SHED HUNTING, May 2006
 

June 6, 2006

Aaron and I thought that since the woods are greening quickly that we could give it one more try for antlers this weekend. We decided to go back to the spot we before when we had the "bear encounter". I was OK with it, but made Aaron carry the shotgun since we would be traveling through thick alders and with the leaves, it's a lot harder to see. I'll admit I was nervous. I deem the area as tainted now. But I knew it was highly unlikely that we'd run into that bruin again! We did see some fresh digs and scat on our way up, but no bears. Once up in the valley we made our way to a run-off creek so the dogs could cool down and we could take a break. Not far from where we stopped we saw some nice BIG fresh bear tracks in the mud. We figure between a 7 ft or 8 ft bear. I was still nervous...but we continued on our way up the valley.
We walked up the valley we walked last time, but with the snow gone our hopes were higher. We did, however, notice on our way in that someone had taken time to cut some alders and clear a trail where that hadn't been one before. We were hoping they weren't shed hunters ! YiKes!
 

When we got to the area that Aaron found his two antlers the time before I spotted a brown tine through the brush; my suspicions were confirmed when both dogs stopped to check it out.  It was probably 10 feet from the others we'd found before, but it was buried in the snow. Oddly enough, none of them are matches.

A glorious day for shed hunting. Notice the green hillside though! Makes walking a challenge, and seeing nearly impossible.  With antler in hand...I am not afraid of bears.

(grin)

Aaron found this year old, and chewed antler, in the wide open. We probably walked on top of it last time we were here. The back is a lovely brown still.

I spotted this little one on our way back. It was probably and old bull. Nice tine development with a heavier base than normal for such a small antler. The top point is a bit chewed and looks like it would have been a little club. I also found a couple year old antler on the walk back, but didn't get a picture of it.

Heading back to the vehicle. This is how you shed hunt in Alaska. Shotgun in hand, pistols on the hip. OK, so maybe we're a little over the top, but at least I feel better.

Not a bad day, four antlers and no animal encounters. We did see at least three moose in the area all growing velvety antlers!

A lot of antlers:

Jill: 23 fresh antlers and 12 old antlers
Aaron: 17 fresh antlers and 6 old antlers, full curl sheep skull.
Kodi & Tundra: at least 11 old antlers

Happy Shed Hunting!!!

May 30 & 31st

Aaron and I took a friend from work, Sam, into our moose hunting area, but from a different approach this weekend.  It was a rigorous hike up into the hills, but once camp was set it was great. The hill we hiked up kept on going and going. I was trying to be positive, but every time I thought "we've got to almost be there" we'd see the hill continue to extend ahead of us. Though the ascent at the top was gradual the soft and squishy tundra sucked out energy with every step.  The two pictures above are of camp and then our eating spot.

Kodi being his usual self. After he got tired of looking at us, he was checking out the hills, I think he may have had the crosshairs on caribou or two, but didn't bother taking the shot!!!!

A picture of Aaron and I.....we so rarely have them. Thanks Sam! Hanging out and drinking coffee in our vestibule!

We headed out in search of sheds the next morning. We were walking along when Aaron pointed out the sheep hair all over the tundra. He assumed it was a lamb that had been killed. We walked a little closer and he spotted the horns of a full curl Dall sheep ram. We were really really excited. Not everyday you find these. 

Not too much further we came to a steep drop into a river bottom. We were glassing down when Aaron spotted what he thought was ONE antler. I took my spotting scope out and sure enough it was two. Two antlers that had been pretty well eaten by a hungry porcupine! We debated on what to do with them since we were a ways from camp and they were in rough shape. Of course, Aaron and I can't leave much of anything in the woods, so they came home with us.  We only walked for about twenty minutes  in the valley, then sat down for lunch. We found four other old antlers also.

Yum..Yum. We love Mountain House meals and apparently Tundra does too.  Nothing like eating lunch and sitting on a moose antler seat!

Aaron always dreamed of having a pack like this. We'd sure love to get a Dall sheep hunting in Alaska. But for now this will do. A sheep skull and a moose antler. Of course I somehow got to carry the other side to the set that Aaron found! Our packs were pretty heavy for the steep decent we had to make to the car. By the time we got down our knees and quads were screaming!

