Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Planning 2017 diy caribou hunt - advise needed

Me and a couple guys down in Idaho have decided to get serious about a DIY fly in Caribou hunt in 2017. I have ambition and drive to go - however the logistic Know very little as we start our research.

What can you recommend on the process to get this going? Best time of the year? Best/Most trustworthy outfitters to fly you in and out? What part of Alaska? Any and all information is appreciated.

Here's how to do a DIY hunt for caribou. The Northwest Alaska caribou herd is the largest in the world. Each fall the caribou migrate from the north slope of the Brooks Range, south past Kotzebue. It's one of the last great migrations left on the planet. Go see it while it's still there. Hunt in late September, after the velvet has dropped from antlers and before the meat is ruined by the onset of the rut.

People have been hunting caribou in the upper Noatak River and its' tributaries for thousands of years. However, today the Eskimos that live in Noatak Village rarely go farther up the Noatak than the Nakolic River. So today the historic hunting grounds are largely untouched except by a few hunters from the lower forty-eight.

I went on my first Alaska adventure in 1987 and have returned every two or three years since then. I certainly do not claim to be an expert on hunting in Alaska. However, over the years I have encountered problems and had questions. Things that might not even occur to a resident. I wrote down the solutions and answers and I have updated the list after subsequent trips. Here is the latest version.

LOGISTICS FOR NONRESIDENT HUNTERS IN ALASKA

In Alaska, nonresidents are required by law to hire a licensed guide to hunt brown-grizzly bear, mountain goats, or Dall sheep. Someday I may want to hunt one of those species and then I may hire a guide. But until that day, I prefer to do everything myself and reap the greater personal satisfaction and lower cost that comes from doing it myself. A DIY hunt is a lot cheaper than a guided/outfitted hunt and I couldn’t afford to go as often unless I do it on the cheap. So all of my Alaska trips have been DIY climbing expeditions or DIY hunts where we did all the recon and planning (that’s half the fun) and provided all of our own camping gear and food. We contracted with Alaska companies only for watercraft rental or transportation.




A 100 quart Igloo or Coleman cooler is the largest that the US Postal Service will accept without charging extra for over-sized packages. Avoid wheels and small door in the top lid. The wheels make the cooler heavier and they take up room that could be filled with contents. The door makes the cooler leak in the rain. I mailed a 120-quart Igloo cooler via US Postal Service. I think it cost about $50. Had to mail three weeks early to ensure timely arrival or pay premium costs for faster service. It was mostly filled with freeze-dried and dehydrated food and other disposable/consumable stuff. Make sure you insure your mail and mark your name and address on the outside with magic marker, then seal it shut with strapping tape.

Rent a satellite phone. They are the only way to communicate with your pilot. Look for Outfitter Satellite Phones on the Internet. http://www.outfittersatellite.com/ or http://www.satellitephonesolutions.com/

On the departing trip I checked only a rifle case and one large duffel bag filled with clothes, hunting items and camping gear. I also take a carry-on that holds travel items, a change of clothing and hunting boots. Make sure that there are no TSA prohibited items in your carry-ons.

You can't carry fuel on board the airlines. Empty your fuel bottle and rinse it out with water so there is no fuel odor, before you go to the airport. You can carry fuel on board the bush plane and the pilots prefer unopened gallon containers of Coleman fuel or Blazo. You can also use propane but those 16oz. canisters are pretty bulky if you take enough for a week.

Gun Case: needs to be very sturdy and have locks. I use a Cabelas two-gun "Bulletproof" gun case, which does the job fine. There are many that aren't as good and a few that are better. Pelican is supposed to offer some real good gun cases. The airlines require the ammo to be in "manufacturers' original packaging" and I put it inside the gun case with everything else. You must declare your firearm at the ticket counter and have it inspected by TSA, then locked. Then you give it to the ticket agent at the counter. Your gun case gets special handling and tracking. That’s why I put all my fragile and expensive optics and electronics in the case along with my rifle. It will be delivered at a location or window separate from regular baggage. But also bring a soft case because it’s a lot more convenient in the bush plane and in the tent. The one I use floats and has hard rubber armor around the scope and receiver group. On mountaineering trips instead of a gun case, I carried a ski bag.

If you need liquor, you have to plan ahead to make that happen. Beer is bulky and heavy and considering all the restrictions and costs associated with baggage on commercial airlines, beer is probably not your best bet. So if you need alcohol you probably want to buy it in Anchorage. Pack it in plastic bottles so that it won’t leak and put it in your checked baggage. You can buy liquor in Anchorage but that’s not necessarily true in the hub communities. Some hub communities have no restrictions on the sale of alcohol and some are damp, which means you can bring in your own liquor but there is none for sale in the community. Bush communities with a high percentage of Native American residents are generally dry.

