Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Talk To Webmaster US military sniper rifles

In Cincinnati, My initials also spell Carp, dead fish ..... Hmmmmm

Kent

That could also be me licking up beans and rice ....

Kent

Long as it's beans 'n rice, I'm cool with it.

The World According to Carp. I like it.

The unusual hunting picture and the story behind it. Part I.





DigitalDan had asked about the story behind this photo. BTW, yesterday was just miscommunication between him and I. No problems here.

This photo was taken on one of three trips I was lucky enough to have gone on to Kodiak Island deer hunting. I lived in Anchorage for fourteen years and that where all the other photos of fish came from.

My buddy had met the son of the gentleman that owned the boat and he got to know him and arranged a hunt for us on Kodiak. The boat was a 60' commercial purse seiner with a refrigerated hold. The skipper made his living with the boat netting salmon and working as a tender for other boats since it was one of the few with a refridgerated hold. Sorry, no fridge girl on this one. Like most Alaskans he enjoyed hunting and was all for a deer hunting trip during his off season.

The journey started with the flight from Anchorage to Kodiak. The airport at Kodiak is very unique to say the least. On approach to Kodiak you come out of the clouds and the plane starts getting close to the water with no land in sight. Lower and lower, you can start to see the waves, lower and lower, no land in sight - are we ditching?. At the last second, at an altitude of about 30', the runway appears, tires squeal, touchdown. When you get out of the plane you realize what has just happened. At Kodiak planes can only take off and land in one direction. There's a mountain at the end of the runway that does not allow for a second chance, go around or mistake of any sort. I have no fear of flying but this one makes you go - hummm - every time.

Met up with the skipper, got a ride into town, got to see the boat, went shopping for essentials, box of wine, malt beverages, a variety of evening libations, etc..

On the trip was myself, my two friends, the skipper and a friend of his that was also a commercial fisherman that lived in Port Lyons. We picked him up in Port Lyons on our way around the north end of the island. The boat was a fantastic home for our trip for the next six days. It was a floating motel with a nice galley, warm bunks at night in the v berth, and everday a changing, waterfront million dollar view. It was a nice change from the typical hunting camp.

The northern end of Kodiak is heavily forrested with old growth spruce, some open areas, very pretty, but not the best for hunting. Too may dense areas. As you round the corner and start heading south the scenery changes, the landscape starts to open up and you start getting exicited. This is huntin' country. Open grassy hills mixed with alder patches, fewer stands of thick trees - it just looks right.

On to the hunting part. One of the adventures myself and my two friends went on, involved getting off the boat and hiking up 1200' to the top of a ridgeline and following it for about 4 miles. It had previously been hunted by some friends of the skipper and they had suggested to hunt there. They had shot a bunch of deer off this ridge just a few weeks earlier but, they also had cleaned it out. We only saw a few deer on our hike. I spotted a small spike early on in the morning at only 75 yards that I passed on. It was too early in the day to shoot a spike and drag it back down down the hill to the beach. Besides, I've learned from experience that dragging a spike with no "handles" on top is a royal pain in the azz.

We hiked the ridgeline for a couple of hours and hadn't seen anything worthy of shooting so we decided to stop for lunch at the end the spine at it highest point. There was a saddle between us and the next ridge that we glassed while we were enjoying our afternoon break. No deer so we decided to head back to a pick up point where we would catch a ride in the skiff to our floating lodge. About 20 yards around the corner of the peak where we had been sitting and eating lunch was a nearly round 4' diameter cave in the rocks facing south. THIS WAS A FREAKIN' KODIAK BROWN BEAR DEN. Talk about bearanoia. It's a very creepy feeling to realize that this cave had been clawed out of the shale by umpteen generations of Kodiak brown bears. We made losta noise and it didn't seem like anybody was at home but none of us were willing to go inside and see. Even with a flashlight and a high powered centerfire rifle in my hands I just didn't have the balls to take a look. We decided to just leave. It had been a long day and a cold one was starting to sound pretty good.

I'll do a part II later on. There's still more to the story.

fish head

Them Webster people learn a new word everyday.

Waiting for part deux.....

Part II

One of the other interesting parts of the trip involved another hike in the bushes. My friends had hiked up an open hillside and shot a buck and a doe in a hidden draw that was not visible from the water. I'd stayed on the boat that day and had gone sightseeing with the skipper and his buddy. We were hunting but hadn't seen anything, hence the sightseeing, so a plan was made that night to hike up the hill the next day.

We started off in the morning up a steep grassy hill that went up to the snowline. We climbed to about 2000' above sealevel and decided to sidehill around the point we were on. My friends had gone up the hill a little further than I just to get spread out a little bit as we hunted and sidehilled the steep "grassy open hillside".

The open grassy part ended at the first alder choked drainage.

Normally while hunting in Alaska my buddies and I all agreed to carry cold. Usually we hunted the tundra, muskeg areas on the mainland for caribou and moose and it was always safer and prudent to carry cold in the open country. Walking in tudra/muskeg ALWAYS leads to stumbling, bumbling, hopping from one tuft to another and inevitably falling on your face or azz.

As I got into the first alder choked drainage I realized this wasn't going to be easy. It's like a friggin' jungle jim. Up, over, under, through, crawl, swing from branch to branch, rifle over the shoulder with the sling - nope carry it - nope set it down so you can past the next tangle and so on. Of course I'm carrying cold, my buddies are way the he!! up the hill and I'm alone. When I reached the bottom of the draw there was a very, very well worn game trail. That's when it hit me that this wasn't just a deer trail but a Kodiak brown bear trail also. That's when I had to rethink the whole carrying cold thing. Do I risk shooting myself in the jungle jim thicket or risk a close encounter with Mr. Teeth and Claws with an unloaded rifle. It truly put a new spin on things. Muzzle control - yeah right. I thought, well if I carry hot it'd be a lot easier to shoot myself in case of an attack cause I'm sure not going to have time to kill a freakin' Kodiak brown bear with my 06 in the alder thicket from he!!.

