Remote airstrip landings in Alaska are always adventurous because the airstrips come in two sizes: short, and shorter.
A husband and wife team write about their divergent lives operating a salmon setnet operation in Bristol Bay.
Eric Beeman recounts the tale of a Kodiak deer hunt when a bear got to the deer before he and a client could.
Photos of Rufous hummingbirds, tufted puffins, bald eagles, Steller’s Jay and other images Eric M. Beeman captured while birding in Kachemak Bay.
Weasels, also called ermines, live one or two years. Their fur turns white in winter and brown in summer. Photo by Eric M. Beeman. In the last century, when my wife was but a wee tyke, she spied a small hole in the bank overlooking a drainage ditch. An inquisitive lass, her rampant curiosity led her to insert her arm to see what treasures lay entombed inside. A muffled chittering and a quick brush with silky fur necessitated a hasty retreat, but not before a set of sharp white teeth buried themselves into the soft flesh of her thumb. My future bride shrieked and flailed her arm to no avail, as the marauder was firmly attached. A final bash loosened its grip and our young adventurer sped off to the solace of her grandparents, curious no more. Most introductions to Alaska’s smallest furbearer are less traumatic, although perhaps as brief.…
I SHOOT BIRDS. I enjoy an autumn day wandering in the high country chasing ptarmigan with my .22 short, and a fat mallard from one of our nearby sloughs is genuinely tasty. Nowadays, though, I’ve discovered an additional way to shoot.
A brief tale of squandered opportunity and a chance for redemption
WE HEARD HIM FIRST, the rythmic unkh, unkh, drifting eerily through the morning fog. Closer he came and louder, and suddenly he was on us, wraithlike in the drifting mist, coming straight at us.
