Bear Bums – Bear Hunting

What’s happening?! We’re suppose to have 1-2 big bears down and deer and fish and photos and?  Frank and Roger open the day at the Armpit where Karta river empties into Karta Lake. Jed and I are on Anderson Creek at the other side of the lake.

Frank loaded with gear.

On Anderson creek we’re catching Salmon and some more Trout out of the Lake. We’re patient and watch the creek pretty closely but find following the stream to deep inland isn’t very possible due to falls, timber and deep water. It seems most of the bear sign is at the mouth anyway. We last until about noon then the plan is to meet the other group with the boat.

From a good look out spot from the Karta Armpit Frank and Roger spot a decent bear across Karta Lake from them headed their way. They make a move and set up in the tall grass on the edge of the lake wishing they could still see the bear. Read the rest of this entry »

From the Salmon Lake Cabin we had a 1-2 mile hike to Karta River and about that far the other direction to Anderson Creek.  After breakfast Jed and Roger hiked to Karta River and Frank and I hiked to Anderson Creek.  The trail from the ocean to Salmon Lake cabin is maintained and is a good trail, though, very greasy slick.

From the cabin upstream the trail hasn’t been maintained for years.  Frank and I struggled up the unmaintained trail through the rain forest for 1-2 hours then gave up and headed for the lake shore to hike the rest of the way.

Everything was green and beautiful but tough to hike through.

There is lots of deer sign and some bear sign everywhere.  I ate 1/2 ton of huckleberries as we hiked.  Hiking was not the way to get to the upstream streams of McGilvery and Anderson Creeks.  The boat was the ticket. Read the rest of this entry »

On day three we did a lot of learning our bear hunting area.  We had looked things over on Google Earth prior to going and it was entertaining and super helpful.  There were basically three streams we could hunt and fish plus the lake shore.  No other openings are available due to the dense forest.  No clear cuts etc.

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Fishing on McGilvery Creek.

Karta River empties Salmon Lake, runs about 1 mile then empties into Karta Lake then goes into some impressive, salmon challenging, falls and runs 3-4 miles further to the ocean bay.  Dumping into Salmon Lake were two salmon worthy streams, Andersen Creek and McGilvery Creek.

Fishing on Andersen Creek.

On our day 3 we examined all these streams and found the most bear sign along Karta River with a fair amount along Anderson Creek. Read the rest of this entry »

A big day for us and the day that made me nervous for months.  Today we split up and got, groceries in boxes, 100lbs of salt for hides, hardware type stuff, satellite phone and camp equipment.   The float plane guys, Alaska Seaplane Tours, let us use their jeep to shuttle stuff around.

Shopping for our groceries in Ketchikan.

The camp equipment was rented and had been delivered as had the satellite phone.  The rest of the shopping went smoothly and by the time 10AM came around we found ourselves being loaded on the float planes and headed to Salmon Lake cabin.

Alaska Seaplane Tours.

Alaska Seaplane Tours has the ability to organize the cook kits, boat motor, petrol, etc and as good as they were to work with that’s who we’d use for every thing next time around.

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