Halloween day 2005 found me on a plane headed for Seattle, then on to Wrangell, Alaska with my new rain gear. Mark Galla met me at the airport in Wrangell the next morning and we were off. Unfortunately Gus had decided not to come along several months earlier and Doc had a family emergency two days before the trip and was also missing but Wade and one of his co-workers Tommy were going and arrived about 3:30. We had just enough time to hit the rifle range and double check the guns and make sure they were ship shape. With that completed we headed to our accommodations for the next week, Mark's boat the "Bear Necessities". The morning of November 2nd. Found us on our way to our first stop, Zumbro Island. The island has a limited road system and Mark had an old suburban stashed on the island that we used to get around with. This was where I got my first taste of hunting a rain forest. If you haven't experienced a rain forest it is hard to explain how wet everything is, even it is not a tropical rain forest. It rained every day for the 7 days we were there, not all day but repeatedly. That means that everything you touch, brush, grab or step on is wet or drips water or both. Your feet are almost constantly in water. Top quality rain gear is not a must; it is a necessity for survival. Our temperature stayed at 38 degrees for almost the entire 7 days. The rain combined with the wet terrain and the never ending rain made this hunt both physically and mentally demanding. I am 63 years old, in average physical condition and survived the hunt but I did have to talk to myself some and just put one foot in front of the other. What really helped was seeing deer, but after 4 days the three hunters had seen about 15 does and 1 buck. We had the buck on the boat as Tommy had made a good shot on a medium sized forked horn on day 4. We had hunted three islands by this time and were moving to a fourth for day five. One of these islands was virgin timber, huge Sitka spruce and hemlock, 3-4 feet in diameter, unfortunately about 30 percent of them were on the ground and we had to walk around, over or under them. This was also the island where I discovered my scope mounts were loose; Marlin took me back to the boat mid day, found some silicone and got those mounts really tight. Then we went to a small island, and re-zeroed my rifle, which cost us 2 hours of hunting but I had confidence in my rifle again. Mark, the outfitter and Marlin my guide had worked their tails off trying to get us on deer and were quite frustrated about our lack of finding bucks.

Day 5 was different, it was windy the night before and the boat had been rocking a little, as we lay anchored up in a small bay on Prince of Wales Island. We were ashore early as usual and about 9:30 as Marlin and I were sneaking along a muskeg edge. Bingo, here came a nice buck. We stopped and as he walked by about 60 feet away I shot from my 270WSM put him down and I had my first ever Sitka blacktail. He had 4 nice points and a good eye guard on one side, the other side had a G-2 that tried to fork and didn't make it, plus half a brow tine, but he had good mass and he was down and mine. A real nice buck for my first deer. Marlin and I hugged and yelled and celebrated. 10 minutes later as we were getting ready to field dress the deer we heard a shot from the direction of where the other guys were and we felt good that we had another deer down. Later as we were getting the deer back to the beach we heard still another shot from the direction of Wade, Tommy and Mark. By two we were all back on the boat, Tommy had taken his second deer and Wade had got his first. Wade's was nearly perfect 4X4 and Tommy's was also a nice buck. After four days of seeing almost nothing we had taken three bucks in about an hour within a mile of each other.

That night it rained hard, blew a lot and was really nasty in the morning. Tommy and Wade decided to go duck hunting near the boat but I had the fever so Marlin and I went back into the woods looking for another buck. Mark had also challenged me, saying that a little wind, rain and snow shouldn't keep a real deer hunter out of the woods. Well we found him; unfortunately he is still out there. We saw him at about 80-90 yards away in heavy brush, I had a quick poor shot at the upper half of his body and didn't' take the shot. I hoped he would come out in a little opening, but he didn't and that's why they call it hunting. He was a dandy, probably bigger than any of the four bucks we took and Marlin and I both thought we saw drop tines in the few seconds we saw the buck. I'll dream about that buck for a while, already have a couple of times.

The hunt was fun and very challenging. I have never hunted with a guide or outfitter who worked any harder than Mark or Marlin; they really worked all day to get us on deer. Then they cooked for us at night and most evenings we sailed for 2-4 hours and they had to do all the sailor stuff as well as snug us up when we got to where they wanted us to be. The three hunters were usually fast asleep by then. I learned some things about myself on this hunt, namely that I'm a little tougher than I thought and that you really do need to prepare for what's ahead. I also learned how to take a nap laying on wet muskeg in the rain and learned that good, no excellent rain gear is an absolute must if you wish to be comfortable on this hunt.

If you want to challenge yourself a little, get a unique deer and have outfitter/guide work extremely hard for you then call Wade Derby at Cross Hair Consulting and he will set up you for a wet, challenging, satisfying hunt in southeastern Alaska with some very hard working guides, and as a bonus you can do all of this while going on a 7-day cruise.