Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire To Kill a Bison...

We spent the rest of the day searching high and low for other herds. VernAK was still on the case, as was Rost495. We all split up, figuring it best to have at least three teams afield looking in different areas for herds to one mob checking over the same spots. We did see another bison herd but those animals were on a property listed as ‘no hunting’. They were all working on feed that the landowners had out. Unclear if it was intentional or not, but the property and feed wasn’t fenced, so the bison simply waltzed in and ate to their collective hearts content. I could be wrong, but it seemed to me that maybe the owners wanted the bison to remain unmolested by hunters so enticed them into the land with feed to the private property where hunting them is not allowed. We also saw a lone bull on a small parcel inhabited also by a small herd of yaks. That bison was safe.

Some critters we laid eyes on as we patrolled about the area.





The herd on the Wrigley land before Rost495 put them to bed. Talk about a stunning background. That was the early evening before our opener.





Rost495 after a quick scouting stomp.



One of the landowners listed with the status of ‘hunting allowed with permission’ had a contact number with the prefix of 978. This was curious, as I knew that that area code was in Essex County in northeast Massachusetts, where I reside. I called to inquire about the possibility of our trespassing to hunt, and the fellow who answered explained to me that he’s very particular about who he grants permission to hunt his land to. If I wanted, I was welcome to visit him at his residence to talk about it. Ah, an interview! I told him that we’d like to discuss it, and asked if we could stop by after dark. He gave me his address.

When nightfall arrived and we’d had no real sightings or leads as far as what to try to do in the morning, we decided to pay a visit to this fellow I’ll call ’Bob’ and ask him about us maybe bison hunting his land. I’ll not spend much time on our interaction, other than to opine that lonely folks with no family with serious health issues in nursing home facilities can be a shocking and disturbing thing to behold. I did find it fairly amazing that when I asked him about his connection to MA and the North Shore, when we got to talking learned that we knew some of the same people. He was surprised when I told him that one of the guys he knew and went to high school with was still serving a lengthy prison term for bank robbery. His kid brother and I have tuna fished together. Small world sometimes. We left Bob’s place with permission to hunt his, and an adjoining land owners land and a thorough explanation of the lay of the land and where we’d want to look for the shaggy beasts that sometime roamed the property.

By the time we got cleaned up back at the inn and had a quick rest, it was around 8:00 pm. Unbeknownst to us, very few places to eat in DJ remain open beyond 8:00 pm or so. Guess which joint was still open. Yep. We ended the first day having to suffer through another meal back at, you guessed it; The Cave. I was kind of hoping that our first bad dining experience was perhaps a fluke. Nope! At least they’re consistent.

Day two of the hunt. SD and I roused ourselves out of bed predawn and got geared up and grabbed some hot grub at the inn before hitting the road. We touched base with Rost495 and came up with a plan. VernAK said he’d get a hold of us and talk about anything seen as he got out and about. We ran over to the Robinson property and got on a back road quietly, and started poking around looking for fresh sign. VernAK had explained that the bison liked to get into the red fescue back in some bushy places to feed at times. He also opined that after getting pressured, the bison herds often got spooky and went nocturnal and chose to often stay in the bush rather than go about their business in the agricultural areas.

SD parked the rig and started glassing near the Circle fields and I got out of the truck to follow some of the obviously fresh bison tracks that ran across the two track and into the bush. It didn’t take but ten minutes after my getting out of the truck before I heard them headed inbound. The grinding of gears, clanking of the tracks, loud with stereo playing were kind of hard to miss. I strode back to the two track and watched as the three guys in the amphibious rig blow past me, all smiles and waves. Fuggin' donkeys. I'd assumed that most Alaskan hunters were a bit more on point and conscientious about stealth and whatnot when in the field hunting. Surprise!

A tale with details so cool it’d be hard to credit if’n it didn’t happen, one of the best threads ever 😎

Thanks for getting back to this and continuing the story.

Please proceed.

You know you are getting older when the main thing you are waiting for is the "food porn" shots of buffalo steaks.... It has been a lot of years since I ate some but I do remember thinking "This is the best steak I've ever eaten...".

You do know they're both virgins, don't you?

Good thing you gave him the go-ahead, Paul Harvey.

