Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Hunting Trip to Nome

I will be going on my first trip to Alaska in August to hunt caribou and when the season opens up moose near Nome. Like I said this will be my first trip there so I am asking for advice on what to bring from necessities to good to have along items.

Thanks

pocket camera in a ziplock bag.
Carry spare gloves and socks in your pack, also in ziplocks.
Handywipes in little packs to clean blood off hands, and to clean hands before cooking/eating.

...a good sense of humor...

Nome is not now the same place it was when I lived there in 61-62; some things do not change, however. Bring a mosquito head net and a spare. I favor the ones made of reinforced, stainless steel cable. Also, a .410 with #6 shot is about right...

best,
bhtr

I favor #5 in the 410 for some reason...grins

I heard about the mesquitos. May need to bring a few quarts of blood too.

100% deet and a bug net

Keep in mind that you will find very few Caribou near Nome until the WACH group pushes down in late Nov or Dec. They have a few there but your chances are much better out of Kotz.

Walt

"Bears" repeating.

Expect it to be far colder than what "August" conjures in your mind.

Expect it to be far warmer than what "August in Nome" conjures in your mind.

I spent 9-10 days up north of Nome, actually north of Teller and Brevig Mission, on the American River with Brian Simpson of Fairbanks (Wittrock Outfitters). Summer of 2008, supposedly had been a very wet summer. By the time we arrived in camp, 7 Sept, it was great weather. Had a few drizzles, off and on, but nothing soaking. The day before we arrived, the wind stopped and the guys were getting eaten alive by the mosquitos. The days we were there it blew, ave 9 mph, constantly and nary a bug was seen.

Saw one Caribou the entire time. Young bull, take by a Texas hunter in our camp.

Alan

Just A Hunter:

I wrote this article to respond to questions like yours. I have never been to Nome. So maybe others here can give you site specific info regarding that location.

I've been to Alaska several times; three times climbing Denali and five hunting trips. So as not to forget, I wrote down this info after my first trip to Alaska and have updated it occasionally after subsequent trips.



I mailed a 120-quart Igloo cooler via US Postal Service. I think it cost about $50. Had to mail five 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. 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. Make sure you insure your mail and mark your name and address on the outside with magic marker. In 2009, I mailed two containers in both directions because airline baggage rates for a third bag are a lot higher than US Postal Service rates.

I flew to Anchorage on United Airlines because I get free airfare on my credit card. There are some really good places to hunt that you can drive to but most of the best hunting will be accessed via a bush plane from a hub city. But United doesn�t fly to any other cities in Alaska. So I flew on Alaska Airlines to Juneau, Dillingham, and Kotzebue. On one flight, they overloaded the plane and intentionally left some people's baggage in Anchorage. My buddy 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, and you can access some good black bear hunting areas by renting a boat.

Update April 2009: United Airlines has started making it very difficult to fly for free to Anchorage so I have just signed up for an Alaska Airlines credit card so I can fly all the way to a hub community for free.

Talkeetna is a quaint little town that has an FAA airport and it is the main jumping-off point for flying climbers onto Mount McKinley. There are several skilled bush pilots that fly out of that airport. I don�t know for sure, but I wonder if you could get a good deal on flights during hunting season because the climbing season is over by then and maybe the pilots would welcome the business of flying hunters into the Talkeetna Mountains.

Be sure to ship your rifle in a hard case with locks. You must declare it at the ticket counter and have it inspected by TSA, then locked. I took a two-gun case and put my fragile optics, electronics, camera, etc., inside. But also bring a soft case because the bush pilots want you to use a soft case in the airplane. The one I use floats and has hard rubber armor around the scope and receiver group.

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 bring small quantities of hard liquor from home. Pack it 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. Dillingham and Talkeetna have no restrictions on the sale of alcohol. Kotzebue is damp, which means you can bring in your own liquor but there is none for sale in Kotzebue. Bush communities with a high percentage of Native American residents are generally dry.

There are several regularly scheduled regional airlines including Peninsula Airlines that fly�s mostly around the Katmai Peninsula and Bristol Bay, and there is Bering Air with hubs in Kotzebue and Nome. Hageland is another regional airline that has a good reputation. 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, reasonably priced and fly to most of the smaller bush communities.



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/

Everything is expensive in the hub communities. Gas cost $5.00/gallon in Dillingham in 2004. A burger cost $10. In 2007 a gallon of Coleman fuel cost $18.54 in Kotzebue. In 2009 it cost 24.88/gallon in Kotzebue. I suppose that prices have probably risen since then. Things are even more expensive in the bush communities. So bring food from home and avoid the restaurants if you can.

