Reba Dog

                                 

 

I watched as the 93 year old bent down to pet the white headed lab lying in the pen. The old dog had been watching for “Dad” to come home for some time. Something was wrong.  The once powerful  hind legs could not find the strength to stand. Great effort was made the legs shook with effort the old dog began panting. I could see love in both eyes, the old man and the old dog. Re, as Dad called Reba,  will look right past anyone at her pen gate, and look for only Dad. 

“I guess you might have to take her to the vet and have her put down,” Dad said to me once inside the house. “I just don’t think I can do it myself,” he continued.

A big lump lodged in my chest.  I fight back the tears. I Don’t want to have to do that either. One of us has to as we both are not willing to watch such a great friend and hunting pal suffer so much.
 Dad and I have been away on a week long deer hunt. This is our welcome home greeting when we arrived. The hunt is forgotten, now all my thought s are on this great dog.
 I think back over  the past nine years and the many, many hunts we have been on. I drive into Dad’s drive way to see Re jumping up on the top of her plywood dog house cover and back to the ground. She is so excited to see me and know we are going on another duck hunt.  I park the truck and open the tailgate for my dog, Jasmine, to jump out. Jaz races to Re’s pen and they both get each other hyper  as I go to let Re out. Re races out of the pen, and straight up into the back of the truck. She then jumps back out and races around the yard with Jaz. We get such a kick out of watching them race around before an early morning hunt.
Dad and I walk down the brushy trail, through the trees, to our favorite hunting blind. The two dogs race around, disappearing in the dark for a short while, then come racing back to check on us. Re is very attentive to Dad. If he stumbles and falls in the big heavy waders, Re is right there beside him making sure he gets up. She seems to be out racing around but she is always right there when Dad might be in need.
 Re put her whole heart into retrieving ducks.  She bails out of the blind and launches into the air to hit the cold river water swimming. Jaz  is not so eager. She runs from the blind to the river’s edge and then eases into the water for her swimming retrieves.
Dad would have to tie Re on a rope in the blind as she would power ahead of Jaz and make every retrieve. It was just her nature. She is just such a good hard working dog wanting to please.
On blind retrieves both dogs would disappear into the thick river brush and tulles to seek out a downed duck. Jaz would come back in short while giving up, but not Re. That little yellow lab would keep at it. She would crash and splash and almost always come back, covered in mud, but proudly bearing a duck.
Dad is 93 and to keep in shape takes a early morning walk. He cut across my brother’s yard and into an empty horse pasture. At the gate he gives Re a half a dog treat cookie. He then jogs about 400 yards to some berry bushes and then back to the gate. Re races around like a rocket burning off the nights pent up energy. She chases fox, deer, and any other wild creature that might be lurking around the pasture.
At the gate Dad had the other half a cookie waiting as a bribe to get Re back and headed to home. Re is always right there to get her treat and finish the walk with Dad.
 If  he falls on the jog or walk I’ve always known  Re is right there to make sure he gets up. I wonder who will do that now? 
I now face the task of breaking this great companionship, friendship of an old man and an old dog. My heart is breaking. I am not ashamed of the tears that flow hot down my cheeks. It just seems so unfair that they both can’t just live forever. I know Dogs are short lived pals, but it is never easy to say good by and especially to a really good one.
Good by Re, my friend and hunting partner. May the gentle wind always blow in your face. May you run in fields of warm sunshine forever. May all your rivers be grand to swim in, and ducks catchable.
An old man and myself will really miss you. There will be a huge hole in our hearts each time we pass your pen, or see a green head mallard duck fly past. We will move on. We may own other dogs, but I can assure you none will be like you. You are a once in a lifetime dog.

Re you were the best.

dads deer

                                            Dad’s Deer

Down from Alaska into the state of Idaho, I had traveled to meet up with friends and family for their annual whitetail deer hunt.

