Not sure if there is anyone out there after a 7 month hiatus but with the long, wet dark starting here in the PNW I find myself with some time to reminisce about the year. Normally, I can count on some injuries or other personal circumstances to keep me writing in the basement but this year was very kind to us. Below is a rapid fire, monthly recap of 2024 to clear the backlog and get me back on schedule.
January 2024 - We started our troll quest in late 2023 but really got into it this winter. My favorite was the Vashon Island version (top of post) but they are all impressive. They are spread out across the greater Seattle area and one outcast down in Portland. You can even search for approximately 114 others further afield.
February 2024 - The month for catching up on projects on the home front with all the hunting seasons finally closed and the edible fungi taking shelter underground. We demolished our odd, three tiered deck to add a larger concrete patio that will hopefully topple less children and mitigate the mud of our big pawed pups. We also made it out to eastern Texas to visit family. We have yet to spot an alligator but the boys got to see their first herd of wild pigs.
March, 2024 - We gathered some friends for a clamming and oyster excursion at Penrose Pt State Park, a new location for us.
We wrapped up the month with a visit to Orcas Island and a day trip to San Juan Island. While I have avoided San Juan due to it having the only real city in the islands, there is a lot of fun history and scenic lighthouses if you can pull yourself away from watching the foxes. Our inter-island ferry trip home featured very disgruntled Orcas Island highschool baseball players and their parents who couldn't believe the gall of the San Juan team not conceding mid game so that their opponent could catch the ferry home.
Actually, the month ended with a truck full of not quite fully composted "Zoo Doo". The dogs loved finding the rhino nuggets but it also performed pretty well in the garden.
April 2024 - We added a tiny stove to our shed and found an elk shed to add to Woody's anxiety reduction regime.
Mid-month found us back in Colorado for more family time. We gathered in Glenwood Springs for a few days and then came back to the Front Range for my responsible spouse to get in a work day. This trip was what knocked me off the blogging wagon as there was so much history that I wanted to bore you with but I procrastinated like I was back in high school...
I spent a lot of April and May trying to will morels to appear in the same location as last year but despite 3-4 visits, they did not return.
I ended the month on an abbreviated 1.5 day turkey hunt (due to an illness back home). It was a uniquely futile hunt for me that was entirely due to my lack of skill but I did find some massive puffballs that were pretty tasty and some woods ear fungus (just figured out what they were while writing this, probably they would have been tasty too).
May 2024 - We kicked off the boating season with the Windermere Cup which included actors from Boys in Boat. What I didn't know then was that the movie is pretty poor but I will still heartily endorse the book. Then, since the boating season was open, I tried a few quick trips to Edmonds for the lingcod season. I only managed to catch one ling (too small for the slot limit), one rockfish (all those get released), and some tenacious crabs (out of season). The only protein that came home were a couple rock sole, not photogenic enough to make the post and my poor cooking attempt meant the dogs ate well that night.
Back on land, I had a much quieter oyster mushroom season but did stumble across a couple more antlers. The deadhead was on the way out of the morel burn area but maybe someone found a roadkill buck and was too lazy to cut a little lower?
Mid-month we finally laid eyes on a beachfront property that looked like it could be a good fit. This is a search that predates our kids but it was really hard to find a parcel that didn't have a house on it and/or had a monster bluff keeping you away from the sea. It was too spendy for immediate action but we did at least start looking for a realtor.
Back on the home front we visited Snoqualmie Falls and for the first time added in the train ride.
May ended with what turned out to be my last major home project of the year, yet another retaining wall. This one got done just in time to host an amazing butternut squash plant that yielded 16 squash, much to the chagrin of the children. Still, I'm going to have to switch to cocaine production if I'm ever going to break even...
June 2024 - One of our trips to the property found us heading into Cashmere for some river cooldown time and we stumbled right into their Pioneer Days. It was a pretty typical small town party and car show except that they also had multiple rounds of a helicopter dumping coolers worth of ping pong balls on top of hoards of children. We didn't snag any of the mega prizes but we will be back!
