Hunting Washington Forum
Other Hunting => Waterfowl => Topic started by: AKBowman on October 05, 2011, 07:22:24 PM
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Not sure if my pics are resized correctly so I am going to post in segments.
I was able to sneak off for a weekend on a recent work trip to AK and hunt with my parents in Delta Junction, AK. We hit the migration just right for the geese and cranes, if you've never heard what 50,000 sandhills sound like it is unlike anything you have probably ever heard. I know I am blessed for being able to go do these types of things. The area is getting harder and harder to hunt with the JO's who go wherever they want witout permission. LOTS of birds though, and I thank my dad for keeping up his contacts there over the years. We have mended fences caused from a rushing herd of wild Bison and done a little plumbing to gain access to some of the these areas.
The first pic is the results from the first day shoot, two limits of geese (8) and two limits of cranes (6).
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Pic from the dug out blind sow capped mountains of the Alaska Range East...
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Cole with another nice retrieve
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My first Sandhill in a LONG time, 12 Ga. Ruger Red label double for scale. After about 20 minutes of scouting we set up on the edge of a giant round barley field. The cranes were coming out of migration routes and pouring into this field. They hated our outlaw silouettes (sp?) and were flying around our set up so we moved to the sides and had good pass shooting.
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Did I mention these were big birds? That is a 10 Ga double with 31-1/2 barrells for scale. Full and Full :IBCOOL: such a fun gun for shooting big birds.
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Cole with an awesome retrieve on a crane my dad killed while we were walking back to the truck. Its not recommended to send your dog after a wounded crane these things have crazy beaks and know how to use them to poke eyes etc but Cole made some serious short work of this guy.
On flat ground such as a field a human will never catch a crane with two good legs, its not even close. It was cool to see Cole chase this bird down from 150 or so yards on a dead run. Luckily he pummeled it and took care of business. My dad was very proud to say the least.
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Sorry about the orientation of that last pic cant figure out how to save the orientation when I rotate it on the laptop.
Molly with a nice limit of cranes. She's getting older but she still has a good nose. Hate it when dogs get old, we had one amazing year when I was in college back in 04'. I started with 15 credits and finished with 6 but Molly and I knew every little hole to kill mallards from Anchorage to Homer.
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More cranes
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More geese...
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So this was the routine:
Walk out of the trailer in the morning, go out in the field and kill two limits of geese. Drive 30 miles to where we were hunting cranes and kill a few grouse on the way. Kill cranes in the afternoon, it didnt get dark until around 8:30 or so.
Heres a nice spruce hen that met his demise from my moms 20 ga. Ithaca over and under.
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This was the scene seemingly every and anytime I looked up along with the droning noise of thousands of migrating sandhills...
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Home sweet home right on the edge of the field we had permission to hunt...
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It wasnt a bad drive back and forth from Anchorage. Sheep country in late Sept...
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Thanks for letting me share everyone, hope you enjoy and hope this gets you fired up for the opener here in WA!
Best of luck.
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Man that sure looks like an awesome hunt. Thanks for sharing sure makes me jealous!!!! :tup:
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nice story and pics :tup: Looks like a lifetime of memories right there!
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That sure looks like fun.
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It looks like you had a great hunt. Lots of great memories.
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Wow! Looks like you did it right man, congrats.. I hear those sandhill cranes are tasty, what's the story??
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very cool hunt! thanks for sharing! :tup:
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Looks like a fantastic time!
Thanks for sharing and showing us something we dont' get to see often. When we're hunting pheasants in E. MT we have giant flocks of sandhills over us all day long. You can just hear the faint sounds of their calls over the wind and looking up it takes a while to find the flocks way up high.
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Looks like fun, thanks for sharing.
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How cool! Looks like a blast (pun intended) :chuckle:
Sandhills are so awesome. Love to try and hunt them sometime.
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Wow! Looks like you did it right man, congrats.. I hear those sandhill cranes are tasty, what's the story??
They taste OK I prefer a big fat mallard over them but they arent bad. They have a really long slender breast and chest cavity not like a goose where its real chunky and you get a lot of meat. I would say there is definitely more meat on a greater than a big sandhill. The drumsticks can be tasty if you pressure cook them, otherwise they are really tough.
Thanks again and hope you have a great opener.