Only six days until elk season. This Friday Justin and Mark arrive and over the weekend we will start to get all our gear together for the hunt. This year Mike Pfeffer will be our 'rookie' elk hunter (I wonder if he knows about our rookie initiation rites?). On Monday we hope to leave on Jim Eufemio's seiner to find the elk herds on North Afognak Island. Opening day is on the 25th of September.
Lately, every year the start of Fall has been marked by our departure for Afognak on the Alpha Centuri. On Afognak we spend a week traipsing through the old growth forest and climbing mountians in search of elk. They are pretty hard to find!. We keep in radio contact with Jim on the boat, and if we end up in some far away drainage he'll motor over and pick us up. We carry lightweight camping gear, and on occasional will camp on some mountain top where we ended up at the end of a long day. But all agree that the boat is the best place to camp (only camp with beer). Of course the ultimate goal of the hunt is tasty elk meat. Nothing tastier!
The top photo is a panoramic of Foul Bay and and the Hidden Lake area of North Afognak. This area is part if the Kodiak Wildlife Refuge (USF&WS land). In the bottom photo I am holding the horns of an elk we harvested in 2005. Afognak elk are Roosevelt elk, and they tend to have smaller horns but much larger bodies than the Rocky Mountain elk found in Colorado, Wyoming and other western states. Afognak elk weigh up to around 1400 pounds - they are the size of most moose from the mainland. Patrick
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