In an effort to MOBGA (did I do that right?) I'll try to give a "quick" recap of our Alaskan caribou hunt from this past September.
tl/dl warning: 4 guys from Texas go to Alaska for the first time and chase caribou around for 6 days!
I would love to answer any questions about doing a DIY trip like this. After researching for 6 months I can tell you that there is not a lot of information out there. This was Unit 23 in Northwest Alaska and part of the Barren Ground Caribou herd.
This is coming to you from the perspective of a novice, big game hunter (and that is being generous) that was blessed to have the opportunity of a lifetime to do something I never thought possible. No humble-bragging going on here...luckily I had enough airline miles saved up to cover all of my flights except one small $150 puddle jump in Alaska. I also already had most of the gear that I needed and was able to spread out the payments to the air transport company over six months. If it wasn't for that this trip would have been years down the road for me.
Just for a little context...I grew up hunting birds in the Panhandle, but never rifle hunted until 4 years ago. I've been able to shoot a handful of deer and pigs since then so it was important to go with good friends that know what they are doing and don't mind helping a newbie out. That is exactly what I did...I joined up with 3 of my best friends, two really experienced hunters and one just as green as me.
So 3 Aggies and 1 Auburn Tiger (I will just call them Aggie1, Aggie2, and Tiger) head out early on a Saturday morning in September flying from Austin to Anchorage for the first leg of our 9 day adventure. We all arrived in Anchorage with enough time to watch the Aggies beat ULaLa with the South Central Alaska A&M Club at the Peanut Farm Bar and Grill...an unplanned, interesting, and overall awesome experience!
We stayed Saturday night in Anchorage and woke up early Sunday morning to fly to Kotzebue, about 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Once there we met up with our air transport company Ram Aviation www.flyingak.com (we had a very positive experience with them and I'd be happy to answer specific questions you might have!)
From here we geared up and went in pairs in a small Cessna another 120 miles north along the Noatak River. Our pilot landed on the side of the river. Aggie1 and I were in the first group so we unloaded the plane and began setting up camp while the pilot flew back to get Aggie2 and Tiger. It is definitely a weird feeling to watch that airplane leave and know you are the only humans for miles and miles! Since you can't hunt the same day that you fly in we got camp set up, checked our rifles to make sure we were still zeroed in, and then spent the afternoon scouting and making a plan for the next day. We had Monday-Friday to fill our 4 caribou tags. The pilot would be back to pick us up on Saturday morning. If I went into detail about the next 5 days I might set the record for the longest post in TexAgs OB history.so I will try to summarize the best I can!
View from the plane flight in...ended up going up and over these mountains!
Sunday night/Monday morning we woke up about 4am to check out the Northern Lights, which was a bucket list item for all of us. The lights were out and pretty awesome. We stood between our two tents looking at them for a few minutes. Then Aggie2 shined his light along the river bank and to our surprise and good sized grizzly stood up about 75 yards from our camp. Little did we know this would be the first of many interactions between us and what we think was 2 or 3 grizzlies over the course of the week. Needless to say the four of us Alaska rookies were back in our tents in a matter of seconds. For whatever reason that thin nylon tent made us feel a lot safer.
Home Sweet Home for 6 nights!
Monday morning Aggie1 and Aggie2 each dropped a bull about 15 yards apart from each other. The problem was they were almost 2 miles from camp in what we quickly found out was a very rugged terrain. It's hard to describe the land in this part of Alaska. Before we left someone described it to us as "walking on frozen basketballs." That is a pretty good description, although I would add that about every third frozen basketball immediately deflates when you step on it and you fall off into at least 6 inches of water. There is water everywhere. When you look across the landscape it looks fairly flat and easy to traverse, but when you get in the middle of an open field you figure out it is full of water and you are now sloshing through at a very slow and tiresome pace.
wareagle and clinte234's view of Aggie 1 and 2 setting up for their shots!
It was an adventure to get across the river! EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
It took most of the afternoon to get the meat packed out and back to camp, but we were rewarded with an awesome dinner of fresh caribou tenderloins, which was delicious. One day down 2 out of 4 guys already tagged out...we may end up having several days to just fish and relax...not quite!