We also crept further along the path of trying to acquire the beach place. We lucked into a really honest realtor who talked us into offering way less than we would have attempted on our own. The only downside was the seller didn't even want to engage and we would have to wait patiently for the rainy season to see if they would budge.
July 2024 - Despite the modest yield in my picture, opening day was a rare limit of 5 keepers after 2 hours of soaking and I even got to filter for the biggest. July also brought our first summer of camps for our oldest and a roadtrip down to the Columbia Gorge and back home along the east of the Cascades. We will try to revisit the route without the highs being over 100F but the timing did let me get a sneak peek at the record sockeye run making its way to the Okanogan River (over 750k made it over Bonneville dam).
Because the sockeye numbers were already ridiculous, I got an early start on the season with my trips down the Okanogan starting on the 9th at the unholy time of 3:30am. After many years of fishing for upriver sockeye, I think I finally have my system down and it took me less than 1.5 hours to catch my four fish each day. That gave me some time to drive downriver to Chelan Falls and try for kings but that effort continued to be futile for me (even while guided by professionals).
Unaccustomed to such success, I begged and pleaded for another chance to really stack up these scrumptious fish. Its probably sacrilege to treat these premium fish so poorly but my favorite meal right now is salmon patties and lettuce on a well mayonnaised bun. I could eat them everyday and regularly do! Now its almost a necessity because I did get to head out a week later and netted two more quick limits.
My favorite part of trip was when a former coworker braved the Brewster boat ramp and got his family on some fish while I was in charge of photography and shouting unhelpful advice. If I could figure out how to make it pay, I think guiding by paddling alongside another boat provides much better pictures and I wouldn't need to spend over $200k getting a tricked out guide's sled.
The last adventure of July was a big one. We gathered two sets of grandparents, shoved them onto the giant boat above and headed for Alaska. Ok, it is giant but at about 2,000 passengers, we were often parking near boats in the 4,000-6,000 range (our boat is the bottom right one trying to hide behind the tree).
Our route took us outside of Vancouver Island and then to Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, and Victoria with a cruise up the Endicott Arm to see Dawes Glacier. The Endicott was the highlight of the trip for me, basically a flooded version of Yosemite with whales, seals, and icebergs.
Sitka was good for some rock scrambling and watching pink salmon stacking up in the bay. Although what I'll remember most is our crew getting bluff charged by an otter from underneath a heat pump.
In Ketchikan we got to watch seals chasing salmon right in town before we headed off for a late evening in Victoria.
August 2024 - We made it back home just in time for the bear season opener. It is always a crap shoot if the berries will still be around on August 1st and this year was not ideal with most of the surviving berries looking pretty desiccated. The first morning I heard a few bears and got to watch a young one moseying around. I had high hopes for the afternoon when my neighbor would be arriving for his first hunt of any kind. Instead, we didn't see or hear another bear for the rest of the weekend... The highlight of the hunt ended up being my midday drive up to the end of Icicle Creek Rd, into country that had echos of Colorado camping as a kid.
Without worrying about scaring away bears, we could squeeze in bonus camping trips with friends at the property.
Back on the wet side, it was raining and kicking off a very productive shroom season with lots of lobsters on the dehydrator:
But most of the mushrooming would have to wait because our final summer trip was a week on Vancouver Island.
The scenery and outdoor recreation opportunities were everything you would expect but I think our kids were most stoked that our Airbnb was adjacent to a working dairy. We spent several afternoons feeding blackberry leaves to the goats, petting newborn calves, and admiring their automated milking, feeding, and manure scrapers machines. On the mushroom front, I found my first Canadian white chanterelles and lobsters.
On the ferry ride home we got a bonus whale tour with the boat taking evasive action as a grey whale popped up so close that I lost sight of it below the bow. A little while later a pod of orcas swam by.
September 2024 - This is the month where I really got carried away with my harvesting. Grouse hunting and fishing would have to wait for another year. It all started with some productive low land, summer chanterelle and lobster harvesting and then when I had a full day to spare I would head up above 3,000' to collect heaps of porcini and my first hedgehogs.