Airline flight schedules between the lower-forty-eight and Anchorage Airport can be awkward. It’s common to arrive around midnight in Anchorage and depart for a hub community at 06:00AM or 07:00AM the next morning. By the time that you deal with baggage, travel to and from the motel, then go through security, it’s not really worth it to leave the airport and sleep in a motel. As a result it’s common to see people sleeping in the terminal on out-of-the-way benches with their gear beside them.

There are some good places to hunt that you can reach by driving from Anchorage but most of the best hunting will be accessed via a bush plane from a hub city. Alaska Airlines is the only major airlines that flies to the hub communities. I have an Alaska Airlines VISA credit card that accumulates air mile points. So I fly for free all the way from my home to the hub community. If you want to hunt in Alaska, you should get one. The other major carriers do not fly to hub communities. I’ve flown on Alaska Airlines to Anchorage, Dillingham, Kotzebue, Juneau, Sitka and Kodiak. On one trip my buddy used Penn Air to fly to Dillingham and they left some people's baggage in Anchorage. He had to wait for two days for his gear to arrive. In the panhandle, you can get to some remote communities on the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system, but you have to adapt your schedule to the ferry schedule. There are a couple of companies that rent boats in Petersburg. I couldn't find any commercial boat rental companies in Kodiak.

There are several regularly scheduled regional airlines including Peninsula Airlines (PennAir) that fly’s mostly around the Katmai Peninsula and Bristol Bay. Bering Air uses eight-passenger Caravan turbo props and they have hubs in Kotzebue and Nome. They have their act together. I’ve also flown with a couple of services in the panhandle. Air Excursions uses little bush planes. Once they had to leave half of our baggage on the tarmac in Kake because the plane was too small to carry everything. I’ve also flown with Wings. They also use Caravans and seem to have a professional operation. Wright Air flies out of Fairbanks to many of the smaller communities, in the region. 40-Mile Air flies out of Tok. ERA-Hageland (RAVN) is another regional airlines and they claim to be as big as all of the other regional airlines combined. I suppose that there must be more, but these are the only ones that I'm familiar with. They are operated like municipal bus systems, expensive but a lot cheaper than using a bush plane to get to the smaller bush communities.

Prices in cities that are on the road system are only slightly higher than in the lower forty-eight. Kodiak and Juneau are large enough that the prices there are only about 10% higher than in the lower forty-eight. Plan on paying about double in other hub communities and expect prices to be higher than that in bush communities. You cannot carry fuel on an airliner so you have buy your fuel in the hub community. I’ve paid as much as $26/gallon for white gas. Bring everything else from home and avoid restaurants if you can.

Lodging was really expensive too. We paid $150/night for a sleazy hotel in Dillingham, in 2004. Nicer places were even more expensive. I paid $100/night to stay at Bibbers B&B in Kotzebue in 2007. It was clean and respectable. In 2009, we returned early to Kotzebue and had to get some lodging without reservations. The only place that had rooms was the Nulagvik Hotel which is about equal in quality to a Motel 6. It cost $245/night. In 2013, we stayed one night at the Best Western in Kodiak and it cost only $108/night. Best of all, try to avoid lodging all together and camp in the bush until the last day.

Also if you hunt out of Kotzebue, make sure that your pilot does not drop you on one of the rivers that are close to KOTZ. The pilots like to make short flights because they can make more of them but the best hunting in mid-September will be further away. If you can wait to hunt in early October, the ‘bou might be closer to KOTZ. Most bush pilots stop flying north of the Noatak River on September 30. We flew with Northern Air Trophy, in 2007 and we used Northwestern Aviation in 2009. Both are based in Kotzebue and I would fly with both pilots again.



If you are going to be anywhere near a river, then go prepared to fish. Arctic char, Dolly Varden, rainbows, graylings, and pike follow the salmon up the rivers. Cast anything orange into the river. We killed 'em using big orange spoons and orange plastic eggs. My buddy tied some orange parachute chord onto a hook so it looked like a salmon egg and caught several fish using that. I took 6 pound monofilament and the pike chewed it up. I switched to 15# Spiderwire. It's just as light and much stronger. Another guy did well using little red plastic eggs and dropped them into the water just behind a run of spawning salmon where two rivers met.



On each trip, we took a little extra food and each time we returned with some food left over because we were eating game meat and fish. Half of a freeze-dried entre' compliments fish nicely. However, I've heard many stories about bad weather preventing pilots from picking up hunters for several days. A buddy was hunting on the Alaska bush on 9/11/01 and all planes were grounded. He was in the bush for an extra week and had no clue why the pilot didn’t come to pick them up (no sat phone). They ate their extra rations and then they ate lots of game meat, fish, and wild berries while waiting for the plane. In 2013, we experienced firsthand how unpredictable weather can extend your time in the bush. Don’t forget to bring a little extra fuel also.