Thankfully Tuesday ended up being our only day with really poor weather. We woke up socked in with the crazy Alaskan fog that you read about. When the visibility improved enough to glass effectively we headed out to our knob that we named Tower Point. This is where we spotted most of the caribou during the trip. Then we would make a plan and head out from there. Usually the four of us would stick together, but as the week went on we split up in pairs to give us more opportunities to find animals. There was a steady, cold drizzle pretty much all day on Tuesday and the caribou were not moving like they were on Monday. It ended up being a long day without a lot of action, but hey we were still in the Alaskan wilderness so it wasn't all bad.
Wednesday was the day we committed the "ultimate sin of caribou hunting." Leading up to the trip we read and watched everything we could find about caribou hunting. One tip that was common in most everything we found was "don't chase caribou." If the caribou are moving away from you it is impossible to catch them. We spotted the biggest herd that we saw all week on Wednesday morning. We estimated them to be about 1.5-2 miles away, grazing and moving slowly away from us. We all agreed that we could make up enough ground to cut them off so off we went stumbling across the tundra. Each time we found an elevated spot to glass the herd we found that it had moved substantially. We did this two or three times until we finally gave up. At this point we were 4 miles from camp and had spent most of the day unsuccessfully chasing this one herd; lesson learned. This area became known as "The Place We Will Never Go Back to Again!"
To make it easier to communicate with each other we started naming all of the places we had been. Our camp was "College Station" and our go-to glassing knob was "Tower Point." We had other glassing knobs that became known as "Navasota," "Hearne," and "Franklin." It sounded ridiculous while we were out there but we can still have a conversation about our trip and mention these places and we all know what each other is talking about.
After Wednesday's disappointment we split up into pairs on Thursday, knowing we only had two days left for Tiger and I to get our bulls. It worked! #3 was dropped by Tiger in the afternoon. There was enough light to make one trip out with meat. The rest of the meat and the antlers would have to wait until the next morning.
Friday Tiger and Aggie1 went to pack out the rest of the meat. I was the last one remaining without a caribou so Aggie2 and I headed out with one last chance. It was a long day glassing and trying to be patient. Finally, with about 2 hours of light left we spotted a group of bulls heading towards us. All week we had watched caribou follow this exact same path, and every time they had turned east about 600 yards from where were were set up. We got as close as we felt like we could without spooking them. I got set up on the rifle and locked in on what we determined to be the best bull of the group. They were still around 750 yards from us and we were expecting them to turn at any moment. I was dialed in to take a long distance shot but to our surprise the caribou didn't turn. They kept walking straight towards us. We stayed as still as possible and continued to adjust the scope as this bull got bigger and bigger in the cross hairs. Finally the group stopped to eat. They were close to 200 yards at this point. We checked the scope one more time and I waited for a clear shot. Bang! Caribou down...with just enough time to get it packed out before the sun went down.
4 guys...4 caribou! The theme of the week ended up being the nightly visitations we had from the local grizzlies. Four mature, bull caribou harvested and unfortunately we only came home with about 80 pounds of meat. It was crazy...we tried everything we could think of to protect the meat, but that is a whole other story for another day.
Part of the bear mess!
Unit 23 Alaska is a wild, barren place. Over six days the only living creatures we saw were caribou, ravens, brown bears, and one lone muskox bull (which was really cool!) All in all it was one of the best weeks of my life and something I will remember fondly. It was also physically and mentally exhausting at the time and I'm glad I did this in my 30's. It was the type of trip where we were all ready to leave at the end, but not in a negative way...more in a way where we felt like we came and accomplished what we wanted to. I'm not going to lie, the cheeseburger, Dr. Pepper, and a temperature controlled hotel room back in Kotzebue Saturday night was enthusiastically appreciated!
Three of us had 6.5 Creedmoors and the other had a 6.5 PRC. We each took a sidearm with us for bear protection.