My first earthstars (below) were spotted on Tiger Mountain but just a couple seconds after this picture, Woody came running through. I was on my knees taking more pictures and that gave me a great view of the swarm of yellow jackets coming out of the ground from amongst the earthstars. I got hit at least 10 times before I got far enough away. In a great injustice, Woody got a single sting... I stumbled out of the forest with a thumping headache but not before finding another few pounds of lobsters.
In other news, the boys continued building hydraulic features on any body of water they see and I made it out for a single, foggy, futile paddle for coho salmon just off of Golden Gardens in Seattle. Even though I didn't hook into any fish, it was a lot of fun to watch the dolphins working the same zone. While it's obnoxious to be trolling with a single rod, I hope to get started in the salt much earlier and more often next year.
October 2024 - With the freezer, fridge, and mason jars all overflowing with mushrooms, I started giving away the bulk of my harvests and trying to get more people into the woods with me to experience the bounty of what everyone who would know agrees was an epic chanterelle year.
We took my bear hunting curious neighbor out crabbing and loaned him the kayak to deploy his pot. Unfortunately, my coaching on dropping down the pot was not up to snuff and an apparent knot in their rope meant that a 100' of rope disappeared in about 50' of water, never to be seen again. My pots were still productive so we could offer a couple consolation crabs.
My eldest got deadly serious about chestnut collecting in a Seattle park near us. This is by no means a secret bounty, with folks standing under each tree for hours at a time but he could out hustle the competition. I eventually had to cut him off because no matter the cooking technique, I was spending hours after each trip trying to peel them.
I drew a quality deer tag this year (my first) that I had no business drawing. Normally, it takes folks closer to 15-20 years to draw and I got it on my 7th year. That meant the boys could come up with me to help distract Uncle Jerm from his general season hunt. We are probably the reason he didn't have any success this year...
The quality tag also meant I was free to get Woody out east to try for early season pheasants. Due to an odd convergence of state and federal duck hunting regulations, my window to get out coincided with a two day duck closure. That would come to haunt me as the ducks demonstrated an uncanny understanding of the regulations and often let me creep within ranges I never experience in December or January. To add insult to injury, the pheasants were also demonstrating wisdom beyond their years and we went home empty handed (at least until we got to the mountains and grabbed the last porcini and first winter chanterelles of the year).
The biggest news of October is that we finally closed on the beach property (formally dubbed the "wet property" by my oldest). We celebrated by rounding up the gloves and clippers to do battle with the ivy, blackberries, and scotch broom. The best tides for clamming in winter are falling in darkness so we won't know for sure if there are any clams to be had until spring.
November 2024 - Game time on the quality tag! There were seven tag holders in the whole unit (approx 500 square miles) and we had 20 days of hunting to find one of the monster mountain mule deer. This was a migratory hunt that gets really good with the mountain snow pushing the herds down to lower elevations. The first weekend I was solo and really hoping against all reason to find a big buck on the property. I did find one elk shed and a couple trail cameras did pick up a mature 4x4 buck the day before my season but didn't see a single deer in person.
Things got better when I moved off the property with sporadic deer moving about. I almost tagged out on the evening of Day 2 when a doe and I stumbled into each other at about 100 yards. I sat down and did my best to look like an herbivore. There was no specific plan but after a couple minutes I peeked back up and a big buck was staring me down. He started licking his lips and glancing between me and the doe, clearly debating his personal safety vs generating his progeny. He never had to make the call as the doe finally got wind of my very non-herbivore scent and bolted.
I headed higher up into mountains for Day 3 but never came across anything with antlers. It was a pretty cool weekend and I had met two of my fellow tag holders while on the roads. The next two weekends were looking more promising with some weather coming and help from the locals.
Day 8 started in the afternoon in the same country that I tried to check out on foot. This time we had a side by side, a first for me. We could drive up to 5,000' and glass into even higher country. Didn't see a big buck but more deer than I had seen in my three days of solo hunting.
Day 9 saw us back down lower chasing reports of a big buck that a local saw the night before. Much to my surprise, we had 4 people in the rig for this morning. I don't think this kind of team hunt is my thing but I was very grateful for the help. We never found the big guy but one of the other tag holders did a couple days later. Our highlight was a decent 3x3 buck and in his little harem was a piebald doe (kinda like an albino but only patchy white).
