spectr17
01-23-2003, 02:51 PM
Fowl weather
Sea duck hunters descend on Kodiak to bag trophy birds
By Elizabeth Manning, Anchorage Daily News
January 19, 2003
http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/867-o_COVERmarvin.jpg
Oklahoma businessman Marvin Jirous, 67, dons camouflage and hunkers down on a frigid beach to wait for sea ducks to fly by. Decoys bob behind him on The Slough, north of Port Lions and west of Afognak Island. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News )
KODIAK ISLAND -- Nixe Mellick and Marvin Jirous are wealthy men. With ample money and old age comes the time and freedom to do as they please.
Two weekends ago, on a bitterly cold Sunday morning, the two hunting buddies chose to sit frozen and stiff-legged on a beach in Sharatin Bay along Kodiak's western shore. They waited patiently for sea ducks to fly within shooting distance.
The temperature had dipped into the low 20s, and light snow was falling. Ducks were nowhere to be seen.
Sitting motionless on freezing rocks is not every hunter's idea of a good time. But Jirous and Mellick are both avid waterfowl hunters. And this was fun.
Kodiak Island is one of the best spots to go for sea ducks. And winter is the time to do it, if a trophy duck is your quarry. The plumage of these exotic ducks is showiest then because it is when females choose their mates. Vibrant orange and blue colors show up on the male king eider's head, for example. And male harlequins sport bright feathers of blue, rust, black and white.
It didn't matter to the two friends that they had been mostly skunked on the first two days of a five-day guided hunt.
Jirous, an Oklahoma businessman who made a fortune building up the Sonic Drive-In hamburger chain, said he came to Kodiak as much for the scenery and the camaraderie as for the hunting. Mellick, meanwhile, was hoping to leave with an ice chest full of sea ducks for trophy mounts. But he was enjoying the uncertainty.
"Once you get them, there's no more challenge," said the 71-year-old Sleetmute resident and owner of a fishing lodge on the Kuskokwim River.
And so the two hunters sat side by side, shotguns in hand, waiting.
http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/287-o_retrieve.jpg
Shelly, guide Scott Phelps' chocolate Labrador, retrieves a common goldeneye downed by hunters shooting from a spit in Barabara Cove on Kizhuyak Bay. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News)
Sea otters bobbed nearby in the surf, an occasional eagle soared overhead and snow-capped peaks rose in the distance. A quiet calm enveloped the beach.
"Marvin, you still alive?" Mellick called out from his hiding spot after a long lull in shooting.
"Almost," Jirous said.
Mellick chuckled and a long pause followed, broken only by the lapping of waves.
"This is pretty slow," Jirous finally added.
BEAUTIFUL BIRDS
When most people think of trophy hunting in Alaska, they think of such big game as bears, moose or caribou. But during winter in maritime areas such as Kodiak, Kachemak Bay and around some Southeast communities, sea ducks are the hot collector's trophy.
Not a lot of people go sea duck hunting for sport, but those who do often get hooked.
A big part of the allure is the birds. Sea ducks -- waterfowl that spend most of their lives at sea -- are spectacular, particularly in winter when the plumage is best. Like many birds, male ducks are the most flamboyant.
Male harlequins, for example, are patterned with slate blue plumage punctuated with bold white, black and chestnut markings that make them look like pantomime actors. The females, by contrast, are mostly brown.
Another favorite trophy among sea duck hunters is the oldsquaw, also known as the long-tailed duck. The male, which is mostly white, has a long white tail, a brown breast and brown face. Females are nearly all white in winter.
Rich Dykema, owner of Fowl Play Taxidermy in Soldotna, said he's always liked sea ducks but can't explain the attraction.
"It's cold out there, and you have to be kind of hard core to get them," Dykema said. "They're beautiful. Every single one has a different look. Harlequins are blue, all the beaks are different colors and every one has a different color foot."
