Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Massive Caribou Herds of Yesterday.

OK, those who lived when and with the massive caribou herds that were an ongoing problem, make those who can't imagine the endless herds of caribou cry with jealousy. Tell them about the years when the Alaska Highway crews used snowplows "YEAR AROUND" to blast the dead caribou off the highways 24 hours a day.

Tell them about when the valleys were wall to wall packed with caribou, so many caribou you could not guide hunters to Moose, Grizzly, Black Bears When they would migrate for months by the thousands in your yard, scraping their antlers against the wilderness cabin as they passed, the endless "clicking" of the tendons of thousands of caribou keeping you awake all night. And the large Wolf packs that followed them. Tell them of when the official harvest quota was (5) but F&G and law enforcement made it clear there was no limit so long as you processed them for some use.

TELL YOUR ACCOUNTS. ("Where & When" disclosure Optional)

I posted this a week or so ago on two other forums, and the constant question was "where" & "when", so this was my reply.

My experience was 53+ years ago in the Noatak River Valley, actually much of the early 70's in the upper Noatak and Ambler River Country.

Also, in the 70's I was proving-up on the homestead on the Upper Susitna River, near the confluence with Windy Creek. Also known as "Clearwater Country".

In the 80's I was mostly guiding in units 17 & 19 "The Mulchatna herd". While living on Lake Clark.

My original post is a collection of remembering's from the 70's 80's and early 90's

Well A, if you hunted the Western Arctic herd at it's high in the 70s, that was right before their crash. 70s and 80s that herd was rebuilding. Peaked again around 2005. I had some good hunting that herd in 90s and early 2000s. Herd used to come down past Unalakleet and almost hit St. Mary's. Came down the Nulato hills and east onto the Yukon R. at Koyukuk. When they headed north they took the majority of the Galena Mt. herd.
The Kokrines hills are criss crossed with what must be caribou trails from the past. Seen a diary of a resident of the old village of Kokrines. Somewhere around the 30s. Fall time entry says hills north of village were covered in caribou.
Western Arctic Herd is at a low again. Didn't crash tho. Steady decline. Will likely increase again.

I was teaching school in Ambler from 1996 to 1999. During that time I hunted with a Remington 788 in 22-250 and would shoot up to 10 per day. I would go down to Onion Portage with my little boat and have a school kid drive the boat and pop them then float them into the sand bar. I was not really hunting but harvesting. It was a time of caribou plenty as they would boil out of the Redstone and the Cutler and go right by town. The herd was near maximum. I used to take the school kids out on hunting in the Waring mountains south of Ambler and they were thick with caribou. I also hunted caribou near the hotsprings between Shungnak and Huslia.

There was a lot of great country up there. It was too remote for my girlfriend and little boy. The local kids would try to bully him and Ambler had bullies that were a good deal worse than what I wanted him to experience so I went to the Jobfair and moved to Nulato.

Nulato had caribou only during the winter but it was a wonderful place for hunting moose. This was when there were 17 moose per square mile up in the area of Three Day Slough on the Koyukuk river. Both of them were wonderful places of beauty, culture and opportunity.

I would genuinely love to hunt sheep in the wrangells, caribou at Onion Portage and the Hunt River and Moose on those sloughs south of the the Yukon and in the Kaiyuh.

Mid-70's From a ridgetop Northeast of Pt Hope, the year before the "mysterious crash" of the WACH, I had in view a minimum of 15,000 caribou one day, as far as the eye could see. That was also the day I failed to take into account the extra high mounting of my scope, edged up just high enough that the intervening little mogul of rocks 15 yards out was out of the scopes fov, waited for two caribou at 70 yards to get lined up for a 2fer..... and blew the hell out of the top rock on the mogul.... had to wing-shoot the next as they fled past at 30 yards or so.

For two springs running, I could have shown you at least 1,000 caribou carcasses with 25 miles of Pt Hope that had gone un-retrieved. I heard the situation was similar in other NWA villages at that time. But the crash was officially a "mystery" - at least publically/politically.

