Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Killer Whales Got Stuck in a Lake

It happened on Prince of Wales Island late last summer, but I didn't hear boo about it until today. Don't think Biggus Stickkus was in on the rescue.

https://www.ktoo.org/2024/01/03/sci...rcas-trapped-in-a-southeast-alaska-lake/

Too cool. Wish I could see a wild killer whale once in my life, but it’ll probably never happen.

I see them all the time certain times of the year. Watched them hammer sea lions twice now, nothing is better to watch than orcas law down the law of who is boss on some sea lions.

Yeah heard about it. Some friends went up and helped chase them out.

I’ve seen 4 humpbacks on different occasions getting killed by orcas. They are brutal critters.

Lately they have been attacking us for halibut. They get under you, and you gotta move. I have some good video from this summer of that

Fascinating Mammals!

Unfortunately, the only ones I’ve seen were at Seaworld.

I bet Calvin. If they are like anything else they learn to listen to the vibrations of the gear in the water

I know they like to cherry pick black cod as long ling gear is getting pulled up. Heard that fishermen team up to either: have a decoy pull gear to lure the KW's that away, then all the others pull their gear or all pull at once (someone will get fish raped).

Saw this once. I was trolling in a 14' skiff. All hell broke loose. KW's were darting around at full speed (they can haul ass). I was right on the edge of the fray. They got the seal lions pinned up against a rock wall and were going to town. I ran the skiff straight onto the beach with gear still out and watched the onslaught. Pre-cell phone days.

Cool story never seen one close, did see 6 humpbacks in one day, 2 were bubble netting, when one came so close to the boat I could touch it.
Another came up next to the boat and blew, what a wonderful stink. They look big as a school bus to a 13 ft whaler.

My best friend had a beautiful private beachfront family cabin on Vancouver island outside a town called Parksville. It’s been in the family for 60 years and was almost paradise with the private cove and the beach they’d seeded with oysters, mussels and clams back in the 60’s and was virtually untouched until the last 15 years when the secret got out but we had some great times there.

One morning about 7 or 8 years ago my buddy was there with his wife for a long weekend. His wife told him to wake her if he got up first because she enjoyed watching the sunrise from the deck right on the water’s edge while she drank her morning coffee. My buddy got up and started the coffee pot and was getting ready to wake his wife up when he glanced out at the cove. He saw a pod of 5 Orcas (1 or 2 juveniles) coral several sea lions into the little cove and he knew what they were doing. He quick woke up his wife and told her that she’s gotta come see the whales and she sprang up. By the time she got to the deck the whales caught the first sea lion and they bit and tossed that 600++ pound animal around like a doll. They methodically picked off all 3 sea lions within a short time and their little cove was a blood bath….it must’ve looked like the tide at Omaha beach that morning. My buddy was telling me this and I was crying I was laughing so hard. His wife woke up and thought she’d see the pretty whales but what she saw was a murderous scene of epic natural proportions…..those sea lions have a lot of blood. For awhile afterwards little bits of fat and chunks of skin washed up on their beach until the tide changed. 😂

Yeah, I had a bull with cow come right up to us in a small boat. He was so close I could have poked him in the eye with my fishing rod. His dorsal fin was taller than I was standing in the boat. It was downright humbling. The three of us in that little boat were speechless with awe. He as quite a bit larger than that boat. I'd be downright uncomfortable in a kayak with such a visit.

It wasn't all that comfortable in an 18 foot boat off the Ninilchik beach, either, at about 30 feet.

Bastard had this big grin on his face.....

Orcas co-starred in this one.

Pt Hope, mid-70s. One weekend someone came and told us there was a gray whale beached near the school, so we went "go see".

It wasn't beached, beached, just laying there in about a 6" surf with it's side on the beach gravel, like it had been washed up. We thought it was dead, until it took a long, slow, quiet breath - not blowing or spouting....

Then we thought it was sick, maybe dying.

Then we saw 3 orcas cruise by about 400-500 yards out.

When you get pinged, running silent is good, in this case "deep", not so much! And it worked.

The gray laid there, not moving, barely breathing for about a half hour after the orcas were gone, then pushed off and went the other way.

Meanwhile, Eskimos eat whale, legally, so the school principal asked Henry, the local school maintainence man if he wanted to harvest the gray. Handy, right there on the beach, with heavy equipment available to drag it up.

Henry said OK, so Gaylen went up and got his .375, handed it to Henry, then gave him a round. Henry looked at the cartridge for a few seconds and handed both gun and cartridge back to Gaylen....

Henry was about 5'4". maybe 120 lbs soaking wet, and one of thenicest and smartest men I've ever known. He once met a polar bear face to face at the end of an ice-ridge and shot the bear at about 5' with his .243.

Choices and circumstances matter, apparently.

at that size the recoil would have been negligible. Its the big heavy folks that absorb and complain the most about it.

You know that, and I know that (I'm 6'0 and 150), but that big cartridge spooked Henry!

Very interesting!

Have been lucky enough to see wild orcas while taking the ferry boat from Vancouver to Victoria in BC, and in Hudson Bay when on a beluga whale hunt with Inuits from Arviat, the tiny village formerly known as Eskimo Point on the west side of the bay. They're a LOT bigger than belugas!

I've seen the white water rapids in the air from that lake on the AK Air milk run. It's quite impressive.

I had a pod of Orca (8 total I think) spend their day with me when I was sea kayaking off of Vancouver Island in the Robson's bight area. They would swim ahead of me circle back and swim with me for a while. There were times I was worried about hitting them with me paddle, not wanting to piss them off. They seemed very curious about what I was maybe trying to decide if I was food, this was 35 years back before sea kayaking was so popular.

I was not worried about them hitting me because they know where they are in the 3d space of the world they live in, and if they decided I was food there was absolutely nothing I could have done but give them indigestion.

It was one of the most amazing interactions I have ever had with wildlife.

Hunted Prince of Wales , had a 14' boat we traveled from our cabin to town where we road hunted . Had pots out for crab...never saw a whale . Tide pulls are ferocious................