feeling, like where you're driving down the highway and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, like you witness a car
Speaker 2: accident right in front of you, or someone swerves in
Speaker 2: front of you and you almost hit them and you
Speaker 2: just narrowly escape, or whatever. You get this massive adrenaline
Speaker 2: dumb right, or some other thing almost happens to you,
Speaker 2: like a bad thing almost happens. You have this huge
Speaker 2: rush of adrenaline, hyperventilating. Your whole body is on fire
Speaker 2: for a second, right, for many of us, In those moments,
Speaker 2: your memory goes into hyperdriver, or you almost go into
Speaker 2: a slow motion where like everything is clearer and crisper,
Speaker 2: and you remember it all. It like imprints into your
Speaker 2: brain so perfectly. You can remember those moments as if
Speaker 2: they were yesterday, as if it was a movie playing
Speaker 2: out in your mind. Right, that's what happens in these
Speaker 2: intense moments. Well, that same kind of thing, to a degree,
Speaker 2: occurs when you are in such a wild landscape that
Speaker 2: you are no longer top of the pole, not top
Speaker 2: of the totem pole. Right, Everything is more vivid, the
Speaker 2: colors are richer, the sounds matter more, the smell are
Speaker 2: more pungent. And that was like every day in Alaska
Speaker 2: you felt like that. And so this is a long
Speaker 2: winded way of saying that we used to have these
Speaker 2: incredible wildlife populations and these wild, wild wild places and
Speaker 2: these infinitely dark skies. This was everywhere down here, and
Speaker 2: we've lost much of it. We still have pockets, We
Speaker 2: still got our things. We still have white tailed deer,
Speaker 2: we still have elk, and it's incredible that we don't
Speaker 2: bring these animals back. But it used to be so
Speaker 2: much more and you can still experience it in British
Speaker 2: Columbia or Alaska or the Yukon, different places like this,
Speaker 2: and I think it's worth seeing and worth remembering, worth
Speaker 2: remembering that there's still stuff like that worth fighting for,
Speaker 2: and that we have so far to go still down
Speaker 2: here in the lower forty eight. Like there's this risk
Speaker 2: of shifting baseline syndrome, which we've talked about before, But
Speaker 2: basically this idea is that every one of us, when
Speaker 2: we're born and we're kids and we experienced the natural world,
Speaker 2: we kind of set our baseline of what wild is
Speaker 2: from what we experience as young people. So what my
Speaker 2: wild was is what I experienced in the nineties and
Speaker 2: early two thousands that felt wild to me, those levels
Speaker 2: of wildlife that felt good to me, right that was
Speaker 2: my baseline, And if I didn't know anything else other
Speaker 2: than that, I might think, well, that's how it used
Speaker 2: to be, that was those of the good old days.
Speaker 2: But I wouldn't know that. Fifty years prior to that,
Speaker 2: or eighty years prior to that, or one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years prior to that, things were so much different,
Speaker 2: maybe so much wilder, maybe so much more undeveloped, so
Speaker 2: many more animals. That baseline keeps changing, and we keep
Speaker 2: accepting this new baseline because all we've personally ever known,
Speaker 2: so our new normal, though, might be god awful compared
Speaker 2: to what the normal baseline was for someone twenty years before,
Speaker 2: and twenty years before and twenty years before. And so
Speaker 2: by going up north to this place that was still
Speaker 2: relative untouched, it was kind of a resetting of the
Speaker 2: baseline for me, and I realized, and I was reminded
Speaker 2: of the fact that, man, maybe if I had been
Speaker 2: born two hundred years earlier, I would have seen this
Speaker 2: down in northern Michigan or Montana. But we we lost
Speaker 2: a lot of it. I'm very thankful we haven't lost
Speaker 2: all of it, and I'm gonna fight hard to make
Speaker 2: sure we don't lose the rest of it, but let's
Speaker 2: make sure we don't screw up these last best places too,
Speaker 2: And I think it'd be worth, like I said, everyone
Speaker 2: having that experience at least once. So that's one thought.
Speaker 2: Second thought, Southeast Alaska's wet. That's no surprise. That's not
Speaker 2: news to anyone's ears. That's been said many times before.
