When I was the secretary for the Juneau Archery Club, I also put together the club newsletter, and for the hunting members of the club, a bowhunting supplement.
Readers would submit stories and photos, and a several times a year I would put out the supplement.
We had a special category of stories for Close Calls!
This is about one of my close calls that was in the Winter 2000 issue:
Slide for Life!
by Chuck Hakari
Many of my early Alaskan adventures occurred on Douglas Island. The reason was two fold: I lived there with my brother Jim and I didn't have a boat to explore any of the other deer bearing islands in the area. I guess that even if I had a boat, I probably still would have done most of my hunting on Douglas Island because there aren't any brown bear there!
Fairly early on, I started putting together the gear I needed to go on extended hunts. This gear included a high quality tent made by the North Face company and a sturdy frame pack made by Kelty. I already had a good sleeping bag that I brought from Michigan.
For shooting gear, I was using an American Archery Cheetah takedown recurve that I had bought from Al Grierson, the only local archery dealer at the time. The Cheetah was a bit of a bear to shoot. It was 60" of quality workmanship and was rated at 75 lbs. at 28" of draw. The problem was that it stacked like crazy! By the time I got to my 291/2" draw, I was holding over 85 lbs! I practiced with it enough that I was reasonably proficient.. Thank goodness for youthful enthusiasm!
One of our neighbors showed me the easiest routes up to the various parts of Mt. Jumbo. He even camped out with me a couple of times. He was with me when I got my first Sitka Blacktail deer, a nice little forked horn taken with my .257 Roberts.
On the hunt in question, I went solo. I climbed up to one of the ridges that lead away from the southeast side of Mt. Jumbo and ends up overlooking Gastineau Channel. I setup camp and did a little scouting of the area before dark. It was a beautiful, calm evening as the sun settled behind Douglas Island. There were a couple of cruise ships anchored in the harbor. Their lights were on and they complemented the multicolored lights of downtown Juneau as they reflected off the glassy smooth harbor water. This was the last thing I saw before I crawled into my sleeping bag.
As you all know, the weather in S.E. Alaska can change in the twang of a bowstring. I had been suckered into the mountains on a beautiful, calm day. Sometime during the night, the wind picked up and rain started pelting my tent. Oh, well. At least I was already on the mountain. I could still hunt if it didn't sock in too tight.
I had semi-good rain gear and my Juneau Tennies, so I stayed mostly dry. The rain gear was a bit stiff and really noisy, so even if I had seen a deer, it would have been a miracle to get off a shot without spooking it.
After poking around in the clouds for a while, I decided to call it quits. I packed up camp and started working my way down the ridge. The ridge dead ended where the hill sloped down to the channel. This is where I would make a left turn and decend a grassy slope into a nice bowl, and then precede down another ridge of sorts that ran parallel to the channel and leads towards home.
The grassy slope had plenty of traction when dry. There was a hint of a deer trail running up it with a little exposed earth, but I had never used it before. I didn't see any problem now, so I ignored the trail and started straight down the slope. I hadn't gone a bow length, when my feet shot out from underneath me. Some people claim that things like this seem to happen in slow motion. B.S. My feet shot out and I took off down the slope on my rear in half a bowstring twang! I was accelerating down the slope at an ever increasing rate. The only thing that was slowing me down at all was the bottoms of the tubes on my frame pack. They were cutting shallow furrows in the sod as they made a feeble attempt at bringing me to a stop.
The ride wasn't really all that bad and it sure beat walking, but the end of ride looked like it was going to be a bit rough! At the bottom of the slope was a boulder patch. Boulders come in many sizes. A boulder can be small enough to hold in one hand. It qualifies as a boulder because the rest of the rocks in the same patch that you plucked it from are a lot smaller. The boulders in the patch I was headed for were all mostly the same size. Huge! If DOT needs a rip rap source for protecting the new road to Skagway, I can show them one! I could almost hear my leg bones snapping, crackling and popping when they plowed into them.
Then I saw it. It was the remnants of a small tree that had tried to grow on the slope and failed. It was uprooted with the top pointing downhill, the apparent victim of a slide of some sorts. I plowed into it. The remaining roots were still securely anchored into the ground and they held. Now I know how a Navy pilot must feel when he catches the arrestor wire on his first landing on an aircraft carrier! I had been spared a very painful and possibly deadly crash into the boulder patch.
I just sat there for long time enjoying life, my life. I was also thinking about some of the mistakes had made. First off, my brother only had a vague idea of where I hunting. Even if I had survived the encounter with the boulder patch, I probably would have been raven food before I was found. Also, Juneau Tennies don't make very good mountain climbing foot gear, especially when the conditions are wet like they are most of the time.
When I finally got up, I realized that I didn't have my bow. I looked up the slope and there it was near the point where I began my slide for life! I retrieved it after a slow crawl up and back down the deer trail. The rest of the hike out was uneventful, although a bit slower than usual.
This turned out to be my last overnight hunt on Douglas Island. I can't remember why I never went back up there. Guess that was enough excitement for that season! It could also have been about the time that Tracy Moore and I started hunting together. Whatever the reason, I will always remember this hunt for my close brush with death.
Topic: Close Call! (Read 175 times)