Aaron and I and our huge packs and Sam and her little pack! She made fun of us most of the time for all the "extra" stuff we bring (guns, spotting scope, range finder, etc.) We hate to bring all the weight but as long as we are in a bear hunting area, the rifles go too. It would have been a dream to carry her pack!

May 24, 2006

After spending a week up north near our cabin in cold temps, snow, wind, and rain Aaron and I couldn't help ourselves when we found temperatures in southcentral Alaska were in the 70s. We packed our bags and headed for the hills for an overnight shed hunting trip with the dogs. We were exploring new country, but it looked good through a spotting scope and we thought it would be fun to find a few more moose antlers before shed hunting season is over with all the vegetation greening up.

It was a miserable, HOT, hike uphill (a very steep and long hill) through alders, devils club, and fallen spruce. Pretty much like every hike off trail in southcentral Alaska. We finally got above treeline and the alders and set up camp on a little knob just above a small waterhole.   We relaxed for a bit and glassed the hills for bears or sheds. Didn't see anything other than tracks probably from bears in the remaining snowfields.  We headed out for a hike in the surrounding area. The sun was scorching and we were frying. We didn't think to bring sun block! Our first real exposure to sun this year. We walked along a runoff creek, occasionally post holing in the snow up to our mid-thigh.  Probably some 30 minutes into our walk I heard Aaron say my name with that familiar tone of excitement. I ran as fast as I could toward him through a couple snow patches that slowed me down.  When I got to him, I looked around and didn't see anything so he told me to look further away. Sure enough about 75 yards away, peeking through some grass, laying on the snow was a beautiful brown antler! 

We walked a little closer and ......there was an antler not ten yards from the first one Aaron saw! We thought for sure we'd found a match!

The two antlers were so close together, but they definitely are not a match. One is a self stander with a thick brow tine and a heavy tine coming off the back of the brow  and the other is typical. The base of the self stander is significantly larger than the other antler.  Unfortunately a bear did a little work on the top of the self stander, but they are still a heck of a find.

We were heading back to camp when I spotted some white tines uphill from me. Sure enough, a couple year old antler that had weathered the sun and elements, with not so much as a chew.  Ah...I thought, at least I won't be skunked!

A couple minutes later Aaron hollered my name. Another freshie for him. A little more bleached from the sun beating on it, but not a chew mark!

Then it was my turn. Finally a freshie. It was probably 30 yards uphill from Aaron. I saw it before he did, but once I hollered at him, he looked up and saw it. This is the biggest antler we found, it too had some chew marks on the top.

Just moments into our walk after my last find, I found this beautiful little freshie! Perfectly brown, not a chew mark, and not even bleached a bit. This is one of my favorite kind of antlers to find. Little, but with great points.

Of course the mosquitoes joined us for dinner. They were awful. This is just a taste of what they were like. At one time Aaron and over twenty on his hat. We ended up spending more time in the tent than we'd liked since the dogs were getting eaten alive. We all piled in and drank coffee (Aaron and I drank the coffee).

An Alaska sunset at about 12:30pm. Can't beat colors like this. We have about 2 hours of real darkness now.

So here is the scary part! Aaron and I finally made it out of the tent at 8am when the bugs were finally getting a little better. We were planning for another day of shed hunting all the country we didn't walk the evening before. We went to get some water at the little water hole below our tent. We filled our nalgene and headed back up to heat some water for coffee.  When we got back to the tent I looked up the hill and saw a bear just below the skyline (right at the far left edge of the picture at the top of the hill). The bear was running down the hill straight in the direction of our tent. It unfortunately wasn't of the black type... it was definitely a brown bear. I told Aaron "there's a bear" and tried to round the dogs up. Aaron thought I meant I saw a black bear, but didn't realize that it was brown bear and it was running down the hill toward us. We both had our pistols out, I carry the Glock 10mm and Aaron carries the 500 S&W revolver. We usually think of them as surprise guns for alder use only or thick brush when surprise encounters happen. Aaron and I have already had one close surprise encounter with a brown bear at 7 yards... That wasn't supposed to happen in broad daylight on an open hillside.

