Kodiak island blacktail

[AK Troutbum]

This happen around 2005-2006? If so, I flew in to the same spot after you were gone. I heard the story and saw how it played out at the campfire! If it wasn’t you, someone else had a really bad couple of nights!

Yeah, early Oct. of '06, that was us.

 

[duckhunter175]

We hunted Raspberry and Afognak mid October for deer and I'll 2nd what the Alaskan residents have said as far as the overall physical difficulty-- having hunted over much of the lower 48 for various critters I'd say this was on the high end of arduous... then add bears... then add some extra weight coming down those hills is even worse haha.

October wasn't hard to turn up does and smaller bucks but larger fellas were hanging out up high and in some thick stuff!

 

[Snowwolfe]

Son drew a elf tag for Afognak and plans on hunting mid October. He is taking a friend more physically capable of me to do the elk portion of the hunt. It will be my first time on Afognak. I have about 10 Kodiak hunts and 2 Montague hunts under my belt. Son is getting together two electric fences for our tent area. We never experienced any bear issues in the past as we immediately hung up the meat bags in the trees 50-75 yards from camp. Hope our good luck continues.

My plans are to hang around camp, maybe do some salmon fishing and take my sweet time hiking around looking for a deer or two to shoot.

Hopefully I'll have my 375 Ruger glass bedded by then as I plan on taking that for my primary deer rifle. And my BFR 500 JRH for belt carry when fishing or walking around camp.

 

[Mangata]

Blacktail population is down by three after the 0800 Alaska Air flight yesterday

 

[Tbone26]

Has anyone been out yet this season? I'm curious on how the population is doing. I only heard one report from spring bear season and was told the population seems to be bouncing back nicely. I head back up in early December again.

 

[‘Ike’]

Son drew an elf tag for Afognak and plans on hunting mid October. He is taking a friend more physically capable of me to do the elk portion of the hunt. It will be my first time on Afognak. I have about 10 Kodiak hunts and 2 Montague hunts under my belt. Son is getting together two electric fences for our tent area. We never experienced any bear issues in the past as we immediately hung up the meat bags in the trees 50-75 yards from camp. Hope our good luck continues.

Those ‘elf’ tag are tough to come by….Good luck!

 

[mcseal2]

We are headed to Kodiak in a month.

I’ve only been once before so I don’t claim to be any sort of an expert. We camped last time, this time I got invited on a boat based hunt.

Only advice I have on gear is that my Kuiu Yukon pants and First Lite SEAK jacket survived Kodiak. That was their 3rd Alaska hunt and they are going back this time. Got them on sale around 2017.

Also I loved having my Kahtoola microspikes. On all the wet/froze/muddy/rotten log types of terrain they really helped me get traction. I wore them every day for some if not all the hunt. When I tagged out a buddy borrowed them. I’m taking a spare pair this trip to be safe.