Deer Hunt and Family Visits

A couple weeks ago Dad flew down and we headed up by Bemidji to do some hunting. My parents own some land up there. Neither of us have been lucky enough to get a deer yet, but that was bound to change this year. I wasn’t looking for the Boon and Crockett deer this year. In fact I was just looking to put some meat in the freezer. So Saturday morning is when the season opened, and dad and I were out in our stands waiting for the sun to come up. I didn’t see anything until 10:30 that morning when 3 does ran by in front of me. The plan at that time was to wait for a big buck. We hunted the rest of the day without any luck. That night the game plan changed from a big buck to any decent sized deer. The next morning we headed out just before day break. Dad’s stand is closer to camp than mine, so he split off to go to his. I kept walking towards mine and got almost there when I heard a shot. The tough thing about hunting down in MN, is there are shots all the time from every direction. I’d heard plenty of shots the day before I was sure belonged to one of the people hunting with us. So I thought it might have been dad shooting, but wasn’t sure. I got up into my stand and waited for the big buck to arrive. Well after about 45 min a doe came running into the clearing in front of me. I raised the gun up and sighted in on her. I was debating weather she was the one I wanted to take this year. Since I didn’t really and was only looking for some food, I decided she’d be as good as any. She paused a second and I put one right behind her front shoulder. She went down right away, and didn’t get up again. Sometimes when you shoot a deer, they will run a long ways before they die. This was not the case. I was shooting the rifle I use for Moose, so I’m sure there was enough shock value in the bullet to stop her in her tracks.

I went to go get my dad to help clean the deer. When I came up to his stand he was nowhere to be found. After a little searching I found him over working on the deer he’d shot right at daylight. The shot I’d heard was him. He had just gotten into his stand, turned around and there was the deer, which turned out to be a small buck. So cleaning deer was on the menu for that day.

So we began the process of cutting up the deer.  They are basically just like a moose, just much much smaller.  It was snowing out and pretty chilly, so the hands got pretty cold.

We finally got it all boned out and into coolers.   Wayne gave me a ride with the meat back to Baxter.  The next few days we took the big pieces of meat and turned them into roasts and stew meat, and the scraps we brought into a meat market to get made into summer sausage and pepperoni sticks.  We just picked them up a couple days ago and they are delicious.

The next weekend Erin and I went down to the farm for a visit.  It was nice to catch up with everyone.

Have you ever printed a boarding pass?

Well this little feat has been a long time coming.  For those of you who have worked with me in Unalakleet you probably have heard about my aspiration of using the poster printer to print my boarding pass.  Well two days ago my dream became a reality.  I logged onto nwa.com and checked in for my flight.  Selected my seats and chose the option to print my boarding pass.  Well as you know Mac computers make it super easy to print things as a PDF file instead of to a printer.  So thats what I did.  I was on two different flights and both boarding pass tickets were on the same page stacked on top of each other.  This wouldn’t do I need each boarding pass to be on a different print out to really dramatize the “Big Boarding Pass”.  So I took a screen shot of each individual one and then took them over to the poster printer.  Each one printed out to be about three feet wide and about 1.5 feet tall.  I put them in a picture tube and flew to Anchorage.  My flight was on Hageland which doesn’t require a boarding pass, so none needed for the first leg of my trip.

After my arrival at Anchorage I got my bags checked and headed to the TSA security screening area.  Rebecca tagged along to take some pictures from a distance as I made my way through security.  I flashed my MVP card to the first TSA lady who let me into the MVP line without the need for my boarding pass.  Then it came to the person that checks your ID with your boarding pass just before the screening area.  Here is how it played out.

The TSA agent asked for my I.D. and boarding pass.  I handed him my I.D. and then unrolled the boarding pass.

After a look of surprise he said “Is that your boarding pass?”  I told him “Yeah… I didn’t have any other printer at work, and was running late for my flight”.  He told me to stand back and called on his radio for his supervisor.  He took my boarding pass and headed back toward the main TSA desk which was on the other side of the metal detector.

The supervisor came over and they exchanged a few words.

