Meet my Great Granddaughter - due March 2012

Reluctantly Returning From Moose Hunting

This is the view from the vantage point where my hunting party spots moose. It is my favorite place in the world. I look forward to moose hunting more than any other time of the year. But I no longer care if I'm the one shooting the moose, I go for the long autumn days above this incredible valley. For the last 12 to 14 years I have spend from 10 days to 2 weeks in moose hunting camp. However this year, for the first time in a long time, my supervisor was not accommodating, and I was only able to spend six days in camp. I feel cheated and angry for the loss of my healing week in the wild. It was completely avoidable if others did their work in a timely fashion.  

About the Foxes...

In an earlier post I suggested that foxes were the likely preditors of my daughter's chickens. Well, maybe. But this weekend I was looking around in the woods 20 yards east of my garage at found what appears to be relatively fresh bear scat. I'm guessing a black bear by the size. Also there were no little bells in it and it didn't smell like pepper spray.

Kenai River Reds

I did my usual 2 weeks on the Kenai River fishing for Reds. It was a record breaking year for the red run. I limited every single day with my fly rod, usually in less than an hour, even after they raised the limit to 6 fish daily. Family and friends were equally successful dip netting at the mouth of the river. I probably filleted 120 fish in the 2 weeks. I broke 2 cheap flyrods and stripped the drag out of  2 equally cheap reels. So I finally invested in better equipment. I lot of sticker shock! I did a lot of sitting around in the sunshine with my old dog sleeping at my feet.

Getting ready for Dipnetting

Foxes

Recently we seem to be having a bit of a fox infestation. My sister has been steadily losing chickens to a fox or pair of foxes. She and her family have seen fox/foxes casing the joint but so far have not been able to remedy the situation. Over at Trippingovermoose Ranch my daughter lost two chickens at the same time. Even though we didn't actually see the culprits I suspect a pair of foxes.

This morning, while driving to work, I saw a young fox in the road ahead. He was hunting the road edge until I got about 75 yards away. He looked up at me gave a little jump into the air and scampered across the road and into the brush. Except for the whitetip of his tail he was completely black in color. I've seen a lot of different color phases before but this was a first. Very striking.

Chickens In The Rhubarb

My old dog.

Above Freezing

When I got home from work and took the dog for a walk it was slightly above freezing. I didn't need my Russian beaver hat. So I wore my, recently acquired, favorite baseball cap.

Katherine June Hale

February 28, 1955 to September 16, 2008