A search for a missing hunter ended Oct. 30 when search teams found his body on the hillside in Nakwasina Sound, 14 miles north of Sitka. Alaska State Troopers said Tad Fujioka, 50, an experienced hunter and longtime Sitka resident, appeared to be the victim of a bear mauling.
Fujioka left Sitka on a deer hunting trip to Nakwasina on Monday, Oct. 28, and a search was started around 5:30 p.m. the next day after he was reported overdue. U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Sitka dispatched a helicopter crew who searched for three hours before nightfall. They found his vessel but not Fujioka.
The Coast Guard helicopter resumed the search the next day and also delivered a Sitka Fire Department team for a ground search. Teams from the fire department and Alaska Wildlife Troopers arrived by boat to join the search.
Searchers on the ground covered the hillside trail that Fujioka was known to use for hunting, and after three hours found his body at about the 800-foot level, between Lisa Creek and the back of the bay, on Baranof Island, Sitka Fire Chief Craig Warren said.
Fujioka had killed a deer and that there was evidence that bears had been feeding on the carcass, according to state troopers spokesperson Tim DeSpain. A Coast Guard helicopter spotted three bears at the site and notified the teams searching on the ground, he said.
Troopers and members of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game searched for the bears until it became too dark but did not find them, DeSpain said. “The bears consumed the deer and left the immediate area, which is remote and difficult to access,” he said in an email.
Fujioka, a commercial longliner and troller, was known as an avid outdoorsman and hunter, trapper and fisherman.
Over the years he was active advocating on behalf of Southeast Alaska fisheries, presenting evidence on behalf of the troll fishery in a recent Wild Fish Conservancy lawsuit to shut down Southeast trollers.
He was chairman of the Seafood Producers Cooperative board for the past three years and held the processor seat on the Sitka Fish and Game Advisory Committee.
The Anchorage Daily News contributed to this report.
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