The deer thread

[OldJake]

Sreekers,
I have an identical twin to that buck in the top picture!

[Grant]

My daughter's 2013 blacktail



My 2013 muley

[Philip.AK]

Well, it's after August 1 here in Alaska, so deer season is on. We like to get ours as early as possible so as to be well before the rut. Our local deer are Sitka Blacktails, which are pretty tiny. Makes packing them out pleasant.

I headed up into the mountains with Brooks and Lindsey early on opening day and they grabbed two young forks.





Since they live off-island, the plan was to get them as many deer as possible since I live here and can hunt anytime. You are only allowed one deer on the Kodiak road system, so the plan was to hike off the road (about 8 miles in) to do an overnighter and get them some more, but then we ran into this dude and couldn't pass him up, so I punched my road tag.





While I love the Paradox frame and harness system, I'm sort of partial to Kuiu bags, so here is my Kuiudox:



We finally did do the overnighter off the road system a few days later and spent some time hiking through the lovely Kodiak alpine before running into some animals that looked appealing.





We found a little hanging valley filled with deer and picked out a buck.



Brooks gets ready for the shot:



He took the one on the right:





Despite it being a 20-mile round trip, with 10 of those being packing the animal out, it was actually a very pleasant hike.



You can probably tell we're not into camo.

[bhoran]

Opening deer hunt in SE AK 2017. We headed up to the top of a local island to go see about some alpine deer to start the freezer fill right. We had a pretty glorious few days of weather to aid us in our hunt. I would say all was great minus the swarms of noseeums and biting black flies that aren't atypical in these early hunts. We pitched the 6 man SO teepee in a spot that was protected from all winds except from the north. The wind switched to north. Since it was only 10-15 knots, the SO handled it with no problem. It was fun to spend some time tweeking and observing the teepee's response to the wind and adjustment in a well controlled wind. We pitched our cougar nest for Lindsey and I and my buddy did the headnet thing on his side. Plenty of room. We use the palomar knot to gravity filter water and to secure our top line for our bug nest. The infamous Patrick Saltonstall recommended the Seek Outside teepee over all others (he owns Kifaru, TiGoat, Seekoutside, GoLites, etc.) and I haven't second guessed that advice once. Well maybe once or twice but because of my newbie errors, not the fault of the product.
Our setup.

Decent deer for a Sitka Blacktail

2nd Sitka Blacktail

The new LNT

Post cleaning/pre-hike down nap. The Kifaru gun bearer is an invaluable addition to the pack for carrying the rifle.

Notice the frontal bossing, hunched shoulders, broad frame, stout legs... typical of the primitive decision making that leads to the purchase of a competitor brand's backpack.

Lindsey and I both carried out with SO Evolution packs. Our reviews at the end were that our packs felt great and weren't that bad. I had whole deer in mine and she had all of our gear. Mine was probably in the mid 60s to 70s. Hers was probably in the high 40s to 50s. Also, the new hip belt pockets are superb.