Was his name Fetterman?

Poor Vern probably been giving The Cave five star ratings the past twenty years.

I too have been following this thread. Very interesting. I realize it take time to write with the detail you do.

Nope! I'm sure SD and KG will tell you I sympathized with em immediately. I shoulda offered em a few cans of Spam to heat on the manifold.

Great thread (as usual) KG. Thanks.

Shid now your making me feel bad. Hot spam on wheat with engine heated soup is a fave of mine, fug [bleep] restaurants anyway...mb

I was just joking.

Hope you all had a good time.

Kudos to you for the help.

Good to meet you, KG. Too bad Mother Nature didn't cooperate for a boat ride and duck hunt, while you were here. That's why it's called "Mother Nature" by the way. Father Nature wouldn't screw up hunting and fishing plans like that. He's good people!

I was wondering how long we were going to have to wait for this story! As a side note, if you have anything left up here you need brought back on the cheap, we’re headed to Maine in couple of weeks for Tday and deer hunting. I’m sure we’ll have a couple open spots for free bags going to Logan via AK Air.

We woulda taken it!

The three guys in the tracked Argo blasted by me hammer down and into the area we were hoping to quietly poke around on foot. This, BTW, is after they admitted the day before that they didn’t have permission from the owners to hunt any of the areas they were riding around in. I had half a mind to let the landowners know, especially since their presence was pretty certainly affecting our hunt chances, but that’s not my thing or my way. Shame on them, and if those guys got jammed up with some angry landowners or the F&G folks, so be it.

Since VernAK had warned us of the bison getting rather spooky pretty quickly when pressured, especially by consistent motorized incursions into the areas they’re in, we decided to bail from that area altogether and go have a look see at ‘Bob’s’ land, about a half hour ride away and tucked back in towards the far eastern end of the bison area, towards the Gerstle river. We got a hold of Rost495 and he said he’d meet us over at the place.

The three of us arrived at about the same time and we were just about to start headed into the property when VernAK came quietly creeping out of the access road in his trusty Tacoma. That guy's like a ghost and was all over the place! We learned from him that there was indeed some bison sign in there, but all he saw was old. He did say that there were tons of fresh wolf tracks in there and that someone needed to get in there and start trapping them. Since VernAK had already scoped the place out, we figured we’d not waste precious time with that spot, but try to keep casually scouting from the back roads for any herds or lone animals on land we could hunt. I also wanted to try to get in contact with some other landowners. Maybe we’d get lucky and be able to try to put a stalk on a bull we spotted on a landowner’s property. That was something of a trick, as I wrote earlier, being that there were lots of names on properties that potentially would allow hunting but had no addresses or contact numbers on the sheet.

I made another call to the DJ F&G folks soon after to try to find out how many bison had been taken on the first day of the third group’s hunt. I was told that they knew of four. Thing was, hunters have 48 hours to report following a bison kill. We were told by another hunter we spoke to that those who attended the bison hunt orientation (we did not) all had agreed to wait until the last legal hour to report, as that way, some of the group could continue to legally hunt until the 12th bison was reported as killed. Recall that the season for each group closed at midnight of the day after the 12th bull was down. So, in theory, our group could very well have already been halfway --or more—into the quota after day one of the hunt. Great for them, not so good for us. By the way, group 1’s season was closed after only 5 days. Group 2’s season was closed after 7 days. It was only day two for us but I admit I was getting increasingly concerned about the season getting closed before I was able to hopefully get a crack at one.

VernAK mentioned during our talk that he’d spoken to a couple friends who told him that one of the landowners had as many as three separate small bison herds on both his land and couple other adjacent properties that he managed for the other owners. This landowner was said to be very easy to deal with and a good man, but that he charged the most by far of any of the landowners in the DJ bison range area. Like 40 times more than the trespass fee I’d paid to be able to hunt on the Wrigley land.

It was my hope to kill my animal on public land, or on private land for a reasonable trespass fee. I’d come a very long way and I had a very special once in a lifetime tag, so I wasn’t opposed to at least talking to the landowner and learning about how he ran his operation and to see how much he charged. SD, Rost495 and I decided to head over to their homestead and hoped to have a chance to talk with the man. We found not him but his son soon after, and I introduced myself and explained that I was a bison tag holder and was interested in talking to his dad about hunting there . After a quick call, the landowner, RP, arrived on scene with a pile of dogs in a work van, and the four of us began chatting as the dogs barked their fool heads off in the van.