Clothing – You need a set of bib waiders so you can cross rivers, and a Gortex/Nylon Parka. Be prepared for temps hovering around freezing. It will probably rain/snow at least once during the hunt and may rain/snow for the entire hunt. You need a pair of leather hiking boots with really good ankle support so you can cross marsh mounds without breaking an ankle. A pair of Kennetreck Hardscrabble boots is a good choice. Orange clothing is not required in Alaska but it's not a bad idea to wear an orange hat so you friends can spot you at a distance.

If it's warm, you will have to be concerned with keeping your meat from spoiling while waiting to return to the bush community. We put our meat in game bags, kept it clean and hung it up every night covered by a tarp to keep it dry. We saw that some other hunters had placed their meat in a side braid of the river so that the cold water kept the meat cool. We also used Game Saver citric acid spray. You mix the powder with water in a spray bottle and it works great. I ordered it over the Internet from Indian Valley Meat Co., in Indian Valley, AK. http://www.indianvalleymeats.com/about.htm

De-bone the meat and put it in clean game bags that you bring from home. In some Alaska game management units, it’s illegal to de-bone the meat until you arrive at a city that has an airport. There are no public freezer facilities in Kotzebue. You have to be a "Known Shipper" for the airlines to accept your meat as air cargo. It takes a month or so to get through the TSA red tape to become a "Known Shipper" to use the air cargo system. In Kotzebue, there is a well established network for notifying locals of hunters wanting to donate game meat.

It has rained or snowed every time that I have been to Alaska and you need to be prepared to hunt in the rain and bad weather. But there have also been some sunny days on each trip. Imagine how clear and clean the air is in a place where there are no cars and the air is washed clean by rain half the time. Setup a rain fly outside your tent so you are not confined to the tent in the rain. Limbs from willows and alders make for passable poles. We used several strategies for rain shelters; driftwood and the oars from the raft on one trip, just the rain fly and poles only on another trip, and on other trips we simply took a 6-man dome tent with a big vestibule. Each strategy has its’ pros and cons.





I HAVE CUT THIS ARTICLE INTO TWO PIECES BECAUSE WHEN IT'S ONE PIECE IT'S TOO BIG AND SOME OF THE PHOTOS DON'T SHOW

PART 2

I was expecting to encounter insects in Biblical swarms. But they weren't as bad as I had expected. We all had repellent but we didn't need it all the time. When we did need it, it worked. This was the situation in the spring and fall. I suppose that they may be worse in July and August.

If you are going to use a raft, then take some good hip waders. Make sure to assemble your raft and check everything out before your pilot leaves. When we floated out of Dillingham, we had two rafts for four people. One of the pumps didn't work. If they had been alone they literally would have been up a creek without a raft because the pilot left before they knew the pump was bad. Also one of the valves had a slow leak and we had to keep refilling that raft. In 2009 we had to cross a fast flowing river. Three of us had bib waders and we locked arms while crossing so we were OK. But the fourth guy had hip waders and he couldn’t cross because the water was too high/fast and his waders would have filled with water and pulled him under.




I have used USGS maps and compass wandering and exploring over North America for more than 50 years and I am really confident with that system. But I got to use my GPS on one trip and learned what extra features it has to offer. It was worth the investment and I will carry it on future AK adventures. Mark the degrees (improve what's already there) on the margin of your map for pinpoint navigation, then have your map laminated at Kinkos.

We carried small Motorola two-way radios in case of emergency. We didn’t use them though, because radio recon for hunting is illegal. If you communicate via radio, your hunting is done for the day.

We used Leupold 10x42 binoculars in 2007. In 2009, my buddy showed up with a pair of Schwarovski 15x56 binos ($2,000) mounted on a tripod and used them to spot a black bear from five miles away. So I bought a pair of Oculus 15x56 binoculars ($320) and a tripod. I've used them for spot & stalk hunting Coues deer in southern AZ. They have excellent resolution. Vortex 15x56 binoculars ($1,200) are also supposed to be real good. We all attached our binos with chest harnesses.

I use to use a wood/blue rifle and my buddy used a Remington 7600, blue with synthetic stock and Leupold Scope. We didn’t have any corrosion problems until we got back into a warm building. Moisture condensed on the cold barrels and they rusted inside the gun cases and I had to re-blue mine when I got home. It’s probably not a good idea to open up a gun case and dry your rifle inside the airport terminal. TSA might frown on that. They have no sense of humor. I tried using a silicone impregnated gun sock on a subsequent trip but the barrel still rusted. I finally bought a T/C Icon Weathershield 30-06 rifle with a Leupold VX-3 scope. It’s heavy and ugly but extremely durable, weatherproof and MOA accurate. BTW take your bolt out, dry it completely, and put it in a ZipLok bag. My stainless steel bolt is the only thing that had any hint of corrosion.

