Message boards told me that going there to stalk, kill and pack out an elk is akin to wearing, protecting then destroying a ring in Mordor. And those are just the success stories.
One dude said, when you hold the permit, "You can almost feel the pain."
Others posted these encouraging tidbits: "Etolin hides 99-foot cliffs." "I didn't think it humanly possible for two men to carry an entire Roosevelt Elk out of the Etolin alpine." "Is it true that the harder the hunt, the better the meat tastes?" "That hunt is one of the toughest I know of."
"Some of the worst terrain you can imagine."
What makes the hunt so difficult is that the area is not open, so traditional methods of glassing glassing glassing is incredibly difficult, and the harshness of the terrain makes “heading over to the next ridge” an all-day affair. What Etolin Island it looks like on Google Earth isn't what it looks like in person. There are hidden cuts and cliffs. When you drop out of the alpine, it's thick and disorienting.
I chose an alpine lake for the Oct. 1-15 tag thinking the elk might still be high, or we could drop down on them from a better vantage point. For someone with really no knowledge of the spot and the vague advice of “if you find the herd, you’ll be fine” it was almost overwhelming. We walked a minimum of seven miles in each direction from our basecamp, looking for any indication that the elk were still up high, or trying to catch glimpses in clearings.
We only ended up seeing a bear, but two people shot nice bulls the same time we were there. We were a little northeast of where the herd was and both people came in from the shore. That’s the problem. If you have it scouted you can have an idea where the herd is, but it’s an island with no roads and no people. I did not have the means to scout it correctly, either spending $2000 to fly out earlier in the season, or taking a boat over early in the season. It would be an expensive run and I didn’t have a boat, or know anyone, willing to make the run just for a scouting trip.
So it would have been nice to bag an elk, but the weather was good and we got plenty of exercise. There is spotty cell service up high on certain peaks. We flew RDM out of Ketchikan. The closest town to Etolin Island is Wrangell, which is served by Alaska Airlines, or Coffman Cove. However, Ketchikan is the cheapest to access and easiest to fly from, followed by Wrangell. Coffman Cove is a small fishing community without many opportunities or resources for fly out hunts.
I updated my information (I held back a lot in the interest of protecting the hunt for the locals who treasure it) about this hunt after Corey Jacobsen had success on his elk hunt and filmed it. He was diligent in his expression that hunts are dangerous. This isn’t like getting turned around and hiking a little bit to find a road. This is inReach, call the Coast Guard territory. So hopefully if word does get out, only the prepared make the journey.
The Danger of Overexposure
By Jeff Lund
For the Juneau Empire
Elk guru Corey Jacobsen and his crew recently returned home from an absolutely miserable Alaskan elk hunt. Not typical Alaskan misery, a brand of dangerous misery that necessitates the Coast Guard for the unprepared or the unlucky. It didn’t go that way for them, because they don’t hack up the gritless, deep-pocket, private land hunting content like their predecessors and some contemporaries. They trained for the hunt, respected the severity, and I can’t wait to watch the footage.
But since he and his crew did it, will it attract more hunters? Will the spot be ruined or impossible to draw? Will he be the latest in the long line of big names from the Lower 48 who come up here, document their adventures, and be blamed for an overstress of the resource?
It’s hard not to imagine an impact when content-makers from down south come up here to do as we do for a week, then return home to hundreds of thousands of “likes,” endorsements and appearances on shows and podcasts to talk about how great our backyard is.
Read the full column here:
https://www.juneauempire.com/news/i-went-to-the-woods-the-danger-of-overexposure/