npaden
Well-known member
What an amazing place. Feeling small is an understatment, especially then you're 20% smaller than the average person.
Congrats on the bulls!
Thought that was a great line. Great pictures!
Congrats!
Seward's Folly Soul Searching
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- Start date
Thought that was a great line. Great pictures!
Congrats!
Wow, what an amazing looking place. I think the words "of a lifetime" are used way too often on these online forums, but THAT is truly a trip of a lifetime. No way in hell can you erase those memories, ever.
Beautiful landscape and some great bulls. Congrats. I am jealous.
Beautiful landscape and some great bulls. Congrats. I am jealous.
fishing4sanity
Well-known member
Great photos and congrats on the bulls! Is the adventure ongoing or are you back home?
belly-deep
Active member
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2009
- Messages
- 3,459
Dang that looks like fun
Matt/VT
New member
Incredible adventure- congrats! Thanks for the look.
deer_shooter
Well-known member
Congrats! Thanks for the great pics.
mtmander
Active member
wow
elkantlers
Well-known member
Awesome, Congrats to both of you. Great pictures.
Hem
Well-known member
Fun looking hunt, and good weather to boot.Nice adventure.
Nameless Range
Well-known member
Looks like the trip of a lifetime. Congrats on the successful hunt
noharleyyet
Well-known member
Like...lifetime memories.
DRAFTSTUD
Well-known member
What! No Caribou Hat? Great Photos and big Congrats on doing it with your wife. Blessing! John
shoots-straight
Well-known member
Randy, thanks for sharing your hunt. Looked like a great time.
Mica Man
Well-known member
Congrats, way cool adventure for you and the Mrs.
Geeze, rough crowd, with friends like these…
Lots of questions, I’ll try to answer them all in the little bit of the story that there is to this hunt.
This hunt/trip turned out to be much different than we had planned and envisioned.
We arrived in Kotzebue on August 30, and were to fly out the next morning. In talking to the transporter, he assured me we would be dropped off down along a major river. I assumed water would be plentiful, and brought some fishing gear to kill time on the river.
Right before our flight out the morning of the 31th, the pilot walks in and says “plans have changed, you’re going to our ridgeline. Did you bring collapsible water jugs?” No, I hadn’t. We filled up our few water bottles, and the basecamp water filter which held 3-4 liters of water.
The flight in was awesome. Blue bird weather, and lots of caribou spotted. We landed on the ridgeline, which was nothing more than a rocky spur way up in the foothills of the Brooks range. We unloaded our gear, and he left me with- “This spot gets a lot of snow, you’ll have to shovel out the runway if weather comes in, and we’ve had lots of bear problems here in the past. Good luck.”
No sooner had the plane gotten out of ear range when bulls (that we hadn’t seen from the air) started filtering out of the willows and onto the rocky ridge. I honestly think we went the rest of the trip with always having a mature bull in view.
We had to make a bunch of trips hauling all our gear down off the ridge to a camping spot. We make a quick recon mission trying to find a spring or pool in the willows for a close water source with no luck. It was looking like we’d have to walk a mile down into the tundra/willows every day to fill up our water.
All the live bull pictures above are from that first day setting up camp. It was very hard to concentrate with the constant stream of awesome animals coming through. That night it was hard to sleep with the caribou coming through camp walking on the rocks. We also set up in the tallest willows in the area, which happened to be the spot where bulls stopped to scrape the velvet off their horns. They were thrashing willows around us all night, it was pretty amazing.
Those that have been that far north this time of year know there really isn’t a sunset/rise, it’s more of like 8 hours of dusk. Towards the end of that dusky period I got out to pee and there was a line of bulls right out of our tent. No time for breakfast.
This hunt was mainly for Kaitie, and she was first up on the gun. I was to wait until she took her pick then get mine. After following herds around for a couple hours, another bachelor herd came through with some great options in it, and Kaitie picked hers out. He didn’t go down right away, but conveniently decided to go die right where the plane dropped us off. No packing required.
While we were taking pictures of Kaitie’s caribou, I noticed a very large grizzly moseying around directly downwind of us a mile away. A little disconcerting considering the pilot’s warning.
As we were taking care of Kaitie’s bull, mine walked up to us, and I decided that if I was going to butcher one caribou, I might as well do two at the same time. Mine also didn’t go down with the shot (these animals are a lot tougher than I had expected), but unfortunately he ran down away from the ridge to die.
I probably jumped the gun on mine, but it seemed like the right situation at the time. Kaitie’s bull is in the class of the best we saw, and that was the main goal of the trip. She’s very happy with him, and the whole experience.
I called our pilot to tell him the situation, and to my surprise he wanted to come get us out the same day, as in four hours from then. It was a pretty frantic day of butchering, packing meat, breaking down camp, and getting camp hauled back up to the airstrip.
The flight out was again amazing. We saw a sow with a cub just over our ridge from where we were, and a lot more caribou.
Upon arriving back in Kotzebue, we realized we were in a pretty big pickle. Of all places and times, Obama decided to visit that next day, and all flights and rooms were either booked or canceled for the next week because of it. We eventually were able to get the last two seats on the next morning’s flight out, and spent the rest of that night butchering meat and packing gear. What little sleep we did get was in the lawn of the National Park Service building right in town.
