The Trapper

The 16 foot skiff was loaded with all my provisions as I headed out Lisianski Straights toward the open ocean.  Not yet 20, I was on my way to a remote uninhabited series of water ways given such names as you most likely would hear in other parts.  Intriguing and beautiful bays, coves and harbors with names like Canoe Passage, Mirror Harbor, Pinta Bay, Portlock Harbor, Black Bay and Surveyor Passage, to name a few.  

A 55 gallon drum of fuel for the outboard sat in the bow and duffle bags of camp gear filled the rest of the skiff.  I sat on top two of these in the stern, gripping the steering arm of the outboard motor.  Looking forward out across the bow, I could see that I was approaching Stag Bay. 

The 30 horse outboard motor could push the skiff up over 35 miles per hour if the skiff was empty, but with it loaded as it was now, I was not making 10.  The mountains, bays and beaches slipped by slowly, giving me plenty of time to think about the local area and all I had read about it.  Being a rich land of timber, fish, wildlife and minerals, many had come to explore, harvest and exploit it.  As Stag Bay slid by on my left to the south, I remembered reading that Lieutenant Lisianski ‘s men of the Russian Imperial Navy had made an exploratory mining shaft on the west side of the bay - just one location of many where he had looked for gold. A year earlier during a hunting trip, I had stumbled across the opening of this mine. The moss grew heavy around its opening and when I slowly crouched and entered into the dark shaft, I could see the white quartz veins running along its walls.  The shaft ended about 30 feet back into the side of the mountain.

In preparing for this expedition I had purchased an assortment of traps totaling a hundred and twenty.  I had come up with this number because it would take a full day to check them if I set them all.  I did not want to let animals be trapped for more than a day for many reasons.  There were 25 large 24 inch conibear traps I would use for Land Otter. This trap has two metal rectangles, opened like jaws, with a trigger on one side. The conibear is designed to have bait placed on the trigger to lure the animal's head into the trap, but I had minimal success with this method.  I would set the hoop in a tunnel or track that the animal would be entering as it tried to get at herring that I had placed several feet beyond. When the trap triggers, the rectangles quickly close together like a large mouse trap, almost always causing death to the trapped animal. These traps are most often used by trappers and pest control companies working in and around populated areas. Their sizes range widely from the size of a mouse trap to a couple feet across for bears. I had not heard of anyone using this type of trap on a brown bear, which were plentiful in this area and I had no intention to do so. 

The majority of my traps were 6 inch leghold traps to be used to capture Martin.  The padded leghold trap is similar to the steel jaw leghold trap. The difference is a layer of rubber around the edges of the jaws of the trap. This is to cause less damage to the animal after they set it off.  I wanted to use these to preserve the trapped animal's fur and I liked the fact that it was less painful on the animal. 

I fully acknowledge that there is controversy over the use of any kind of trap to harvest or kill an animal and some people even have a problem with any method of taking them for the use of their fur or meat.  To this I would respond that for those who live in the cities, it would be reasonable to think that they could refrain from using fur or consuming wild game, but for those of us who live in remote and/or cold places the subsistence of these becomes necessary to survive.

Marten found in Alaska are part of the American marten and are also known as the pine marten or American sable.  They belong to the weasel family and are closely related to fisher and mink. Marten pelts vary in color from a dark brown to blond, yet the most distinctive characteristics are an orange or buff throat patch and pronounced ears.  When visiting the Seattle Fur Exchange, I learned from them that the dark brown marten pelts with long guard hairs would bring the highest price.

Any time you head out in a large vessel into the open ocean, it can be intimidating, but in a small skiff it can be downright scary.  Being loaded as I was, I had checked the weather forecast prior to leaving the village of Pelican, to make sure the ocean swell was calm enough for me to get out the entry of Lisianski Straights.  I had learned that I could not trust weather forecasts, especially in areas where I encountered converging factors of wind, waves, tide and rocks.  So as I made my way past Porcupine Island passing the last rocks to the south, my eyes searched for any signs to indicate I should turn around and wait for better conditions.  It looked safe enough so I throttled up and headed south along the coast. 

The wind was calm and the sun broke through the few clouds to give the ocean depths a translucent green.  Looking to the north, up the Coast of Yakobi Island and then to the south along Chichagof Island, the sea sparkled a vivid blue.  The mountains dressed in the greens of Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Hemlock, Spruce and Doug Fur, rose up out of the ocean to dance with the heavens.  I knew not any other country as beautiful as this.