 I was just a tag along, help out where needed guy on this trip. I did not have a deer tag or carry a gun.
Hunting whitetail deer is quite a challenge. I watch the hunting channel where the stars sit for endless days in tree stands waiting for some unsuspecting deer to walk the trail below so they can shoot. That is definitely not the way we hunt here in Idaho. Can you spell Boring with a capital B?
We get out and hunt hard in Idaho, sneaking along ridge tops or into the deep dark forested canyons hoping to catch a glimpse of the deer before they hear, see, or smell you. It is one of the greatest rewards in hunting to know you have hunted well enough to sneak up on a monster whitetail buck.
The challenge this year was to see if we could get my 93 year old Dad a nice deer.
 Mom’s instructions when we were leaving was, “Now, don’t you go and shoot a rank old rutting buck that is not fit to eat! We want a young, good eating deer to fill the freezer.”
The hunter in me finds that hard to abide by. I am always looking for the biggest deer with the largest antlers.
Dad and I hunted hard for a couple days, but came up empty. I am still amazed at how far Dad walked on some of those hunts.  I would get back to the truck tired and ready for the hot fire and big meal. At 93 he just seems unstoppable.  
Snow is a key component on this hunt and so far nothing had hit the ground but the liquid kind… Rain.
 On the third day we finally saw some snow hit the ground the deer seemed to be moving a bit more. They were not responding to rattling horns or grunting on our calls. It looked like just spotting one was the way to hunt this year.
We were driving along a little logging road chatting and have a good time. I looked over and spotted deer ears peaking above a log off to the side.
 I stopped the truck and asked Dad to hop out, never mentioning that I had spotted a deer. I wanted to keep him as calm as possible.
Dad clamored out of the truck and I followed out his side with his shooting sticks. I know he is a good enough shot, even at 93, to shoot without the stick but that is the sure way to get a solid rest.
 I walk dad around the truck to the side of the road, still not telling him that there was a deer laying in the brush just a ways away.
I had him kneel in the snow and then set up his sticks. With gun in place I pointed out the still bedded deer. Dad was locked on. I could see the gun weaving from side to side, and even though the deer was close a head shot is never easy.
 Just as he was about to shoot, a nice young doe stands up right beside the bedded deer.
“There’s the one you want to shoot,” I whispered in Dad’s ear. I slowly swung his gun to the right so he could pick up the deer in his scope.
“Are you on it?” I whispered.
“Yeah, I am right on it,” he responded, and I could see he was much steadier on this deer.
“Shoot when ready,”
 I watched through binoculars as he squeezed of his shot.  Perfect. The deer went down.
 No sooner had that deer gone down then two more stood up. Dad levered in another shell thinking he had missed.
“Don’t shoot!” I said, “You’ve got yours down.”
 Dad took the live round out of his gun then aimed at the still standing deer and said, “Pow.  You’re dead.”
We walked over to claim his prize deer. A very nice young doe, just what Mom had ordered.
At  camp everyone was very proud of a 93 year old being able to harvest yet another deer. I was so thankful for being with him when he accomplished such a feat.
Good shooting Dad.

Hawaii

                                                                            Hawaii

We are on our way to Hawaii. I must admit, it is not my planning that is getting me to the island of paradise.  I told Rene if she wanted to go to plan it and I’d tag along.

 There is no easy way to get from Alaska to anywhere, let alone half a world away to some place sunny.