Kodiak Island is known as one of the best spots for collectors because of the large number of waterfowl that winter there and the variety of species. Hunters there can shoot two species of eiders -- a large sea duck prized for its magnificent markings -- and other sea and coastal ducks such as the Barrow's and common goldeneye.
Other commonly hunted sea ducks in Alaska include the bufflehead, a small duck with a rounded head; two kinds of mergansers, which have distinctive narrow bills; and three species of scoters -- black, white-winged and surf.
Scott Phelps owns Kodiak Sports & Tour, the guide company that took Mellick, Jirous and two other hunters to bays and beaches near Port Lions. Five days of shooting off his 30-foot boat and six nights in the Port Lions Lodge cost each hunter about $3,000.
For that, the hunters spent cold days hunting around Port Lions, located 20 miles west of the city of Kodiak. By boat, they reached places such as The Slough (between Raspberry and Little Raspberry islands), Sharatin Bay, Whale Passage and Kizhuyak Bay.
At night, the hunters lingered over cocktails and fine dinners. Mellick, nicknamed the "Duke of Sleetmute" by the two men from Oklahoma, brought the wine. During those hours, they teased each other and practiced another old hunting sport: storytelling.
"Whoever can lie the best wins," Jirous joked.
http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/629-o_silhouette.jpg
Known as the Duke of Sleetmute to his hunting partners, Nixe Mellick waits for his quarry to land in Barabara Cove. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News )
Phelps tells his hunters not to count on getting king and common eiders, the species most prized by sea duck collectors. But eiders were what Mellick and his friends wanted most.
King eiders used to winter in great abundance around Port Lions, Phelps said, but have dwindled in recent years. He guesses that warmer temperatures are keeping them at wintering grounds farther north.
Sea ducks can be challenging to hunt and tough to kill. Unless the ducks are hit squarely with a heavy composite-type shot, they often escape. Sometimes they fly away wounded but more often the shot does not seem to penetrate their thick feathers and skin. Wounded birds sometimes dive and get away.
Phelps likes to line hunters up in a row to allow for multiple shots at a single duck. On this trip, his assistant guide, Tim Geer, typically stayed on the beach with the hunters while Phelps put out decoys and took care of the boats.
"It's hard to kill them on the water," said Tom Rothe, the state's waterfowl coordinator. He also hunts sea ducks. "Experienced sea duck hunters will have one person take the first shot and then have another person swat the duck on the water."
Strings of decoys are used to draw the ducks close to beaches or spits, and boats and retrievers are needed to fetch them. At other times, the hunters shoot from boats, with the engine cut and the vessel drifting.
"You have to know how to hunt," Rothe said. "In some respects I like to see Outside hunters go with a guide to figure it out."
Rothe also notes that not all hunters who kill sea ducks are trophy hunters.
Subsistence hunters kill and eat sea ducks. And some sport hunters, Rothe and his wife included, like hunting longer into the winter and enjoy duck meat. Regulations require hunters to salvage the breast meat of all waterfowl. Rothe said many hunters likely give it away, which is legal.
Some sea duck hunters also like going because it gives them a good chance to train bird dogs. Steve McVeigh, the owner of Greatland Kennels in Wasilla, said he tries to go sea duck hunting on Kodiak at least once a year. He said it's a good place for him to work with his dogs since most of the retrieves are just off the beach. He also loves hunting in Kodiak's maritime environment.
"People really don't know what they're missing."
OLD FRIENDS
Mellick, a lodge owner, one-time chairman of the Kuskokwim Corp. and former bush pilot, organized the early January hunt through Port Lions Lodge. He invited Jirous and another lawyer and businessman from Oklahoma -- hunters he has befriended because of repeated returns to his Kuskokwim lodge.
Mellick met the fourth hunter, Phyllis Tucker from Muncie, Ind., when he sold her property for a remote cabin on Lake Telequana near Lake Clark. Tucker, 58, is an appraiser and general contractor and hunts all over the world.