False Pass faced North-West to the ocean and in the way it entered into the top side of Portlock Harbor, even local natives who knew its location would sometimes pass by and not find it.  Much smaller than its name sake 900 miles to the west, I could throw a rock from one side to the other at its narrowest.  If I could get through the pass it would shave off 30 minutes more of being out in the open ocean.  To enter it required my skiff to pass over a sandbar covered by just 10 feet of water at low tide. This part of the coast had a range of tidal movement from a few feet on a holdover to over 21 feet on an extremely high winter tide.  Suffice to say that if the swell, tide and wind are not cooperating, the entry is likely to be blocked by breakers.  It is much more difficult to determine the danger of potential breaking waves going with them than going into them.  There are many such perilous breaks and hidey-holes in South-East Alaska’s coast line - better left to the local mariners who have sometimes spent years studying them.  The pass appeared to be clear of white water so I pointed the bow of the skiff to the center of the entry and made my way safely through into Baker Cove.

The cove stood at the base of Baker Mountain where my brother Don, a friend and I had hunted deer in the past.  Hidden from the rest of Portlock Harbor, I had chosen this landfall to be where I would set up my base camp.  The clearing just off of the beach was fairly level and I proceed to unload the skiff.  A barrel rack was cut out of a small tree I dropped with a chain saw.  I then rolled the fuel barrel up the makeshift ramp and placed it on the rack with the spout facing down, in order to easily fill small fuel tanks for the outboard.  Working into the dark, I made a cooking table with a canopy roof and set up a temporary dome tent that I would use for my sleeping quarters till I could build a lean-to out of logs. In the glow of the fire, I looked around the clearing and into the dark forest and smiled at all that was accomplished this first day.

Morning came early and I did not hesitate to crawl out of my sleeping bag and get ready for the day.  It was dark, but with a hint of light seeping through the canopy high above.  The cold air was sharp and gripping as I coaxed the fire back to life. 

As I stood with my backside to the fire eating some fried diced up potatoes, I fell into deep thought.  I was continuing to live as I had read and dreamed about as a young boy.  Stories of mountain men heading off into the hills never to be seen or heard from again, well, I didn’t care for the ‘never to be seen or heard from again’, but the ‘heading off into the hills’ part was pure entertaining to think about.  Back in September I had started trapping in Soap Stone Cove and around Column Point, using my brothers fishing boat as a base camp, but now it was well into November and I was entering a new more dangerous chapter in my life.  “You had better watch yourself this time” I muttered to myself, putting emphasis on the ‘this time’.  No snow had fallen yet, but I knew it was coming and I had better be ready.

On a hunting trip up Yakobi Island’s Grass Mountain when I was 17, my brother and I were caught in a late summer storm that brought an ice rain that cut to the bone.  Wearing jeans, tennis shoes and a t-shirt I had dressed for a warm summer day that never materialized.  After Don and I separated at the beach that morning, to ascend the mountain up different trails, I had shot a deer an hour later up in the grasses above tree line. Sixteen hundred feet above the beach, where the forests faded and the yellow grass began, I had packed the deer down to, in a increasingly heavier down pour.  The cold rain robbed me of my energy and the lack of my ability to think clearly no longer concerned me.  As I sat on a moss covered log in the heavy rain resting, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a large buck 20 yards away staring at me.  Without thinking I raised my rifle with the first deer still on my back and shot it. Field dressed minutes later, I dragged it over to the main trail so it would be easy to find upon my return.  The trip down the mountain in the driving rain was exhausting enough without carrying a deer on your back, but I eventually made it down to the beach to where the boat was anchored just off shore.  When I broke out of the forest onto the grass covered flats I was glad to see Don.  He had been down for over an hour and was mostly dry standing there in front of a large bon fire.  I saw two large bucks lying on the beach next to the skiff and turned toward him asking “How..?”  “I shot the first one just after I exited the tree line and was down to the beach by ten o’clock” he explained.  “Seeing I had most the day ahead of me I decided to take a quick hike back up to tree line” and with a smile he continued “As soon as I reached the grass the second buck was standing right there.”      

Don was not happy to hear I still had a deer up the mountain as it would be dark soon.  He could see I was in no condition to pack another deer down the trail, but demanded that I go with him to help locate the buck.  Hypothermia had its claws in me so by the time we located my second deer and started back down the trail in the dark, Don had to kick me out of every puddle of water we passed.  The water seemed to be extremely warm to me, but it was not.  How Don was able to carry a buck on his back, navigate and drag my hide down that mountain in the dark is still a mystery to me.  After managing to eat some hot soup and falling into a warm bunk on the boat I slept continuously for twenty-two hours. I do not remember getting into the skiff and onto the boat, so Don must have packed all four deer and myself from the beach into the skiff and onto the boat.  The bruises where Don kicked me lingered on my body for weeks, but I was grateful.

            I spent the next two days working on completing the setup of my camp and scoping out good routes for my trap lines. The log lean-to was to protect the dome tent from being crushed by snow.  The islands in this area received annual rainfall of more than 120 inches and it could snow much more than the 140 inches it averaged in one winter.  If you were not ready for it, the accumulation of snow could be quite a problem.  By the end of the third day I felt the base camp was ready to support me for the duration of the winter.  Like a sleeping giant Alaska’s weather held its fury from me and I slept that night in a state of naivety and bliss.