We’d drained our water supply hours ago and I felt the initial twinge of a cramp in my tibialis anterior-the outside of my calf. I was one awkward motion away from a debilitating spasm, and I carefully dropped my meat-laden pack. Experience had taught me that if that particular muscle went into revolt, the rest of my leg would follow. Crippled and smelling of fresh blood, I stood about the same chance of making the beach as a wounded seal in the Red Triangle. Just then, I remembered the ever-present but seldom-utilized water filter buried in the bottom of my pack, and my salt buffer tablets. I gulped down a large Nalgene of creek water and a handful of the pills. I refilled the bottle and handed it to Bill. My body demanded more water but filtering was laborious and time-consuming and it was almost nightfall in Alaska. Somewhere between our position and the tangled creek bottom that eventually led to the extract point on the beach was a car-sized brown bear and we preferred that our paths didn’t cross in the dark.
Several hours prior, we’d spotted a thick-bodied, heavy-horned buck feeding up the mountain, with two smaller bucks in tow. A half-mile of tundra and steep topography separated us, but the approach would certainly be the easy part, I was more concerned about the descent. Willows, poplars, Devil’s Club, and other progress-impeding, thigh-gouging flora that I’d come to abhor in my brief stint hunting Sitka blacktails on Kodiak Island lined the route between us and the beach, where a Zodiac would arrive and take us home to the mother ship anchored just offshore. Then there were the bears, of which we’d seen several. The largest bears on earth. Taking all this into consideration, Mike Hanback, my hunting companion and the host of the show, opted out and I continued uphill with Bill, my great friend who had the dubious task of videoing this hunt for a television show.
We reached a comfortable shooting distance from the buck, which was attentive to the sparring session of his juvenile companions and oblivious to our presence. He was a blocky specimen-not your average Sitka buck. His belly nearly reached the ground and his rack was as tall and wide as the antlers I’d seen mounted in the hotels, bars, and airport in the city of Kodiak the day prior. Though horn-size has never weighed in on my personal decision to pull the trigger or release the arrow, we were, after all, filming an episode for a show called “Big Deer” and this buck fit the bill. I ranged the buck at 260 yards. As soon as Bill gave me the green light for videography purposes, I eased the trigger on my dad’s .257 Roberts, the same rifle I’d shot my first buck with nearly thirty years prior. Bill confirmed that the first shot was a solid hit and the buck limped downhill and turned facing us as he started to bed down. I fired again and the buck rolled over, stone still. Now we had to work quickly. The bears here are well-conditioned to associate rifle shots with fresh meat. I had just rang the Alaskan “dinner bell.”
In addition to being the senior cameraman at our company and excellent at his trade, Bill was a consummate woodsman. Too often, his true talent was wasted sitting in treestands, ground blinds, and bass boats. He’d put boots to country in every environment on earth. Here, with a challenging task at hand, he was in his element and though he humored me with how steep and tough this country was, I knew that I was more concerned about the next few hours than he was. In a precarious outdoor circumstance with a heavy load, you want a guy like Bill along.
Our expectations were that a Sitka buck would probably weigh an easily manageable 120 pounds but clearly, the animal on the ground was in an entirely different class. This was confirmed when we first attempted to move the deer, which had a dense anatomy, similar to a black bear. We inched him up out of the thicket and found a relatively open slope along the spine of the ridge to drag him down. On the final steep pitch, we let the deer go and he rolled out of our sight and into an interwoven thicket. Now we were in for it.
We found the buck entangled in a tree within an impassable alder forest, and our only option was to take him out in pieces. I stuffed the backstraps and tenderloins in a game bag and slung the rear quarters on my pack. Bill already had a full pack of cameras, lenses, batteries, and a large tripod. He constructed a yoke with rope for the head and shoulders and like an Ox, pulled the front half through the waist-high “elephant grass”. It wasn’t the fastest system but given the circumstances, we were making progress.
Distance was extremely difficult to judge in this terrain. What appeared as a relatively flat field of grass was in fact laden with multiple hidden folds and ground cover so thick and high you had to put your head down and plow through like a running back behind a wedge. Our progress came to a screeching halt when we reached a dark, thick island of alder trees, surrounded on all sides by steep ledges and rushing creeks. It was then that my legs began to quiver from all of the abnormal pulling, dragging and lifting associated with packing out literal dead weight, and we deemed it necessary to hydrate and assess our circumstances, which were, lost in the dark on Kodiak Island and reeking of fresh meat.
Bill set off to utilize the Alaskan twilight in attempt to find a negotiable route, or perhaps, he was strategically distancing himself from me, a wounded chunk of bear bait. I radioed the mother ship in hopes of attaining some navigational advice. Our crew on the boat asked me for my coordinates and I pulled my old Garmin 12 GPS from my pack. This unit was a quarter-century old and I used it for simple “go to” procedures and UTM navigation, but the settings were all wrong for the task at hand. I couldn’t calculate accurate latitude and longitude data to relay to the boat. I was embarrassed and frustrated that here in a dangerous situation, me, a lifelong hunter, was lost and perplexed…just another city slicker in Alaska.
The one useful gadget I did have with me was a Surefire torch. This little flashlight produces mass lumens and I aimed it skyward. Christian, our other cameraman, came over the radio with the welcome news that he had my position now, and we were just a few hundred yards from the coastline. We were instructed to follow the stream, literally, and rendezvous near the creek mouth. By headlamp, we waded into the swift, icy water up to our waists. I floated the deer behind me and Bill did his best to keep his camera gear dry. We moved cautiously to avoid sweepers and any sudden drop offs, until we cleared the forest and the river stretched out into an alluvial fan on the beach.
Back “home”, aboard the Arctic Endeavor, we refueled with delicate backstraps, (some of the best venison I’ve ever tasted) and fresh halibut. Thanks to good friends, the awesome crew of Ninilchik Charters, and a little luck, I would be going home with plenty of both.
Months later, just before Christmas, a package arrived in the mail. It was a new GPS with this note attached: “Thought it might be time for an update”.
-Bill
