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KUGURUROK

I’ve been on a lot of hunts in Colorado, and several western states and in Alaska. But the hunt that I went on in 2007 is probably the best adventure that I have had the privilege to experience.
I went on my first Alaska expedition in 1987, when I climbed Mount McKinley with a group from the Colorado Mountain Club. I returned two more times to climb Denali; in 1993 with R.J. Campbell and in 1996 with my son Bryce. I didn’t return to Alaska for eight years. But the lure of the Last Frontier had taken hold of me and I yearned to return.
In 2004 I placed a post on an Internet hunting forum, and three men answered my post. The four of us corresponded for six months and in September, we met in the hub community of Dillingham, on the shores of Bristol Bay. Our goal was to hunt moose. We flew in on a bush plane and floated east for a week, down the King Salmon River, to the Nushagak River, where the bush pilot met us for the flight back to Dillingham. I didn’t get a moose on that trip and instead of quenching my thirst for adventure it just intensified it. Bill Oster was one of the guys on that trip. We became good friends and have hunted together many times since then.
In 2007, Bill and I returned to hunt Caribou on the Kugururok River, which is a tributary of the Noatak River, north of Kotzebue. Most people call it the Kugurok or just the Kug. The Noatak River is a world class river, at times half a mile wide, and a thousand miles long. But most people have never heard of it because it’s so remote. At the time, the Northwest Alaska Caribou Herd was 400,000 strong.
We arranged for a one-way bush plane flight and for rental of a raft, then flew on Alaska Airlines into Kotzebue. The next leg of the trip was a bush plane flight onto the upper Kugururok River. The pilot landed on a gravel bar and when that plane left, we realized just how remote we were, 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle and over seventy miles from the nearest people, and the plane wasn’t coming back.
We were on a side braid of the river and we wanted to get in to the main stream that evening. So, we inflated the raft and floated down the side braid. In Alaska it’s illegal to hunt on the same day that you fly. While we were negotiating the side braid a herd of a couple hundred caribou crossed the river in front of us and another herd about the same size crossed the river behind us. We had to accomplish a short portage to get into the main flow and we set up camp ½ mile down-river from there.
We camped in the river bottom and while we were setting up camp, we saw lots of ‘bou and some big bulls strolling along the rim, less than a hundred yards away. There’s a lot of vegetation, willows and alders, in the river bottom. But above the rim it’s all open country; muskeg, marsh mounds and in the distance, we could see low hills. We decided to try our luck tomorrow morning, from that location.
At first light, we climbed the rim and looked out onto that open country and we saw thousands of caribou. Not one big herd, rather many smaller herds; a hundred here, a couple of hundred there, smaller groups everywhere. But there was no cover for us to hide in and they were all out of rifle range. The animals were generally moving to the west and the river was flowing south. We hiked along the rim until we came to a small gully that the caribou would eventually cross. Bill and I sneaked up that gully on our hands and knees, until we were about a hundred yards out into the open country. We peeked over the edge of the gully and watched as hundreds of critters were generally meandered in our direction.
I saw a nice big bull that was going to cross the gully a hundred and fifty yards east of us and I told Bill “that’s the one I want.” He said “OK. I’ll wait for a bigger one.” When the bull crossed the gully, he was just east of us and the morning sun was shining behind him. I carefully placed my first shot in his lungs and the spray from the exit wound sparkled in the sunlight. It was visible for just a few seconds but, I’ll never forget the site of that spray glistening in the sun. My bull was resting in the bottom of the gully and the approaching animals couldn’t see us in the gully. As I was field dressing the kill, Bill removed the cape and antlers.



