Yet another western adventure (CO/AK/MT)

[Brian Halbleib]

Great! Looks like we're in for another incredible adventure-a-long! Keep it coming.

-Brian
 www.bowyersjournal.com

[Steve H.]

Waiting for tomorrow's installment, tick-toc, tick-tock.....

[cjones]

This is getting good. Beautiful pics!  

[Jeff Holchin]

Good morning, bowhunters.  I'm glad you like the stories and photos - it is fun to relive the adventure and avoid the reality of my job.  Here goes......

Arriving in Anchorage around midnight on September 7, I find my partners at the Alaska Airlines gate but our flight to Kodiak is not until 6:00 am.  I find my partner, Jim McInteer from Iowa, as well as the group leader, Terry Receveur.  I meet the 3 other bowhunters, all from Indiana, including Herb, Eddie and William.  We finally arrive in Kodiak on friday morning to rain and fog - no real surprise. My luggage didn't arrive with me, causing some anxiety but it arrived later and by afternoon we were all ready to go.  Here is the Bushhawk floatplane that will get us to our island....

 

[Jeff Holchin]

The weather clears slightly in the afternoon and the first group of 3 bowhunters, including me, take the hour plus flight over Kodiak and out into the Pacific.  We saw deer, goats and over a dozen big brown bears while flying low over Kodiak - a beautiful island....

 

We arrived on our island and quickly unloaded.  There were 2 rifle hunters at the lake, who had been waiting several days for their plane.  They had killed 5 nice bucks and those racks got us pretty excited.  Our pilot agreed to take them out and off they went, back to Kodiak for the other 3 bowhunters.  Since we had several hours until those guys returned, we took a walk with our bows.  We saw some eagles feeding on dog salmon at a stream, I made a lucky shot and killed my first ptarmington, and we saw a few deer.  We returned to the lake when the floatplane returned and made our plans.  With lots of wind and rain predicted, and a cabin available from the island's only resident, four of us decided to rent the cabin and its woodburner, while 2 of the more hard core guys headed out with their heavy backpacks.  Here is our home for the rest of the week.....

 

[Jeff Holchin]

We had all planned to backpack hunt, so at first I felt a little wimpy for choosing the cabin.  However, as the days passed and the rain poured down, that feeling faded in the dry and toasty cabin.  This whale skull was neat to see...

 

Saturday morning dawned relatively clear and Jim and I headed out in one direction while Terry and Eddie headed in the other direction.  The hills up away from the beach were not that tall (the highest we climbed was 1400 feet) but relatively steep.....

 

Soon we saw deer and Jim got the first stalk.  Amazingly, the 5x5 buck Jim approached turned out to be the best one he saw all week, but he was rusty and the stalk ended at 40 yards.  The deer were not too spooked, probably 15 in all with mostly does and fawns, so we got on the downwind side of them, along this main drainage - we were on the left side....

 

[Jeff Holchin]

We eased along and kept on seeing more bucks.  We came to a little draw and I motioned Jim to ease up the side after I peeked over the edge and saw 2 little forkies bedded at the bottom.  I saw Jim move forward, stop and draw his Black Widow longbow, and release the arrow.  The I saw one of the forkies crash down the draw and I hoped he was down for good......but he wasn't ready to give up just yet.  We found that these blacktails were pretty tough, and this first buck was only marginally hit, through his front left elbow and the brisket.  We watched him descend the slope, cross the stream seen in the above photo and climb the opposite slope.  I motioned Jim to stay put and signal for me, and I took off after him.  It took over an hour and some anxious moments, but I ended up 12 yards away and surprised the buck in his bed.....

 

Jim was happy and we had our first deer on the hunt.  Two interesting things happened while I took care of the deer.  I used the "gutless" method for the first time and loved it, except I did make a slight mess trying to get the tenderloins out.  The second was the red fox peering over my shoulder at 5 feet, licking his chops in anticipation!  He wasn't the slightest bit afraid of me and my errant shots at him proved that he had little to fear from me.  Turns out the island had lots of fox with various color phases, including a beautiful blue - we saw them every day but just couldn't get one with an arrow.

Jim's excitement of killing the first buck was muted somewhat the next morning, when he discovered that all the meat was gone!  Luckily we had cooked some backstraps on the wood burner the previous evening, but somehow the rancher's dog had gotten the door open and now wore a very guilty expression and displayed a bloated belly!

[Jeff Holchin]

The rain resumed on saturday afternoon and sunday was a soggy day afield.  Jim and I tried another area and saw a few deer.  I am always looking for shed antlers and found the first of 5 today......