Speaker 2: But it's one thing to hear, it's another thing to
Speaker 2: experience it. Make sure you've got really good rain gear.
Speaker 2: Make sure you've got rain proof boots. I brought waterproof
Speaker 2: leather boots, but I also brought knee high rubber boots
Speaker 2: based on Berange recommendation, and I ended up wearing those
Speaker 2: a lot, just like in day to day life around
Speaker 2: the camp. Around Juno fishing, like was almost always in
Speaker 2: the high rubber boots, and a lot of guys do
Speaker 2: that there they're wearing their extra toughs and now I
Speaker 2: understand why. So definitely bring rubber boots. Definitely bring the
Speaker 2: best waterproof stuff you can bring. I had waterproof stuff, sacks,
Speaker 2: waterproof backpack liner for my big backpack, waterproof everything, and
Speaker 2: it was needed. So recommend that, you know, definitely come
Speaker 2: prepared for bears. That's again, that's nothing no surprise I
Speaker 2: think for anybody. But I do think like you just
Speaker 2: have to be really respectful of that fact in these
Speaker 2: places that they're there. You don't need to fear them,
Speaker 2: you don't need to let them stop you from going
Speaker 2: and experience in these places. You just have to respect
Speaker 2: it and be properly prepared. And if I learned anything
Speaker 2: from Bejorn, it was that it was that you need
Speaker 2: to be prepared for all circumstances, but also understand that
Speaker 2: they don't want to mess with you. Nine point nine
Speaker 2: times out of ten, read their body language, talk to them,
Speaker 2: avoid if need be, don't escalate the situation, and most
Speaker 2: of the time they're gonna go on their way. So
Speaker 2: so that was that was a good reminder. And I
Speaker 2: brought bear spray. I had my rifle, of course, and
Speaker 2: I also brought a ten milimeters pistol. And the key
Speaker 2: thing is to always make sure you have stuff with
Speaker 2: you like a gun or bear spray is never going
Speaker 2: to do any good if it's in your backpack, on
Speaker 2: your back, or if it's ten feet away while you're
Speaker 2: taking a piss. Always have your thing. That was a
Speaker 2: key thing that Bjorn mentioned, like you know, don't even
Speaker 2: go to the outhouse without spray or your pistol or
Speaker 2: something like, always be prepared just in case. So that
Speaker 2: would be something else I would note for anyone planning
Speaker 2: a trip like this for the first time. And I
Speaker 2: guess the last thing I would say, and again, this
Speaker 2: is not like a thorough how to of this trip.
Speaker 2: These are just more some overarching thoughts. But the last
Speaker 2: thing I would say is that this trip also I
Speaker 2: realized like an aft like looking back on it, and
Speaker 2: Alaska in general is more accessible than maybe I realized.
Speaker 2: I kind of always looked at Alaska as out of reach.
Speaker 2: I kind of looked as like prohibitively expensive, like out
Speaker 2: of my league. And by doing this trip, this is
Speaker 2: my second time to Alaska and the most I've been
Speaker 2: involved in like planning logistics and doing stuff myself, I
Speaker 2: kind of realized that it's not that much different than
Speaker 2: planning any other kind of big trip like this, like
Speaker 2: whether it be going to the Rocky Mountains for the
Speaker 2: first time or going on a camping trip to the
Speaker 2: Grand Canyon, whatever. Like there's planning, there's logistics, there's definitely
Speaker 2: things you need to have, you know, in order and
Speaker 2: it definitely is an investment in some travel costs, but
Speaker 2: not disproportionately more those other things, Like a plane ticket
Speaker 2: up to Juno was no different than if I wanted
Speaker 2: to take a plane ticket to California or something. So
Speaker 2: I definitely came out of this trip realizing that I
Speaker 2: could do this more often, and I could take my
Speaker 2: family there more often, Like this is not out of
Speaker 2: my league, nor is it out of yours. And as
Speaker 2: I said a few minutes ago, I think my big
Speaker 2: thing is see it at least once, experience it at
Speaker 2: least once. It's your country just as much as anybody else's,
Speaker 2: and it is an unbelievable gift that we still have
Speaker 2: places like this. If we're going to keep places like this,
Speaker 2: we need to experience them so we can care about
Speaker 2: them and know them enough to continue that fight. So
Speaker 2: that is kind of where I end on this whole thing.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to getting back up there get I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to continue to follow what's going on in
Speaker 2: Alaska and caring about the issues up there in Alaska,
Speaker 2: just like I care about things down in here in
Speaker 2: Michigan or Idaho or Montana. You know, a couple things
Speaker 2: worth noting if you are ever interested in going on
Speaker 2: a black bear hunt in the Tongas National Forest, or
Speaker 2: a deer hunt like this, or if you want to
Speaker 2: go salmon fishing or do any of these things that
Speaker 2: are down there, we're just incredible opportunities for this stuff.
