What do bears do for fun? Maybe this!

One of our favorite hikes on Admiralty Island includes crossing an abandoned logging bridge.  We have done it probably hundreds of times.  When you think “bridge” do not picture the Golden Gate or Brooklyn Bridge.  Rather it is a bridge constructed totally out of wood … some rough-cut, some treated, some logs … with no regard to the remote chance there would ever be pedestrians on it. It is a purely functional bridge to get massive log trucks over the creek with their load of trees.   We have taken many a nap on this bridge just because it is smoother than the road, less rocks. We eat our snacks on this bridge, we even scattered some of Bill’s mother’s ashes off this bridge – and where I intend to go when it is my time.  We have set-up the game camera at various points overlooking this bridge since bears seem to like to take the easy way to travel if available, just like us.  Along this bridge is a long ago started deeply imprinted bear trail, proof of the repetitiveness of their travels.  That is why we set up a camera at this point.

Deep impressions made by bears taking the same route over scores of years.

We caught a bear I have nicknamed Peanut Butter, probably a younger bear weighing around 800 pounds.  Over time, we have caught pictures of him tearing one of the 12″12″ side beams off of the bridge, not all at one time, but gradually.  Who knows what is going through his mind, but I like to think he is just having fun, like adolescents will, by tearing something up.  At first, there were just claw marks up and down the support.  Then there was bite marks, with bits of the beam being pulled off.  Sometimes, he left a little of his fur behind, from rubbing on it.  One time when we came back, he had pulled a piece off and the time lapse on the camera showed him tossing and playing with the piece of wood.  Another time, we came back and the beam was nearly pushed off the bridge – and then it happened, he tore, pushed this huge beam off the bridge and into the creek below.   There is no logical reason for him to do that, other than just “having fun,”  There are pictures of him rolling around in the pieces, so contorted that it is hard to recognize that he is a bear.  The one piece of word that remained on top was kicked around on later days.  I have included a lot of these pictures in this post, but the game camera did not always take the sharpest shots, but I think you will get “the picture.”

 

 

 

 

Alaska take-out-food …fresh halibut recycled

I guess if I lived in a big city like New York or Boston or San Francisco, I could ask the hubby to run down to the local deli or specialty restaurant and pick up dinner, or go by the market and select the best looking, not farmed, not frozen, USA caught fish he could find – which would probably be difficult. However,  in a town of 32,000 people the restaurant choices can be counted on your fingers (well, maybe, a few toes too), but we do have fresh & wild & local fish that can be bought or caught . We even now have an awesome fish market called Pinkies   http://pinkiesmarket.com/    that supplies the city with all kinds of seafood from local boats. If we have to, we buy the area’s seafood bounty, but our preference is to catch it ourselves, however UN-economical that is – or  life threatening.

The balancing act … why we need calm water

Sport fishing isn’t usually considered very dangerous, but it takes on more of that element when it is done while balancing on the floats of a sea plane on the ocean.  We have recently been obtaining, cleaning, cooking, preparing, and eating so much crab (and some king salmon and clams) that I really wanted some halibut, my personal favorite.  The conditions have to be “just right” for a successful halibut trip:  calm water, low tide during daylight hours in the early morning or evening, and good visibility, plus a few other secret ingredients.  We thought that was going to be Friday, but ended up being Saturday.Nothing really special about this trip because the weather just couldn’t be better.

Juneau tennis shoes, alias rubber boots.

When you land a seaplane in the ocean and just start “going with flow,”  it really is a meditative experience, the ultimate clean air and only the sounds of nature.  Even the method of catching halibut, jigging, is relaxing because it is so repetitive.  Which reminds me, I need to confess, I wear a fitbit and to get my steps in, I made sure I jigged with my left hand (up/down motion).  Hey, it all comes out even for a lot of my steps are over rough terrain and uphill, for which I get no credit.  Anyway, back to fishing.

We went out with the intent to catch a few dinners and have enough to give away to friends…. and that is what we did.  No giant halibut, no bragging rights, just four perfect “chicken halibut,”  the small kind that are absolutely the sweetest and best according to my taste, and many other locals.  We achieved our goal in less than an hour of fishing with no ancillary catch of rockfish or any other bottom dweller.  Into the hatch.

