4 Days Solo Camping on Island Full of Whale Bones & Grizzly Bears

Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and for the next four days I'm all alone in the wilderness of Alaska. I'm coming face to face with giant grizzly bears, hunting for my food, collecting washed up whale bones and exploring a remote island in the Gulf of Alaska. Yeah, I'm not gonna see him for four days. I am on a remote island on the edge of the Gulf of Alaska at the very top of the Pacific Ocean. If you were to go that direction, as far as you can go, the next land you would hit is Antarctica. Well tonight I'm going to be staying in this off-grid dry cabin and it's maintained by the National Forest Service and they have these cabins all over the wilderness of Alaska. Many of them you can only reach by plane or boat and these cabins are in some of the coolest places in Alaska. We got the bear-proof lock. Look at this, we got a bed, got a table, chairs. Yeah, there's a wood stove. That looks like that's a heating oil stove. Got some utensils, some books and things, some puzzles and oh, looks, there's a loft here. It's a nice big sleeping space up here in the attic. If you come here in the wintertime, this will be the warmest place to sleep. Tell you what, this is gonna do very nicely with the sun setting. I gotta get unpacked quick. This is pretty perfect, but there is one thing I'm a little anxious about. Water. I'm not sure where we're going to get our water from. Oh, there we go. See this trash can? It's underneath the drain spout. There's a little screen here, so this is a rain catch. So I'm gonna drink out of a trash can. That's why I brought my filter. Just hang up the dirty water and the gravity feeds it through the filter, down the hose and into my water bottle. It filters about a liter every two minutes. It's pretty fast. Brought my old shotgun and I brought my rifle. We're geared up for just about anything we can legally shoot. I brought along my liquid fuel stove. I love this thing. It runs off of almost any type of fuel, including unleaded and diesel. Getting a little cold in here. Let's get a fire started. Well, you know, now that I'm settled in, I'm starting to get a little hungry and I think a little dessert before bed might be in order. It's a Marion Berry pie. I actually put this in my checked bag. I'm gonna cover it in a little tin foil. Let it sit right there. Should warm up in a few minutes. I'm pretty excited to eat that pie, but it's gonna last me the whole trip, so I gotta pace myself. Oh, check it out. I found a replacement for my lost knife. Found one used on eBay. There we go. Some Marion Berry pie. Still is putting out the heat, keeping my bum warm. This is a good way to start out the trip. Well, guys, it's late. I'm going to bed. I've got an early start tomorrow. I will see you guys in the morning. Well, good morning. It's a little bit cold in here, but the fire's warming the cabin up pretty quick and I'm gonna start making some breakfast. Smoked pork jowl bacon here. Smoked pork jowl bacon, eggs, and toast. All righty. Oh, that is so good. That's good. All right, I think it's time to go explore the island. Now, I've never hunted for deer before and I've never hunted on this island before, but my understanding is that the deer tend to stay away from the beaches in the summertime when the weather's good and then as it gets cold they get forced down off the mountains and come down. Well, it's still pretty nice, so my guess is I've got to go hiking up. There you go. That's black-tailed deer poop. I can smell rotting salmon, which means this is bear country. There's a salmon. There's a salmon. There's a salmon. The salmon come from the ocean into these rivers to spawn and as soon as they spawn, they die of old age. There's just dead salmon everywhere. Smells like a rotten fish market. You see all these salmon pulled up onto the bank. That means something's been eating them. Look at this. This is all piles of dead salmon and look at this. This right here is a bear print. This is the rear paw of a bear. Anytime you have salmon like this, there will be bears. This trail I'm walking on could easily be a bear trail. These are bear prints right here. Look at the size comparison to my hand. See each of his toes right there. His claws. That's his hind leg. That's his front leg. Generally speaking, for each inch across on the front pad is how tall the bear is. It's a very average size grizzly bear right there. It's probably four or five feet tall. A big grizzly bear will be over 10 feet tall and that's measured from nose to tip of tail. There's some salmon right in there. You can see that just all those little white spots are dead rotting salmon and there's a couple live ones right there. The salmon's bodies actually rot before they die and so you can see that live salmon right there has mold all over his tail. Check it out guys. There's a grizzly bear right there. Right there in the bushes. I don't think he knows I'm here yet. I'm downwind from him. Grizzly bears are actually in season right now and this gun would take him down but what am I gonna do with the dead grizzly bear? Well, I'm just gonna go back this way. Seems