Phelps said the four are similar in their hunting backgrounds to other clients he has had over the years. The two Oklahomans are avid bird hunters but also had hunted big game trophies in Africa. Tucker, on the other hand, was mostly a big game trophy hunter, more adept with a rifle than a shotgun.
Like many avid hunters, Phelps said his clients sometimes have big personalities. That can make dealing with people as challenging as the hunting, he said. But he and Geer said it also is part of the fun to figure out what makes people tick.
Tucker, who wore makeup and looked put together even when hunting in foul weather, said she decided to go on the trip because Mellick needed a fourth person and she had not done much duck hunting before. She found shooting birds trickier but more enjoyable than she had imagined.
Shooting a bear or a lion requires a certain amount of moxie, she said. But hunting birds poses its own challenges. She left Kodiak determined to improve and return.
"I'm kind of bad at it," she admitted. "It's not easy to hit a little bitty bird flying in front of you at 40 miles per hour. But I'm going to conquer it. I really enjoyed it, other than my hands being cold."
DUCK DECLINE
Although state and federal game managers don't know as much about sea ducks as as they do about more commonly hunted waterfowl, they know that scoters, long-tailed ducks and eiders are declining in numbers.
The use of lead shot on spectacled eiders' breeding grounds in western Alaska may be part of the reason for their drop. Both spectacled and Steller's eiders are now on the endangered species list. Sport hunting pressure is generally not thought to be a significant factor in the declines, according to Rothe. Based on hunter surveys, the state estimates that less than 1,000 sport hunters take 4,000 to 6,000 sea ducks a year.
Even so, the state has in recent years cut back some on bag limits. Residents generally may take 10 sea ducks a day, nonresidents seven. Both are allowed 20 ducks in possession, and nonresidents can shoot no more than 20 sea ducks the entire season. Nonresidents may also shoot no more than four of any one species of sea duck per season.
Rothe and Phelps said there have been abuses.
In 1995, a three-year undercover operation around Gambell and Kodiak resulted in the prosecution of several guides and taxidermists. One taxidermist from Wisconsin illegally killed 67 spectacled eiders in a day, which he was stuffing and selling.
In the same sting operation, some sea duck guides, including several Kodiak ones (not Phelps), were found to be illegally driving ducks toward hunters with boats or allowing hunters to shoot while the boat was operating. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits both hunting practices.
PRESERVING MEMORIES
On day three of the five-day hunt with Phelps, the hunting picked up. The hunters shot 16 ducks between them, compared to just 11 for the first two days combined. Day four was even better. The hunters took 17 ducks between them that day, including two king eider hens and a king eider drake. Day five was good, too, but included sideways rain -- the kind of foul weather duck hunters love to brag about.
The hunters continued to hunt from the beach with decoys just offshore. But Phelps also tried other things, including putting Tucker out on a spit on a hunter's cot. Ducks were flying all around her, but she still didn't hit much, she said.
"I was laying flat down, shooting, shooting, shooting," Tucker said. "It was pouring down, just pelting, hitting my face like rocks."
Phelps said he does not like to advertise the eider hunting but said hunters sometimes get lucky. With just a few minutes of legal shooting left on the fourth day -- hunters are required by law to stop shooting at sunset -- Phelps spotted a flock of king eiders winging toward the boat. He cut the engine and yelled at the three hunters on top of the boat to shoot. A drake and two hens went down.
"It was very exciting," Tucker said.
When she left Kodiak Island, Tucker took home nine frozen ducks wrapped in white butcher paper for her taxidermist to stuff and mount. Among them were oldsquaw, harlequins, goldeneyes and scoters. She plans on displaying them in her trophy room along with the bears, lions and other animals she has shot over the years.
The trophies help each hunt to live on.
"I do it in memory of the life I took," Tucker said. "If I take their lives, then I make them beautiful their whole life. Each time I look at everything I have mounted, it brings back the memories of the hunt, the people I met, the friends I made, the whole experience of it."
Reporter Elizabeth Manning can be reached at emanning@adn.com or 907 257-4323.
