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Fly in a gear load for a comfortable camp!

Sheep hunting is another matter.....ultralight all the way!

A 50 pound tent is way much for fly-in hunts. I'm 12 years into my 12 man Kifaru Tipi and still liking it.

Absolutely!

What tent and stove?

If your not flying in on a cub don't skimp, bring everything that makes camp comfortable , including food! Hit up a grocery store and get some things that you'll enjoy eating out there. Your paying for the weight so use it!

yep, you are paying, but the flip side to that is we go to hunt, not to have to make time to cook and clean up.

Like cooking and such, but do that at home all the time.

out tehre boil water, eat, and have time to hunt, or just watch and relax.

Obviously its different strokes for different folks.

I'd rahter have a few extra tarps for rain cover and good chair than pots and pans and regular food.

We flew in a 206 once, took all kinds of stuff along... and spent time cooking and cleaning.... that one taught us it wasn't what we wanted to do out there.

Happy Birthday Jeff!

Thanks, not till the 19th, but I'll take er early. Might not make it till the 19th. LOL

Your "cake" missed a leap year or something.

Yep. (You're pulling my leg. Right?) That's too heavy for a fly-in hunt. Leave the stove at home and get a lighter tent. A Cabelas "Instinct" 6-man tent with aluminum poles weighs 26 pounds. On several hunts in September, above the Arctic Circle, I've experienced night time low temps in the low twenties and day time highs in the high thirties. So a heater stove is not really necessary. But a tent that will stand up to high winds and a sleeping bag rated at 0° are both essential.

Also it can be difficult to find firewood. Alder branches burn very quickly and even those can be hard to collect in some places. A big pile doesn't last very long.

Last September we hunted caribou on the upper Kivalina River. We collected firewood all week and waited until the last night to have a campfire. Our firewood lasted about two hours. If we had been breaking it into small pieces for use in a stove it would have lasted longer but we certainly would have depleted the locally available wood before the trip was over.


I use a set of MSR pots and a frying pan with a folding handle. I had to buy this set in pieces at REI. I couldn't find it offered as a set.

https://www.msrgear.com/cookware/base-2-pot-set

https://www.msrgear.com/cookware/quick-skillet

This allows me to eat a wider variety of food. Not gourmet but more than just freeze dried. And I can fry up some fish or caribou tenderloin steaks. I'm not a very good cook, but over the years I have developed a list of camp foods that are lightweight, non-perishable, easy to prepare, and easy to cleanup. My week long menu is a blend of freeze dried food, dehydrated, canned and nonperishable fresh food like bread and tortillas.

KC

Then I will use my 8 man tipi and stove. I have titanium pans and skillet. I will treat the weight limit as an ultralight backing trip.

Snake:

You can carry more on a fly-in hunt than on an ultralight backpack hunt, a few luxuries like a small folding stool, etc. The bush pilots that I have flown with generally limit personal gear to 75# per person. I suppose that each pilot is different and weight limits vary with different planes.

Last September we hunted on the upper Kivalina River and experienced three days of winds 40 to 50 mph. The Cabelas dome tent endured the wind without any problems. We used my Sierra Designs Origami-3 tipi as a cook shack. I tied it down with rocks and stakes using every tie down available and some extras. It made it through the week only with lots of maintenance. It was so badly damaged that I had to retire it. It wasn't worth repairing. A better "made-in-America" tipi (Seek Outside or Kifaru) might have done better. I don't know. But I was disappointed by how poorly the tipi reacted to the wind and pleased by how well the aerodynamic dome tent shed the wind.

I don't want to reignite an old fight. I'm just relating my personal experience.

KC

I was looking at the 40 mile website and they have a 50lb weight limit per person but 200 lb total. They recommended 2 to 3 people on a hunt. I will have to check into this some more with them.

Snake:

Most times that I have flown, the plane held two people and their gear. If you have only two hunters, then a 200# limit is a lot of gear and supplies. I try to have four people (two flights) on a hunt. It's safer if someone gets hurt.

However, once I did fly in a De Havilland Beaver and the pilot took an attractive female friend along for some flight-seeing. That's a bigger plane.

KC

lotsa good advice, but the best imo&e was to call Vern


he's btdt more than most of us, particularly with 40 Mile, I'm pretty sure Leif and Crystal figure he's some degree of kin by now.

KC is the man. I have very little experience flying in small planes. Now I understand the weight limits better. Thanks KC.

Just looked at their website and was caught off guard at what they charge now for a drop-off bou hunt. $2200? Wow.

bearstalker:

I paid $2,450/person for the bush plane last September. So $2,200/person is about the going rate.

40 Mile Air has a stellar reputation. The problem is finding an opening to get on their list. They are usually booked with return clients. They might already be full for 2017 and maybe taking bookings for 2018? I guess that says something about them.

KC

I paid $20 for a cab ride the other day. So cab rides cost about $20.

Should have texted uber.

Uber outfitters...that's the ticket!

KC-
They are full for 2017. In fact, they were already full by the time I called; we were first on their waiting list for Caribou. For new customers, like we were, they do all their booking on one day in December, for their next years hunts (so 2018 is not booked until December of this year). When I finally got through when calling on their booking day, it took me 11 minutes after they opened to get though, and by then all the Caribou hunts for new clients were full, so your observation that it says something about their business must be spot-on.
Northerner