Kodiak winter?

Joined
Feb 16, 2015
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For the few of you that live up in AK, what’s the verdict been on the winter this year in kodiak? I am heading back this fall and hoping I was mild and the deer population is booming!

Anyone else have a kodiak hunt planned this year?
 

BRWNBR

WKR
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Feb 11, 2015
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Almost wasn’t a winter in some areas of the island. There seems to always be pockets of snow but this winter was mild to say the least. Deer should be fine.
 
OP
B
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Very good, I have been watching the weather in kodiak city and it looked mild to me...just didn’t know if other areas got pounded with snow and cold for some reason.
 

Oregon

WKR
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I believe the winter of 2011 was a bad one. I went on my 3rd trip Nov 2012. My previous trips were after mild winters.
Tough hunt that year only because I was used to banner years. We couldn’t find a 4pt to save our lives. We shot a couple decent 3’s and found enough to scratch the itch. Regardless, still my favorite place to chase deer, even on tough years.
 

BRWNBR

WKR
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I have seen years where the number of fork horn bucks of varying ages where more numerous than does. Then years where branch antlered bucks were everywhere but the population seemed about the same.
 
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Nov 3, 2017
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The 2016-2017 winter was supposedly a very bad one. I was on a work trip on north Afognak in March 2017 and I had to do a 2 mile hike to a survey marker. Came across 5 carcasses just along the game trail on that short walk. The pilot made it sound like that was pretty standard across the whole island for that year.

Hunted south end Kodiak February 22-28, 2018. Snow was at about 1,000 feet on the fly in. About 8 inches of snow on the beach when we left. We saw tons of deer on the beach and stumbled across several deer and plenty of deer sign up to about 1,000 feet. Obviously no antlers at that time, but I would feel confident in hunting that area this fall. I'm eyeing to head back fall of 2019 if this coming winter is decent.
 
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Apr 8, 2017
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South end of the island faired much better than the north end during the 16-17 winter. It was the late hard freezes in March that I think did em in. This past winter was super mild comparatively. It’ll likely take a couple years for the numbers on the road system/north end to come back up. But you’ll find deer no matter where you go!
 
OP
B
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South end of the island faired much better than the north end during the 16-17 winter. It was the late hard freezes in March that I think did em in. This past winter was super mild comparatively. It’ll likely take a couple years for the numbers on the road system/north end to come back up. But you’ll find deer no matter where you go!

I’ll be on the south end again, so should be a good trip if the weather isn’t a major factor!
 
OP
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Weather is never a factor on Kodiak. Ha!

Learned that last year with rain, sun, snow, cold, warm, sideways rain, light rain, sprinkle rain, heavy snow, light snow, sideways snow...then usually some rain in-between the snow and some snow in between the rain. But the sun did come out a few times.
 
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