Alaska Caribou

20 years guiding, I’ve yet to meet anyone that was not humbled by hiking the Tundra. It is tough. Don’t know how many times I told guys Ok, it’s 3/4 mile to where the plane will pick us up, we,ve only an hour to get there. If I figured a mile to a mile and half an hour we always made it easy. Push that to 2.5 mph you better be long legged and in really good shape. Really looking forward to the rest of this story.
 
I never understood the issue with walking on the tundra. Granted i have only done it for about 60-70 days total for all my trips, to Labrador, Quebec, Alaska, NF, Nunavut and BC… I just never found it overly difficult. My buddy Nick and I get a laugh at it every time it’s brought up. Maybe i have big feet or something
 
Trial153 said:
I never understood the issue with walking on the tundra. Granted i have only done it for about 60-70 days total for all my trips, to Labrador, Quebec, Alaska, NF, Nunavut and BC… I just never found it overly difficult. My buddy Nick and I get a laugh at it every time it’s brought up. Maybe i have big feet or something
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I'm mostly in agreement with you. I did 76 miles of it in 2022. If you pick your routes to avoid the muck, ponds, and water crossings, it isn't much worse than any other soft surface. 10 miles round trip with 150lbs of animal and more gear is just a lot of effort, regardless of the terrain.
 
Sorry for the wait. I’ve been busy today. Taking care of meat and antlers, changing flights, cleaning the truck ect. Flight leaves at 12:46am and we have some time to kill so here it goes.

We landed in Fairbanks on the 14th along with all our gear, which is always a relief. On this hunt my friend, Wayne, who also lives in SC and gets after it pretty hard was joining me. Last year Wayne and I went to Colorado for a muzzy elk hunt and he called in a nice bull for me.

We grabbed our truck and headed to Walmart and Sportsmans to grab some gas cans and stove fuel and then we headed north. We drove for a while and didn’t see anything but Alaska countryside and road work. Oh my goodness the road work. I think we followed a pilot truck for over a hundred miles. In some places the road was great and in others it was terrible, but eventually we crossed the Yukon River which was really cool. Then the Artic Circle sign which was also a first for both of us. Not long after Wayne started to snooze a little bit because of the 4hr time difference it was starting to feel pretty late even though the sun was still up (it never really goes down). I kept driving until I got tired. All of the sudden I saw a black shape in the road and I knew immediately it was a wolf. I started smacking Wayne and pointing. The wolf went into the woods but as soon as we passed he came right back out trotting up the road and letting us watch him for a minute or so. It was really cool.

Finally around 10pm (2am eastern) I was starting to get pretty tired. So I found a spot and we pulled off and spent the night in the truck (it was still light). 2 times in the night it got chilly so I turned on the truck and got some heat going to warm us up bc neither of us had dug out our sleeping bags. At around 7am we were up with the sun… and back on the road. When we got to Coldfoot we stopped for some gas, drinks, and Wayne got some food then back on the road we went. I kept commenting how it was looking like moose country then all of the sudden there was a big cow right beside the road. Wayne had never seen a moose before so it was a cool experience for him. As we started to get into the mountains I was hoping we’d see some Dall Sheep because I’ve never seen one and a sheep is my dream hunt so I always want to see sheep, haha.

Before getting to Atigun Pass we got stopped for some road work and in front of us was one of those grizzly relocation tube trailers being pulled by Alaska F&G. The trailer said “Sandra Dee” on the side. I should have gotten out and gone and talked to them, but I’m not that type of guy so we just looked. The weather in the mountains was rainy and was we came out of the pass I started looking up on the ridges and my wish came true. There off to one side of a green ridge were some ewes and lambs white as snow. They were cool to see. I stopped the truck and dug out my spotter and took some pics. Another first for both of us!

IMG_1615.jpegIMG_1622.jpegIMG_9283.jpegIMG_9286.jpegIMG_1861.jpegIMG_1862.jpeg
 
As we came out of the mountains the weather improved some as the country opened up. We didn’t really have a spot in mind to hunt so we just started looking for caribou. There were a good many people hunting, but most of the folks had bows. We both preferred to find a place with fewer people so we kept driving, plus we hadn’t seen any caribou. After 90 minutes or we came to more road work and I got out of truck to ask the guy with the stop/slow sign if he’d been seeing any caribou. He told me a week ago there were a lot of them around but he hadn’t seen many since then. I got back in the truck and Wayne started looking around while we waited for the pilot truck to return. Not 5 minutes after the guy telling me he hadn’t seen any caribou in a week Wayne said to me “What do you think that is?” I looked through the binos and about 2.5 miles away were 12 caribou working across the tundra. We were excited to see our first animals. There were still plenty of trucks around so we drove on.

Another hour later the number of trucks parked started to thin out and we found a spot where we saw a couple caribou in the distance. This spot looked as good as any so we got our gear all ready to go and headed in. It was around 4pm. I realize that for some the Tundra isn’t that bad to walk on. It was relatively tough for me, but not impossible. I’ll try to describe the tundra for those of you that have never had the pleasure of experiencing it. The volleyball size chunks of tussock move if you step on them. If you step between them your foot might squish down 1” or 4”. Pretty much everything is wet. There are swampy areas, tiny creeks, big creeks, little ponds, big ponds and little lakes. Basically everything moves. It felt like every step took the energy of climbing a squishy stair.

The good news was that the farther we hiked in the more caribou we were seeing. At about 3 miles in we saw a really nice shooter bull. Another mile later while working our way around a pond we snuck up on 2 more nice bedded bulls. By the time we got to the 5 mile mark we we’d probably seen 50+ caribou and a handful of shooter bulls.