 

Terry and Eddie hit the jackpot, finding a bunch of deer and getting several shots but without luck.  I tried stalking a small buck in his bed but arrived to no deer, after the wind had shifted.  The deer on this island were more spooky than expected and it was clear that getting a nice buck would not be easy.  Later in the day, I finally spotted a nice buck bedded on the side of a slope away from the 15 or so other deer scattered across the broad ridge top.  It took almost an hour and I had to go around several does and fawns along the way, but I was finally within 10 yards of the nice 5x5 buck with those richly dark antlers.  My problem was that he had backed up against a vertical mound of dirt and I didn't like the offered shot, because a hit above the spine would get only 1 lung.  In hindsight, I should have tossed something past him and distracted him, but instead I tried backing up to angle the shot forward from the rear.  The wind was brisk and a errant strap on my Catquiver pack made a noise at just the wrong moment.  He whipped his head around, spotted me and quickly launched from his bed.  My arrow sailed past him and down the canyon - Jim watched the whole thing and claimed it was the most beautiful miss he ever saw.  Small comfort to me.  We slowly worked ourselves back to camp at dark and I mentally kicked myself over and over.  How can one stand 10 yards away from a beautiful and unsuspecting buck, and not get him????????  Turns out I found many different ways to ruin these stalks over the hunt.  This spot and stalk hunting ain't nothing like treestand hunting those silly whitetails back home.........

More to follow later today, I had better pretend to be actually working for a while!

[PA Bones]

Jeff,
Thanks for the stories and photos.  Another fine Holchin adventure.  Hope to see you tomorrow.
Bill

[Whip]

Sure, you had to mention work..    
I'll check in for more later.

[Huntrdfk]

Great pics Jeff, and looks like you guys had a pretty good time so far.  Nice job on the buck too.


David

[Steve H.]

For some reason I am anxiously awaiting MORE "island" photos.  Keep 'em coming!

[Jeff Holchin]

Just a little more before my 1:00 meeting.  This will have to do for a little while, as I have to take my mother-in-law back to PA tomorrow and that is 15 hours of driving in one day!

Monday was to be our fishing day, as Terry, Eddie and I decided to hike around to the north side of the island, fish for salmon and then hunt our way back to camp.  Jim was more sensible and stayed back, closer to camp.  It took over 2 hours to get to the proper salmon stream, but the walk was worth it.  Check out these fish...

Here is Terry:
 

I got to show off this one:
 

We ate this one 15 minutes after catching him, on a driftwood fire right there on the stream:

 

Life was good.  When we finally looked at our watches, it was mid afternoon already!  Yikes, we had better try a little deer hunting.

[Charlie Lamb]

Keep going Jeff... great stuff!!  

[kojac]

don't give in yet...good job!!!  

[Jeff Holchin]

Yes Steve H, you do seem more interested than usual!

We split up, with Terry and Eddie headed up one ridge and me on another.  I soon found a little 3x3 buck asleep in a draw - way too small for me!  With so many deer, I could be picky, right?  Ha!

We walked and walked, seeing more does, fawns and small bucks.  We reached the head of several ridges and decided to head back to camp.  I impressed the guys again with my keen eyes, snatching first a small shed antler in front of Eddie and than a nicer, 5 point shed antler right out from under Terry's boot!  

We came up on a group of deer and Terry spotted a nice little buck with forked G-2 tines, so off he went.  Unfortunately the herd spooked and we had us a deer rodeo, but I managed to keep his buck frozen in his tracks with the ol' "bow over the head" trick.  That buck just hadn't seen many "caribou" on the island (nor goofy bowhunters) and stood gawking at me while Terry oozed closer.  Finally the spell was broken when I began the whitetail grunts and the deer departed quickly!  Then we spent another 15 minutes hunting my binoculars.  Oops.

Terry commented that maybe I should be looking for bucks as hard as I was looking for shed antlers, so I raised my eyes and spotted a VERY nice buck ahead, bedded on a bench on the slope.  It was still in velvet and had numerous points.  Both of my friends declined the stalk so off I went, promising to be done in 15 minutes as I circled behind and above the bucks.  An hour later the rain stopped briefly and a double rainbow appeared over the buck - I took this as a sure sign from Above and moved in for the kill.  At 30 yards the buck, a beautiful 5x5 with thick bases and forked G-2s that I wanted very badly, saw me and stood.  I just can't shoot accurately that far, but he let me get 5 yards closer before swapping ends and preparing for a retreat.  I drew and committed that error so familiar by now - I forgot to pick a spot!  Of course the arrow only cut a few hairs under his big chest and he took 2 steps and stopped.  There was my "rainbow buck" still close, so maybe I should shoot again, right?  Except......I had taken off my Catquiver 30 yards back and didn't have another arrow!  Now I really regretted my decision to get rid of my  bow quiver!  "My" buck slowly walked out of my life, and I was not a happy camper as I joined my buddies for the long walk back to camp.  What a buck, and I had blown it!

[BillW]

Neat story. How were the bears?

Thank you!
Bill

[Doug Campbell]

:(        

[Jeff Sample]

Great, now I'm not getting anything done today, monitoring this post. Come on Jeff, keep it coming!!!

[the Ferret]

Great read and great pics..golly what self respecting bowhunter would carry only 1 arrow on a stalk   :rolleyes:           are you coming up in November?