Sea duck hunters descend on Kodiak to bag trophy birds
By Elizabeth Manning, Anchorage Daily News
January 19, 2003
http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/867-o_COVERmarvin.jpg
Oklahoma businessman Marvin Jirous, 67, dons camouflage and hunkers down on a frigid beach to wait for sea ducks to fly by. Decoys bob behind him on The Slough, north of Port Lions and west of Afognak Island. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News )
KODIAK ISLAND -- Nixe Mellick and Marvin Jirous are wealthy men. With ample money and old age comes the time and freedom to do as they please.
Two weekends ago, on a bitterly cold Sunday morning, the two hunting buddies chose to sit frozen and stiff-legged on a beach in Sharatin Bay along Kodiak's western shore. They waited patiently for sea ducks to fly within shooting distance.
The temperature had dipped into the low 20s, and light snow was falling. Ducks were nowhere to be seen.
Sitting motionless on freezing rocks is not every hunter's idea of a good time. But Jirous and Mellick are both avid waterfowl hunters. And this was fun.
Kodiak Island is one of the best spots to go for sea ducks. And winter is the time to do it, if a trophy duck is your quarry. The plumage of these exotic ducks is showiest then because it is when females choose their mates. Vibrant orange and blue colors show up on the male king eider's head, for example. And male harlequins sport bright feathers of blue, rust, black and white.
It didn't matter to the two friends that they had been mostly skunked on the first two days of a five-day guided hunt.
Jirous, an Oklahoma businessman who made a fortune building up the Sonic Drive-In hamburger chain, said he came to Kodiak as much for the scenery and the camaraderie as for the hunting. Mellick, meanwhile, was hoping to leave with an ice chest full of sea ducks for trophy mounts. But he was enjoying the uncertainty.
"Once you get them, there's no more challenge," said the 71-year-old Sleetmute resident and owner of a fishing lodge on the Kuskokwim River.
And so the two hunters sat side by side, shotguns in hand, waiting.
http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/287-o_retrieve.jpg
Shelly, guide Scott Phelps' chocolate Labrador, retrieves a common goldeneye downed by hunters shooting from a spit in Barabara Cove on Kizhuyak Bay. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News)
Sea otters bobbed nearby in the surf, an occasional eagle soared overhead and snow-capped peaks rose in the distance. A quiet calm enveloped the beach.
"Marvin, you still alive?" Mellick called out from his hiding spot after a long lull in shooting.
"Almost," Jirous said.
Mellick chuckled and a long pause followed, broken only by the lapping of waves.
"This is pretty slow," Jirous finally added.
BEAUTIFUL BIRDS
When most people think of trophy hunting in Alaska, they think of such big game as bears, moose or caribou. But during winter in maritime areas such as Kodiak, Kachemak Bay and around some Southeast communities, sea ducks are the hot collector's trophy.
Not a lot of people go sea duck hunting for sport, but those who do often get hooked.
A big part of the allure is the birds. Sea ducks -- waterfowl that spend most of their lives at sea -- are spectacular, particularly in winter when the plumage is best. Like many birds, male ducks are the most flamboyant.
Male harlequins, for example, are patterned with slate blue plumage punctuated with bold white, black and chestnut markings that make them look like pantomime actors. The females, by contrast, are mostly brown.
Another favorite trophy among sea duck hunters is the oldsquaw, also known as the long-tailed duck. The male, which is mostly white, has a long white tail, a brown breast and brown face. Females are nearly all white in winter.
Rich Dykema, owner of Fowl Play Taxidermy in Soldotna, said he's always liked sea ducks but can't explain the attraction.
"It's cold out there, and you have to be kind of hard core to get them," Dykema said. "They're beautiful. Every single one has a different look. Harlequins are blue, all the beaks are different colors and every one has a different color foot."
