Gathering

[ugashikrobert]

We have had a excellent year gathering for winter staples and wanted to share a few photo's with you.
The first is from the best silver run I've seen in over twenty years. World class fishing/gathering at our doorstep. We added about a dozen of these to our winter supply of smoked sockeye.

The silver run was followed by the blueberry harvest.

After the blueberry harvest it was time to gather some Ugashik Beef.

We gave most of it to three other families down in the village as one quarter and few steaks gets us through the winter and its always good to share in a time of plenty.

And finally here is a photo I took yesterday of the last portion of over 2 thousand pounds of groceries I brought up with our final load of winter fuel. With fuel, propane and groceries here and our gathering done we are just about set for winter after I go down to the village and put the big boat away.

[Kristianna]

Wow! So, I guess you're family is ready for winter. Thanks for posting photos of all of your hard work. I love to see this stuff and *so* wished we lived out in the bush. We do a couple of the things that you do. We gather wild blueberries every summer and freeze them to use throughout the year. But, we don't hunt yet. We buy our beef from an organic grass-fed farm.

Great photos and posting!

[Washkeeton]

love the bluberries and the moose. I am impressed. yes the salmon run was the best this year. Do you all dry or smoke your salmon?

[ugashikrobert]

Washkeeton:
We fillet a few, steak out a few and smoke most of them. We usually put up sockeye only but this year the silver run was so strong we did a few of them as well.

[Washkeeton]

so do you reload or do you buy your shells? I have talked to a lot of hunters in this area that reload.

If you do reload
How hard is it? If you do what kind of things do you need to know to reload? I know that you need to know how to weigh out powder but what else do you need to know. Where do you get your powder?

[ugashikrobert]

Waskeeton:
I reload everything I shoot except for the rimfire stuff. It's not hard to learn the basics. I thing I would recommend is to pick up reloading manual from Sierra, Hornady, Speer or others and read and understand the how to sections and then ask me or any other reloader questions.
Powder and primers can be a problem in a remote area. I get all of mine during our yearly trip into Anchorage and have them flown out here by friends with a private plane to avoid all the hazmat charges and hassles. When you factor in the cost of the reloading equipment and components you really don't shoot that much cheaper you just get to do a lot more shooting for the buck. Today a lot of the factory ammo gives good reloads a run for the money in terms of quality unlike when I started.