We used MSR “Whisperlite” and/or MSR “Dragonfly” stoves, plus MSR “Alpine Guide” pots. Don't forget a frying pan. We fried the fish in 1/8" water plus a little margarine, salt & pepper. I didn’t see any butane for sale in hub community stores. So, if I had taken a butane canister stove, I would have been out of luck and would have to buy another stove before going into the field. I only saw white gas and propane for sale in the stores.





We slept in a Cabelas XPG Expedition, 4-season, 4-person tent for two people, which weighs 13#. That tent has lots of room so you don’t get on each others nerves so much. On a float hunt the only weight you have to worry about is that which your bush pilot will impose so as not to overload the plane. We’ve used an REI Base Camp-6 tent for our rain shelter. That worked OK but a heavy duty tent would probably work better. Whatever tent you use, make sure that you use every single extra tie-down that the tent offers, to combat wind.

The only thing that I regret about the caribou hunt in ’07 is that we were not as selective as we could have been. We saw thousands of caribou and it reminded me of the Serenghetti Plain on some National Geographic TV special. Both of us shot respectable bulls before noon on the first day that we could legally hunt. You cannot hunt on the same day that you fly. But we saw bigger bulls while carrying meat back to camp.



On that trip, we rafted 80 miles back to an Eskimo bush community and flew back to Kotzebue on Bering Airlines. Meeting an Eskimo family and spending the night in their home, was one of the highlights of the trip. They use small caliber rifles and shoot caribou from a boat, at close range while they are crossing a river. They said that it is part of their overall strategy to waste as little of the animal as possible.




My buddy took some T.T.C. (Taxidermy Trophy Compound) https://www.bringmin.com/catalog/index.php and used it to treat the capes in the field. It’s lighter than salt. If you are not returning to the lower forty-eight immediately, put some “Stop Rot” on the cape. I left mine at the meat processor for two weeks and instructed them to keep it frozen. They put it in a cooler (not a freezer) and it was ruined.

US Postal Service: You don't want things to get lost so mark your name and address on the outside of all packages in such a way that it can't possibly get lost, torn off, etc. They will accept some really odd looking packages so long as they are within certain dimensional restrictions. I have mailed two sets of caribou antlers via US Postal Service and they arrived in perfect condition. Cut the skull plate in half and nest one antler inside the other, tape them together and cover all the points with cardboard and duct tape. It looks really awkward but works fine. I also mail back my large duffel bag full of clothes and camping gear. I used the same cooler to carry frozen meat, as my luggage on the plane and I mailed my gear home, again with USPS. I froze the meat, put it in the cooler and it was still frozen when I got home.



Here's the web page for Alaska Dept F & G that shows the price of licenses and tags. A nonresident hunting license costs $85 and nonresident caribou tag costs $325.
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=huntlicense.prices

OTHER THINGS I HAVE LEARNED

I hate marsh mounds.

Don't setup your tent on frozen muskeg. It looks inviting but sooner or later it will thaw.

Use a sleeping bag with synthetic insulation.

A bull moose is bigger and heavier than a horse. Plan accordingly.

You need to own all your gear and be an experienced camper. You need to know what you are doing in the wilderness, must be self-sufficient and know how to survive when everything goes wrong. Once the plane leaves, you are on your own until it comes back.

Have a backup plan, contingency for emergencies. Expect some gear to break or fail and be ready to repair it or adapt to do without it.

Expect someone to get injured or sick and be prepared to care for them.

You need to be proficient at wilderness navigation so you can hike three or four miles from camp into unfamiliar country and get back to camp at night, in the fog or in a howling blizzard.

Good luck, have a great adventure and a safe hunt.

KC

Search button is your friend !

tim got a nice black bear there....

Tag

2 comments on KCs great article that he posts time to time....

AK air, charges 50 bucks for oversize/overnumber luggage/overweight... I will not send stuff when I can take it with me. Personal choice.

If it really rains, and it can, or if it rains day after day, and it can, goretex it NOT rain gear. FYI.

Tag

I went with Brooks Range Aviation in 2013 and had a great trip. Jay &Judy run a solid operation. The typically hunt the upper noatak drainage but also can put you north of the brooks depending on the season. The herds in the northwest are in decline (as are many others) so be sure to contact adfg biologist before going off historical reports from others. Feel free to pm if you have any questions.

I am strongly against rookie river runners doing float trips for hunting. The potential for huge problems and severe danger from problems a pro would have easily avoided is high.

Stuff can happen very fast in a raft and rookies can cause a lot of problems...