2024 Kodiak Blacktail hunt!

[Westelker - W. Colorado]

The next two days were marked with poor weather, it was either rainy or foggy for both of them. We still spent most of our time out hunting, but honestly we probably should’ve just rested at camp. This is the dilemma of hunting, can’t do it from camp and we went all the way to Alaska to hunt not sit at camp. However, really poor conditions to be out in. Anyways, we ended up sitting around some ridges, eating lots of blueberries and crowberries, having great conversations and seeing no deer.
Finally, day 5 arrived, which was our last full day to hunt. I was struggling with coming to terms with the reality that I might not take a deer. While I would love to be able to say that I have the maturity to be perfectly ok with that. Certainly the trip had been phenomenal and I wouldn’t say that success would hinge on filling a tag, however, to have gone that far and not fill the tag would have been on some level a failure to my mind. I was reconciling all these thoughts in my head as we woke and made breakfast. I decided that all I could do was to hunt hard that day and fully soak up the experience, and mature some more haha.
Well as we awaited our meals to rehydrate, I began glassing the hillside adjacent to our lake. Lo and behold there were three deer about 1.25 miles away. I couldn’t tell exactly if they were bucks or does, but given their position on the hillside I thought that they could be a bucks. In our experience (4 days worth at this point) the bucks seemed to feed higher early and then moved down to bed, while the does seemed to feed lower and kind of stay in the alders all day.
We quickly devised a stalk to both avoid their eyes, noises, and the aforementioned alders. Honestly, everything went quickly and perfect. We pretty quickly cut the distance down to around 500 yards. I this point I could only see two of the deer, not sure where the third had gone. They were moving from right to left, slowly feeding. I told my buddy to wait there, I dropped my pack and ranged a little false summit that was 278 yards ahead of me. I knew if I moved about 20 yards to my right, that little rise would block me from the deer’s view and should allow me about a 200 yard shot at them.

I quickly gained the little hill, and slowly crawled up to it. Both deer were still feeding unaware of our presence. I noted the larger of the two and slid my rifle into position on the lip of the hill. I tried to steady my breathing, dialed my scope up and began applying pressure to the trigger.

Blam!

Both deer froze and looked in my direction. Hmm well that didn’t work, recheck yardage quickly, 249 yards, ok work another round in. Stop, box breathe. Calm down, a few seconds later go through the routine again. Blam! This time the larger buck disappeared at the shot.

Those dang alders swallowed him up. I had no idea where he had gone, but I knew where he had been. More telling was the second buck didn’t run, but kept staring into the alder patch where his buddy had been. He then slowly started walking towards me.

I made some notes on a few quickly snapped pictures and dropped an On-X pin where the buck was last at.
View attachment 340557Then made my way back down to my buddy and packs. We high fived and figured we would drink some water, eat a snack and then head up to him. As we sat there talking about the trip and enjoying the time, the smaller buck walked within 30 yards of us and snorted. Figures that’s how it goes, can’t find deer for a few days and then they come to you.
We made our way up to where I thought the buck should be and we found nothing.
So I started walking through the alders looking for blood, while my buddy walked a little further up hill to get a better vantage. As was going through a little ditch when he stopped me and said he could see the white belly of a deer! Elation! I was literally 5 feet away, but could not see the deer at all. Thick!View attachment 340628
View attachment 340629

Congrats, very nice picture. Those deer up there can be quite tricky, with all the alters etc. Any brown bears? Did you get to fish? Or are you leaving that for the next trip? Enjoyed your story. Brings back memories. Thanks for sharing!!

 

[cgasner1]

That’s a solid Sitka buck congratulations

 

[Gellar]

Nice job! That was a great write up! Thank you for sharing.

 

[ashersdad]

Hard to beat a Kodiak deer hunt. Congrats on your success!

 

[SFC B]

That is a nice buck....nice pay off!!!

 

[Robert N]

That’s a good buck! GREAT Job and loved the Story! Sitka does NOT make for an easy hunt and I love your attitude towards it!

If you could pick just one thing to do differently, what would it have been?

 

[FrontRangeDude]

Just booked with a transporter for the last week of August! Going to be flying out and spending almost a week looking for blacktail, fishing, spying on foxes, and avoiding bears! Pretty stoked for this trip! I’ll update as developments occur!

Sounds awesome

 

[D-Mac]

That’s a good buck! GREAT Job and loved the Story! Sitka does NOT make for an easy hunt and I love your attitude towards it!

If you could pick just one thing to do differently, what would it have been?

Great question! We talked this over after the hunt. We were overall very happy with our choices. If we were to return we would have a better spotting scope, our topped out at 35x and made it hard to tell on some of the further deer.
We had a gerber exchange a blade folding saw and it almost failed us. Between wood and two deer it seemed to be almost at failure. The screw area on it just isn’t robust enough in my opinion.
We didn’t do any fishing this trip. I would definitely change that for the next trip… and there will be another!

We also both said that the hiking in that terrain would simply not be possible without trekking poles.

 

[Robert N]

Outstanding Report. . You make me want to write mine up. Bravo!

 

[deer_shooter]

Nicely done and that’s a good buck. Kodiak is an amazing place.

 

[Sask hunter]

Congrats!

 

[kansasdad]

Outstanding Report. . You make me want to write mine up. Bravo!

Get on that while the inspiration is still fresh!

 

[fallfreak]

Great write up. Thanks for sharing.