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12 June 2007

Alaska Hunting Tips & Advice from a Gold Prospector, Fur Trapper, & Mountain Man

Posted by Darrell under: Alaska; Tips & Ideas .

Alaska Fishing Gold Prospector Fur Trapper

During our recent trip to Alaska, on the last day of our trip in fact, Caleb and I met a REAL MOUNTAIN man. This guy was awesome. He pans for gold in the summer (which is what he was doing when we met him) and traps and hunts all winter.

Once he found out we were from Missouri, he promptly showed Caleb and I some gold powder he had already found that day. He then said “Missouri is the show me state and now I dun showed you”.  He was a super friendly guy and Caleb and I enjoyed listening to him for probably close to an hour or so.

He said that he will go for months in the winter(while running his trap lines) without seeing any other humans (and my guess is he prefers it that way even though he was extremely friendly). He claims that it snows so much where he traps that he doesn’t use steel traps because it is too much trouble to dig them up. He snares everything he traps. Occassionally, he gets a wolf or wolverine, but mostly he is after smaller prey. He does love shooting wolves though.

In the summer he pans for gold and it sounds like he does pretty well at it. He isn’t looking for a big haul, he’s just looking to make enough to get by. He said that he averages between $150 to $300 a day in gold, which sounds like a pretty good haul to me. “I just cant figure why none of these town people aren’t out here after this here gold” he told us. “Just don’t make no sense at all. They could make more money off the gold and be their own bosses!”  – He’s got a good point.

After I told him I’d been bear hunting he got excited and gave me all kinds of hunting advice. Here goes (straight from a mountain man to me to you):

1. Alaska Blacktail Sitka deer is the best eating deer, hands down. The deer gorge themselves on berries and the meat is sweeter than other venison. He claims to have hunted deer all over the lower 48 in his younger days and none of it compares (taste wise) to the Alaska blacktail.
2. The only meat better than blacktail is Alaska Moose! This suprised me as I always thought moose was just barely edible. I thought he might hit me when I said this. “Boy, there aint no meat better than moose and don’t you forget it!” — I won’t.
3. Bear will kill you after you think you’ve already killed them. “I just shoot ‘em in the shoulder and keep shooting. You’ve got to get ‘em on 3 legs so they can’t swipe at you with their paws. They are high on adrenaline and you think you’ve dun killed em and then they’ll still kill you. Bust their shoulder real good and then worry about getting em killed with heart and lung shots.”
4. A .44 mag, regardless of bullet size, isn’t big enough to take a bear. He used a rifle calibur Thomson handgun, although he said the .500 Smith & Wesson was a good bear load - “just too heavy and too expensive for an old man like me to lug around.”
5. Blacktail deer get a lot bigger than what people think. He claims to take several huge bucks every year. My average buck is over 180lbs and I get some 200lb plus bucks every year (with huge racks, too). “People don’t even bother hunting the mainland cause they don’t think there are any deer there. Let me tell you something, there’s some huge deer on the mainland eating those berries.”
6. The best place to hunt blacktails, according to him, is Admiralty Island. “Admiralty has huge old bucks.” I wondered if he was telling me this because Admiralty Island also has the densest population of Brown Bears in the world? Maybe wanting me to rid Alaska of one more Yankee hunter?
7. Hunt Deer and Moose in November for the easiest hunting. “The snows will push them down low into the valleys and along the coast. “
8. Hunt goats early, early, early. “Go after a goat late in the season and you might not ever come down.” S.E. Alaska gets lots of snow and goat country gets pretty treacherous later in the season.
9. “The best way to eat bear is to can it.” I didn’t admit to him that I’ve never canned any meat and don’t have a clue how to.
10. The best hunting in Alaska and his favorite place to hunt is South East Alaska (Junea, Ketchikan, Haines, Skagway area). The meat taste better because of all the berries. I don’t know if this is true (in fact I didn’t really notice much berries) - just reporting what I was told.
11. The Winter of 2006/2007 was a rough one and killed lots of the deer & moose. It made trapping difficult as his snares were covered with fresh snow about every day. Plus, the “wolves kept running my lines and eating everything”.  All the ‘new’ Alaskans were complaining about the hard winter. According to him “I’ve got news for all of you, ask any old timer, this is what winter in Alaska is supposed to be like. We’re just getting back to the normal.” He predicted that predator hunting & trapping would be good this coming winter because the predators ate really well this last winter. Snows pushed herds of deer together on the coast, killed em, and the predators feasted on them.

 The most interesting hunting advice he gave me was about predator calls. I’m going to save this tidbit for a later post. You might enjoy it.

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