Kodiak Island is known as one of the best spots for collectors because of the large number of waterfowl that winter there and the variety of species. Hunters there can shoot two species of eiders -- a large sea duck prized for its magnificent markings -- and other sea and coastal ducks such as the Barrow's and common goldeneye.
Other commonly hunted sea ducks in Alaska include the bufflehead, a small duck with a rounded head; two kinds of mergansers, which have distinctive narrow bills; and three species of scoters -- black, white-winged and surf.
Scott Phelps owns Kodiak Sports & Tour, the guide company that took Mellick, Jirous and two other hunters to bays and beaches near Port Lions. Five days of shooting off his 30-foot boat and six nights in the Port Lions Lodge cost each hunter about $3,000.
For that, the hunters spent cold days hunting around Port Lions, located 20 miles west of the city of Kodiak. By boat, they reached places such as The Slough (between Raspberry and Little Raspberry islands), Sharatin Bay, Whale Passage and Kizhuyak Bay.
At night, the hunters lingered over cocktails and fine dinners. Mellick, nicknamed the "Duke of Sleetmute" by the two men from Oklahoma, brought the wine. During those hours, they teased each other and practiced another old hunting sport: storytelling.
"Whoever can lie the best wins," Jirous joked.
http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/629-o_silhouette.jpg
Known as the Duke of Sleetmute to his hunting partners, Nixe Mellick waits for his quarry to land in Barabara Cove. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News )
Phelps tells his hunters not to count on getting king and common eiders, the species most prized by sea duck collectors. But eiders were what Mellick and his friends wanted most.
King eiders used to winter in great abundance around Port Lions, Phelps said, but have dwindled in recent years. He guesses that warmer temperatures are keeping them at wintering grounds farther north.
Sea ducks can be challenging to hunt and tough to kill. Unless the ducks are hit squarely with a heavy composite-type shot, they often escape. Sometimes they fly away wounded but more often the shot does not seem to penetrate their thick feathers and skin. Wounded birds sometimes dive and get away.
Phelps likes to line hunters up in a row to allow for multiple shots at a single duck. On this trip, his assistant guide, Tim Geer, typically stayed on the beach with the hunters while Phelps put out decoys and took care of the boats.
"It's hard to kill them on the water," said Tom Rothe, the state's waterfowl coordinator. He also hunts sea ducks. "Experienced sea duck hunters will have one person take the first shot and then have another person swat the duck on the water."
Strings of decoys are used to draw the ducks close to beaches or spits, and boats and retrievers are needed to fetch them. At other times, the hunters shoot from boats, with the engine cut and the vessel drifting.
"You have to know how to hunt," Rothe said. "In some respects I like to see Outside hunters go with a guide to figure it out."
Rothe also notes that not all hunters who kill sea ducks are trophy hunters.
Subsistence hunters kill and eat sea ducks. And some sport hunters, Rothe and his wife included, like hunting longer into the winter and enjoy duck meat. Regulations require hunters to salvage the breast meat of all waterfowl. Rothe said many hunters likely give it away, which is legal.
Some sea duck hunters also like going because it gives them a good chance to train bird dogs. Steve McVeigh, the owner of Greatland Kennels in Wasilla, said he tries to go sea duck hunting on Kodiak at least once a year. He said it's a good place for him to work with his dogs since most of the retrieves are just off the beach. He also loves hunting in Kodiak's maritime environment.
"People really don't know what they're missing."
OLD FRIENDS
Mellick, a lodge owner, one-time chairman of the Kuskokwim Corp. and former bush pilot, organized the early January hunt through Port Lions Lodge. He invited Jirous and another lawyer and businessman from Oklahoma -- hunters he has befriended because of repeated returns to his Kuskokwim lodge.
Mellick met the fourth hunter, Phyllis Tucker from Muncie, Ind., when he sold her property for a remote cabin on Lake Telequana near Lake Clark. Tucker, 58, is an appraiser and general contractor and hunts all over the world.