 We Leave Sitka at six in the morning,  take a quick flight to Juneau, change planes and head to Ketchikan. After a short stop without leaving the plane, we head to Seattle.  Another plane change and we are off to Sacramento. A short stop there and we are finally on our way to paradise.
Five and a half hours later we are at last seeing the lights of Maui. As the big plane drifts down for a landing we are seeing a sight that makes Alaska island dweller’s hearts skip beats. There is solid traffic bumper to bumper as far as we can see.
 Now, coming from a town of 8,500 people the last thing we need is to try and navigate through bumper to bumper traffic for nearly an hour to get to our condo for the night.
 Rene grew up around big cities so when the traffic gets stuffy, I leave the driving up to her.
 “Looks like you’ll have to take this one tonight,” I comment to her still peering out the plane window.
 It is 8:30 p.m. when the big bird touches down on the hot Maui runway. Well, hot to us, not to the locals.
 We leave the plane and stroll into the airport to find people racing to get luggage and get out the doors. Not to uncommon in airports and probably everyone in a hurry to get into their shorts and tee shirts to keep from melting in the sweltering heat.
 Rene’s phone cheeps that a text came in. She stops in her tracks. “Tsunami” is the only word written. It is from our daughter Brooke, who is in Sitka holding down the fort as we play.
 We get to the car rental window to find a cardboard sign hurriedly written telling all to go take the shuttle to the lot for car rentals tonight.
Now we are starting to hear the word. Tsunami is coming for Hawaii! It is now nine at night and it is supposed to hit the island at ten thirty! Everyone is racing to get out of the airport, especially the employees, and to get to high ground. The airport is just about at sea level and expected to take a good drubbing if the wave reaches here.
 Rene is in touch with Brooke who is informing us that a quake in British Columbia might have caused a tsunami that is supposed to reach Alaska and then Hawaii. Brook then informed us that the wave did not hit Sitka even though they were under the Tsunami  warning there as well. That was good news. Our little condo up there sits on ocean front and will be one of the first to go if a good wave washes that place.
 We get to the car rental yard and people are racing around everywhere. We check in to get our little compact car. When we go to pick it out the help in the parking yard are shouting, “Just pick a rig, any one you want! If the tsunami does hit all these cars will be destroyed.  No extra charge, just pick one and get to high ground!”
 We are in a row of small SUV’s so we just race to a gray one and jump in. On the way out the girl scans the car and hands us the paper work.
 “Where do we go?” we asked her. “This is our first time on the island.”
 The girl rushed into a route we should take to get to some highway to get us out of town and towards a mountain.
 “You’d best be getting out of here as they are going to close all the lower roads and highways in one hour,” she admonishes as she races away to save herself.
 Pitch black darkness, in some strange rental car, in a place we have never seen, no maps, no g.p.s. this is a great start to a week’s vacation.
At last Rene finds her way out of the airport and into the bumper to bumper traffic heading somewhere. I am giving her my best navigation advice, “I don’t know where we are. I don’t know which way for you to turn. I don’t have a clue where we should go.”
  Following my close directions in that manner we make it to the highway. We race along at snail’s pace to wherever these people think is the right place to go. Now we know what the Lemmings in the middle of the line must have felt when heading to the cliff! “Wonder where all these guys are going. So many surely can’t be wrong, I’ll just fall in line and see where it takes me.”
 At last my crafty navigation (Rene might tell it another way) gets us heading to distant lights we see up on a hill. Right now we are liking to see lights way up on some hill.
 All the locals are zooming around like they know where they are going, turning down this street, and off into that house. We imagine they are just getting off work and racing home to save their trinkets before they race themselves up some secret mountain where they will be saved from the big wave and the lost tourists.
 We are up some hill getting into houses but the cars behind are going crazy trying to push around us in our floundering.
“Pull over into this driveway,” I shout with great navigation knowledge. It seems there has been a tad bit of shouting going on inside this rental car. Seems like a family vacation now, lots of shouting and just a little bit of driving.
 We are trying to decide what to do when a girl comes out of the house to see who the crazies are in her yard.
Using our best Hawaiian we inform her we are tourists ( That was no surprise as most everyone on the island is as well) and don’t have a clue where to go to be safe for the night in the tsunami.
 The gracious girl has only been on the island a short time, but she grabs a neighbor from next door and the kind man gives us good directions on how to get to a rescue center just up the way from where we are parked. He even gives us a route around most of the traffic.
 Rene drives the little SUV through the subdivision and into a shopping mall of some sort, and we pull in with a kazillion other people and settle in for the long, long night.
We were not informed of the proper way to spend a tsunami night in a parking lot. These local people were well versed in the proper educate of tsunami survival. The little trinkets they had raced home to save from the wave, were cases of beer! The parking lot was a roaring party.
Rene and I were so exhausted from flying for the past 15 hours that the last place we wanted to be was the parking lot tango. At about midnight we drove to a quieter place and drifted off to sleep in half reclined seats, just one notch better than a plane.
Nothing like a romantic night in a car with my wife!  It was so hot outside that we couldn’t leave the windows down for air so we had to keep starting the car for some air-conditioning.  At about two thirty in the morning we woke from our spotty sleep to find the parking lots empting out. It must be over.
We (Rene) drove an hour to our place of abode and finally crawled into bed at about 4:40 A.M.        Welcome to Hawaii!   

diving for cucumbers part 2

  Mike and I race to town after selling our catch at the tender. We are racing time to get in before the stores close. We need new belts on the compressor and I need to try and glue a new neck seal on my dive suit.

