Hello all,

I am wondering about the possibilities of doing a boat hunt for blacktail deer or black bear out of Whittier? I thought that this might help with logistics if one could fly to Anchorage and just drive through the tunnel to Whittier to start a hunt. Thanks for the help.


ddj

I've only fished out of Whittier but I've boat hunted along the Alaska penn. and around Homer. It's totally doable and on a sunny day you won't find a more beautiful place on earth than Prince William Sound. (it's also the armpit of Alaska weather wise, alot). Only and hour from Anch.It gets hunted a lot but it's big. You will likely have to cover some water to get to the big islands with deer. Black bear most anyplace. Spot and stalk.

I wouldn't waste my time with trying to hunt deer in PWS. I'd go to Kodiak, much better deer hunting there.

Alaska has some really good spots for Sitka Blacktails. PWS rarely gets mentioned as one of them.

Whittier is [bleep] - literally. Listen to AkMtnHntr and Calvin - they got it right.

Thanks guys for the imput! I was just thinking (typing) out loud.


ddj

Nothing wrong with asking.
I should have been a little clearer as to the deer part of the question. I was thinking you'd have to almost go to Cordova area for that. More than 100 miles away from Whittier.

There are deer on most Islands in PWS, as well as mention of some occasionally on the mainland. That said there are several downsides of deer hunting PWS. Anchorage, Matsu and Kenai/Soldotna are within a 2 hour drive of Whittier, so you're competing with over 1/2 the states population. PWS is well North of the blacktails natural range, they were introduced to the islands. The reason I mention their range is that they are often decimated by a hard winter. Most of the islands have non existant trail systems, so you'll be spending alot of time bushwacking to get high enough to glass for the deer.

Regarding the bears, see comment above regarding competing with over 1/2 the state. As I recally one of the posters here mentioned this spring they saw more boats than bears in the sound. Not to say there aren't a fair number of bears, but you might be put off by the traffic.

SE is where you want to do a bear/deer hunt.

Have had very few trips where we saw more boats than bears, especially early in the spring. That being said, we have also had years that the season closed before there was really enough of a thaw for ideal bear hunting.

There are lots of bears, and lots of country. A few good sized ones, but they won't compete with SE for size on the average unless you are willing to accept internet measurements.

Weather in the spring is generally pretty decent... you'll get an occasional storm that will kick up some water, but mostly you just have to be willing to hunt in the rain. Rain's no big deal - that's why god gave us Impertech.

Weather in the fall is an entirely different animal, IME.

Saw 2 transporters running out of Whittier when we launched to Montague from there. One other boat in the bay we hunted. The weather was not good, and so saw few deer, but the one morning we had after a snow, and nice weather for about 4-5 hours, it was unbelievable the number of deer we actually saw compared to what we'd seen for 3-4 days previous....

I'll second the part of no trails to speak of, but not that big a deal really... Will much prefer to go around Thanksgiving if I had a choice though.

Oh yeah, never so much as saw any fresh bear sign or bears at all though we had tags.... brownie tags.

Correction made which explains a lot.

Oh so true, buddies have hunted deer yearly on Montague. One year they had an experience of the up close and crap your pants kind, when they had no tags.

The year after that all of them had tags with plans to punch them, but no bear encounters.

I've found more often than not, that having a bear tag in my pocket is a sure fire way to NOT see any bears.