We ended up camping by a creek that was 5.2 miles from the truck as the crow flies and 5.6 miles on foot. It was around 11 by the time the teepee was up and we both crawled in. It had still been raining a little off and on. We were exhausted but our spirits were high. We’d picked a good spot. There were plenty of caribou and we went to sleep (with the sun up) with dreams of big bulls in our head.

We woke up to rain on the teepee. Not ideal but also not unexpected. We weren’t in a super big hurry or anything so I decided to make some oatmeal for breakfast. I also decided I’d boil more water than normal because I was going to make some bone broth to drink for something warm before heading out. Since it was raining I was boiling my water in the tent. I looked at my pot and saw it was boiling I turned around to grab my spoon and I heard something. What I heard was my pot falling over…. 2 of the 3 cups of boiling water went right on top of my left foot. I felt a little pain at first then nothing. Wayne obviously saw it happen. I said “That’s not good” then I said “I don’t think it’s that bad”. Looking back you always think about what you should’ve done differently and I definitely should have taken the sock off immediately but I didn’t. It didn’t hurt bad so I didn’t rush. After a couple minutes the pain started to come pretty strong. I took my sock off and I realized my mistake. It wasn’t good. I limped out and put my foot in the creek. I thought about if I could continue, but I didn’t come this far to quit. I had a med kit, I had drugs, there were caribou that needed to be hunted. I wasn’t quitting.

The bedded bulls on the lake.
IMG_1652.jpeg

IMG_1643.jpeg
The 2 bedded bulls joined up with some others that we watched for a while.
IMG_1654.jpeg
My foot.
IMG_1814.jpeg
 
SCliving Outdoors said:
As we came out of the mountains the weather improved some as the country opened up. We didn’t really have a spot in mind to hunt so we just started looking for caribou. There were a good many people hunting, but most of the folks had bows. We both preferred to find a place with fewer people so we kept driving, plus we hadn’t seen any caribou. After 90 minutes or we came to more road work and I got out of truck to ask the guy with the stop/slow sign if he’d been seeing any caribou. He told me a week ago there were a lot of them around but he hadn’t seen many since then. I got back in the truck and Wayne started looking around while we waited for the pilot truck to return. Not 5 minutes after the guy telling me he hadn’t seen any caribou in a week Wayne said to me “What do you think that is?” I looked through the binos and about 2.5 miles away were 12 caribou working across the tundra. We were excited to see our first animals. There were still plenty of trucks around so we drove on.

Another hour later the number of trucks parked started to thin out and we found a spot where we saw a couple caribou in the distance. This spot looked as good as any so we got our gear all ready to go and headed in. It was around 4pm. I realize that for some the Tundra isn’t that bad to walk on. It was relatively tough for me, but not impossible. I’ll try to describe the tundra for those of you that have never had the pleasure of experiencing it. The volleyball size chunks of tussock move if you step on them. If you step between them your foot might squish down 1” or 4”. Pretty much everything is wet. There are swampy areas, tiny creeks, big creeks, little ponds, big ponds and little lakes. Basically everything moves. It felt like every step took the energy of climbing a squishy stair.

The good news was that the farther we hiked in the more caribou we were seeing. At about 3 miles in we saw a really nice shooter bull. Another mile later while working our way around a pond we snuck up on 2 more nice bedded bulls. By the time we got to the 5 mile mark we we’d probably seen 50+ caribou and a handful of shooter bulls.

We ended up camping by a creek that was 5.2 miles from the truck as the crow flies and 5.6 miles on foot. It was around 11 by the time the teepee was up and we both crawled in. It had still been raining a little off and on. We were exhausted but our spirits were high. We’d picked a good spot. There were plenty of caribou and we went to sleep (with the sun up) with dreams of big bulls in our head.

We woke up to rain on the teepee. Not ideal but also not unexpected. We weren’t in a super big hurry or anything so I decided to make some oatmeal for breakfast. I also decided I’d boil more water than normal because I was going to make some bone broth to drink for something warm before heading out. Since it was raining I was boiling my water in the tent. I looked at my pot and saw it was boiling I turned around to grab my spoon and I heard something. What I heard was my pot falling over…. 2 of the 3 cups of boiling water went right on top of my left foot. I felt a little pain at first then nothing. Wayne obviously saw it happen. I said “That’s not good” then I said “I don’t think it’s that bad”. Looking back you always think about what you should’ve done differently and I definitely should have taken the sock off immediately but I didn’t. It didn’t hurt bad so I didn’t rush. After a couple minutes the pain started to come pretty strong. I took my sock off and I realized my mistake. It wasn’t good. I limped out and put my foot in the creek. I thought about if I could continue, but I didn’t come this far to quit. I had a med kit, I had drugs, there were caribou that needed to be hunted. I wasn’t quitting.

The bedded bulls on the lake.
View attachment 337274

View attachment 337275
The 2 bedded bulls joined up with some others that we watched for a while.
View attachment 337277
My foot.
View attachment 337278
Click to expand...
oh come on man, that’s why you have two feet! Just use the other one! 😉
 
Last edited:
SCliving Outdoors said:
It’s going to be a while. I’m about to get on SEA-CHS flight which is about a 5hr flight and I’m not paying for wifi. I have a 2.5hr drive after that. I’ll write on the plane and try to upload while waiting for luggage.
Click to expand...
How do you travel and not pay for the Wi-Fi
 
Dang man yeah now I see why this was a tough one. Couldn't imagine that pain headed back out heavy. Bad enough as it is.
 
Looking forward for the full write up on this!

Headed to the Yukon in three weeks for a 10 day caribou/moose hunt. Lucky for us, we don't have to hike 5 miles in and we get to drive ATVs to our spot.
 
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