He came back to me and said “Okay… You are going to need to carry this through the metal detector with you.”  and he let me on through with a smile.

I made it through the metal detector, and didn’t even get an extra pat down or anything.  So that was nice.  My backpack needed another scan.  It usually does with the pleathra of hard drives and extra batteries that I always have with me.  So while that was happening a TSA agent came over and asked if he could look at the giant boarding pass.  I handed it to him.  He took it back to their little area and laid it out on a table.  He called over all of his TSA buddies and they all hovered over it checking it out.  I heard comments like..

“Thats an official boarding pass?”

“yeah..  Look it has everything, just really big”

“Man.. how’d he get it so big?”

“He must be an architect or something.”

I finally got my backpack and headed over their way.  They all had smiles on their face and said that I was very original.  I told them I was hoping to lighten their day a bit, and thanked them for having fun with it.  Here is a picture with one of the TSA guys.

I then headed down to my gate.  When I got to the check-in place. The agent asked for my boarding pass.  I unrolled it and he started laughing.  Mentioned somthing about not being able to scan that and just typed in my seat number and told me to have a nice flight.

After my extremely long flight down to Minneapolis I headed into the World Club (NWA’s rendition of the Board Room).  When you enter their facility with an Alaska Airlines board room pass you need to show them a NWA ticket to get in.  So I handed them my board room card and unrolled my boarding pass on the counter.  The two ladies looked at each other and started laughing.  They called over the other people working in the world club over to take a look.  They asked me if I had won a trip or something.  I told them that I was just doing it to get a smile out of people.  They laughed and told me to have a nice day.  One of them said that they’d like to see the gate agent try to scan that thing in.

After my 4 hours of sitting in there waiting for my final flight, I headed over to my gate.  When I went to check in there I unrolled my other ginormous boarding pass, and the lady just started laughing and said “is this for real?”.  I told her that it was and so she punched in my seat number into the computer just like the last one had and said “can I have that?”.  I said “sure, can I get a picture with you?”.

So it turned out to be a good trip.  Everyone involved really seemed to enjoy the whole thing.  I wish I could have gotten a little video of the encounters, but that would have been pretty difficult to pull off all by myself.

I hope you enjoy the story.  It made my long journey just that much better.

Flights….

A quick recap on the last two and half weeks of travel…

Here is a video I did in Google Earth to show how my last two and half weeks has been spent.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/tour.mov 320 260]

So as you can see I’ve had a busy two weeks. Lots of flights. Almost one a day. I did spend two days over a weekend in Brevig Mission, and two days in Unalakleet over another weekend. Besides that I was only in a village for one night and off to the next village the next day. Needless to say I slept like a hibernating bear my weekend in Unalakleet.

This last Monday I flew with Doug (the BSSD plane) to Koyuk at 8:00 AM from Unalakleet. I spent the day there shooting video and then Doug swung back by Koyuk around 5:15 P.M. and took me to Shaktoolik. The weather was kinda sketchy with slushy rain falling outside and a fair bit of wind bouncing the plane around. We flew the trip at about 400 feet off the ocean. The GPS in the front of the plane was displaying the yellow (we may just hit something if you go any lower) and Red (If you fly towards me you will hit something) warnings of well pretty much our entire surroundings.

I took a little video and used the seat in front of me to stabilize the camera to the best of my abilities. As you can see it wasn’t very easy.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/10/bit_bouncy.mov 320 260]

So I spent a night in Shaktoolik the weather there was pretty much terrible. Blowing like crazy and rain pouring down. The next day I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of there. John Concilus was there as well, so we both kind of had a weary eye on the sky. Hageland decided to get a plane out flying so we had our chance. The pilot landed the 207 there in Shaktoolik and we quickly loaded up all of our gear. Then a truck pulled up with 500 pounds of mail to be added into the back. We were pretty packed in there. Here are few pictures from the short flight from Shaktoolik to Unalakleet.

We made it into Unalakleet safe and sound.

My parting picture for this post will be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in Unalakleet. For those of you who lived in this building. Yow know how far from the truth this actually is.