  As soon as I get cell phone reception I am on the phone with Ketchikan dive shop ordering a new dive undergarment. I have a spare dry suit but once my undergarment is wet I am done diving. Lesson well learned. I have a new undergarment on the way before we even reach town. I love the modern world of cell phones.

  The compressor belts are a quick fix and it is up and running. I spend all evening and  into the night working on replacing the neck seal on the dry suit.
  Five in the morning Mike and I are once again on the boat heading to Neva Strait.We race through the staging dive fleet and arrive on our spot about an hour before the eight o’clock dive opening time. 
  I don’t trust my neck seal repair so I squeeze into my back up suit. It is a custom made suit for a time when I weighed quite a bit less. Mike helps me wiggle, tug, and strain myself into it.
  Just before eight. The machines are running, Mike has me in about 25 feet of water. Hovering just outside us is the trooper boat, glasses trained on the divers, making sure no one enters the water one minute early.
 “Time!” Mike shouts.
 “Give me a couple more minutes in case the troopers watches are off from our cell phone time,” I shout back.
   “Three after!” Mike yells and I bail off the boat into the frigid Alaskan waters.
  Cucumbers are everywhere. They are stacked over themselves in what we divers consider the best picking. I am grabbing and stuffing bags as quickly as possible. The sweet air from the compressor is filling my chest as I pant from exertion.
  Good picking for me is about 20 minutes per bag. Right now I’m sending them up every 10 to 15 minutes… great picking.
  The seven bags I have taken down with me seem to vanish in no time. I slowly ascend to the surface with my last bag. I hand it to mike, spit out the regulator and shout above the noisy machines.
  “You doing OK?”
   “Great!” mike yells back.
  “I need a new stack of bags.”
   Mike helps me up on the back of the boat as he stuffs my dive bag with seven new bags. We are both giddy about the great picking.
  We only have untill noon today on this opening. Not much time considering how far behind we are from yesterday’s mishaps, but we are sure giving it the old college try.
  It seems in no time at all I feel the tug, tug, tug on my air hose signaling me to come to surface. Mike wants to talk to me.
  “Time is up!” he shouts when my head breaks water.
  I know I have sent up a lot of bags but I am not sure how many.  I’ve replenished my seven bag stock several times.
   “I think we’ve got them all,” Mike says once all the noisy machines are shut down. “I’m pretty sure you’ve picked enough to make 2,000 pounds for the two days.”
  We clean up the deck and motor to the tender. We are the first boat in line. We bucket our catch into his hoist system to be weighed.
  Sure enough, we have just made our total poundage for the day and a half opening. Two thousand pounds!
  It is an exciting run to town chatting about the past day and a half. Who would have thought a couple of old duffers could have made up that much ground after being behind so much on the first day.
 We are both exhausted, but do a good clean up of the boat before heading home.

 It will take a couple of days for both of us to get over the sore muscles, but with money in our pockets and smiles on our faces… life is great!

Diving for Cucumbers

Cold water seeped from my neck, down my chest, into my right arm, and finally down my legs. Bitingly cold. Sea cumbers were everywhere. I was picking as fast as I possibly could trying to ignore the cold that was quickly taking over my body.

  Mike (the guy I hire to tend my dive boat) and I left Sunday evening to race to our secret spot, drop anchor, and spend the night guarding our opening dive area. When we approached the dive area we were greeted by a wave of anchored boats. “I guess we were not the only ones with this idea, “ I grumbled to Mike as we cruised our way between the boats.

  We found our little niche spot without a boat on top of it and dropped our hook. We enjoyed a meal as darkness fell on the quite ocean world.

  Monday morning we were up at five getting things ready for the dive opening at eight. Boats were jockeying for positions, but all left us alone. A  big tug came through towing a barge and barked on the radio about not having much room to navigate through the dive fleet. “This might get interesting,” we commented.

