Hey folks, Tina Babe and I are back from our Mothers Day trip to the beach.

Four years ago when Babe was a brand new puppy, Tina and I took a trip with the dog out west of here for a camping trip on the beack at Cape Constantine. The Cape points out into Bristol Bay, pretty much the open ocean, and is a good place to beach comb, whale watch from shore and waterfowl hunt. While camping on the beach in the correct season one could expect to see perhaps a dozen different species of waterfowl to include Emperor geese and Eiders, whales in good numbers, ptarmigan, parka squirrels, and various shore birds. Beach combing remote Alaska beaches is usually more productive than combing more heavily used lower 48 or urban Alaska beaches and this trip we found glass japanese fishing net floats, boots, life jackets, rain gear, old bottles, whale and seal skulls, walrus and whale ribs and vertabrae,.......you get the idea.

We flew with Bay Air in their Maule on wheels and as the plane is not quite as spacious as their Beaver on floats we tried to pack a little smaller. The Maule is a very impressive plane non the less! With roughly 600#'s of passenger and gear, not to mention pilot and fuel the thing just jumped off the runway on takeoff.

Here's my idea of packing smaller.

Since we were down there for something like four nights I didn't really start hunting until the last two days. Certainly the opportunity was there for quite a bit more birds to take but we've already had a pretty good spring season and did have the plane jamb packed on the way down so taking too many birds to get in the plane didn't sound like a good plan.

Babe continued to work well and made some very good water/ half frozen pond retrieves. The hazard I am finding with her is the mix of jump/ pass shooting where she is already on her feet and just grabs the downed bird and then in a blind setting where she is supposed to be steady to shot. So far I seem to be able to stop and otherwise handle her fine but I can see the confusion in her a little.

Mostly Babe is steady to hand but with the larger birds its only maybe 50% of the time.

With ducks she's steady to hand every time. So this is most of the bag we took while on the beach. Not pictured is the four specks we'd taken the day before this picture that I'd processed. Only the two ducks, a bull sprig and a drake greenwing teal.

Notice the difference in size and I believe different sub species of canada goose. I'll look it up later and report my guess.

I thought this was an interesting comparison of freckling on the breast of the white fronts.

Evrything is cleaned and in the freezer.

Scott

That looks like some awesome shooting. I used wto spend a lot of time on the foreshore and I think it has to be classed as some of the most "real" hunting out there. I'm hoping this year to get out and have a go at punt gunning, and your pics have got me thinking that I should pull my finger out and start planning.

I will be shooting some ducks in RSA this August, and then back to the UK for some geese on the first of September.

Rgds,
Kiri

Scott,

Would love to see pics of the goodies you collect on your beach combing excursions. Please post some pics if you took any, especially sea mammal skulls and such. Walrus Ivory would be awesome


I cannot see the side of your teal...if I could see the scaps I would be able to tell for sure...that could be an Aleutian Greenwing Teal.


My Guess on Geese:
YOu have three different species of Geese in the Canada bunch. One of the small Canadas looks like a Cackler (considered a different species now from Canada) that is the one on the middle. The one on the left with the white-collar around the neck may be an Aleutian Cackling Goose (Both are barely larger than the Pintail). I am not sure about the one on the right...that is probably a Canada Goose (not a Cackling Goose).

We found a walrus skull 4 years ago when we went down, but not this year. There was a whale skull half buried in the beach I'll post a picture of.

The Alaska beaches are really interesting because of the lack of road traffic. Nobody picks up or cleans up anything that can't be hauled off in an airplane so what you can find is unlimited. I keep looking for the cash stuffed wallet with no I.D. but so far no good.

I believe the guesses on the Canada geese are correct with the third bird being a Taverners. I wish I could save and taxiderm three or more of those whitefronts. I really like the difference in speckling and think together they'd make a great piece.

Scott, the plethora of sub-species of waterfowl that passes through Alaska is mind boggling. I am sure there is more than one sub-species of Whitefronted in your pics, but they are just hard to separate just by looking at pics....that is why I did not attempt. The one with heavy black barring on the chest is definitely a mounter for taxidermy.

P.S. Please post any pics of the beach junk that you may have....I find them all to be so interesting.