Alaska Winter Mountain Goat Hunt! Just gonna send it!!!!!

[cbond3318]

Solid work!

[Widgeondeke]

I love reading of the adventure, but we all want to know.

Who's rain gear perform better?

[Karl Blanchard]

I love reading of the adventure, but we all want to know.

Who's rain gear perform better?

bullblasters were a bit warm so I cut a bunch of vent holes in them.  They breathe much better now

[Karl Blanchard]

Since we now had bloody stuff, we decided we better get serious so we hung food, trash, meat, and hides in a tree grove about 400 yards from camp.  That evening was cold as hell but spirits were high! The coffee flowed freely, the food tasted extra good and we were smiles from ear to ear.  We toasted to Aaron and laughed about how much he would have complained about being wet and especially about being cold (he was cold blooded ). 

That night was a restless one.  For the first time since we had been there it was dead calm.  Every single sound was a bear following the smell of goat blood.  I would go from dead asleep to heart pounding wide awake at every rustle of brush or snort coming from the air bag next to me    about 3 or 4 a.m. the rain started and the steady drum on the tent lulled me to sleep.

The next morning was a cold one again and light snow was falling.  Ceiling was sitting at about the 800ft line so no glassing for the morning.  We took a hard look at the extended forecast, our lack of goat options, and the fact that we had taken nannies from a breeding pool and decided to call for a ride and end our stay.  Turned out to be a dang good decision because as we would find out, we would have been weathered in most of the remainder of the week. 

Our ride showed up mid day and as fast as we had been dropped off, we were loaded and skipping across the lake looking at the wall of water coming up the valley from the SE.  Just beat it!

The flight home was just as spectacular as the flight down.  Absolutely breathtaking country and the sizeand remoteness is hard to wrap your brain around.

[grundy53]

Wow.  Sounds like an amazing trip! Great memories. Congratulations.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Dan-o]

EPIC trip.

Really a cool write up, Karl.

No bear encounters?

[trophyhunt]

Very cool, thank you for letting us tag along!  I never knew just how great of a trophy nannies can be, absolutely beautiful animals!  Glad to see the bears stayed away, I’m guessing they prob hit the hibernation early up there?

[Karl Blanchard]

Back on kodiak we paid our float plane balance and headed back for my uncles.  Everything got packed away wet so first order of business was unpacking, washing, and drying gear.  My poor uncles basement    the next day was dedicated to meat cutting.  Steaks and roasts were cleaned up and vac sealed.  Trim was ground up and cut with a pork roast and made into a spicy Italian sausage.  Evwrything went in the freezer and with that all our chores were finished.  We had goat tacos for lunch and tenderloin and backstrap for dinner.  The next night we had some sitka blacktail (hands down the best meat you will ever eat) and endless crab  

Saturday we drove the road system and saw the sites.  It was a beautiful sunny day.  We took the 10pm Ravn air flight out of kodiak and with a crappy 7hr layover in Anchorage we were headed back for washington.  It was a somber flight home.  I wasnt ready to come home.  Alaska was amazing and we are already planning our return trip. We aren't done with the mountain goats on Kodiak

[Karl Blanchard]

Only bears we saw were in the airport 

[Karl Blanchard]

Local Starling population cleaning up goat scraps there was 15 at one point.  We drove by the dump and there was about 200 of them.  Pretty crazy

[h20hunter]

Cool pics. 

2nd that on the tastiness of sitka blacktail.

Mmmm crab.

Bear sightings are overrated.

[Karl Blanchard]

Cool pics. 

2nd that on the tastiness of sitka blacktail.

Mmmm crab.

Bear sightings are overrated.

I shot a couple there in 2003 and over the years I thought maybe I had built up in my mind how good they are.  NOPE!!!! Best wild game meat hands down!!!!

[nwhunter]

Great story and thanks for sharing... Until you've been on a hunt where survival and staying alive is more important than killing something you can't quite understand that part of the adventure.. You guys will talk about this one the rest of your lives .. congrats..

[Jpmiller]

Rugs will be a great way to show off the hair. Great story thanks for sharing

[Rainier10]

Great story, thanks for sharing.

So glad you got to experience this with your brother.

Still loving that hair.  Rugs are a great idea.