The bear proceeded to run down the hill until he got the the little bench above our camp, maybe 150 yards away. By this time we are yelling, waving our arms, clapping, and hoping the bear realized that we are humans. He stood up on his hind legs and continued toward us. I shot a warning shot with my Glock. He stopped and stood up again, woofing. He continued toward us, I ended up shooting three more warning shots ( I have fifteen shot clip and an extra ten on my hip) each time he stopped and stood up and then continued toward us. He was maybe 100 yards away, when I shot my fifth warning shot. He then turned and ran up the bench in the direction we would have to hike to get to our car.

We sat and stared in that direction for the next half hour making as much human noise as possible. Wanting to make sense of what had happened we ran over the previous events. We had been purifying water right before. Our purifier has a nasty habit of squeaking when the filter is dirty....it was squeaking and it sounds an awful lot like a predator call. I've often been nervous before using it thinking we'd call a bear in, but it had never happened. We assume that the bear heard the call and thought "Ah, and easy meal for breakfast" and thus came running right at us. Once on the bench that bear must of thought...."Where did my easy meal go?" I don't think he could get our wind since it was blowing into our faces and he needed to get closer to know what we were, or to figure that we wouldn't be the easy meal he'd planned on. 

It was frustrating to me that it took him five warning shots to turn and run. It is not fun having such a large and powerful creature come running directly at you when all logic and all the books you read say it should run away from fear. There was no where to run...just flat land with little itty bitty trees!

So much for the mood of shed hunting. I know some people in Alaska would just go on about their day like nothing happened, happy that the bear did what it was supposed to. I couldn't even think about spending the rest of the day out in that bears country, but I didn't want to walk along the trail it had just run on and through the thick alders and brush it could be in to get to our truck.  It took about an hour for the adrenaline to wear off and for us to start packing camp. We kept our eyes on the brush where he'd disappeared though. 

Getting started walking was the hard part. Once we got past where we last saw him,  it got easier and easier. We made lots of noise, and the dogs ran ahead.  Once we got to the truck I said a big prayer of thanks and breathed a sigh of relief to be back in my security zone. 

Not a bad trip though. Six antlers and a great bear story! Too bad we know there are a lot more antlers up there. We are going to try and round up a shed hunting buddy to take on a trip there again. Three is always better than two.

May 10, 2006

Aaron, Nick, and I went on a  jaunt today and found ourselves mostly in alder patches, dodging devil's club, and trudging through thigh deep snow.  Luckily we didn't go home empty handed though. I found this dandy year old antler. Looks like a bear got a hold of it and ate the side and some of the top tip. It is still in great shape otherwise. It scores 63 as is at this point. Too bad we missed this one last year. We'd never walked in this country before though! The mosquitoes are out!!!!

May 9, 2006

Aaron and I finally made it out in caribou country today with a buddy of Aaron's from Montana. We started the day off with this one and ended with 40 caribou sheds.  Tundra posed so nicely in this picture!

It isn't very often we have good scenery in the background, so today was an amazing day for shed photography. This is a nice little bull caribou antler.

There were Ptarmigan everywhere. This little guy just stood there for a picture.

Aaron walking along the bench toward me with two nice caribou antlers. One was a cow shed and the other a bull caribou shed.

This is a nice little cow shed I found. The cows have just started shedding, but we saw a number still carrying them.

Another cow antler.

and another.

A nice bull antler with an outstanding view.

All the caribou antlers we found were fresh. Nick found 16 antlers, Aaron found 16 antlers, and I found 8.  I didn't do so well with racking up the points like the boys. We were out for about two hours and were picking them up left and right!

On our way home, I stopped the truck and insisted on a small jaunt through some prime moose country! I found this beauty. Too bad we drove past this area probably a hundred times in the last couple years!

May 7, 2006

Fellow Montana shed hunter, Nick, joined me for a walk in hopes of finding some moose sheds. We walked 8.5 miles total and found two antlers. This one is probably a year old, and it looks like a bear found it and chewed the top a bit, otherwise it is in great shape!

We were walking in some really thick country with a fair amount of snow. I was crossing through alder patches when I saw the little rub pictured here. I had to look around it and sure enough I saw something that was out of place, but didn't have the normal tips of a moose antler. I walked closer to check it out and found this little club antler. Very fresh. We also saw a nice black bear,  a couple bulls with antlers growing, and a large set of griz tracks!