But after the catch comes the processing and as unpractical as it sounds, we decided to fly to a lake on Admiralty Island to clean our fish and do some recycling.   If we would have taken the halibut back to Juneau, the carcasses would have ended up in the landfill, so my logic was it was better to spend more money on gas and to risk our lives landing on a lake known for it tree-stumps in the water in order to give the wildlife the chance to eat the parts that we don’t. Anyway, something like that. There is no-one else on this wilderness lake, just the brown bear,  wolves, foxes, marten, beavers, eagles, etc.   When I had  finished filleting the halibut and we had them in bags in the float hatches, Bill took the remains and put them out in the open for easier visibility, as if a bear would need to see the free-meal, they probably smelled it the moment we taxied to shore.  We pushed out and hadn’t even started the engine yet when I looked to my right and an eagle was already tugging hard to pull a carcass bigger than it back into the forest.  It was a stealth attack – we never saw it coming.  Unlike a bear which uses its nose to locate food, eagles use their sight, the phrase “eagle eye” is quite accurate.  I am sure he had been watching us all along from some far off place and as soon as we indicated we were leaving, he was upon his free meal with vigor.  I would like to think, the dreamer that I am, that he took some home to family and friends, just like we were going to do.  Nothing got wasted.  Within hours, we had our first fresh halibut of the season, simply pan sauteed in a little garlic butter.  Some time next week, though, we need to get our meat fix, maybe a steak or even a hamburger ……. and then back to fresh from the sea.  What a life.

Catching sand sharks … instead of halibut

It is usually not hard to catch halibut, especially if you prefer the “chicken” (small) ones like we do.  We just wanted some halibut for the week, not for the freezer.  We jig for halibut off the floats of our Cessna 180 (N8208V), making it a balancing act as well as a fishing trip.

The water was perfectly calm and I was trying out a new halibut rod and reel.  Bill and I always have a friendly rivalry going on about who will catch the first fish – correction, the first “keeper” fish.  I thought I had won the contest that day in about 30/minutes of fishing and “felt” it was a good size halibut tugging on my line as I brought it to the surface from approximately 75 ft.  Wrong.  As the shape of the fish began to come clear nearer the surface, I just thought it was a large cod, some of which are very good eating and would have been classified as victory for me.  However, as I got it to the surface and ready to gaff it through the gills to enable removing the circle hook, it was apparent I had a shark, though a small one.  The teeth on the underside of the head/body and the pointed snout was proof positive that I had caught a sand shark.

This happens rarely to us, although I understand sand sharks are quite common in Alaska.  I had trouble holding the rod and trying to get the hook out with a pair of pliers in the other sand, so Bill came across the wire in front of the plane to give me a hand, literally.  Your fingers are literally a few inches from its jaw and the shark did not exactly take kindly to being out of the water.

It was constantly flipping and flopping and making our ability to release it even more difficult.  At one time, it even did an acrobatic maneuver that caused the line to twist multiple times  around its body.  Finally, Bill was able to get the hook out of its mouth and even though it appeared disoriented for a few seconds, it quickly disappeared from site.

Back to fishing.  Put a fresh herring back on my line and dropped it over the float again, sitting on the 1.5″ airplane step, not exactly comfortable, but it does add some sense of stability.  No bites and slow fishing, though a very beautiful day to listen to the sounds of nature including waterfalls in the distance and eagles. Suddenly, another bite and this time it was strong and aggressive.  Got the fish to the surface and again it was a sand shark.  I don’t recall catching two sand sharks in 30 years of fishing and today I caught two in one hour.  Can’t explain why, since all else was equal to previous fishing excursions.  A good excuse for about anything up here nowadays is global warming, so maybe I will use that one too. We actually went home empty handed – which is very uncommon.

I was curious to find out more about sand sharks when we got back home and had access to the Internet (smart phones do not work where we were fishing). It was then that I discover that some people consider the flesh of the sand shark quite delectable. Guess I could have one the friendly contest, after all – the sand shark could have been a “keeper” and on our dinner plate that evening.  Next time.

Bears: An un-scientific experiment

Over the years, we have spent a lot of time in bear country, choosing to take hikes where cell phones don’t work and no one can hear you talk – much less scream for help.  There just isn’t anyone else around …. except the bears. 

Fish and Game claims that there is one brown-bear (a coastal grizzly) for every square mile on Admiralty Island – and that they are territorial. We have seen our fair share of bears in the wild, but we always felt that they saw us much more frequently, and that we probably walked within feet of them many, many times – and didn’t even know it.  So we decided to set up a Bushnell Trophy Cam on an abandoned logging road near a lake that we fly into.  Because it is difficult to access (plane only), it gets few human visitors this time of year.  We have seen bears over and over in the area (see other posts), but never more than a few times in one year.