When everything was butchered and bagged and ready to be carried back to camp, Bill started hunting again. He saw a bull, bigger than mine and decided to take him. The bull was not approaching the gully as close as Bill wanted so he crawled on his hands and knees then slithered his way, on an intercept angle, toward the bull. He shot him at about 100 yards. So, we had two bulls down before noon on the first day that we could hunt.
We were only about a mile from camp but, there was a field of marsh mounds between us and camp. I was reminded just how much I dislike hiking across them. It took two trips to get the animals back to camp. The arctic twilight lasts so long that we still had enough light to negotiate our way through the swampy ground when we finally got the second load to camp at 9:00pm.
The next morning, we packed up camp and began the long float trip back to civilization. We weren’t going all the way to Kotzebue, because that would require us to weave our way through the myriad channels of the Noatak Delta and then to row our way across the open ocean and Kotzebue Sound. But we still had 70 miles of river between us and the little bush community of Noatak Village. We spent nine hours on the river and traveled 23 miles on the first day. Bill’s GPS said we were traveling at 3 miles/hour. That seemed reasonable because we were close to the river banks on each side and could see the territory passing beside us. We passed Kayak Lake and Trail Creek at about 1,000 feet elevation. Fall had already appeared where we were hunting because there had been a hard freeze at that higher elevation. But when we passed through 1,000’ elevation, summer returned along with lots of insects, and the caribou disappeared. We traveled 23 miles that day and camped just a couple of miles north of the Noatak River.
It would probably take two more days of floating to make it to Noatak Village. So, we started the second day of floating as soon as we could get ourselves going. Bill caught a big silver salmon and hung it on his stringer in the river. After only a short time, we arrived at the Noatak River and stopped for some more fishing, then moved out onto the wide Noatak. The River seemed about half a mile wide at this point and even though we could read the GPS unit that said we were still going about 3 miles per hour it didn’t seem like we were traveling at all because we were a long way from the shore. We passed the mouth of the Kelly River and saw a cabin on the bank of the Kelly. We hadn’t seen any other people since the bush plane left. Bill said to me “If a boat were to come along, how much would pay to have them tow us into Noatak?” I said “I would pay $25.00,” and Bill Said “What a cheapskate.” No more than ten minutes later a motor boat passed us and I yelled “Would you tow us into Noatak for $100.00?” They made a quick “U” turn in our direction. They first tried to hook on with a rope but the raft kept fishtailing so, they beached the boat, had lunch of caribou soup, and put our now deflated raft, us and all our cargo into their boat.



There were five people in the boat in addition to Bill and Myself. The owner was of European decent and a teacher in Kotzebue. Whittier Burns and his wife and another lady are Eskimos. There was even an Ainu who told me that he was a whaler by profession. The boat was traveling slow because the owner had failed to fill up with gas at Noatak Village and they were afraid that they would run out. Still, we arrived at an island across from Noatak Village in about six hours. They dropped us there but via UHF radio, Whittier called one of his sons to meet us with ATVs for the ride into the village. They noticed the fish that Bill had caught and Whittier said that his mother would cook that up for all of us to enjoy. We never saw that fish again.
Whittier and his wife (each was on their second marriage), had nine children between them, ranging in age from young children to sons in their twenties. They invited us to eat dinner of caribou stew, with them and to spend the night in their BIA cottage.
We had arrived in Noatak Village a day earlier than we had expected so we had a day to explore. There are about 450 residence and that makes Noatak one of the largest bush communities. The town includes an FAA airport, a post office, an ACC store (Alaska Commercial Corp.), a native store, and 40 or 50 BIA cottages all exactly the same. There is a building that houses the National Guard 1st Scout Battalion, 297 Infantry. Lots of motor boats, snowmobiles and ATVs, everywhere you that you look. There were even some full-size SUVs and pickups. We were told that the vehicles are delivered to the boat ramp via a ferry and everyone in the community helps pull them up the ramp.
There still remained one of the original buildings, at the time about 80 years old, which is a remnant from the community that the BIA built in the 1920s, as part of their effort to convince the Noatak People to give up their seminomadic ways. There were also some museum quality relics just lying beside the road; a wooden dog sled and a wooden fishing boat. Lots caribou and moose antlers were just laying around. The people were all friendly and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit. Finally, we had to leave and fly back to Kotzebue on the mail plane.
I’ve hunted and toured in Alaska six times since then and although all of those visits have been good, none was quite the adventure as our hunt on the Kug.