He was a pleasant fellow with a strong southern accent. He told us that not just a few but that about half of all the bison bulls taken in the season so far had come off of his land and the surrounding parcels he managed. At that time, 12 hunters had killed 11 bulls there. The one who didn’t kill, we were told, was because he was after a trophy bull only, and the ones he’d seen didn’t meet his requirements. To each his own, I guess.

The way that RP ran the hunts on his land was pretty simple. Each tag holder and his group would be allowed to trespass for 24 hours. If you got your animal, great. If you didn’t, you were out of luck. There was to be no bird or predator shooting, no small game shooting, no shooting at all unless it was at a bison. Further, he explained that under no circumstances were any of the hunters or any in that party allowed to drive any vehicle of any sort on his land. No trucks, no ATVs, no nothing. All hunters would go in strictly on foot, or not at all. RP also explained that he only allowed one team of bison hunters on the lands under his control at a time. He did explain that he did allow successful bison hunters to use their own vehicles to remove the animals after they were field processed.

Above all, he demanded that all trespassers respect his land. That needn’t have been stated to our group, but I totally understand it. We were strangers to him and while I’d not dream of conducting myself in any manner other than with respect to both him and myself, I’m guessing some have in the past. I knew the man wouldn’t regret granting us permission to hunt there, if in fact that’s what I chose to do.

RP went on to explain that a not insignificant portion of land is planted for and managed for the bison. He also remarked that his family had put out an incredible amount of hay bales for the bison last winter, as they were losing so many to starvation. As an aside to this, VernAK harbors considerable angst in the way the starving bison were handled last season by the authorities, and rightfully so, based upon my understanding of how things played out. The state should’ve done much more to help the herd, and had the resources to do so. Due to bureaucratic red tape, negligence, legal issues or a combination (I’m admittedly not really sure where any blame lies), many more bison died than should have. I’m not entirely sure on this but I believe VernAK has actually drawn up a detailed proposal to much better deal with any horrific future winters where the bison are concerned. The man is extremely passionate about the herds in any case and l applaud his many efforts on their behalf.

Back to our talk with RP. The man told of an awful sight seen during the spring thaw. One of the bales of hay that had been set out for the bison by his family had been completely covered by drifting snow-- like ten feet of it. The bison knew the hay was there under the snow and were so desperate, literally in the throes of starvation, that several endeavored to dig down into the deep snow covering the bale so as to be able to get some nourishment. Three of the animals managed to actually dig a hole so deep that they reached the hay. Problem was, once in the hole, the animals couldn’t get back out of the hole and piled up on top of one another. I can only imagine the panic they must have felt. Three of them died in there, stacked up on one another in that horrible frozen tomb. A terrible thing. Mother Nature can be a cruel and fickle bitch at times.

I had a decision to make, and it didn’t take me long. I asked RP to put me on his list. There was a pair of guys hunting bison on the land at the time, so he took my phone and name information and said that if and when the current hunters were successful, he’d text me and we’d talk more about details tomorrow. Sounded like a plan.

The bad part of this new development was that Rost495 had to go to Fairbanks that following day to grab his wife at the AP. Unfortunately, that meant he’d likely not be joining us if we ended up hunting RP’s land on day 3. If he was able, it’d only be for a couple hours. I felt badly about that, especially in light of all his efforts on my behalf. We left the RP land and decided to split back up and see about maybe finding a herd on public land, and agreed that we’d touch base later in the day with any new developments. SD and I decided to grab a hot drink somewhere after poking around some other hunting lands, and I thought I should maybe try to get a hold of some of the other landowners who allowed hunting and see what they had to say.

An hour or thereabouts after we left Rost495, I got a text. ‘Previous guys have their bull down. If you want to come in about an hour, you can get started looking for yours. If you want to wait until tomorrow, that’s OK too. Let me know’...

KG, thanks for sharing, waiting patiently for the rest!

I’ll set my bookmark right here.

First the earth cooled...so where's the bison? Most enjoyable thread...