The insane runway in Kotzebue...we also landed/took off on this runway in a 737, which was a wild adventure all on its own!
tl/dl warning: 4 guys from Texas go to Alaska for the first time and chase caribou around for 6 days!
I would love to answer any questions about doing a DIY trip like this. After researching for 6 months I can tell you that there is not a lot of information out there. This was Unit 23 in Northwest Alaska and part of the Barren Ground Caribou herd.
This is coming to you from the perspective of a novice, big game hunter (and that is being generous) that was blessed to have the opportunity of a lifetime to do something I never thought possible. No humble-bragging going on here...luckily I had enough airline miles saved up to cover all of my flights except one small $150 puddle jump in Alaska. I also already had most of the gear that I needed and was able to spread out the payments to the air transport company over six months. If it wasn't for that this trip would have been years down the road for me.
Just for a little context...I grew up hunting birds in the Panhandle, but never rifle hunted until 4 years ago. I've been able to shoot a handful of deer and pigs since then so it was important to go with good friends that know what they are doing and don't mind helping a newbie out. That is exactly what I did...I joined up with 3 of my best friends, two really experienced hunters and one just as green as me.
So 3 Aggies and 1 Auburn Tiger (I will just call them Aggie1, Aggie2, and Tiger) head out early on a Saturday morning in September flying from Austin to Anchorage for the first leg of our 9 day adventure. We all arrived in Anchorage with enough time to watch the Aggies beat ULaLa with the South Central Alaska A&M Club at the Peanut Farm Bar and Grill...an unplanned, interesting, and overall awesome experience!
We stayed Saturday night in Anchorage and woke up early Sunday morning to fly to Kotzebue, about 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Once there we met up with our air transport company Ram Aviation www.flyingak.com (we had a very positive experience with them and I'd be happy to answer specific questions you might have!)
From here we geared up and went in pairs in a small Cessna another 120 miles north along the Noatak River. Our pilot landed on the side of the river. Aggie1 and I were in the first group so we unloaded the plane and began setting up camp while the pilot flew back to get Aggie2 and Tiger. It is definitely a weird feeling to watch that airplane leave and know you are the only humans for miles and miles! Since you can't hunt the same day that you fly in we got camp set up, checked our rifles to make sure we were still zeroed in, and then spent the afternoon scouting and making a plan for the next day. We had Monday-Friday to fill our 4 caribou tags. The pilot would be back to pick us up on Saturday morning. If I went into detail about the next 5 days I might set the record for the longest post in TexAgs OB history.so I will try to summarize the best I can!
View from the plane flight in...ended up going up and over these mountains!
Sunday night/Monday morning we woke up about 4am to check out the Northern Lights, which was a bucket list item for all of us. The lights were out and pretty awesome. We stood between our two tents looking at them for a few minutes. Then Aggie2 shined his light along the river bank and to our surprise and good sized grizzly stood up about 75 yards from our camp. Little did we know this would be the first of many interactions between us and what we think was 2 or 3 grizzlies over the course of the week. Needless to say the four of us Alaska rookies were back in our tents in a matter of seconds. For whatever reason that thin nylon tent made us feel a lot safer.
Home Sweet Home for 6 nights!
Monday morning Aggie1 and Aggie2 each dropped a bull about 15 yards apart from each other. The problem was they were almost 2 miles from camp in what we quickly found out was a very rugged terrain. It's hard to describe the land in this part of Alaska. Before we left someone described it to us as "walking on frozen basketballs." That is a pretty good description, although I would add that about every third frozen basketball immediately deflates when you step on it and you fall off into at least 6 inches of water. There is water everywhere. When you look across the landscape it looks fairly flat and easy to traverse, but when you get in the middle of an open field you figure out it is full of water and you are now sloshing through at a very slow and tiresome pace.
wareagle and clinte234's view of Aggie 1 and 2 setting up for their shots!
It was an adventure to get across the river! EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
It took most of the afternoon to get the meat packed out and back to camp, but we were rewarded with an awesome dinner of fresh caribou tenderloins, which was delicious. One day down 2 out of 4 guys already tagged out...we may end up having several days to just fish and relax...not quite!