Old Stomping Ground

I left Gambell and St. Lawerence island on Friday heading for Teller which is just a mear 7 miles from Brevig Mission where Erin and I taught a few years ago. I got some pretty decent footage in Teller, stayed the night, and shot a little more the next day. Around 5:00 I was on a plane to make that quick journey to Brevig. C.O. and AnnMaire were out at the airport when I stepped off the plane. I was lucky enough to stay with them while in Brevig. It was fun to see all of the students that we had worked with. AnnMaire and C.O. have a very nice house. They have it decorated up very nicely. We stayed up talking late into the evening enjoying some tasty Muskox for dinner.

The next day was beautiful out and we decided to hike up the mountain behind the village. I was hoping to get some video of Brevig from up above, and it was a nice day to be outside. As we approached the base of the mountain we found two of my old students. Sherosha and RayRay on a dirtbike. They were checking out the small herd of Muskox that had come down off the top of the mountain. We talked the boys into riding around to the other side of the heard to get them to run back towards us in hopes of getting some video. They were up for the challenge and did just that. The heard however headed up the side of the mountain, so I got some okay video but they were kind of behind a ridge. The boys met up with us as we were heading up the mountain after us. They said they’d try to go around them again and get them to come by us again. So we continued heading up the mountain.

We were about three quarters the way up the mountain when the boys finally had the heard coming back our way. I squatted down and started filming the heard coming my way. I was looking through the view finder and watching them get closer and closer. The hard thing to tell is how far away they actually are. I think it should have that little disclaimer “Objects are closer than they appear”. Well needless to say when I opened my other eye to see where they actually were, they were close. I stood up so they could see that I was there, and they were nice enough to divert their direction away from me.

We spent a little time at the top looking at the amazing panorama views. The weather was still very nice with some clouds rolling in.

We headed down the mountain and back to the village. After a little dinner we went over and I got my first look at the new school that was built since Erin and I left. It is amazing how its changed. It actually feels like a learning institution. You can see why the kids are more likely to be in a working mode. Really amazing to see such a nice school in the place our old run down one used to stand. After the school tour we went down to the beach and shot got some video of the sun setting over the ocean.

Today I left Brevig on a Bering Air flight that followed the coast landing in Wales. Wales lies on the tip of the Seward Peninsula and the Bering Strait. Wales has a few things in its surrounding area that are fairly well known. The first is a land feature known as Razor Back Mountain.

I hiked up the Razor Back and shot this photo looking between two if the spires looking over the Bering Strait.

On my hike up Razor Back I was surrounded by the tundra changing colors in the fall. It was really pretty.

Over behind the village is this huge hand statue. It is a peace symbol facing Russia. Apparently its waving to the Russians, and there is one on the Russian side waving back. I can’t really go to Russia to take a picture of it, but here is what the one on the US side looks like.

This is a picture of me with the village of Wales in the background.

I am off to Shishmaref tomorrow, so I’ll keep you posted in the next couple days on how my trip is going. I am really looking forward to getting back to Erin. It has been entirely too long to be away.

St. Lawerence Island

Im back up in Alaska now working on shooting video at each of the Bering Strait School Districts schools.  Each one is located in a different village on the Bering Strait in Northwest Alaska.  I started my trip two days ago (Tuesday)  out in St. Michael.  Dan Edie the principal there is a good friend of mine so it was nice to spend some time with him.  I got the footage that I had missed in my previous visit and after one night there I was off to Savoonga.  Savoonga is one of two villages located on St. Lawrence Island.  It is the biggest of the BSSD schools and like many of the villages in the area is situated right on the edge of the ocean.

