mooster
WKR
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2018
- Messages
- 607
Did my first AK DIY last year to take a caribou. Decided to go back this year after a moose, or two. With an 11 day season two would be unlikely, but a possibility.
Got there a few days early to go up the haul road to scout some grounds and see if it makes sense for a future low budget caribou hunt. So bought a bou tag just in case we saw a good one, but also knew we could apply the tag to a black bear during our moose hunt if I didn’t take a bou.
We saw moose,wolf, Artic fox, caribou, dall sheep as we drove all the way up and above Happy Valley. Caribou were still just ones and twos, we didn’t want to go any further as we still wanted time to fish. We found the grayling to be abundant and hungry. We also suffered the typical flat tire on the haul road, but our windshield survived intact.
Got back to town and spent a day checking our gear in and weighing with the air taxi (came in 18 lbs lite) , also shooting the rifle on range. So we were flown into the field the next morning, a day and half early which allowed room for a weather delay w/ch isn’t uncommon in AK, but also to set camp, do some pike fishing, and scouting before the season opened.
Didn’t see any moose until the season opened, but then only a cow for a day and a half, mostly in same place each morning and evening. No real bull sign to be found, but did find some sheds.
After five days with not a moose seen, we moved to the opposite side of the lake, about a mile via our packraft. We’d found good sheds there and an area we could hike to a smaller secondary pond and some additional
Marshy fields and swamp holes. I did manage to take a small black bear, fresh meat in camp was awesome
Enjoyed some great scenery and literally thousands of ducks on our lake. Also found some huge black bear scat! (yes, that's what we told ouselves to make us feel better!)
On the night before our last hunt day, we finally have a small bull come to our calls and gets to within 50 yds of camp. We’d been 8 days since last seeing the cow, so we were excited to finally seeing something with a rack and not going home completely skunked.
Last morning of our hunt, and finally a small & medium sized bull showed up, but definitely not 4 brows or 50" wide.
And then we had a cow come out across the lake from us, but she didn't appear to have company.
So after the cow left we continued to call but saw nothing. We decided to hike about a mile further from camp.
Got there a few days early to go up the haul road to scout some grounds and see if it makes sense for a future low budget caribou hunt. So bought a bou tag just in case we saw a good one, but also knew we could apply the tag to a black bear during our moose hunt if I didn’t take a bou.
We saw moose,wolf, Artic fox, caribou, dall sheep as we drove all the way up and above Happy Valley. Caribou were still just ones and twos, we didn’t want to go any further as we still wanted time to fish. We found the grayling to be abundant and hungry. We also suffered the typical flat tire on the haul road, but our windshield survived intact.
Got back to town and spent a day checking our gear in and weighing with the air taxi (came in 18 lbs lite) , also shooting the rifle on range. So we were flown into the field the next morning, a day and half early which allowed room for a weather delay w/ch isn’t uncommon in AK, but also to set camp, do some pike fishing, and scouting before the season opened.
Didn’t see any moose until the season opened, but then only a cow for a day and a half, mostly in same place each morning and evening. No real bull sign to be found, but did find some sheds.
After five days with not a moose seen, we moved to the opposite side of the lake, about a mile via our packraft. We’d found good sheds there and an area we could hike to a smaller secondary pond and some additional
Marshy fields and swamp holes. I did manage to take a small black bear, fresh meat in camp was awesome
Enjoyed some great scenery and literally thousands of ducks on our lake. Also found some huge black bear scat! (yes, that's what we told ouselves to make us feel better!)
On the night before our last hunt day, we finally have a small bull come to our calls and gets to within 50 yds of camp. We’d been 8 days since last seeing the cow, so we were excited to finally seeing something with a rack and not going home completely skunked.
Last morning of our hunt, and finally a small & medium sized bull showed up, but definitely not 4 brows or 50" wide.
And then we had a cow come out across the lake from us, but she didn't appear to have company.
So after the cow left we continued to call but saw nothing. We decided to hike about a mile further from camp.
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