Phelps said the four are similar in their hunting backgrounds to other clients he has had over the years. The two Oklahomans are avid bird hunters but also had hunted big game trophies in Africa. Tucker, on the other hand, was mostly a big game trophy hunter, more adept with a rifle than a shotgun.
Like many avid hunters, Phelps said his clients sometimes have big personalities. That can make dealing with people as challenging as the hunting, he said. But he and Geer said it also is part of the fun to figure out what makes people tick.
Tucker, who wore makeup and looked put together even when hunting in foul weather, said she decided to go on the trip because Mellick needed a fourth person and she had not done much duck hunting before. She found shooting birds trickier but more enjoyable than she had imagined.
Shooting a bear or a lion requires a certain amount of moxie, she said. But hunting birds poses its own challenges. She left Kodiak determined to improve and return.
"I'm kind of bad at it," she admitted. "It's not easy to hit a little bitty bird flying in front of you at 40 miles per hour. But I'm going to conquer it. I really enjoyed it, other than my hands being cold."
DUCK DECLINE
Although state and federal game managers don't know as much about sea ducks as as they do about more commonly hunted waterfowl, they know that scoters, long-tailed ducks and eiders are declining in numbers.
The use of lead shot on spectacled eiders' breeding grounds in western Alaska may be part of the reason for their drop. Both spectacled and Steller's eiders are now on the endangered species list. Sport hunting pressure is generally not thought to be a significant factor in the declines, according to Rothe. Based on hunter surveys, the state estimates that less than 1,000 sport hunters take 4,000 to 6,000 sea ducks a year.
Even so, the state has in recent years cut back some on bag limits. Residents generally may take 10 sea ducks a day, nonresidents seven. Both are allowed 20 ducks in possession, and nonresidents can shoot no more than 20 sea ducks the entire season. Nonresidents may also shoot no more than four of any one species of sea duck per season.
Rothe and Phelps said there have been abuses.
In 1995, a three-year undercover operation around Gambell and Kodiak resulted in the prosecution of several guides and taxidermists. One taxidermist from Wisconsin illegally killed 67 spectacled eiders in a day, which he was stuffing and selling.
In the same sting operation, some sea duck guides, including several Kodiak ones (not Phelps), were found to be illegally driving ducks toward hunters with boats or allowing hunters to shoot while the boat was operating. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits both hunting practices.
PRESERVING MEMORIES
On day three of the five-day hunt with Phelps, the hunting picked up. The hunters shot 16 ducks between them, compared to just 11 for the first two days combined. Day four was even better. The hunters took 17 ducks between them that day, including two king eider hens and a king eider drake. Day five was good, too, but included sideways rain -- the kind of foul weather duck hunters love to brag about.
The hunters continued to hunt from the beach with decoys just offshore. But Phelps also tried other things, including putting Tucker out on a spit on a hunter's cot. Ducks were flying all around her, but she still didn't hit much, she said.
"I was laying flat down, shooting, shooting, shooting," Tucker said. "It was pouring down, just pelting, hitting my face like rocks."
Phelps said he does not like to advertise the eider hunting but said hunters sometimes get lucky. With just a few minutes of legal shooting left on the fourth day -- hunters are required by law to stop shooting at sunset -- Phelps spotted a flock of king eiders winging toward the boat. He cut the engine and yelled at the three hunters on top of the boat to shoot. A drake and two hens went down.
"It was very exciting," Tucker said.
When she left Kodiak Island, Tucker took home nine frozen ducks wrapped in white butcher paper for her taxidermist to stuff and mount. Among them were oldsquaw, harlequins, goldeneyes and scoters. She plans on displaying them in her trophy room along with the bears, lions and other animals she has shot over the years.
The trophies help each hunt to live on.
"I do it in memory of the life I took," Tucker said. "If I take their lives, then I make them beautiful their whole life. Each time I look at everything I have mounted, it brings back the memories of the hunt, the people I met, the friends I made, the whole experience of it."
Reporter Elizabeth Manning can be reached at emanning@adn.com or 907 257-4323.