Posted By: Capt.JVH
Barrow's and Harlequin in Alaska - 11/11/21 12:21 AM
Just got back from a week with my good friend in Ketchikan. Although hunting rutting blacktail was the main goal, we found a few days to do a diver hunt and then a sea duck hunt on Sunday. The Barrows Goldeneye were all over around the islands we were deer hunting. We decoy hunted them one morning and had a blast. The days where I need to shoot a limit are long gone. I was enjoying decoying birds and picking out stud drakes. We could have filled 10 limits with drake goldeneye in two hours if we wanted to. They were truly everywhere. We also jump shot stream pockets at low tide. They were holding good numbers of cananda's and mallards. We shot enough to eat.
Sunday, was the best. Our original plan was to hunt the rocks outside of Ketchikan for scoters. The whitewings and Surfs were starting to show up. But...... on the way out we started seeing big numbers of harlequins. All fresh birds. Our plan quickly changed. We found a cove at low tide full of mussels. set up our string and had them in the decoys before we moved the boat. We took our time and picked out drakes for a few hours as the tide started rising. I got a huge whitewing scoter, a few buffleheads and some surfs. It was such a fun hunt. I love open water hunting. It was always my favorite when I lived in Corpus. Again, after a while we hung up the guns and broke out the camera.
I brought a few harli's home for the wall. And a few barrows for a dead mount to mimic a picture I took on the boat. I've got a barrows mounted already but 2 more couldn't hurt
Deer hunting is fun but hunting crazy rough water off the rocks for probably the prettiest duck in America really did it for me. The pics could have been better. It was raining, go figure.
John
Sunday, was the best. Our original plan was to hunt the rocks outside of Ketchikan for scoters. The whitewings and Surfs were starting to show up. But...... on the way out we started seeing big numbers of harlequins. All fresh birds. Our plan quickly changed. We found a cove at low tide full of mussels. set up our string and had them in the decoys before we moved the boat. We took our time and picked out drakes for a few hours as the tide started rising. I got a huge whitewing scoter, a few buffleheads and some surfs. It was such a fun hunt. I love open water hunting. It was always my favorite when I lived in Corpus. Again, after a while we hung up the guns and broke out the camera.
I brought a few harli's home for the wall. And a few barrows for a dead mount to mimic a picture I took on the boat. I've got a barrows mounted already but 2 more couldn't hurt
Deer hunting is fun but hunting crazy rough water off the rocks for probably the prettiest duck in America really did it for me. The pics could have been better. It was raining, go figure.
John