Lodging was really expensive too. We paid $150/night for a sleazy hotel in Dillingham. Nicer places were even more expensive. If I were to return to Dillingham, I would stay at the King Fisher Inn. They charge $75/person/night. But that includes free use of a car. It's a nice, new, clean B&B and they have two bungalows that can sleep four people each. I paid $100/night to stay at Bibbers B&B in Kotzebue in 2007. It was clean and respectable. In fact, the owner likes to interview hunters to make sure that they�re going to treat the place with respect. 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. Best of all, try to avoid lodging all together and camp in the bush until the last day. You can reserve/rent remote US Forest Service cabins, in the Tongass National Forest for $25/night. http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass/cabins/cabin_info.shtml
Also in the Chugash NF. http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/chugach -> Recreation

If you go to Kotzebue, you should rent something (anything) from Walt Maslen at Northwest Alaska Backcountry Rentals. http://www.northwestalaska.com/ The rental gear comes with free advice and recon that�s priceless. Update 2009 � Walt has been transferred and he is selling out.

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 hunt in late September or very early October, the �bou might be closer to KOTZ.

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 entree' 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 in the Alaska bush on 9/11/01 and all planes were grounded for a week or so. He was in the bush for an extra week and had no clue why. They ate lots of game meat, fish, and wild berries while waiting for the plane.



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

BTW meat processing and storage was really expensive. Cut it into big chunks yourself, put it in clean game bags that you bring from home. In 2004, there was a guy operating a huge walk-in freezer in Dillingham and he had setup cutting tables outside that hunters could use to de-bone the meat. In some Alaska game management units, it�s illegal to debone the meat until you arrive at a city that has an airport. It was expensive to keep the meat in his freezer, but well worth it if you compare that to the fines imposed for wanton waste of game meat. There are no public freezer facilities in Kotzebue. Alaska Airlines has a freezer facility in Kotzebue for freezing and shipping frozen cargo, but they will not allow storage overnight. So you have to arrive at the terminal early in the morning and get the meat into the freezer for an afternoon flight. Also, you have to be a "Known Shipper" for the airlines to accept your meat as air cargo. It takes at least a couple of months to get through the TSA red tape to become a "Known Shipper". In Kotzebue, there is a well established network for notifying locals of hunters wanting to donate game meat. All of the panhandle hub communities have freezer facilities for freezing fish and most can also handle meat from big game animals.

It rained at least one day in four. It was overcast half of time when it was not raining and it was sunny about every fourth day. In 2009, we got hit by four days of spitting sleet in fifty MPH winds. 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, the rain fly+ 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 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 June and September. 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 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 Talkabout T5720 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.

I used Leupold 10x42 binos. My buddy used Swarovsky 15x 55 binos mounted on a tripod and spotted a black bear from five miles away. We used 30-06 rifles, wood/blue, with Leupold scopes. We didn�t have any corrosion problems until we got back into a warm house. Moisture condensed on the cold barrels and they rusted inside the gun cases and I had to re-blue mine when I got home. I think in the future I will put my rifle in a silicone impregnated gun sock.

We used MSR �Whisperlite� stove on one trip and an MSR �Dragonfly� on another trip and MSR pots. Don't forget a frying pan. We fried the fish in 1/8" water. I didn�t see any butane for sale in the 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 used 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. In 2009, we used an REI Base Camp-6 tent for our rain shelter and the wind broke a tent pole.

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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 Serengetti 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 because aerial reconnaissance is illegal. But we saw bigger bulls while carrying meat back to camp.

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On that trip, we floated back to an Eskimo bush community and flew back to Kotzebue on Bering Airlines. Meeting an Eskimo family was one of the highlights of the trip.

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.

There�s a meat processor at 7th and M streets in Anchorage.

I hate marsh mounds.

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

KC

KC: Awesome write-up..... Valuable advise...

Thanks KC

I am going with a friend who used to live at Nome. He gets his moose every year up there. He claims there are caribou there, but the later it gets the further south they go so that is the reason he wants to go early.

We will be staying at his friends house so that takes care of the lodging and as I understand it go in by atv. He got me a round trip ticket to Nome with Alaskan Airlines. They are having a special deal that saved me $400 round trip.

KC:


Thanks for the plug! Yes i have moved out of Kotz but still in the business here in Alaska. Currently there are no Rental outfits working out of Kotz but Jim Kincade does some small scale stuff and he owns Northwest Aviation. Jim is a top notch pilot and very honest but he does not fly of Saturday-PERIOD!

For all of you guys out there KC's group was a dream to work with, did their research and were well prepared for this type of float hunt!


Good luck to all and if any one out there needs and unit 23-WACH advice please drop me a note!


Walt