to be a little side trail that goes up this hill. You can see this faint trail kind of running like this. It's a game trail, probably for deer. So we're gonna go and walk along this game trail and see if we can't find anything. That's a deer poop. That looks like the skull of a baby bear. That's crazy. Every once in a while I pop out on one of these little clearings and I just stop and wait and listen. That looks pretty fresh to me. That's the beach head of the river we were at where we saw the bear. I've got a pretty good view up here but I haven't seen any signs of life. It is the middle of the day and that's the worst time to see animals. I think I might start working my way back to the cabin and maybe I'll see something on the way back. Coming up over this ridge and I spooked something. I think it was a bedding deer. In the middle of the day like this they kind of hunker down and digest their food from the morning. I looked up just in time to see a bunch of branches moving and that was about it. Well, made it back. Well, I hiked for about five and a half hours, climbed about 1200 feet in elevation and did about five miles. I'm gonna grab my fishing rod and we're gonna see about doing some fishing. Rumor has it that there's a river one mile east of here that has cutthroat trout and salmon in it so I think I'm gonna hike over there and take a peek at it. There's some more bear poop. It's a lot of bear poop on this trail. Random piece of plastic with tooth holes in it. Some bear gave it a taste. Bears are a little bit like babies. They like to put things in their mouths when they don't know what it is. Oh, look at this. Looks like something ate a raven right there. There you go. That's the mountain I climbed this morning. Oh, look at these bear prints. That is a large coyote print and that's an average bear print. Hey, check this out. This is the vertebrae of a whale right here. Isn't that crazy? It's another chunk of a whale bone. Look, there's like a teeth marks in it right there. Look at that. Another big piece of whale bone. Oh, that's heavy. Looks like deer bones to me. See some ducks up ahead. I think I might have to get dinner. They're starting to get in range when you can see the color on their head. Getting ready to fly. I got one. Oh, there we go. Got a nice fat duck. Now I want to see if we can spot any trout or salmon in here. Just saw a fish jump in the water up there. Oh, there's a few salmon. That's a pink salmon right there. That's what that is. The bottom of the creek is just covered in bear prints. There's a couple spawned out pink salmon, but that's about it. Look at that. It's a sand dollar. Whoa. Oh, thing weighs like 15 pounds. The rib bone of a whale. Look at this. Oh, man, it looks like a piece of the skull or maybe a pelvis. That is so cool. I'm going to use my Garmin inReach to text Becca and have her Google the federal regulations for whale bones. If I can keep this, I'm totally bringing it back. I'll figure a way to get it into my bag. Oh, man. Got to clean that duck, but don't want to do that by the cabin. That'll attract grizzly bears for sure. All right. Oh, this weather is so nice. It's been such a cold, wet summer. I got snowed on last week. A lot. Well, I've been using my inReach to text my wife and I found out a little something about finding whale bones. Apparently, in Alaska, whenever you find whale carcasses or whale bones, you're supposed to report it to a biologist here in the state. Well, tomorrow, Becca is going to go ahead and call the biologist and tell her what I found. And we're going to see what I get to do with the whale bones. We got ourselves a feast here. We have roasted duck breast, lingonberry jam, pimenta, pork jowls, fried onions, fondant potatoes, and gravy. I don't know. I'm pretty happy with this. I think this looks pretty good. This duck with a little lingonberry sauce and gravy is good. I think that's the best wild duck I've ever had. That worked out real well. Tell you what, it is late. I am very sore and I am very full of food. I am going to go to bed. I will see you in the morning. Good morning. Looks like the first thing I got to do today is do some dishes. Before I left on this trip, my brother gave me a jar of homemade rhubarb syrup. So, I've got a little bit of that in this jar and I'm going to put that on my pancakes. It is pretty amazing. Oh, that was good. Well, I'm going to make another attempt at trying to find a deer. I definitely think that near the top of the mountain was better. I saw more deer sign up there for sure. I mean, look at this trail. All deer tracks. Oh, my legs are butter asleep. Well, it's a little past lunchtime and I'm getting hungry. So, I'm going to hike down the mountain about two miles back to the cabin. Well, there's a deer. I'm tired. Well, I'm hungry. I think it's time for some lunch. Just eating a little snack while I make sandwiches. Grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. That's just hard to beat. Ah, this is such a great cabin. I mean, look at that view. It's pretty. Well, guys, I had an interesting development over lunch. Turns out if you find any whale bones, you're supposed to report it to a biologist here in Alaska and Becca did. And the biologist wants me to go ahead and photograph all the bones I found and send her to the GPS locations. And some of the more intact pieces I'm going to bring back to Anchorage. Apparently, whether or not you can keep the bones or not depends on what species of whale it is. So, since I'm much better at finding whale bones than I am at finding deer, I figure I'm going to go do some beachcombing and I'm going to go document all the whale bones I can find. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's a deer skeleton. There's an eagle feather right there. Look, here's another one. Oh, look at that. So much of this driftwood looks like bone. It tricks me half the time. That had me fooled. Looks like a bunch of buoys. Here's some deer prints, some little snipe prints, and bear prints. Oh, check this out. Look at this. It's like the lower jaw of a dolphin or a whale. Look at the size of that tooth right there. That is so cool. Oh, look at this. That's a vertebrae disc right there. There's no way these are coming all from the same animal. That jaw and tooth was way too small for those vertebrae. Oh, look at this. There's another one right there. Look at that. Look at the size of that barnacle. The skull of some animal. Oh, look at this. Yeah, two of them right there. I mean, look at how big those are. That's a big animal. It's a really big animal. Oh, check it out. There's a croc bone right there. Well, I've walked as far as I can go this direction without getting my feet wet. Time to turn around and head back the other direction. Check this out. Look at that. This is just one small bone in a whale's back. Look at the size of these things. Oh, look at that. I don't know what that is, but it's fresh. Those look like those belong to a deer. Look at that. That's a shark egg right there. You can see where the little shark pup hatched out. There's a school of salmon right there in the river. Oh, man, this is gorgeous. Check it out. This is bull kelp. It's an enormous piece of seaweed and it's edible. You can pick all these little rings of kelp and they're really good, salty and crunchy. But the best thing to do with bull kelp is pretend you're Indiana Jones. I remember doing that as a kid, smacking myself in the face so hard. I've got to hurt myself. Oh, that's fun. I remember when I was young, me and my brother found some bull kelp and started whipping each other with it. Still can't believe all these whale bones washed up on one beach. And they're obviously from different whales, too. I'm going to try the best I can to pack these up and get these back to Anchorage and we'll see what the biologist has to say. It's getting late. I'm going to make a little dinner. Honestly, that tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich was so good. I'm going to do that again. I've been looking forward to this. It is a beautiful day and there is a beautiful beach out here. I think I need to make a bonfire. Good morning. Oh, it's cozy in my bag, but I've got so much I need to do this morning. Turn on my lights. I've got a couple of rechargeable bicycle lights. I use them as flood lighting whenever I'm out camping so I can film. I've been using the same battery for four days. All right, let's go get some water. Let's see. I've got a nice little breakfast here. I've got some pork jowl bacon, got some hot mueslik cereal, some hot chocolate, and an apple. Oh my goodness, I am full. Well, I've got to go use the little boy's room. I must say, this is one of the prettier outhouses I've ever been in. I'm going to turn this off now. I can't believe how dark it still is. It's almost eight o'clock and there's just barely light in the sky. This time of year, the days get shorter very quickly. We lose almost 15 minutes of daylight every single day. And the further north you go in Alaska, the more extreme it gets. If you're above the Arctic Circle, there's days in the wintertime where the sun never rises. Tell you what, this has been an awesome place to camp. I would love to come back here with the whole family, but I've got to figure out some way to get these bones into my checked bags. That's going to be interesting. I got my bags checked in. I'm waiting at my terminal. My flight should be here any moment now. Well, since getting home, I began the process of registering these whale bones with the federal agency called NOAA. I'm waiting to hear back from them to find out what species of whale these might belong to and whether or not I get to keep the bones. Unfortunately, I don't know how long the process is going to take. So I'm going to go ahead and end the video now. And once I hear back from them, I'll post the results on the Outdoor Boys Facebook page. But hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and you want to see more. If you do, make sure to click subscribe to the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel. And I'll see you guys next video. If you like this video, don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this. And don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning. Hit that bell button. 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