One or more ate nearly all of the plastic off of our motorcycle and seemed to take pleasure in knocking it over.  We were chased in this area by a sow with cubs and we have seen enough bear scat to fertilize a large garden.  But still, it was rare for us to see them – and we want to see them, not to kill, but to take their picture and just stand in awe of them. From a safe distance, of course.   So we figured that if we put up a “Bear Cam,” that we could discover how many different bears are in the area – as well as what time of day they move in the space that we frequent – making it easier for us to observe them in the future. 

It took a little experimenting to position it at the right angle and to get it in a good spot, but we are already getting some pretty good shots, and very good data as well.  We set it up on a tripod and my brother bet us that it would be knocked over immediately.  That has not been the case, at least so far.  We have many pictures of bears being so close to the camera that all we see are its ears or tail, but they haven’t knocked it over.  One did take a bite on it, causing a small puncture that superglue fixed. Since the camera is set off by motion, every time that we retrieve it, we get our own picture taken.

The camera is located about a 30/minute flight from Juneau.  It almost has become an addiction to go out and check it, even when  experience might say that we shouldn’t because of the weather – like last night.  But we can’t help ourselves, we always think that we will get that one “best shot”, like one more pull of the slot machine and I am going to win the grand prize.  We somewhat justify the expense and risk by saying that it is good exercise, since we have to walk several miles to the camera location  (but we could walk in town, right?).    What might be even more wacky is that we take a laptop with us so that we can get immediate gratification by not having to wait to look at the pictures until we get home.

I never thought that I would be in a Wilderness Area carrying both a gun and a computer (and in my pockets, a handheld aircraft radio and point and shot camera).

Bears are habitual and they walk the same paths, some say as their ancestors did.  The camera is currently positioned a few feet back from such a trail, where the bear prints are indented in the ground much deeper than one impression.    The fish are not in the creeks and the blueberries are not even out yet, so the carnivorous bears are basically eating plants – never did figure out how the could get filled-up on eating greens, but obviously they do.  Just yesterday, we did notice a whole deer hoof in some bear scat, so they are getting meat every now and then.  The game camera takes pictures of anything that moves in front of it, and that include deer, lots of them.  You can see how alert they are to noise, always looking over their shoulder.  They have to be.

There is a sow with two cubs that comes by regularly. 

There are also several males that are hanging out in the same area, which surprised us.  One of them, which we have named “Broadband” for the dark stripe on his huge humped back, just looks plain mean and dominating.  Another male seems to be much younger, but very muscular, we call him “Toy Boy.”   The third male that also hangs out in the area is lighter and scrawny for a brown bear, but we still call him “Rump Roast” because his hind quarters just seem huge compared to the rest of him.   The camera records not only the date, but also the time of day.  What we have noticed so far is that there is no pattern to when they are out in the open, on the road.  We have recordings at midnight, as well as dawn to dusk – with more probably during the daylight hours than at night.

To ourselves, at least, we have proven that there are a lot more bears out there than we ever see.

Tide Pool Crab Picking

A very low tide in SE Alaska can mean a lot of things, good and bad, to  a seaplane pilot.  We look forward to the opportunity to find Dungeness crab that are trapped in pools left when the tide goes out.  It is not as easy as it may sound, nor is it necessarily a safe activity or even an economical thing to do. Some may even say that it is stupid.  But it is legal and it is a challenge and it sure beats watching TV or someone else play a sport.  There are hundreds of islands where we live and that means a lot of beaches, inlets, bays, harbors, etc.  In some areas, the mountains seem to almost drop immediately into the the ocean, with no beach, but in other areas, almost the  opposite is true – where there is a beach that can go for half-a mile at a negative tide, but disappear completely at high tide, which can be 20+ feet around here.  If all of the pieces come together perfectly, we go crab picking.  First there has to be a negative tide, the lower the better, but at least minus 2-feet.  Then, the low tide has to be during daylight hours, and preferably not to early in the morning or so late at night that there is not enough time to fly back home. There has to be a tidal beach that is safe for a seaplane to go dry, or protected enough that a person can “babysit” the plane without it being blown into rocks. Most importantly the weather has to be good, which mainly means that it need to be less than 5K winds, calm is even better.   That doesn’t happen much in SE Alaska, but when it does, it is a heck of a lot of fun to try to find some crabs.  We have a few favorite spots that we have used over the years where you have to use either a plane or a boat to get to – no road access.  It is not like “combat fishing”  up near Anchorage where it is wall-to-wall people along the beach going after the same thing.  We have never run into another person crab picking off the beach, it is just too remote of a place for it.  It is like having your own private seafood deli to walk around. Speaking of walking, there is a lot of it when you crab pluck, usually wearing heavy hip boots, a sea-plane pilots version of a business man’s wing-tip shoes. Of course, there are always bears around here, and they like the tidal flats as much as we do, so carrying a gun is a necessity. You also have to carry bug spray – the bugs can be quite nasty in the tidal flats with little wind.One of us always stays with the plane, whether or not we allow it to go dry – or choose to keep it afloat. The later option gives us more options for when you can leave – don’t have to wait for another tide cycle for the water to come back in.  However, keeping a floatplane floating when the tide is coming in or going out is a constant effort that requires attention, especially if there is any kind of wind.