Two of the teachers Doug and Michelle graciously hosted me.  Doug took me out around the village on his honda helping me get some amazing video of an Arctic Fox searching for lemmings.  I stayed the night with them and finished up shooting in the morning.  Then I hopped a plane to Gambell which is the other village on the island.  Gambell is another one of the bigger schools in BSSD.  I had never seen Gambell before not even from the air.  I had stopped in Savoonga briefly last year, so I kind of new what to expect when I went there this time, but Gambell was completely new.  I really like the surrounding area.  The village itself is sitting on a huge gravel pad.  The gravel is made up of round rocks that is 70 feet deep.  It is quite difficult to walk on.  Every step you take your feet roll back about half your stride, so its tough going.  I had wonderful weather and armed with a honda and one of the local students (Mike) was running around shooting video in no time.  The principal Steve and his wife put me up in their house and fed me a very tasty dinner.  Its nice to have a real bed to sleep in at all my stops so far.  After dinner I went back out to shoot a little more video.  It was a beautiful evening out, and didn’t want to waste a great rain free opportunity to get some more video.  Behind Gambell is a big mountain and I figured I’d get some good footage if I climbed up there.  So I drove the schools honda to the base of the mountain and hiked up from there.  Defenetly worth the effort.  Up on top you can see in every direction.

The island surrounded by the blue waters of the Bering Sea is just beautiful.  I was able to get some great video of the village from up above, and watch the sun rays shine through the clouds above.

After I got the video I wanted I just spent some time sitting up there enjoying the view and feeling the wind blow through my ummm hat and coat.  😉  It was nice.

My plans for tomorrow (Friday) are to shoot video in the school and a couple other places around town and then I’ll be off to Teller for a night, and then to my old stomping ground Brevig Mission to stay with AnnMaire and C.O.  So far I’ve had amazing weather, and great hosts. I only hope the rest of my trip is the same as the beginning.

What have I been up to?

Well, my days in Baxter have been spent working on my professional website a little bit during my relaxing mornings, and kicking it with Axton in the afternoon.  I was lucky enough a couple days ago to witness the rollover.  Axton is working on perfecting this little feat, and on a good day he will accomplish it in just a matter of minutes.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/09/roll_over.mov 320 260]

He’s pretty much a lot of fun to hang out with.  He is almost always really smiley.  I am lucky to have such a calm little guy to spend my afternoons with.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/09/axton.mov 320 260]

I found a really cool little flash interface that allows me to show different photos as Polaroids on a desk.  You can move them around and double click on a photo to make it larger or smaller.  So click here to check out a few that I decided to put up.

On another note.  I have accepted the job with BSSD to recreate their recruiting videos.  I will be flying up to Unalakleet on this coming Monday.

Flying in the Mountains

Dad and I got up today and headed down to the airport.  The sun was shining and we were going flying.  One of the Civil Air Patrol members has a Cesna 172 and he is nice enough to let my dad use it.  He has put a lot of work into this plane and it shows.

We took off and immediately the town of Valdez was below us.

We took off up into the pass following the Richardson highway.  Up through the mountains through the pass on our way to Chitna.

We were going to take a look at a couple of planes that are for sale that were parked at the Chitna airport.  It was a quick flight over numerous glaciers, lakes, and rivers.  It was a gorgeous day to be up in the air.  We landed in Chitna and took a look at the two planes.  One was a Piper Colt and the other was a Cesna 150.  Both are fairly small planes with their only real use being learning how to fly or basic commuting from airport to airport.  These aren’t planes you are going to fly a moose out of the woods in or pus skies on and go land up in the mountains.

While we were at the airport we spotted a fish wheel in action so I ventured down to take a look.  I did get some video, but my camera was in my pocket when a fish was actually caught.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/08/fish_wheel.mov 320 260]

After a little exploring we hopped back in the plane headed back for Valdez.  We took a little different rout home this time following the copper river.  We took a little side trip over to get a closer look at an amazing waterfall.  This video doesn’t do it justice.  The amount of water cascading over the edge was amazing.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/08/waterfall.mov 320 260]

We ended up ducking off the copper river down a side valley that took us right back down the canyon into town.   A very nice trip.

I am now sitting in the Anchorage airport waiting for my midnight flight to Minneapolis.  I will be back up in Cook tomorrow afternoon.

No Halibut and Robbed of Shrimp

We went back out on the water today in search of big shrimp and and small halibut.  It was an aboslutly beautfiul day outside.  Blue sky over mountains surrounding the sea.

Our first mission to soak some herring in about 200 feet of water.  The crazy thing was we were only a couple hundred yards off shore and we were already in pretty deep water.  We fished and fished and fished for about 3 hours with a few nibbles here and there.