Speaker 2: Pay close attention what's going on with the Tongus National Forest.
Speaker 2: Like I mentioned, this is an incredible place, seventeen million
Speaker 2: acres I believe, but it has been in to varying
Speaker 2: degrees at risk. A handful of years ago, the previous
Speaker 2: presidential administration had removed the roadless rule protections from nine
Speaker 2: million acres of this forest, So more than half of
Speaker 2: the forest lost protections that had been placed on it
Speaker 2: several decades prior. That kept this place from getting clear cut,
Speaker 2: That kept this place from getting new roads punched into
Speaker 2: the last few places that don't have roads. This is
Speaker 2: one of our last best wild places. And so they
Speaker 2: had placed these roadless rule protections on it in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands that would protect those areas that had
Speaker 2: not yet been carved up in clearcut, because a lot
Speaker 2: of it had. And in those places there's all sorts
Speaker 2: of like ecological ramifications and downsides, for example, in the
Speaker 2: places that were clearcut, which again were big chunks. What
Speaker 2: happens is that you clearcut a forest, and you know,
Speaker 2: down in the whitetail world, when we think about cutting trees,
Speaker 2: we think about benefits to wildlife, and there are some
Speaker 2: immediate benefits when you cut trees in that you're getting
Speaker 2: sunlight to the ground and new growth. Right. But clear cutting,
Speaker 2: especially in forested ecosystems up here up north especially has
Speaker 2: you know, trickle down effects that are not so good.
Speaker 2: So in the immediate couple of years after that you
Speaker 2: would see better food available for blacktail deer. But blacktail
Speaker 2: deer need old growth forests because they need protection from snows.
Speaker 2: They need to survive these gnarly, gnarly winters up there,
Speaker 2: and old growth high canopy forest is the habitat that
Speaker 2: they need to survive that. Now, what happens is that
Speaker 2: when you get these clearcuts, they lose a bunch of
Speaker 2: their wintering habitats. So that's bad, but they do some food.
Speaker 2: But then you have these clear cut areas that do
Speaker 2: start growing back, and they start growing back very thick
Speaker 2: and all the same level. So what you eventually have
Speaker 2: is something called canopy exclusion, where these second growth forests
Speaker 2: get to a point at I don't know, fifteen twenty five,
Speaker 2: thirty five years old, where they are forests. Again, they're
Speaker 2: very thick forests, and they are completely dark forests on
Speaker 2: the top, and so there's no sunlight that gets to
Speaker 2: the bottom, and there's no diversity in the age structure
Speaker 2: of the forest, and so there's no understory. And what
Speaker 2: you have then is a deer desert. What deer need
Speaker 2: there is old growth in which you have naturally occurring
Speaker 2: diversity and aige structure of forests because you've got the
Speaker 2: big old trees that provide your winter cover and your canopy.
Speaker 2: But then there's dead and dying trees scattered throughout. So
Speaker 2: you get these different pockets and openings where sunlight does
Speaker 2: come in, and so you get understory and you get
Speaker 2: over story, and so what you want is a balance
Speaker 2: of both of those things. There are examples where there's
Speaker 2: been like wildlife thinnings coming into these second growth force
Speaker 2: and trying to recreate that. So trying to create some
Speaker 2: pockets and open up things a little bit, and that's
Speaker 2: a good thing, but the big thing is we can't
Speaker 2: have these clear cuts happening again that are not only
Speaker 2: bad for blacktail deer, but they're also bad for salmon.