It doesn’t take much equipment to find crab.  All you need is a bucket, usually an old plastic paint bucket, a pole, and maybe a small net.  You walk around the tidal flats looking for a pool of water that also has vegetation in it.  The crabs that were not able to follow the tide out to sea and find themselves left behind, try to protect themselves by burrowing under the weeds and somewhat into the sand.  You really can’t see them in the pools and that is why you need a pole, to poke around until you feel one.  You can only keep males and they have to be at least 6.5″ across, so every one you get, is not a keeper.  Sometimes you get a lot, sometimes not, but you always have fun.  This year, we can buy  three Dungeness crab for $35 in town.  We spend quite a bit more than that just on gasoline to fly Cessna N8208V out to the crab grounds – but there still is nothing like providing your own food for the table – and just simply being outdoors.  Usually, we use the floats as our cleaning table so as not to have as much of a mess back home – if the good weather looks like it is going to last. It depends on the size of the crab, but three usually produce around two pounds of meat, and that is after eating your fill as you are picking the shells.

Pack Creek Bears Aren’t Always There

Pack Creek is a sanctuary for free living brown bear -which really means that it is a protected area where bears can’t be hunted and they aren’t caged or fenced into a specific area.  It is just their natural habitat where they can do their thing like they have for thousands of years.  The first time we visited Pack Creek was maybe 30 years ago before the government had anything to do with it and it and Stan Price was still there with “his” bears on his homestead.  Their place was on a creek full of salmon in July and August and the bears simply came to eat.  Stan never threatened them and they became accustomed to his family and people in general.  When Stan died, the Forrest Service and AK Fish & Game came in and turned it into Stan Price State Wildlife Sanctuary.  After that, we only visited twice, because with government came control and permits and the permits were hard to get for locals like us.  Originally they were  all reserved by the outfitters for tourists, but eventually a quota system was started and a few of the permits were reserved for day use on a first come first serve basis.  For many years you had to gamble and apply for a rare reservation months ahead of time – with no idea of the density of bears at that time – or especially the weather.  We have our own plane and we don’t have to be dependent on a charter company, but we are dependent on the weather, especially when you have to tether your seaplane to a pulley system and leave it for many hours.  We had a sunny week with mild winds and we knew it was peak salmon run time.  We easily got a permit, $25/per person for seniors.  Upon landing a Forrest Service employee met our Cessna, N8208V and helped us tie it up to the buoy and rope system.  We then got the standard lecture on bear safety in the wilderness and where you can and cannot walk in the sanctuary. It is very controlled – but they have to do it for the safety of the inexperienced – and to keep the bears  not annoyed. They provide a bear proof lock box to put your anything edible – down to chewing gum or flavored water, or anything else you don’t want to pack around.  Instead of the short hike over to the open bear viewing area, we chose to walk the approximately 1-mile trail up to the observation tower and stay there for several hours.  We saw no bears on the hilly trail. 

Upon arriving at the tower, there was a woman from Juneau who had been there for a few hours.  She had seen no bears from the tower, but did run across an injured sow along the trail … one that the Forrest Service was well aware of.  The other visitor left shortly after our arrival.  Bill and I took turns napping and standing watch for bears.  We saw none – just birds.  That’s OK.

