One of my pastimes

[joechop]

yep - 77 FLH just finished it about a month ago. not to jack the thread, but since you asked.....

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Glad to hear you're doing well.

joe

[railroad bob]

That's a real beauty Joe, lotsa nice touches to it.
The gold leaf really makes the color stand out, and I like the split boxes, oil bag (& mount), air cleaner...........
Bet it rides good with that FXR swingarm.

[railroad bob]

These were taken March 2011. My friend Cory came up from Anchorage with 2 snow machines, and we went into the wilderness looking for a spring bear.
That is a bear that has recently come out of hibernation and is searching for food to stoke the old furnace after being damped down all winter.
Sometimes you have to find the den and see if Mr Bruin is still inside. Kinda like knocking on the door, ya know?

The first shot is me with both machines parked on the Chatanika River after a 15 mile ride from the top of Murphy Dome. I have a freight sled behind my Arctic Cat Bearcat.

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This is Cory. We had stopped on the river to wait for a moose to go up onto the riverbank. We didn't want to get to close, as they can become agressive, and have attacked people, sometimes fatally. The moose is the dark spot at the river bend in the distance. She was pretty spooked, so we were careful to not get any closer. Didn't want her to hurt herself running from us. Cory is the same friend I met in Roswell NM in October to ride Harleys with for a day.

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We never got to the area I had been told about. We rode into the area 2 days, coming back home each evening. The weather was clear but cold, maybe around -10F down to -20F, depending on location. Riding from the river up to the top of Murphy dome was very windy.
I bought a helmet for the second day of riding. The trail was drifted badly the first day, as there had been an unusual wind storm the previous week. Very tough going, even on an established trapline trail.
Normally I would not ride on one, but trapping season was over, and all traps and sets should have been pulled, and they were. We had no encounters of that sort.
Each day of riding was over a pretty tough trail, and we traveled about 75 miles round trip each day.
We did have a beaver encounter tho, sorta...

We were riding along a frozen slough (creek or stream in some places) and started finding beaver dams across the stream. After jumping over the first 5, we finally met our match. This one was huge and towered almost 5 feet above the snow level. Cory tried riding around the end, but got hung up on stumps beneath the snow. He finally made it out by goosing the throttle, and the machine shot out from under him and went about 50 feet across the snow before it idled to a stop.
Since he is only about 5'6, it was a little amusing to see him trudging in waist deep snow to get to it. He is a helluva rider tho, and when he was on it again, he jumped back across the dam with it. The nose of the snow machine was almost 15 feet in the air when he did that, and he landed in the powder back on the right side.

We thought about trying to travel thru the woods, but the beaver had been so active, there were trees dropped everywhere, and it would have been a nightmare to try that.

Here is a pic of some trees the beaver whittled on, but didn't completely drop.

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This is a bridge on the trail we were following. Handbuilt by someone unknown, likely the trapper, but possibly not. It crossed a narrow little gully about 5 feet deep. No way to nose into it and get back out, the machines would have been stuck nose down in the hole.

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I had quite a bit of survival gear with us, just in case. Wyas to build a fire, come-alongs, poly rope, axe, meals, water, etc. A 12 gauge shotgun for the bear, a 454 pistol. When we finished riding and were loading the sno-mos on the trailer, I found my plastic gun case shattered, and the shotgun had come apart, the trail was so rough. Lessons learned.

The third day we elected to do some easy trail riding close to the house. My son came over and we rode up to a local bluff and along the Tanana River. Both the sleds they were riding were much faster, so they kinda layed back and let me lead. I felt like I was holding them up, so I was pushing my machine pretty hard, went over a couple of humps and dropped into a hole doing about 60mph. When I shot up out of the other side I was tossed off onto the river ice. Luckily I only slid maybe 50 feet and didn't hit any driftwood or a sandbar. My visor was up tho, so I had to clean a lot of snow out before I could see again.

So that was the easy riding. All in all, we had a lot of fun, explored new country, found some cool trails, and plan to do it again.

Maybe next time I'll find a bear.

[Maxthegardener]

Active beaver in the tundra theres me thinkin there was a shortage up there

[railroad bob]

The shortage of beaver in Alaska is well known, especially beaver with a prime pelt and nice tail.

[railroad bob]

Here is a picture my buddy took in November.
I was away from home working on the North Slope. He lives in Anchorage, and
was staying at my place while working in Fairbanks.

This is the thermometer outside my living room window....

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[railroad bob]

Here is a picture of the results of a hunting trip in about 1993 or 1994. My buddy Jesse is standing at the rear of my truck, parked in front of his house right after we got back to town.

We hunted all day, both got lucky at dusk. I got the moose and he got the black bear. The moose rack on the front of the wheeler is upside down in the pic, and measure 65-1/2 inches across at the widest point. He was a big old boy too, I think a hind quarter would weigh around 150 pounds. I found bite scars on a hind leg, certainly from a wolf, and probably during a recent winter when we had record snowfall and the moose were having a tough time traveling. Wolves got a lot of them that winter.

The black bear measures about 6-1/2 feet, and I would call it a medium size.

We worked on both all night, skinning and putting in game bags, and I was hauling loads to the truck 7 miles away. It was early afternoon by the time we got to his house, and another couple hours to hang the meat to cool

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[Maxthegardener]

Thats fekin wilde man...


Bet you have good BBQ's

[railroad bob]

It was a very good day. We got off the wheeler, hiked down the trail, and when I got to a place I could see down the ridge, those big antlers were flashing in the sun like a big sheet of plywood. I started running down the trail cause it was a couple miles down, thinking my buddy Jesse was right behind me.
I was able to get within 70 yards of the 2 cows the bull was hanging around, but he was 200 yards away. The cows started getting my scent cause the wind was whirling around, got spooky and took off. That spooked the bull, he ran about 50 yards and stopped. I was still couple hundred yards away, but stood up and shot him behind the shoulder twice. Thats when I found out Jesse was nowhere around. Found out later he had decided to hike toward the trailhead hunting as he went.

I waited several minutes before I went up to the bull. Thats when the comedy of errors started. 3 knives were dull, no flashlight, couldn't get a fire going, had to hike up the mountain in the dark, found the note at the wheeler, went to let Jesse know about the bull, he was hiking back to let me know he got the bear.

Wound up working all night, unloading the truck for gear, loading in the bear, skinning and bagging the bull, hauling to the truck (about 7 miles each way). After the last trip of several, had to unload the meat and bear to load the wheeler, load the meat and bear again, drive to town, hang the meat.

There was enough meat to last me and Jesse's family for more than a year, and I gave some to some other friends.
The old guy had some revenge tho, cause the meat was pretty tough. I made a lotta stew and chili with it.

We were riding on the wheeler with the last load coming out, had the antlers strapped on to the front rack upside down, went around a curve in the trail to see another hunter scrambling to get his rifle out. He saw those huge antlers come around and got all excited thinking he had a record bull walking into his sights. Luckily he realized they were upside down before he could unload a round.

Just for reference, the antlers are wider than a pickup truck.

[railroad bob]

While I was hauling meat to the truck, I had such a load Jesse waited at the moose. I didn't think too much about it at the time, but in the back of my mind I noticed that not much was done when I got back after each meat run.

I didn't realize until years later that Jesse was sitting there by a moose carcass in the middle of the night by himself.
I guess he was OK with it, he never complained, but as I've mentioned before, we do have a lot of bear activity in the area, lucky a big griz didn't come along. I woulda felt sorry for the bear.