Alaska caribou hunt: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

Hey Gang...back home after our Alaska caribou trip. We drove from Seattle to Anchorage, flew out to the Alaska tundra and drove back to Seattle. In all, 5200 miles with 106 hours behind the wheel. I just gotta share some of this experience. Better grab your favorite......this is a long one.

We drove the Cassiar highway up to the Al-Can highway and then into Alaska. Hmmm...familiar sticker?

Just about every river we crossed was just plain huge. Frazier, Skeena, Yukon, just to name a few. Here's some zipperlip where I spotted a couple fish.

We saw black bear, moose, daal sheep, bison, caribou, mountain goats, eagles, hawks, and ptarmagon. The drive home took us into Denali, Fairbanks, Dawson City, North Pole, (the list goes on) Dawson Creek, Hell's Gate, and finally back through Sumas. Tons of pictures along the way.

While none of took a big bull, all five hunters (but six people in the party) took an animal during our nine days in the bush. Needless to say, a trip of a lifetime! We didn't grab any pictures of caribou taken, but I do have a few pictures capturing a few memorable occasions. Here's the fella who took all six of us in, one by one:

I was the first one dropped off. We had two tents in the alder scrub, and one in the open. This is what I took in complete solitude after the bush pilot dropped me off:

Absolutely immense space on the tundra. After getting settled into our new home for the next nine days and eating din-din, we had a visitor on the first night. Shortly after taking this photo another "fella" came into view.

We saw lots of caribou, near and far.....and I mean far. You can see forever. Distance takes on a new meaning out there. Our camp offered a three mile vista of a valley. The first morning was the day before the opener. Needless to say, we thought we were in fat city. I was the first one up and about that morning and got this picture while enjoying my first cup of the day:

None of us shot on opening day, but we watched a grizzly sow and THREE cubs traverse a mountain side for about 20 minutes through the glasses about a mile away. On day two we did more scouting than hunting, and didn't get an animal. But we did see what we thought was a second sow and her two cubs on a different mountainside.

Finally, on day three of hunting season one of our party had success from about 200 yards. It was a very long hike back to camp through the muskeg. But now this is living! , and we had caribou tenderloin on an open alder fire. Of course, we followed that up with butterflied backstraps on a frying pan. The hard work was worth it.

On day five (day four of hunting) we got hit by a bad storm, but some of us hunted anyway. Heavy wind and distance made shooting dismal. The next morning we awoke to nice weather which turned into a successful day. Three more of us took our animals. That was a busy day. Our dry wood was gone, and none to be found. But we pan-fried caribou every night and morning after that!

The following day we saw plenty 'bou, but most were too far away. During the late afternoon the last hunter (my wife) took her caribou. We packed out back to camp under flashlight that night.

The next morning we awoke to nice weather, but the wind started to pick up. The bush pilot came and picked up one of us and a tent that was out in the open. He said a bad storm was coming in and they were going to try to get us out a day earlier than scheduled.

Well, the weather came hard and we didn't see anymore planes. It was day eight in the bush. We tried not to be concerned about our first member and the pilot. It quietly weighed heavy on each of our minds. That evening, we "guesstimated" 60 mph winds. Our other two tents we tucked safely in the alder scrub. We passed the night away hunkered in the tents and played pinuckle until 2am with the tent walls a'flappin'!

Most of the storm passed us by during the wee hours of the morning, and the rain came and went. Our pilot was on the spot at about 10:30 am. As the day worn on, the wind and rain picked up speed again. One by one, we were flown off the tundra. The pilot flew in one of the members of the next hunting party during his trip back out to pick up his #5 passenger. I requested to be last out, #6. When he was getting ready to leave with #5 I asked what he thought about the conditions. We both looked out to see only a 1/4 mile or less across the valley. Clouds, rain and wind were heavy. He looked back at me, kinda shook his head and said, "Well, we'll see..."

The pilot was taking us out one at a time to a waypoint where a second plane handling two passegers and pilot flew back to the lodge. His round trip from our camp to the waypoint was taking about 55-60 minutes all morning.

Me and that hunter from the next party got to chattin' a little bit. We'd go outside the tent so I could point out some places we saw caribou, but we didn't want to stand out there very long! At about the 50 minute mark, our voices stopped every so often. Our ears were playing tricks on us. 60 minutes passed. I began resigning to the idea that I wouldn't be flying out that day. We chatted some more about this and that....the weather wasn't breaking at all. Somewhere around the 70 minute mark we stopped our words again. The plane, the plane!

Here comes the bush pilot, and off I go running up the hill with bags and rifle! Needless to say, the pilot was all business. He offloaded the second and last hunter of the new hunting party, and away we took off on our 80 mile flight back to the lodge.

Along our way we spotted a couple unmanned rafts tucked up into some backwater in a river. Heavily treed, we didn't spot any people. No signs of a camp. Kinda weird, we said to each other. About two miles later we spotted two tents camped on a gravel bar on the river. On that bar was a ten foot sign made of logs and branche: HELP. Three people were there, jumping and waving bright colored shirts and such. The pilot dipped a wing. One of the guys waving his yellow flag dropped his arms and ran to his comrades as to say "he saw us! He saw us!" We circled overhead, but didn't spot a suitable landing area. The pilot entered a waypoint into his GPS and we resumed course. I was back on land at 5:30 that afternoon.

That evening we boned out our meat and boxed it up. We weighed about 400lbs of boned out meat. Those rafters, from what I understand, were rescued. That was about three weeks ago. Today, we picked up our meat from the shipper, and is it tasty!

If you ever get a chance........no.....if you can MAKE a chance to do a trip like this, DO IT! It was a trip of a lifetime!

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