It was a beautiful day and extremely relaxing to be in a safe place surrounded by natural sounds and beauty.  Of course, we didn’t pay $600 or more each  to get there and neither was this going to be a once in a life time experience.  We were just happy to be able to be outdoors.  In the open viewing area, you are more likely to see bears, but they won’t be nearly as close to you as they are at the tower … if they are there. 

http://www.wc.adfg.state.ak.us/index.cfm?adfg=refuge.pack_ck

http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass/districts/admiralty/packcreek/index.shtml

Puley

Fishing from Seaplane Floats … two styles

The tides and winds were right on Saturday to go halibut fishing, from the floats of our Cessna 180, N8208V.   About an hour before low tide, a friend of Bill’s from Juneau joined us in Freshwater Bay in his Cessna 185.  That was a first.  Two planes fishing for halibut.  There was a Lund skiff that was also in the area that arrived after we did.  At first, they came speeding directly toward us, but when they saw our fishing poles – diverted to behind our plane.  What we suspect is that they originally thought we were in distress and had come over to help us out of what they thought was a problem situation.  It was a perfect day for fishing, but no halibut – just rockfish.  Whereas Bill and I either stand on the floats or sit on the steps, Kurt stands in one of his float compartments – says it is more comfortable.  Guess it is harder to fall in the cold water that way, but it surely looks strange.

Bear Watching Can Be Spooky

We were camping and about 7pm decided to go for a hike along an old logging road to see if we could see any bears.  Within a short while, a brown bear came  walking our direction.  The conditions were ideal for watching since the wind was in our face and the bear thus had less ability to sense our presence.  This photo doesn’t come close to showing the trill of watching it for a few minutes, before it decided to go out of sight.  Twice, it stood up on it’s hind legs  to get a better view or smell of us.  When it did decide to leave, it looked over it’s shoulder at us. 

The good news about this encounter was that it was at a relatively safe distance.  We did not surprise it and it was not a sow with cubs.  That said, they have been known to go off in the woods and then come back out again right next to you.  We decided to go the opposite direction for a few more miles until it got too dark to see much of anything.

Walking the line …. seaplane style

We flew out to Freshwater Bay to do some halibut fishing from the plane.  The water was a little too rough to land at first so we went over to Kook Lake  near the eastern shores of Chichagof Island between the outlets of Tenakee Inlet and Peril Straits to wait for the weather to improve. Just poked around the forest and sat on the creek bank and visited.  I walked the beach looking for mineral specimens.  Took out the Blackberry, but as usual, no signal in this area.  Wanted to check the weather stations since it was already early evening and it would have been nice to know if we could get back to Juneau before the float pond closed at 9pm.   At approximately 7pm, the white caps had disappeared from the lake and we were hoping the same would be true on the other side of the mountains at our fishing hole.  It was and we were able to land.  First thing we did was put out our king crab pot in about 150 feet of water.  With the pot out of the plane (and it’s stinking bait), we could get to our rods to try to catch some fresh fish before we headed back to town.  I had just gotten my bait to the bottom and maybe a minute later a halibut hit hard.  I hooked it and as I usually do, asked Bill to bring it in.  It felt like a fairly large one which would mean that it needed to be shot.  I don’t do that.  Our Cessna 180 (N8208V) seaplane is not a spacious boat and for us to swap sides is not as easy as it sounds – especially when the plane is loaded.  He started bringing the fish up and like a surgical team, I readied the gun, knife, and pliers for him.  After the halibut was in the float, he needed to get back to the left side of the plane, but rather than going through the cockpit, he took the option of walking the wire between the two floats.  He installed the line on the front cleats many years ago as an alternative way to quickly get from one side of the plane to the other.  Most of the true bush planes have them, even Beavers.  It is a scary thing to watch  – even though it doesn’t bother Bill as much as me.  Falling into 50′ water would not be pleasant, but more unpleasant would be getting out of the water and back on to the floats while wet and with a current.  Fortunately, that did not happen this time and we got back to Juneau with 30 minutes to spare.   I cleaned the fish on the float dock and then on our way home, dropped some off at our friend’s house.   The next day we gave half of it away to another friend at the airport.  We can always get more.

Bears Like Foam … and Plastic

We flew out to a lake on Admiralty Island to take a bike ride in pursuit of salmon berries.  Upon arrival, we found our bike had been trashed by a bear.  Very frustrating.  Who knows what goes through the mind of a bear, but what is the motivation for simply tearing something that is not edible apart?  I guess it is curiosity or simply a bear sport, but this isn’t the first time they have done it.  They probably wonder why humans do the things we do too, like hunt and kill them.  Anyway, the foam seat was completely chewed up and is now put together again with duct tape, of course.  Bike still works.  Fortunately, all the damage was cosmetic.

Bear ripped all form off of seat

Duct Tape Seating