Life 'on the beach'

 

Here are some 'on shore' pictures from the elk hunt. Our base camp is a big fishing boat the Columbia. And when we go ashore we carry our camp with us. At the end of every day we camp where we end up. We carry one big teepee with a woodstove, a meat shelter, and a smaller teepee for 2. Four hunters sleep in the woodstove tent and two in the 'mother-in-law' tent.

On this trip we went ashore with 3-4 days of food. We had enough food to hike all the way across Afognak if we did not see elk in the first 2 days. But on the second day ashore we found elk near our first camp. And after butchering the elk we took the meat back to the first camp and re set up camp in the same spot.  One of the big chores at every camp is cutting and splitting wood for the stove. And we already had split wood at that camp leftover from the first night.

Then after finding and harvesting the elk the rest of the time on shore is spent ferrying heavy loads of elk meat.  First we carried it all to camp where we set up an electric fence. Then we ferried the meat in 2 loads down to the boat.

Patrick