Thankfully Tuesday ended up being our only day with really poor weather. We woke up socked in with the crazy Alaskan fog that you read about. When the visibility improved enough to glass effectively we headed out to our knob that we named Tower Point. This is where we spotted most of the caribou during the trip. Then we would make a plan and head out from there. Usually the four of us would stick together, but as the week went on we split up in pairs to give us more opportunities to find animals. There was a steady, cold drizzle pretty much all day on Tuesday and the caribou were not moving like they were on Monday. It ended up being a long day without a lot of action, but hey we were still in the Alaskan wilderness so it wasn't all bad.
Wednesday was the day we committed the "ultimate sin of caribou hunting." Leading up to the trip we read and watched everything we could find about caribou hunting. One tip that was common in most everything we found was "don't chase caribou." If the caribou are moving away from you it is impossible to catch them. We spotted the biggest herd that we saw all week on Wednesday morning. We estimated them to be about 1.5-2 miles away, grazing and moving slowly away from us. We all agreed that we could make up enough ground to cut them off so off we went stumbling across the tundra. Each time we found an elevated spot to glass the herd we found that it had moved substantially. We did this two or three times until we finally gave up. At this point we were 4 miles from camp and had spent most of the day unsuccessfully chasing this one herd; lesson learned. This area became known as "The Place We Will Never Go Back to Again!"
To make it easier to communicate with each other we started naming all of the places we had been. Our camp was "College Station" and our go-to glassing knob was "Tower Point." We had other glassing knobs that became known as "Navasota," "Hearne," and "Franklin." It sounded ridiculous while we were out there but we can still have a conversation about our trip and mention these places and we all know what each other is talking about.
After Wednesday's disappointment we split up into pairs on Thursday, knowing we only had two days left for Tiger and I to get our bulls. It worked! #3 was dropped by Tiger in the afternoon. There was enough light to make one trip out with meat. The rest of the meat and the antlers would have to wait until the next morning.
Friday Tiger and Aggie1 went to pack out the rest of the meat. I was the last one remaining without a caribou so Aggie2 and I headed out with one last chance. It was a long day glassing and trying to be patient. Finally, with about 2 hours of light left we spotted a group of bulls heading towards us. All week we had watched caribou follow this exact same path, and every time they had turned east about 600 yards from where were were set up. We got as close as we felt like we could without spooking them. I got set up on the rifle and locked in on what we determined to be the best bull of the group. They were still around 750 yards from us and we were expecting them to turn at any moment. I was dialed in to take a long distance shot but to our surprise the caribou didn't turn. They kept walking straight towards us. We stayed as still as possible and continued to adjust the scope as this bull got bigger and bigger in the cross hairs. Finally the group stopped to eat. They were close to 200 yards at this point. We checked the scope one more time and I waited for a clear shot. Bang! Caribou down...with just enough time to get it packed out before the sun went down.
4 guys...4 caribou! The theme of the week ended up being the nightly visitations we had from the local grizzlies. Four mature, bull caribou harvested and unfortunately we only came home with about 80 pounds of meat. It was crazy...we tried everything we could think of to protect the meat, but that is a whole other story for another day.
Part of the bear mess!
Unit 23 Alaska is a wild, barren place. Over six days the only living creatures we saw were caribou, ravens, brown bears, and one lone muskox bull (which was really cool!) All in all it was one of the best weeks of my life and something I will remember fondly. It was also physically and mentally exhausting at the time and I'm glad I did this in my 30's. It was the type of trip where we were all ready to leave at the end, but not in a negative way...more in a way where we felt like we came and accomplished what we wanted to. I'm not going to lie, the cheeseburger, Dr. Pepper, and a temperature controlled hotel room back in Kotzebue Saturday night was enthusiastically appreciated!
Three of us had 6.5 Creedmoors and the other had a 6.5 PRC. We each took a sidearm with us for bear protection.
The insane runway in Kotzebue...we also landed/took off on this runway in a 737, which was a wild adventure all on its own!
