Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska 3 Caribou by Dog Team:

The wife and I ran our dogs untill the late 90's when our family had grown beyond our capacity to use them as transportation.

My wife had grown up with dogs and , of course, so had her family.

People stopped drying fish for sale in villages, so ''Gassing up the dogs'' became a matter of finding food on the fly.
I cant hunt Seals, and when, after 10,000 or so years it became illegal to feed dogs Caribou, we would have had to find another method of support.
Getting a $ paying job to keep the dogs fed defeated the idea of using them anymore for roaming around Subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering, and were not into sports, so dog racing wasnt a venue , either. Feeding a working dog takes as much as feeding a grown man, and we had only 12 dogs.

When we hunted with Dogs, it was a matter of me taking the stalk on foot while the wife, and later the sons kept the dogs , untill needed.
Once Caribou are ''Educated'' with any hunting method, Snowmachines, dog teams, people walking, they are as skittish as a Caribou herd is when theres Wolves around. Caribou are always moving, walking, migrating and the ''replacement Caribou'' will show up and they may or may not be educated....
Often, I would work up above the Caribou and have the wife drive the dogs to where the Caribou could see them and they would, naturally, run up hill, often right to me.
This was also the time in my life when I put long shots to effect, and became proficient at shooting moving animals.


When you have Caribou run, and they all do after the first shot or before, the fat ones, like puppies, fall to the back, and when they run a bit, the fat ones, without calfs , fall to the rear of the bunch. If you rely on meat and fat, thems the ones you want.
If you are on a snow go, have them run and come up from behind, you can move up the line to the Caribou you selected, and by pulling up along side, they will break away out of the line and they will want to rejoin the herd. Stop your ride and take your shot. Then you get your shot before they rejoin their buddies. No wounded 'others'' in the line,, no mistaking that , but its a quick shot on a positioning move that basically clears them from the others.

Using this same method, when separating Reindeer from the Caribou they have mixed with, diligent herders could remove and herd 10-20 Reindeer or shoot feral ones that they cannot turn back (read this as a $$$$ marketable, domestic meat). Reindeer that were shot from a Caribou herd were done up close and personal, a pistol actually touching the head/neck. This is legal on 'Domesticated livestock'' and if you are or work for the owner. Shooting from a moving snowgo require that the barrel actually touch the animal or there's the larger chance of bad shooting. I
Reindeer herding in th region ended in the winter of '95-'96 450,000 Caribou left the Northern Seward Peninsula with 38,000 reindeer.....

You can run into all kinds of people hunting by Kotzebue.........North of the trail across the Baldwin Peninsula is folds, hills and valleys that allow you to sneak up on the Caribou, while south of the trail, it is wide open. Takes different kinds of techniques to get them dead, depending on where you are.

For Wolves, we would keep quiet and get the dogs to howl, and then trail slowly home, howling along the way. I would dress in black and when we had Wolves on our trail, I would drop off and lay down, quite seeable, and let the wife keep going. When they arrived, I would rise up and start with shooting the furthest away and keep on untill I had them all.






Still, today I have ''Monster'' our best hunting Malamuit and a habit of sled building......and he still tugs a line, but for fun or short walks........but the sleds on my kitchen table right now, a present for my grandsons 2nd birthday.




A most excellent thread, and I'm still jealous!.....LOL!!

If you throw down some dimensions, I will get started soon, if you want to make your old runners into ''false runners'', atop a set of new ones, we can salvage your ride as it is, most likely. I just need a side picture of your ride and length...

The kiddy sled has 'False runners'' on it, as you can see.....