Day 10 we tried the same area in the AM and then swung back by the property in desperation. It was near dark on the way back out of the mountains that we spotted a mature buck chasing does, maybe a mile away. We were too slow on the spotting scope to count antlers and by the time we drove closer and walked into the area where we could see some of his does, we ran out of daylight. Six days of hunting without even chambering a round might be a record for me but both weekends came with one big shot of adrenaline and I would have one more weekend (with maybe some weekdays if I really begged and pleaded).
Day 15 we went even lower elevation and I got to meet another local who was obsessed with hunting at a level I'll probably never fully comprehend. We still hadn't had sufficient snow to push down the mountain bucks but the hope was that at least a few of the orchard does would be coming into heat and that might pull bigger bucks out of their hidey holes for the rut.
That didn't pan out as planned but we eventually ended up following the roads back until we were at a decent elevation. Around 2pm, my "guide" spotted two bucks and a doe working across a very steep hillside. As we watched them and got setup, it became apparent that one buck was worthy of an attempt
(at least by my standards, my friends would have kept driving) but a sickening feeling came with knowing he was 400 yards away and there wasn't a realistic way to get closer. For my friends, this was still in the chip shot range but it was almost twice as long as any shot I have tried. I wouldn't have shot without utilizing a tricked out loaner rifle and a snazzy tripod rest. As the big buck was facing down his little buddy, I took a shot and missed high... The deer didn't take off but I was feeling physically sick about missing and the range only increased as they worked along the rocks. We decided to call it a day and come back to the same area in the morning. I haven't completely missed a deer in at least 17 years and it made for a rough night of sleep...
(at least by my standards, my friends would have kept driving) but a sickening feeling came with knowing he was 400 yards away and there wasn't a realistic way to get closer. For my friends, this was still in the chip shot range but it was almost twice as long as any shot I have tried. I wouldn't have shot without utilizing a tricked out loaner rifle and a snazzy tripod rest. As the big buck was facing down his little buddy, I took a shot and missed high... The deer didn't take off but I was feeling physically sick about missing and the range only increased as they worked along the rocks. We decided to call it a day and come back to the same area in the morning. I haven't completely missed a deer in at least 17 years and it made for a rough night of sleep...
Day 16 we did a quicker scan for orchard deer but all three of us were ready to get up into the timber. It was about four hours without seeing a mature buck but on the way back down we spotted the same big buck standing on what I could only describe as his rock throne. While not sporting an epic set of antlers, he had a huge body and looked magnificent in his element. This time he was solo and staring us down but at 400 yards away and downhill, we opted to load back up and try to find a shot at him from a bit closer. It was maybe 20 mins until we walked along an old road and spotted him laying down on his throne. As we set up, he was still 340 yards away and dozing. I got steady and ... missed high again. The buck woke up but didn't stand up, perhaps thinking a tree had fallen? We dialed the scope down and my third shot was finally on target and he tipped over and that was the end of my first, potentially only, quality deer hunt.
In the postmortem we found a small scab along his back that corresponded with a small puff of hair I had dismissed as camera noise that we could see in the previous day's spotting scope video. I'm not sure if it was because I was wearing my old man glasses or if the scope was just dialed a little high but it was a huge relief knowing my shots were always good right/left and I was not flinching high on the shot. The other thing I'm feeling much better about is having meat in the freezer that can't give me trichinosis (unlike the bears). So far we have made some of my favorite chili adobo jerky from Hank Shaw's recipe, tried some steaks, and made a Mississippi roast. Finally, because he was a big bodied deer, my friend could recover his cape and trade that in to his taxidermist for some significant store credit.
Apologies that November was consumed by the deer hunt but that is how the month felt for me. Although, once the meat was processed, it was back into the woods for more chanterelles/winter chanterelles and little projects at the "wet property":
Well, if I hadn't lost all my readers with the long hiatus, I've certainly scared everyone away before the epilogue... If you somehow managed to get this far, I tip my hat to your persistence and I'll do my best to return to more regular and digestible reports from the field for December and beyond. Happy holidays and take care!