The plan was to meet up with five of my old college buddies and to fly into Larsen Bay, on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, and hook up with Kodiak Charters for a blacktail deer hunt.

Kodiak Charters is a transporter service, which means that they can’t guide or tell you where to hunt, but will take you to where you want to hunt, drop you off and pick you up. In addition, they provide a cabin to stay in and all your meals. They can take you deep sea fishing if you want.

We had talked about getting flown into a high lake and making a camping trip out of it, but after talking with a few folks decided that between the possibility of bears and bad weather, utilizing a transport service would be a better option.

Traditionally, hunters have been able to harvest three deer on a hunt. Things started to take a turn when Alaska dropped the quota to just one deer this year.

After airplane-hopping all day, my five buddies and I were greeted by Randy and his wife, Terri, at the dirt strip in Larsen Bay and dropped off at a cozy little cabin. My hopes and dreams sank a little lower when we learned that Randy had a total of 15 hunters that week, and there were two more transport services operating out of Larsen Bay.

Sure enough, the deer were not out in droves. They definitely weren’t sunning on the open hillsides. We tried hunting high to get away from the pressure, and spent a lot of time glassing, but didn’t see much.

We started to have some luck by resorting to whitetail tactics, still hunting through the thick stuff to find them, and Jeff tagged a two-point on our first day.

After a day or two of hunting, we decided to take a break and do some fishing. Turns out that was a great idea. Bouncing cut bait off the bottom worked like a charm and we caught a bunch of halibut, cod, a few rock bass and a dogfish or two.

Most of the halibut weren’t huge, mostly 25-30 inches, but Eric hauled in two that went about 50 inches. One of my buddies caught a great big skate that gave him quite a fight, but there isn’t any meat on them, so he got tossed back.

Fishing in 250 feet of water means that it takes a long time to reel in a fish, and after catching a few I needed to take a break.

We tried hunting for a couple more days, and while I didn’t have any luck, my buddy Tom managed to sneak up on a huge buck at 30 yards.

We decided to spend the last day fishing and limited out on halibut. I was disappointed I didn’t get a deer, but that is how hunting goes sometimes.

I still had a great time hanging out with my friends and doing some great fishing. We are already talking about what our next adventure is going to be.

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