Speaker 2: They're bad for the streams, they're bad for the trout,
Speaker 2: all the different fish species in these rivers. When you
Speaker 2: clearcut these rivers, you remove the habitat that's preserving the
Speaker 2: banks of the streams. You get siltation and dirt and
Speaker 2: erosion and all stuff rushes into the rivers. It covers
Speaker 2: up the gravel beds that spawn that salmon need to spawn.
Speaker 2: All sorts of different kind of trickled on effects from it.
Speaker 2: So this is my rambling way of saying that the
Speaker 2: roadless Rule has been something that has been very good
Speaker 2: for fish and wildlife in that area. We had it
Speaker 2: for a while. It was taken away in like two
Speaker 2: thousand and I can't remember eighteen or nineteen or something
Speaker 2: like that. But then again they were put back in
Speaker 2: place recently a year or two ago, so we have
Speaker 2: those roless rule protections on the tongus. Again, there are
Speaker 2: work that's work being done to have better habitat for
Speaker 2: deer and for fish. They're doing some of this wildlife
Speaker 2: fitting work. They're trying to find ways to have some
Speaker 2: level of timber harvest because hey, we need some logging,
Speaker 2: we need jobs, we need that, we need managed habitat
Speaker 2: for wildlife. That's a good thing, but we need to
Speaker 2: do it in such a way that it's not going
Speaker 2: to destroy the habitat, that's not going to level these things,
Speaker 2: that's going to still preserve the wild spots that we
Speaker 2: have left. So I'm very much in supportive of the
Speaker 2: roleless rule. I would suggest you learn about it because
Speaker 2: you know the political pendulum swings, and I would not
Speaker 2: be surprised if we see a debate come up about
Speaker 2: these things again in the future. And if you want
Speaker 2: to chase blacktail deer someday or go see this place someday,
Speaker 2: you won't experience the same thing I did if we
Speaker 2: lose those protections. And I hope if you've listened to
Speaker 2: this you can see the value in protecting these places
Speaker 2: and hopefully being able to see them someday self too.
Speaker 2: So that is the story of my Alaskan deer hunt.
Speaker 2: I actually got to stay around for about another just
Speaker 2: a little less than another week, and got to go
Speaker 2: in a whole nother excursion learning about salmon and the
Speaker 2: issues impacting salmon. I got to do some saltwater fishing
Speaker 2: in the ocean. I caught caught coho salmon. I saw
Speaker 2: humpback whales. I went to Bristol Bay. I caught massive
Speaker 2: rainbow trout, the biggest grailing I've ever seen in my life,
Speaker 2: pink salmon. Just all sorts of really, really fascinating things.
Speaker 2: I learned about, some incredible places, some incredible animals, and
Speaker 2: once again I'm just more fired up than ever to
Speaker 2: do whatever i can to keep these places wild, to
Speaker 2: keep these wild animals out there, and to make sure
Speaker 2: that all of us and our kids can experience these
Speaker 2: things someday in the future as well. So that's my story.
Speaker 2: I'm sticking to it. Hope you enjoyed this one, and
Speaker 2: if you have any questions, you know, hit me up
Speaker 2: on Instagram or social media. I'll try to answer some
Speaker 2: questions here in the coming days and weeks about this
Speaker 2: hunt and about this experience, if there's any of you
Speaker 2: that want to try something similar in the future. But
Speaker 2: I think that's it for today. Starting next week, we'll
Speaker 2: be right back into our usual Whitetail content. The season's
Speaker 2: kicking off here in Michigan in just a handful of days,
Speaker 2: so I'm about to get real serious about white tails.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you are too, so until then, best of luck.
Speaker 2: If you are out there hunting already, you know, dot
Speaker 2: your eyes, cross your t's. If you're getting ready for
Speaker 2: the season to start here in a couple of days,
Speaker 2: shoot your bow. And until next time, my friends, stay
Speaker 2: wired to hunt.