Without any luck on the halibut end of things we decided to head over to try our luck with the shrimp.  We found our orange buoy floating just off shore.  We started pulling up the 400 feet of line with a pot puller and it came to a halt.  The pots were stuck on the bottom.  Uh-oh…  We pulled and pulled and were only gaining in inches.  The fuse on the pot puller burned out and we were attempting things by hand.  I secured the line while dad went in search of a new fuse.  With a new fuse installed the pot puller  was up and running again which freed up our hands to coil the massive amounts of line.  The pot puller was able to free the ocean floors grip on our shrimp pots and they were soon heading for the surface.  Our first pot empty  :(.  We had five down.  The next pot had 2 measly shrimp inside.  As the third pot came into view we suddenly realized what was causing our misfortune in the shrimping business.

Thats right an octopus was in our pot.  We think he was swimming along and found the shrimp buffet.  Now we can only assume how this went down but we believe it went something like this…..

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/08/octostory.mov 320 260]

So when we pulled the pot out of the water here is what we got.

We got him out of the pot and put him in a bucket.  It wasn’t long before he was trying to make is break for freedom.

We took a look at him for a little while and then let him go.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/08/octofree.mov 320 260]

Even though he cleaned out a few of our pots we were able to take some shrimp home.  Here is what one of them looked like.

It was a fun day on the water even though we weren’t very successful with our endevors.  Tomorrow it sounds like my dad and I are going to go do a little flying if the weather cooperates. Then I will be on my way back to Minnesota leaving Valdez around 9:30 PM.

Boating Around

Well after a nights rest in a real bed, I was up and moving around 9 in the morning. Dad and I unloaded the truck from our stellar hunting trip and then headed out on the sound. The small boat harbor was pretty quiet being a Monday and all. It really is fun to walk the docks and look at all the different boats.

We were quickly out on the water with only a couple of tasks on hand. We brought with us 10 cans of cat food and 5 shrimp pots. “Dropping shrimp pots” being the first thing on the list. We skimmed across the calm water with mountain in every direction.

We went about 9 miles out towards the narrows and dropped our shrimp pots in about 350 feet of water. We will be checking them tomorrow with high hopes of some tasty morsels.

Our other goal for the day was to make a meager attempt at catching a halibut. We tried a spot near where we dropped the shrimp pots knowing that the best halibut fishing is yet another two to four hours boat ride out of Valdez. So we knew were weren’t going to have much luck. We found a nice spot and pulled out the tools of the trade for catching halibut. Here is what the majority of the equipment looks like that most widely used for reeling in the titanic sized fish.

Notice the knife in there for a little perspective on the size of things. To these hooks one usually attaches a whole herring. Here is what it the whole rig looks like before you drop it overboard in about 150 feet of water.

So we drop the line to the bottom and jig until we have a bite. I had some nibbles, but none were confident enough to take the big bite. Tomorrow we plan to head out with a little more serious attitude on the whole halibut catching subject. I hope to have an update tomorrow with pictures of the big flounder.

While we were sitting there jigging our lines up and down the clouds started to linger around the edges of some of the mountains that drop into the ocean. It was a beautiful day to be out on the water.

After a little over an hour of letting our bait soak that the bottom of the ocean we decided to head back. On the way we passed one of the many oil tankers and its two escorts on their way out to the open ocean. The two tug boats follow the big guy out 80 miles through the narrows ensuring we won’t have another mishap like the exxon valdez in 89.

On a side note, there is another poll up on the right side of my blog.  So if you have a second let me know what you think.

Moose Hunting aka. Camping :(

Well once again my dad and I were skunked on yet another moose hunt.  I don’t think we were meant to go this year.  We probably should start this story from the beginning.

