Bear Bums – Bear Hunting

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.

Jed and Roger made the hike down to Karta River and found a spot we called the Armpit to glass for bears.  Where the Karta emptied into Karta Lake the stream opened up and gave us quite a wide area to view.  There were literally thousands of dead and dying salmon here, it stunk bad so we labeled it the Armpit.

Everywhere on the Karta River there was bear sign.  Mostly partially eaten fish.  We could tell the bears would grab a dead fish, take it up on the bank, often into the brush and eat their favorite portions of the fish.
At both ends of the lake we spent hours glassing and watching but saw no bears.  We each caught a few lake trout.  We felt we now had a better handle on the area and once again it became obvious that this was hunting not killing.

One of the spots where we glassed the Armpit.

Roger hiking to the Armpit…we saw a bear across the lake for about 2 minutes on the way there.

We carried small radios for safety and Frank and I tricked Roger into bringing the boat, with extra gas, to come across the lake to pick us up.

The boat leaked a little but was pretty reliable.

The weather was almost ideal.  It did rain everyday but didn’t ever rain us out.  Sun rises and sun sets and evening and night skys were beautiful.

Roger never had to wash dishes ’cause he was the designated cook.  Tonight we had Indian fry bread and scones as Navajo tacos.  It’s amazing how much food is a part of a good hunt.  One of the reasons I enjoy bear hunting so much is because of the relaxed atmosphere which includes visiting and eating.
We cooked on a propane stove which we liked better than the pump up Coleman white gas stove.  We also had a propane lantern. These two items use just less than 2 bottles of propane daily  and we were not frugal with them.
At the end of day 4 we were pooped out and stuffed full of good food.  We planned to attack Karta River the next day in mass.

This spider spun a web on Jed’s pole on the way to the Armpit.