  Mike counted me down to the final minute of eight while a big Alaska State Trooper boat idled through making sure we did not start one minute too soon.

  I found great picking right off the start and picked five bags in a hurry. Mike tugged my air hose to signal me to the surface. The kicker motor control cable had snapped.

  We spent a good hour repairing the control cable and at last I was back on the bottom searching for sea cumbers. That is when the cold water began seeping into my dry suit.

  Forty degree water saps ones strength in a hurry. I know a lot about hypothermia, and am very careful to keep myself in check. I needed to pick 2,000 pounds of cucumbers in a day and a half to get my quota, but time out of the water makes it nearly impossible to get the poundage. I pick one more bag and send it up. I am shivering like crazy and my teeth are chattering on the regulator.

  “Just a couple more bags and I’ll go up,” I keep telling myself. I pick hard trying to work my body to keep the heat up, but each time I press the equalize air button on my dive suit a new blast of cold water enters to chill my core again.

  At last I cannot feel my fingers. Time to come up.  I inflate the suit and watch my computer to make sure I don’t ascend to quickly and get the bends. My feet hit bottom. I look down, not believing what I feel. I have gone down and not up! I press my air button again. I feel air rush out my neck seal but still I am not heading for the surface.

  My fingers are so numb I am using the back of my thumb knuckle to push the air button, and I’m swimming hard to get up. At 13 feet I come to a standstill. It is crazy. I could drop my bag of cucumbers and get up or I could dump my weight belt and blast to the surface, or I could one hand climb my air hose… Just then I am yanked up by my air hose. Mike is hand over hand pulling me in! Super!

  Mikes eyes are big as he shouts, “ The air compressor belt broke, you have not air!”

  He helps me on board and we shut down the machines. I find my neck seal has blown out completely. I am soaked and freezing cold. I ask Mike to keep and eye on me as I warm up to make sure I don’t become overcome with hypothermia. We decided to sell our meager catch and head to town for repairs.

  Dive one is half over.

LUCKY TO BE ALIVE

  My wife and I watched as the big blow hit town. The weather service was calling for 40 knot blows out on the ocean. "Should have the commercial fleet scurrying to town," I commented

Little did we know the drama that was unfolding at that time on the ocean just a short 20 miles from our comfortable house.

  One of my friends who charters, dives, and dabbles in commercial trolling was, at that very time fighting for his life.

  Stonie (we call him Mac) and his deck hand, 19 year old Ryan were trolling off Cape Edgecumbe when the weather blew up. They knew the forecast, but due to some problems with the troll gear delayed their run

to town. Once they got things squared away the wind was pushing some large waves into their path to town.

  They were fishing out of Macs 28 foot bow picker aluminum boat, the Kaitlin Rae.

  As the wind pushed the rollers into breakers, they battled their way into the growing sea. They took a big wave over the bow filling the front to the house in an instant.

The boat started foundering only to be hit in the stern by another huge wave. The boat rolled over before they could get a Mayday call on the radio. They tried getting their survival suits out but the boat

sank out from under them. It was about 1:00 pm Friday.

  One of the fish totes from the boat floated by and the two men swam to it. Mac helped Ryan get into the tote but could not get himself up over the three foot side himself. He found a tote lid nearby and clung to that

Then a fortunate stroke of fate happened, one of the survival suits became dislodged from the sunken boat and floated to the surface near Mac. He was able to swim over and retrieve it.

  As the waves reached 8 foot in height, and the wind howled, the two became separated. As they drifted apart Ryan shouted to Mac, "We're not going to die here!"

  Mac was able to get into the survival suit in the water, not an easy task in a calm swimming pool, let alone a raging ocean with wind tossed waves.

  The long drift had begun. No one was aware of their problems until they did not return home that evening. At midnight the families declared an emergency and called the coast guard. A rescue helicopter was dispatched to the general area the men were supposed to be fishing. They could be anywhere.

  Daylight Saturday a massive hunt was underway. Sitka's search and rescue was called upon, troopers were out as well as the fishing fleet and the coast guard in their choppers.

  I received a call from my friend, Scott, saying Mac was in trouble. I turned on my radio and we listened for hours as the search continued.