Each of the next four or five drainages on the "open grassy hillside" posed the same delima.

I got to as far as we had planned to go and found a nice spot overlooking a open bowl to sit until evening. Only saw one deer that day that my buddies had spooked fom up above me. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the forky as he was running above me 175 yards away. I enjoyed the scenery and also watched whales feeding in the straights below me. That was cool. It started to get late and I decided to go to the pick up point to meet the skiff. Remember I'm 2000' above sealevel on a rather steep slope. It turned out to be a lot steeper than the one we climbed up.

The ankles were a little sore from the sidehilling that day and now I faced going 1/2 mile straight down the "open grassy hillside". It was steep enough that with every step I would look for the next tuft of any kind vegetation I could grab onto in case I slipped. I didn't want my next step, with my sore ankles, to start a human toboggan run, "with jumps" on the way down the "open grassy hillside".

I made back OK, no deer, no bear just sore ankles.

I still have more that I'll finish later.

fish head

What's up with this hunting talk . . . .?

That's one way to get me to quit tellin' stories.

Nice video.

Much better than the waterboarding I got to start talking.

What's up with this hunting talk . . . .?

What's wrong with this hunting talk.

This is the anything goes thread. Boobs, fish, movie reviews, sarcastic wit, meaningless drival, videos, sniper rifles ? ? ?, dissing those that deserve it, weird juju schite - whatever.

Mellow out.

You can post more pictures though. Please.

fish head

Point of order! I told him to tell me about the deers in the boat. Girl commercials approved during intermission.

Part III of the unusual hunting picture.

The first two parts were from our first trip to Kodiak. I was trying to remember which trip was which. We went in 2000 and 2001 so they kinda blend together plus I sometimes suffer from Anheusers disease. This part was from the second trip we went on was right before Christmas in 2001.

It was cold, snowy, sleetting, rainy, sunny - a little bit of everything. The skipper wanted to go later in the season for several reasons: bears were more likely to be less active, the snow would push the deer to the lower elavations and less hunting pressure. There wasn't many boats that ventured out, but we always saw a few of the locals that would hunt the area we went to.

On one of the last days of our hunt my buddy and I had decided to walk through a promising looking low drainage we had found. There was a lot of snow up higher so we were stuck hunting from the big boat or staying down low.

We were hunting around a lagoon that would dry up at low tide. It was about a 1/4 mile wide by 3/4 of a mile long. At the end of the lagoon was an area of open cottonwoods and meadows that was easily huntable. We got dropped off in the morning by the skiff, our other friend, the skipper and his buddy decided to stay onboard the big boat and hunt the shoreline that day.

As we walked up the trail at the edge of the lagoon we spotted a nice buck at the end and another seperate group of deer out in a meadow. We tried to close the distance on them but there was no way to keep from being out in the open as we approached. We stopped walking about 200 yards from the nice buck to set up for a shot. As soon as we quit walking he got nervous and made for the thick stuff. Bummer. The other deer that were further away also scattered so we just continued up the trail to see if we could find them and hunt the wooded area at the end of the lagoon.

We seperated and went our own way through the cottonwoods. Shortly after I heard one shot and knew that my buddy connected. I meandered on through the cottonwoods on a trail that soon had very fresh pie plate sized brown bear tracks on it. This time I was carrying locked and loaded and ready for bear. Still makes you wonder about only having a 30-06 though. After a while of following the bear I decided to go back to where my buddy was and see what he'd got. Seemed more prudent than what I was doing.

He had shot the nice buck we had seen earlier and already had him gutted so we drug him back towards the lagoon and the trail out. About halfways back we decide to leave the deer where we were and come back with the skiff when the lagoon flooded. Seemed better that dragging him the extra 1/2 mile. About 400 yards further up the trail my buddy spotted a deer out in the flats at the opening of the lagoon out on the tidal flats. I looked through my binoculars and realized it was too dark, short and husky to be a deer. It was a freakin' Kodiak brown bear.

He started moving up the flats towards us so we just stopped where we were and decided to watch him. He made his way up to where we were and got a scent of blood from the deer or just us and turned and walked straight at us. At about 75 yards my buddy had seen enough of the bear that was coming straight at us so he fired a round into the mud about three feet in front of him. The bear hardly flinched but he did turn and decided to head on up to the end of the lagoon.

As he came up and out of the lagoon he crossed the trail that we were on and had dragged the deer on. One sniff and he was now once again heading towards us and straight for the deer we had left behind. We sat and watched as he followed the scent trail and we then noticed that a red fox had found the deer. When the bear got to the deer the fox was standing on top of the carcass and barked at him and actually made the bear step back til he remembered that he was a bear and a little fox ain't schit. It was funny as hell !!!

After all the fun we headed out and left the deer to the bear and fox and returned to our floating motel for dinner and libations with a good story to tell.

There is still more if anybody wants to hear it or we can go back to just sillyness and boobs.

fish head

I had to work a 12 hour day today...and am so proud of you guys for this thread maintenance....
I'm too pooped to dispense my usual dynamically clever banter......


But, I just thought Id give you a cyber high five!!!


Ingwe

Here's a Cyber "High Two" right back at you . . . .

I love you....errr I mean her...man!!!

ingwe

Boobs are good, but how'd them deer wind up in the boat? Curious minds and all that....foxes are brash critters, it would have been tough for me to leave the deer to the bear. However, I invented discretion..............

How did this thread go from "US military sniper rifles" to boobs?