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Alaska's "Big Three"
Posted by Michael Strahan on Mar 31 2006
These guys have pretty much nailed it.
You asked about kinds of bugs on the north slope, but let me tell ya, after a half hour out there the last thing you'll be worried about is the species; you won't CARE what kind they are, you'll be running around with your eyes rolled back in your head, foaming at the mouth, and waving your arms in the air yelling, "MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!" If you don't go crazy first. I can assure you from personal experience, and a million caribou would agree with me, that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been going on for a looooong time.
We have basically two types of noxious bugs up there; drillers and skin-rippers. Depending on your degree of allergic reaction to the gallon or so of anti-coagulant they'll inject into you before they start sucking up your moisture, you may experience a mild case of the itchies, you may scratch until you bleed, or you may be reduced to a large quivering red welt twitching on the ground. I know one guy who still, ten years after the fact, has large knots under the skin on his legs from being bitten while wearing shorts on a sheep hunt. I know, I know... did he get a ram? He shot a full curl at about 350 yards, using a 7mm Rem. mag, Ruger M77 pushing a 175 grain Remington Core-Lokt bullet. There were three rams in a bachelor group and as they made their final stalk they saw a wolverine making an approach on the other side, so they... but... oh yeah, the bugs. Well, anyway, his legs still look like one of those 3-D relief maps of the Alaska Range. Denali is about three inches below his right knee, and Mount Foraker is three inches lower on his shin bone, with the Cathedral Spires on his calf. We've been using his leg to plan our next sheep hunt... "Hey John, can you pull your pants down and show us the headwaters of the Tonzona again? Well, maybe next time."
Until you've experienced it, you have no idea what a cloud of mosquitos and white sox is like. It's sorta like the kid in the Peanuts comic with the cloud of dirt that follows him around, except the cloud is bugs bent on reducing you to a clear sack of meat with all the fluid drained out of it. Of course, since you're hunting the north slope, you could fool 'em by going in September when the bugs are grounded by low temps... but by then the caribou will be over the top of the Brooks and headed south. Still, it would be a more relaxing hunt and you'd save yourself the arduous task of packing out all that meat. The results would be the same as some of my hunts, and you'd be less likely to startle your family later when they find you running around the house at 3am waving your arms in the air yelling, "Make it stop! Make it stop!" I think this is where the term "Bug DOPE" comes from.
Prevention is always better than treatment, but even with the best of measures, you're bound to get zapped. This is my favorite part, where I tell you to avoid the temptation to scratch the welts. Yeah, RIGHT! This is where a portable belt sander might come in handy. More traditional hunters may want to use a sanding block, while the ladies prefer an emery board. Either way, you simply MUST find relief. Someone suggested using Claritin, but my personal favorite is a wire brush. If you're a sheep hunter, you can cut the handle in half to save weight; I use the same one to brush my teeth on about day eight... or nine. It sorta doesn't make sense though, because by then the crud I'm carrying around on my teeth weighs more than the handle of the brush...
However it goes, you're in for a real treat. Drink plenty of fluids before you go, and be sure to give someone the coordinates of your camp so they can find what's left. Best of luck!
-Mike
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