Here are a couple of photos of a deer hunt we went on this past Dec in Larson Bay (Kodiak Is.).

Awesome thanks for sharing.

Are they all bucks?

I went to Kodiak in 98. The four of us shot 14 deer that trip. One of my deer was a doe and my friends dad was teasing me about shooting a doe. It was the only doe he had seen shot there out of 40 some deer shot on trips to Kodiak he had been on.

I said "fine ,but how many of those deer were shot with a handgun?"

He said only one. My doe.

RMiller: No, they were not all bucks...out of 25 or so deer killed, I think 4 were does. We were hunting mid-Dec and it was perfect (some antlers were dropping though)...There were 11 hunters in three parties and I was in a party of 5. We killed 10 deer (3,3,2,1,1)...I think the entire group killed 25 deer in about two days. We passed up many deer...(I did not pass up too many--I shot two bucks and a doe in about two hours of hunting from a boat). Those who wanted to fill their tags (3 deer) and were not too choosy, did so. Those that were choosy or did not want to deal with more animals shot 1 deer. There were so many deer down low....most of us had been on Kodiak hunts where we couldn't find a deer or get a good shot at a legal one..this hunt made up for those hunts. I never shot three deer in two hours before.

Great hunt.

I have shot 3 in one day but not in two hours.

I went on one hunt in early December to Montague Island and three of us shot 11 deer (5 bucks) only one buck had a single anter left all the rest had dropped.

rwj,

When you hit it just right on Kodiak it is quite a show. One time we saw 35 mature buck between 10AM and 3PM. Yes! I did take one and it was a beautiful 4x4 I'm looking at right now.

Regards,

Mark

Mark: You are right. The two in our party that shot just one deer each were a husband and wife team and they each shot excellent 4x4s due to patience and good shooting. The rest of us slugs were filling tags and meat boxes...both of my bucks were 'average' and make perfectly fine skull mounts. It was a very good hunt and you are right about it being a really good show. They were still seeing bears near Larson Bay when we were there.

rwj

We actually hunted Larsen Bay when Leon Fancisco had the Spirdon camp. We saw all the bucks one day out around the point on the Shelikof Strait. That was a truly great hunt with a great guy.

Regards,

Mark

we hunted with spiridon bear camp with leon francisco right before he sold/retired/etc.

we had a lousy hunt, got shafted in every way posssible and he could not have cared less.

he is gone and the business is better off without him and his kind. m.o. based on experience with him.

O.K., so I've checked out the pics twice. But I have to ask you RWJ - you really bring the deer onto the boat whole w/o gutting them? [as in 2nd pic?] When do you get around to doing this?

I can usually gut one in 5-10 minutes, depending on where hit. Never seen anyone bring 'em onto a boat whole before, that's all.

MM

MuskegMan: That is an good question and an astute observation..The answer to your question is "Yep...we brought them back to the boat hide hair guts and all." I think initially there was a plan to quickly shoot the deer and get them aboard the boat (a 48' commercial fishing boat) and then hang them from some (to me unknown) part of the boat and gut them. But that is not what happened. Our boat killed 7 deer between about 11am and 3pm..I shot 3 between 11am and 1pm..we retrieved all the deer using the trailer boat seen in the middle photo above..the outfit we were hunting with wanted us to shoot deer and not waste time with gutting the animals immediately...we shot the deer, retreived them whole, and moved on to the next group of deer. It actually worked out very well...but at about 4pm we were told with out ceremony to gut our deer...we were on the boat headed back to Larsen Bay...I gutted my 3 three deer and helped with the others who were having problems...that nice clean aft-deck with the two bucks in the photo above was turned into a bloody mess...guts over the side and a bloody deck. All the meat was perfect though. I think the idea of not gutting the deer immediately has a commercial element to it...getting some photos of a bunch of freshly killed deer has some value..and I have to admit..I hunted on Tuesday and on Wed morning, there was a huge pile of deer lined up outside of where we were staying...and there were a lot of photos being taken....Nonetheless, the deer were gutted after the shooting was over. One of the deer I shot fell off a 60 foot cliff on the west side of Amook Island and fell into the ocean..it was a spectacular sight and I felt bad for the deer. That was an easy deer to retrieve, sort of... Guts and all.