Afognak Elk Hunt

More elk hunt. Today we cut up and packaged elk meat for 8 hours. And we have another 2 quarters to do tomorrow. Yesterday we packaged about 180 pounds of halibut. So it was a true subsistence hunt. About the only failure was our attempt at catching shrimp in pots. We baited them with cat food and all we caught were starfish (see bottom photo of Mike with the fruits of our labor).

The hunt itself was pretty hard. We climbed up into the high country carrying camping gear in the rain, hoping it would clear off. And it did - by evening it was snowing, and then it cleared off, dropped into the 20's, and started to blow. A full on gale. With all our wet gear on we were pretty cold. But not as bad off as another group nearby that shot an elk and got stuck on the beach without adequate gear for 2 days. They almost lost a skiff trying to get off of the beach.

As it was Jim, our skipper, could not pick us up (anchor and weather problems) and we had to hike up back into the bay to get to where he could pick us up in the skiff. That's when we found the herd of elk :-) So we got our elk in the late afternoon, cut them up, and then hunkered down for the night for another night in the field - an electric fence around our elk meat to protect it from the bears. Good thing we brought food for 2 days!

The next day was spent humping out all the meat. By the end of the day we were very happy we decided to shoot just 2 elk rather than 3. It snowed off and on, and by the end of the day after two trips up and back to fetch meat we were very happy to be back on the boat drinking beer. The next two days were spent recovering and catching halibut - with some beer imbibing on the side. All and all, a most successful hunt!

Patrick