Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 2017 Northern Brooks Range Caribou

After talking about it and planning for three years, finally made my first trip to Alaska on a Northern Brooks Range drop-in caribou hunt with three great friends. We flew out of Bettles with Brooks Range Aviation (BRA), and were in the field August 17th through the 23rd. Weather pretty much across the board, flew in and set up camp in the rain, two days of complete sun, two cold with snow, rest were rain/clouds mixed. Really no bugs to speak of.

Even though I had seen the "warnings" in other posts, the tundra was still tougher hiking than I had expected and I was surprised how much elevation you could gain and still be in water and have that "boot sucking" sound.

We went 4 for 4 on bulls, and were happy with all of them. Here's a couple pics of my bull, from day three:





Here are 3 of our bulls in camp:



This is all 4 after we had stripped the velvet (which I wish we hadn't done, although a bear "pre-stripped" one of them pretty well):


The trip was made a bit more interesting by having WAY more bear interaction that I had expected. Here's one of the thieving bastards on my buddy's bull (taken through my spotting scope back at camp):


He had taken his bull late in the evening, and we were packing another bull back already, so after gutting we had left this one for the next morning to pack back. Luckily, my one buddy and I were on a ridge across the valley from this as our other two buddies went to break him down that morning as the fog moved in. We saw the grizzly on the carcass and were able to yell at them to go back, after we picked them up in the fog about 150-200 yards from the bear. I know it goes without saying, but that would have been ugly had they walked up on him. We ended up finding his rack after 3 days of searching about 1000 yards over the ridge in the picture. I also lost about 2/3 of the meat from my bull.

Just some random things that worked well for me and I'd definitely have on the next trip:

Simms G3 waders and guide boots.
MSR Guardian water purifier. Filled our nalgenes quickly and kept our 5 gallon jug filled for camp water
MSR Reactor stove system. Boiled 5L of water very quickly in the wind and rain
Cabela's Alaska Guide Geodesic Tents. My buddy and I used the 4 man, other 2 buds had the 6 man. Major tent envy over the 6, great to hang out in for dinner, etc.
Mexicali Rose Instant Refried Beans, with some sausage and rice, outstanding!

Also, got to shake hands and spend a couple days around the BRA hangar with dennisinaz. He's working on their planes this summer, great to meet him and his sidekick Ruby!

All in all, it was a trip of a lifetime for me. I get it now that you really can't understand what that experience is like until you've done it. Hope it won't be my last time there.

Looks like a great trip! Wonderful field photos too!
Thanks for sharing, and, congrats.

OUTSTANDING!

Am saving for my next trip, and I hope it will be fore either caribou or moose.

Regards, Guy

Awesome. Thanks for sharing!

What a great post and better hunt it looks like.

Thanks for the story and pics. How did it go explaining the lack of game meat to the game and fish?

We lose some meat to grizzlys as well here. And they are thieving bastards. That cracked me up.

I've only had a bear move the horns/skull once and he only moved it about 40 yards. And that was before he'd really had time to eat much of the meat/guts.

Spectacular! Except the bear part

Thanks for sharing your adventure and congratulations on some beautiful caribou. How was your timing in regards to the migration and animals seen? I'm scheduled for next year with BRA and trying to figure out the dates. Any info is helpful and appreciated.

Nice pics! Congrats on some great trophies and fantastic adventure/memories. Thanks for sharing!!

Thanks for the nice comments.

Ralphie - we had already talked about a possible "discussion" with Fish & Game, so we had the pictures of the bear on my buddy's bull on his phone, and we all took pictures of the carcasses after we had all the meat off, like below. We never saw any F&G officers, nor were we checked by anyone.


ejo - Our timing worked out great for us, but I'm sure that can swing a week or two either way year to year. We were trying to find the "sweet spot" between lots of bugs and lots of snow. Again, we got dropped in on August 17th, and picked up on the 23rd (actually a day early). I PM'd with dennisinaz after we were back, he said the weekend after we left it was freezing and everything was socked in in Bettles. Also talked to a guy on another site that was behind us by a week, he said they had very heavy winds and snow pretty much the whole time, and their group went 2 for 4.

We probably saw 100-120 caribou total the first 6 days, mostly cows and calves, and took advantage of it when we saw a decent bull. It wasn't the "nose to tail" fast moving migration that you see on TV shows or read about. We actually commented that it was more like spot and stalk on muleys, they just slowly moved through, and sometimes grazed in the same general area all day, you just had to come up with a way to get to them.

I spotted my bull at about 1500 yards, and he stayed in the same spot for probably 3 hours. He eventually moved down to some swampy willows by a lake, which brought him to about 750 yards, I closed it to 300 but could only see his rack and top of his back down in there. About 2 hours later he came out of the willows, shook like a dog, and stood facing directly away from me (Texas heart shot) for 20-30 minutes, I finally got into a prone position at 275 and was just waiting for him to turn. All of a sudden he started shaking again, swinging his rack, etc., and I finally realized the bugs were driving him nuts. As luck would have it, he takes off on a dead run - right at me. Laying prone in the hummocks, there wasn't much I could do besides wait and see what happened, as I couldn't really adjust or turn. When he got to about 60 yards, he started to turn to my left slightly, so I just stood up and went to offhand. (I'm not sure whose eyes were bigger at that point, his or mine!) First shot high shoulder, second shot mid ribs, and my caribou hunt was over.

On day 7, pick-up day, we saw as many caribou (and many more bulls) than we had the rest of the days combined. It was pretty windy, and heavy rain moved in and out until late in the afternoon, we got picked up around 4:30. They were definitely moving with a purpose that day, really the first time we had seen them lined out, and a much higher percentage of bulls.

Looks like fun. Glad it all worked out for you.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the story.

Good story. Congrats to all you guys.




Travis

Really nice bulls, congratulations to all the hunters.

The boys from Kansas and Michigan did real well. They have the biggest racks as a group of any I've seen this summer. It was great to spend some time with them. I hope Ruby didn't chew any of their antlers!

August was a rough month here, Sept has been much better. I spent last night standing on the prop of a Beaver changing a cylinder at a remote lake and worked in short sleeves until about 10 pm. I think it his 65 today on my thermometer. I hope it holds out.

Great hunt guys. Hope you do it again some time.

What did you all hunt with?

Rifles. I'm assuming you meant rifles or bows? If not, let me know.

C O N G R A T S all the way around.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of your story and am very glad your trip & hunt went well.

Jerry

BTW - they looked like keepers to me!!

I think he meant caliber/bullet of the rifles.

Great job, congrats on a fantastic adventure.

Wow what a great bunch of trophies you guys got. Congrats, and thanks for sharing the great pics with us.

Nice job all around. Alaska changed my life.