It all started last Wednesday evening.  I flew into Valdez at approximately 9:45 P.M.  My dad and I were scheduled to leave Valdez the next morning at approximately 10:30 A.M.  Well….  at 4:00 P.M. we were finally on the road hoping to leave the dreary clouds and chilling rain behind for a trip into the wilds of interior Alaska.  Our destination our old hunting grounds located just outside Northway, AK.  The 300 mile drive though started a bit late was going quite well until about 60 miles outside of Tok.  We were cruising down the road chatting about the hunt to come when our trusty truck started to make a terrible racket.  We pulled off to the side of the road to inspect this new melody ringing in our ears.  With a little inspection we noticed that our muffler had become disconnected from the exhaust pipe rendering it inoperable which in turn left our poor truck un-muffled.  We embarrassingly made our noisy way the rest of the way into Tok.   We stopped over at a friends place there in town and quickly borrowed a couple of “L brackets” a hose clamp and 4 rivets.  The plan to reattach the exhaust pipe to the muffler just enough to finish our trip.  Mind you this was all occurring around 10:00 P.M.  After about 15 minutes under the truck Dad had the two pieces attached to each other once again.  Not really in the correct position, but attached non the less.

We were back on the road a little after 11:45 P.M.  with merely an hour between us and our destination.  The rest of the drive was uneventful landing us at the “trail head” a little after 1:00 A.M.  We promptly reclined the seats pulled a blanket out of the back seat and fell fast asleep.

The next morning we were awaken by four 4-wheelers buzzing up to the truck.  One of the gentlemen stepped over to my window which I promptly rolled down.  The four men were appropriately dressed all in camo and wearing helmets.  Once he removed his helmet he informed us that he and his comrades were part of the US Military and were out to check on their seismograph equipment located in the area.  Now I’m not positive about this, but I believe the equipment is used to listen for possible Russian underground nuclear tests.  Their hops is to pick up the vibrations of the blasts.  The gentlemen asked us to please not shoot them when we headed back on our hunt.  You see there happen to be a few people out there that when hunting will shoot at any movement in the brush or noise that they hear without checking to see what it is first.  I assured him that we always make sure what we are shooting at is indeed a moose since that is all we really had a license to hunt anyway.  He’s just lucky that the season for men in camo hasn’t opened up yet.  😉  j/k.

Well that got us up and moving for the day.  We unloaded our two rigs off the trailer and loaded up all of our gear.  Dad had his 6-wheeler and I was borrowing Dan Eide’s 4-wheeler.  Once loaded up we were ready to hit the trail.

The trail was good at first.  We were working our way up a hill.  As we crested the top of the hill we knew we had some tough trail ahead of us.

There is an area that had some very large boulders embedded into the trail making the precise maneuvering of our machines a must.  I did take a second to snap this photo of the valley off to one side of the trail.

So on our way we went, through the rocks and down the other side of the mountain.   On our decent into the valley we were to be hunting in I looked up and saw the lakes we were to be glassing over (looking at through binoculars) for the next few days.  In the edge of one of the lakes was….  You guessed it a moose!!  I hopped up on top of the 4-wheeler with my binoculars and took a closer look.  Well after further review it turned out to be a cow moose, which in case you didn’t know is not legal to hunt.  Bulls only in Alaska, but they are always good to have around because just like humans there are usually a few boys chasing the girls around.  So we continued on down into the valley.  We were about 8 miles back into the woods and a mere mile from camp when my 4-wheeler decided it didn’t want to run anymore.  After futile attempts to bring it back to life we decided we had better get it back out to the trailer.  We weren’t sure how easy it would be to get it back over those pesky rocks and back up over the mountain top.  So we hooked up some tow ropes and back we went.

The return trip went quite well and after we made it back safely to the truck agreed that we probably should have stayed in and continued the hunt.  Odds are though that if we had stayed in for the hunt we would have had a terrible time getting the machine out.  So we headed into Northway to refuel the 6-wheeler.  Our new plan was to head over to another easier trail known locally as “The Paradise Trail”.  This trail is about 20 miles from the Canadian border.  We loaded up all of our gear onto the 6-wheeler and with me on top of the load we headed back on attempt number two.  We weren’t 300 feet into the trail when we looked up and saw a beautiful rainbow ahead of us.

Dad snapped this photo of me on top of the 6-wheeler with the rainbow in the background.

