Today's outing was ptarmigan hunting in the mountains about a 20 minute bush plane flight up into the mountains.
Even though the peaks top out at only 4,000 ft they looked and felt like triple that. Tundra, no treeline at all, just bare mountain. Powerful winds of 35 MPH gusting to near 50. Temps in the low 40s with wind chill factor made it feel like mid 30s.
Terrain was exactly what we expected, very steep with loose broken rock under foot much of the time after we climbed above the tundra.
Our guide Monte has over 30 years of experience and teaches certification classes for other guides. His Labradoodle Charlie was energetic and loads of fun.
Not 5 minutes into the hunt, I stumbled onto a ptarmigan just hanging out. He started running and I called out "bird!" to Brian and Monte. It flew up and I brought it down with one shot.
Over the next few hours we flushed several dozen ptarmigan but hit just a few of them. The wind roared, skies darkened and some rain began to fall. We were now several miles from where the float plane had dropped us off but a new cluster of birds erupted from some willow bushes completely distracting us from the harsh conditions. Brian got a couple and we noted where the escapees landed. As we closed in on them, we could see about ten birds out in the open tundra scurrying around and watching us approach. When we got near they all took off at once. Brian and I missed all of them but Monte got a couple.
I got one more in a crossing shot leaving Monte agape at how I could miss all of the previous flush at close range and still make the more difficult one afterward. We headed back to the dropoff place to wait for the float plane.
Monte told us we got 15 birds total. Funny, I only remember getting 4 and Brian got 5 or 6. So I asked Monte how many birds he got and he slyly said that Brian got 8 and I got 7.
Plane picked us up in very windy conditions that lesser pilots would likely not have attempted. Another amazing day on our adventure.
Tomorrow we will do a drift boat trip down the famous Kenai River fishing for dolly varden and rainbow trout.
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