Cows that I killed were pregnant in Dec./January, none that I killed in Mar/April were. I believe extensive and intensive chasing with snow machines (I did not!) was responsible for the recruitment rate to drop to 3-5% due to "spontaneous" abortion of fetuses. The herd dropped from a couple hundred thousand to 55,000 in two years. By the time we moved to Kotz in 2010 (to 2018), the herd was once more booming , but is now in slow decline again. It's all because of them damned non-resident "sport hunters" and their guides, of course. According to the locals. Actually it's a perfect storm of causes probably, aging herd demographics, range conditions, and bad weather primarily. Mid-winter freezing rain storms do nasty things. Still has a couple hundred thousand in it last I checked.

I've killed caribou from the 40 Mile, the Teshukpuk, WACH, Mulchatna, Kenai, and Killey River Herds. Took one near Lake Louise also, not sure what that herd is. Probably not ever going to get one from the Porcupine, darn it.

Caribous have been good to me!

This thread needs pics

I can't find my book by Frank DuFresne but I can give you an idea of what he saw. Frank was one of the first US Biological Survey People in Alaska. That department now is USFWS.

Frank was at Rika's Roadhouse in Big Delta [8 miles north of Delta Jct] where the big pipeline bridge crosses the Tanana.

In those days, [probably late 20s] the Forty Mile Herd often migrated through that area and up the Delta River to Isabel Pass country. Frank Glaser [Alaska's Wolf Man] spoke of same massive migrations.

DuFresne watched and tried to count the mass of caribou as they headed up the Delta River. He rough counted 300K in one day and thought that probably a million caribou passed through while he was there.

Foggers grazed the range to bare rock- ain't never been the same.

Rangifer is an excellent and apt designation - they never really stop moving, even tho they may have a restricted range, like on the KP. One sat-collared cow in the Arctic traveled 1500 miles in a single season, ending up practically where she started from.

A collared cow from the second re-intro to the KP- now the Killey river herd, apparently tried to go home to the Nelchina (that's it!!!- my Lake Louise one) Herd. My buddy Bud helped release her in the spring to jump start the Killey Herd, and shot her in August out of the Kenai Mt Herd, near Hope.

Put 'N take.....

What were the predator populations like during these periods?
Wolf, Lynx, wolverines, etc.

I can tell you about wolves in the upper Noatak River, but it is not believable. I have learned my lesson about telling the truth reference one unbelievable observation. My ass is still burning from the endless flaming on a different forum. And I was on the ground, those who have harvested wolves from an aircraft, claim to have observed equal or higher numbers.

I've been to that Hot springs a few times Kaboku. Cool place. Huslia folks will be heading there soon for some bou hunting. 3 day is a long ride from Nulato! Are you saying the kids are nicer in Nulato?

During the month of September I traveled the Yukon three times going to the Koyukuk then running up the Huslia. Maybe spent 40 days total. Never seen one caribou.
Plenty of moose, occasionally a black bear and a wolf or two. But no boo. One year the group I was hunting with seen a muskok when cruising the Huslia.

In 1984 nearly 10,000 caribou died during their annual migration over the Caniapiscau River when Hydro Quebec opened the spillway during their migration. Pathetic!

KB

I would like to hear about those wolf numbers. I love hearing the game stories from the bygone days. Hard to imagine what it was like, but I'm sure it was constantly a target rich environment.

Mulchatna Herd for me at it's peak, I'll get in writing mode and put sumtin together here shortly.

I have read in a couple sources that it was thought that distemper spread through the canine populations in the early 1900s thereby eliminating much of the wolf predation.

I did not get along with a wolf lover co-teacher who wrote for Alaska Magazine and I saw the writing on the wall from that direction as well. I ended knocking him out cold in the end of the year staff student softball game when he tried to block the plate. The guy was a complete [bleep].

Funny how Nick Jan's spent all that time hunting with the locals then turned greeny. Him and Seth Kantner are a pair! Nick and wife were in Nome when I lived there pushing the snare ban. I saw her in the PO and introduced myself. Told her Nick and I had slept with some of the same women!!

I caught the tail end of the Mulchatna herd explosion.
A good time to be a Caribou hunter.

Hunting the mulchatna herd was fun in the mid 90's. Died off quickly after that.

I hunted the Mulchatna herd in the mid-1990s, and they were everywhere!

Hunted bears (both black and grizzly) just a little further north in 2009, and saw very few--and only one mature bull.