So if you know what makes rainbows then you know what lied ahead of us.  We came upon the steady downpour only a short time later.  It was a good thing we had rain gear on and all of our gear either in dry bags or waterproof boxes cause it really came down.  On a brighter note on the ride we noticed fresh moose tracks in the mud headed in the same direction as us.  So we had high hopes of still achieving our goal.  We drove back in about two miles and set up camp on a side hill overlooking a valley with a few lakes interspersed throughout.

We set up camp, changed into some dry clothes, heated up some water for tea and apple cider and began glassing the flats.  We spent the afternoon hunkering under a tarp to avoid the occasional short bursts of rain and kept a weary eye out for the illustrious big game we were so hoping to find.  For dinner that evening we dined on freeze dried “Chilly Mac with Beef”, pilot bread crackers, and more tea and apple cider.  When it was no longer safe to be shooting a gun due to the lac of light we snuggled down into our sleeping bags resisting the urge to roll down hill.  You see our tent wasn’t exactly on a flat spot.  We were scouting from a side hill so thats where our tent ended up being set up at.

Now when moose hunting it is necessary to wake up wicked early to catch those moose our getting a drink or moving around.  They seem to like to do most of their moving in the morning or evening times.  Well the next morning (Saturday) we were NOT good moose hunters being that we drug ourselves out of bed at 9:00 AM.  We spent the next day glassing the flats and shooting the breeze.  Unfortunately that was the only shooting we’d be doing on this trip.   At about 2:00 in the afternoon I placed my binoculars in front of my eyes for yet another look across the flats.  I had scanned about half way across when at the very far end of the valley I catch a flash.   I look closer inspecting what caught my eye.  Something white.  Not just something white two somethings white side by side.  YES!!! It has to be the rack of a ginormous bull moose.  I say “Dad I see a moose”  he grabs his binoculars and after some telling him where in relation to some landmarks this huge moose is he locks onto the sight.  We continue to watch intently hoping to get a better idea of what we are looking at.  At this point all we can see is the huge rack.  Usually you can see the dark siloutte of the moose’s body along with the antlers.  All of a sudden the two white somethings separate.  Wait a minute…..  No moose can do that.  So now we are a bit confused.  Could it be two other hunters loading up their rig or cleaning a kill?  What is it.  We continue to watch for about a half an hour until I realize what we have been watching for such a long time.  What I thought was the white flash of the bone antlers of a moose was actually two swans swimming next to each other on a body of water obstructed from our view by the overgrowth of bushes at the waters edge.  Deflated we sink back into our chairs and go on shooting the breeze.  For lunch we had MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) used prodominatly by the US military during times of war.  These are full meals in a pouch.  Everything from the main course down to desert and a few sides.  Well Dad was eating an older version.  Believe it or not they have come a long way over the years.  I had Beef teriyaki with rice and dad had a re hydrated pork patty.  Mine came with a little bottle of Tobasco and since dad’s didn’t look very appetizing I offered to flavor up his dinner a bit for him.  Well after removing the top and attempting to apply a couple of drops to a bit on his fork I wasn’t having any luck.  So I poked into the hole at the top of the bottle with my knife hopping to dislodge whatever was blocking the hole.  I tried to shake some on again without any luck.  So  I shook a bit harder and all of a sudden the dam broke loose and not one, not two, not three, but about 15 drops of Tobasco found its way onto the grayish piece of meat.  Here is what ensued after that.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/08/tobasco.mov 320 260]

Before we headed to bed this evening I snapped this picture of dusk over the flats.

And then this picture of a tree silhouetted against the skyline.

The next day I woke up early to catch those elusive moose out and about.  As I clambered out of the tent I looked across the valley to find the whole basin full of fog.  I wouldn’t be seeing any moose until the sun decided to peak over the mountain and burn off the dense condensation hovering over the ground like a thick blanket of white cotton candy.  So I went back to bed.  When we got back up the fog had melted away and revealed not one stinking moose.  The dew all about did highlight some smaller beauties though.

So a bit discouraged we packed up camp and headed back to Valdez to spend some quality time with my mom.  The weekend was fun.  It was nice to be out in the woods hanging out with my dad, but I wouldn’t call it a hunting trip.  It was more like a camping trip with high powered rifles.