Every year in mid-September, mechanic Dave Randrup closes his garage in Petersburg and heads up the Castle River for a month of moose hunting.  He weaves his houseboat south between Kupreanof and Mitkof Islands, then angles west toward the mouth of the Castle.  The river meets saltwater reluctantly after passing through a wide stretch of tidal flats, which bare at low tide.  Dave times his departure, sometimes leaving town in the lonely dead of night, so that he crosses the flats on the flood tide.

After traversing the tidal flats and working around the rock garden of boulders at the river’s mouth, Dave moors his houseboat near a Forest Service cabin and settles down to hunt moose.  The annual trip doubles as a family reunion, as Dave’s kids, brothers and sisters, buddies, and old hunting partners visit on weekends and days off.  Some come to hunt, others to paddle up the river, sightsee, and enjoy the camaraderie of the Randrup camp.  Dave likes the spot because “it’s a place where the kids can come up and go hunting and fishing without any danger of brown bear.  You can fish for coho and trout, and there are waterfowl during the last part of moose season.  It’s a nice area, nice and quiet, and there aren’t too many people.”

In mid-October, when the bite in the air reddens noses and the cold rain sheets down from gray skies, Dave and his hunting party strike camp and head home with—if they’ve had any luck—two or three moose. Dave divides his share among family and friends, and trades some of what’s left over for deer and halibut.  By late fall, the Randrup family usually has three hundred pounds of moose, a couple of Sitka black-tailed deer, and a hundred pounds of halibut in the freezer to keep them well-fed until the next trip to the Castle River.

Back for the winter, Dave resumes work at the garage he and his brother started in 1969.  An affinity for nuts, bolts, and grease has marked several generations of the Randrup family.  Dave’s father worked as a machinist in a Washington shipyard during World War II before moving to Petersburg in 1951, where he opened his own machine shop and taught his son the trade. But growing up in Petersburg, in the heart of the Tongass, Dave began to discover worlds outside the work and interests of his family. Over the years, he has worked as a salmon seiner, a logger, a carpenter, and a shipwright as well as a mechanic. 

Dave’s passion for hunting settled in him early. Since his father didn’t share his interest, he learned from friends.  By the time he was 13, he was making regular expeditions to a family cabin, and has hunted religiously ever since.

“I don’t go to church,” Dave says, “but I guess my church is the outdoors.”  He has taught his children to enjoy tramping under the moss-draped trees of the forest as much as the excitement of the hunt.  This mindset is an important part of the reason that Dave returns to places like the Castle River.  “I go out of my way to stay away from a road system when I hunt,” he says, “and I try to teach my kids the old-fashioned way.  There aren’t too many places where you can hunt away from roads, but if you want to see country, you’ve got to walk.”