  Our thoughts were that no one could survive that long in the water. If they made it to the beach they might have a chance, if there were no hungry bears getting to them first.

  After 24 hours a trooper boat spotted someone on the beach waving his arms. Mac! He had drifted from the corner of the cape to Point Amelia, about 12 nautical miles.

  Some 26 hours after the boat went down one of the fishing boat happened upon a floating fish tote. The captain of the Nerka motored up to it with high hopes only to find it empty. He scanned the sea again to see another fish tote floating... this one had a young man waving frantically from inside it! The captain contacted the coast guard chopper and they swooped over to pluck a freezing Ryan up to safety.

Ryan had drifted about 17 nautical miles straining to keep the tote floating upright in the raging waves. His hands were blistered and he could hardly straighten his legs from the long strain.

  I am so thankful these two good men survived.

  Living on the ocean is fraught with danger. We all face it on a daily basis. One can never take the ocean for granted. You must respect its raging power.

  A happy ending to a harrowing ordeal.

  We all breathed a, "thank you Lord", when we heard the chopper pilot radio com center Juneau with the report, "Roger Juneau, we have the survivor on board and are heading to Sitka Air station."

Drop By Visitors

  It seems rude nowadays to perform a drop by visit on someone, as used to be common in days gone by. Now one must call, e-mail, or text to obtain "permission" to stop by and see someone. Kind of sad, in my opinion, as those used to be some of the best visits one could have.

  Things are very different on the ocean. Drop by visits are common, and most of the time welcome. The interesting part of the drop by visits is that you never know who or what your visitor will be.

  I was sitting here trying to think of all the visitors we had around the boat this summer. Of course, the big whales come to mind first. They seem to get your attention by bellowing out a monstrous plume of air and water... hard to ignore. Killer Whales are not as boisterous, but also get your attention right away. When you see a six foot tall fin cut through the wave, you tend to take notice.

Sea Lions seem to be constant visitors, but they are certainly not a welcome guest, as they are looking for something on your hook they can steal for an easy meal.

  We had a little seal pup come around the boat for a curious look, but he did not give us time to film him before heading back to his hiding place in the kelp.

  Then there are the birds. Each day I drop the hook to anchor for halibut the birds come. Sometimes it will be one lonely bird, but most of the time they swarm around the boat hoping for scraps and kibbles to eat. The clients and I really enjoy these drop by visitors. We have the usual gulls, terns, one day a frigate bird, murres, storm petrels, shearwaters, fulmars, and the graceful flying albatross.

  I must say the albatross is one of my favorite visitors. They are a friendly bird and come right next to the boat.

When an albatross takes flight off the ocean he must run on the water to gain speed. It looks like a big B52 bomber lumbering down a runway gaining air speed to fly.

Once the albatross is in the air it transform into the most graceful glider you have ever seen. The spread their long wings and skim the ocean surface with a wing tip

just caressing its surface. Even in rough ocean these wonderful birds can skim the surface and never crash into a steep cresting wave.

Albatross are some of the worst begging birds in the ocean. They will sit at the back of the boat for hours on end hoping for a scrap of fish meat.

The albatross will not eat the guts of fish. I have tossed them out into the ocean and the big birds lunge on them, sample them, then spit them out. They always

then wash their beaks out in the ocean as if to say,"yuck, why did you toss that stuff out!"

  Albatross are meat eaters. They can eat a floating rock fish in no time at all. the big beak rips meat apart in a hurry.

  One day this summer we had our usual gathering of birds doing their drop in visits, when a client commented, "Hey look, one of these big birds has a band on his leg."

  sure enough an albatross was wearing a bright band on his leg. I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos trying to get a close up to read the band number.

I'm sure the birds are banded on the nesting grounds north of us for some type of research.

  As we watched the banded bird we soon realized that he was banded on both legs.

  I snapped a few more pictures and then it was back to fishing.

  I am always thankful for the drop by visitors on the ocean, but when I really think about it, I am more thankful for the drop by, unannounced visits from friends. It  does not bother me at all. If we are too busy to take time for friends, then we really need to reorganize our lives and make room for a friendly visit every once in a while.