After getting all the meat taken care of, and resting in Anchorage for a couple days, we took a rental car and explored Alaska as much as can be possible in 10 days. What an amazing state.
As far as logistics, if you’re willing to sell your soul to Alaska Air and use their mileage program and cargo service, it’s pretty affordable. We got 140 pounds of packaged meat delivered back to Montana for under 100 bucks. We had been saving air miles for a while and were able to cover the commercial flights with that. The big cost of course is the bush plane. But for what it is I don’t think it’s outlandish what they charge. We put full trust in our pilot to put us in the right spot out there, and never questioned his decisions. I am very glad we went in to it with that attitude, and he put us in the perfect spot. You’re paying for a lot more than just a ride with those guys. We talked to a bunch of other hunters back in Kotz, and while everyone did get their bull that we talked to, no one else had an experience like ours. Our pilots call to go up high rather than low paid off big for us.
Lots of questions, I’ll try to answer them all in the little bit of the story that there is to this hunt.
This hunt/trip turned out to be much different than we had planned and envisioned.
We arrived in Kotzebue on August 30, and were to fly out the next morning. In talking to the transporter, he assured me we would be dropped off down along a major river. I assumed water would be plentiful, and brought some fishing gear to kill time on the river.
Right before our flight out the morning of the 31th, the pilot walks in and says “plans have changed, you’re going to our ridgeline. Did you bring collapsible water jugs?” No, I hadn’t. We filled up our few water bottles, and the basecamp water filter which held 3-4 liters of water.
The flight in was awesome. Blue bird weather, and lots of caribou spotted. We landed on the ridgeline, which was nothing more than a rocky spur way up in the foothills of the Brooks range. We unloaded our gear, and he left me with- “This spot gets a lot of snow, you’ll have to shovel out the runway if weather comes in, and we’ve had lots of bear problems here in the past. Good luck.”
No sooner had the plane gotten out of ear range when bulls (that we hadn’t seen from the air) started filtering out of the willows and onto the rocky ridge. I honestly think we went the rest of the trip with always having a mature bull in view.
We had to make a bunch of trips hauling all our gear down off the ridge to a camping spot. We make a quick recon mission trying to find a spring or pool in the willows for a close water source with no luck. It was looking like we’d have to walk a mile down into the tundra/willows every day to fill up our water.
All the live bull pictures above are from that first day setting up camp. It was very hard to concentrate with the constant stream of awesome animals coming through. That night it was hard to sleep with the caribou coming through camp walking on the rocks. We also set up in the tallest willows in the area, which happened to be the spot where bulls stopped to scrape the velvet off their horns. They were thrashing willows around us all night, it was pretty amazing.
Those that have been that far north this time of year know there really isn’t a sunset/rise, it’s more of like 8 hours of dusk. Towards the end of that dusky period I got out to pee and there was a line of bulls right out of our tent. No time for breakfast.
This hunt was mainly for Kaitie, and she was first up on the gun. I was to wait until she took her pick then get mine. After following herds around for a couple hours, another bachelor herd came through with some great options in it, and Kaitie picked hers out. He didn’t go down right away, but conveniently decided to go die right where the plane dropped us off. No packing required.
While we were taking pictures of Kaitie’s caribou, I noticed a very large grizzly moseying around directly downwind of us a mile away. A little disconcerting considering the pilot’s warning.
As we were taking care of Kaitie’s bull, mine walked up to us, and I decided that if I was going to butcher one caribou, I might as well do two at the same time. Mine also didn’t go down with the shot (these animals are a lot tougher than I had expected), but unfortunately he ran down away from the ridge to die.
I probably jumped the gun on mine, but it seemed like the right situation at the time. Kaitie’s bull is in the class of the best we saw, and that was the main goal of the trip. She’s very happy with him, and the whole experience.
I called our pilot to tell him the situation, and to my surprise he wanted to come get us out the same day, as in four hours from then. It was a pretty frantic day of butchering, packing meat, breaking down camp, and getting camp hauled back up to the airstrip.
The flight out was again amazing. We saw a sow with a cub just over our ridge from where we were, and a lot more caribou.
Upon arriving back in Kotzebue, we realized we were in a pretty big pickle. Of all places and times, Obama decided to visit that next day, and all flights and rooms were either booked or canceled for the next week because of it. We eventually were able to get the last two seats on the next morning’s flight out, and spent the rest of that night butchering meat and packing gear. What little sleep we did get was in the lawn of the National Park Service building right in town.
After getting all the meat taken care of, and resting in Anchorage for a couple days, we took a rental car and explored Alaska as much as can be possible in 10 days. What an amazing state.
As far as logistics, if you’re willing to sell your soul to Alaska Air and use their mileage program and cargo service, it’s pretty affordable. We got 140 pounds of packaged meat delivered back to Montana for under 100 bucks. We had been saving air miles for a while and were able to cover the commercial flights with that. The big cost of course is the bush plane. But for what it is I don’t think it’s outlandish what they charge. We put full trust in our pilot to put us in the right spot out there, and never questioned his decisions. I am very glad we went in to it with that attitude, and he put us in the perfect spot. You’re paying for a lot more than just a ride with those guys. We talked to a bunch of other hunters back in Kotz, and while everyone did get their bull that we talked to, no one else had an experience like ours. Our pilots call to go up high rather than low paid off big for us.
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