In late August/early September, I was back in Alaska for another remote flyout caribou hunt. I opted to go again with the bush pilots I’ve been flying with since the mid-2000’s – 40 Mile Air out of Tok, Alaska. They’re really good pilots, run a safe and organized operation, and fly into some really wild country. In addition, they have a chilled boxcar back in Tok where they take your meat until your hunt is over, which is perfect for a meat hunter like me. I skipped my AK hunt last year to take my girlfriend to Alaska, so it was great to see the guys again and get back into the mountains of Alaska.
I’ve had great success finding AK hunt partners on forums like this one; that wouldn’t be necessary this year. A former high school baseball teammate and small game hunting partner back in the day was interested in going, and had never been to Alaska. Tom and I met for dinner back in November; I brought pics from past Alaska hunts, and described how this hunt is much more work than we’re accustomed to hunting whitetails on the East Coast. He was up for the adventure, so on December 1 I called 40 Mile and booked our spot for a 6-day caribou hunt.
We flew into the mountains on August 29; the caribou were still scattered all over the mountains, and not yet showing any consistent travel pattern. 40 Mile opted to fly us far north into the Charley River country, about 125 air miles north of Tok and deep in the mountains. The flight into and out of the wilderness is always one of the highlights of these trips.
We were dropped on a ridge that 40 Mile hadn’t used before this year; the couple hunting there before us had both been successful, and it offered a great view of several travel corridors, so we opted to give it a try.
While we began to set up camp, we had some interested spectators on the top of the ridge…
My typical camp setup – sleep tent in foreground, and cook/gear tent in the background. We don’t bring any food into the sleep tent.
Our sleep tent with the bear fence in place. Probably didn’t need it at this campsite, but had it with us, and it only takes a few minutes to set up (except for tying all of the ribbons on the electric wires).
As we were finishing setup of the bear fence, this guy came down to investigate, and got within 150 yards or so of the tents! He was as big as any bull we saw later, a trophy to be proud of…if it wasn’t fly-in day.
Tom all geared up and ready to hunt, with my backup pack and Kifaru Gunbearer setup for the rifle. That pack has hauled a lot of meat over the years.
Our camp, with mountain in the background, taken from the knob where we watched a saddle with multiple travel corridors.
If we walk in this direction, after a while we will get to Canada…
We were fortunate to see lots of caribou on a daily basis, more than I’ve seen on any previous hunt in the 40 Mile country. When a group without shooter bulls would pass, I would sneak a little closer and take some photos.
As we were about to head back to the tents for some dinner on Hunting Day 2, I glanced back at the saddle before leaving, and saw a group of 6 caribou coming with 2 nice bulls. I called Tom back to the rock outcropping we were sitting on, and he started to get setup; the caribou were about 400 yards out at that point. He had bumped his scope against a rock when we were preparing to head back to camp, and we were planning to check the zero after dinner; so I handed him my .338 Winchester Magnum. The caribou walked to within about 160 yards of us, and he dropped this nice bull with one shot.
We got him caped, field dressed, quartered, and hauled the meat back to the ridgetop just before dark. Tom was elated with his bull, and it wasn’t a bad pack as meat packs go – only about ½ mile, and the terrain was easy walking.
I had caught a bug just before flying into the field, wasn’t sleeping well, and felt a little run down on this trip; so I decided I was going to shoot a bull close to the ridgetop for an easy pack (if the caribou cooperated, of course). On Day 3 we didn’t see any shooters close to the ridge, so I took photos of some of the smaller caribou that passed through. I didn’t try too hard to stay concealed, so they would notice me and wonder what I was…
On the afternoon of Hunting Day 4, I saw a bald eagle fly onto a rock outcropping about 400 yards away, and convinced myself that was a positive sign. A short while later, 4 caribou came up the ridge from the trees, and a nice bull was leading them. I let them keep coming, and shot him when they were about 150 yards away. I’ve shot bulls with much bigger antlers, but this bull had the heaviest body of any I have shot – lots of prime meat for my sisters and family in Anchorage! I was only about 250 yards from the part of the ridge where the planes could land, so we didn’t even put the meat in the backpacks – we carried it to the ridgetop by hand.
After I shot the largest bull, the 3 others with him hung around for a while, trying to figure out what happened to their buddy. Gave me a chance to take some pics of them right on the ridgetop, only about 150 yards from camp.
After spending a couple hours the next morning trimming and bagging the meat, I called 40 Mile for a meat haul, and to see if we could get an early flyout since we had filled our tags. They had lots of flights scheduled that day, so it didn’t look likely at first. But Jake stopped by to grab the caribou a few hours later, and told us if we could get camp taken down they could fit us in that evening. We took camp down in wind and rain, and Jake and Leif came back around 6 PM to get us and our remaining gear. After drying the tents and gear in our hotel rooms for a couple of days, I was able to get everything clean and stored up for the next adventure.
I’ve had great success finding AK hunt partners on forums like this one; that wouldn’t be necessary this year. A former high school baseball teammate and small game hunting partner back in the day was interested in going, and had never been to Alaska. Tom and I met for dinner back in November; I brought pics from past Alaska hunts, and described how this hunt is much more work than we’re accustomed to hunting whitetails on the East Coast. He was up for the adventure, so on December 1 I called 40 Mile and booked our spot for a 6-day caribou hunt.
We flew into the mountains on August 29; the caribou were still scattered all over the mountains, and not yet showing any consistent travel pattern. 40 Mile opted to fly us far north into the Charley River country, about 125 air miles north of Tok and deep in the mountains. The flight into and out of the wilderness is always one of the highlights of these trips.
We were dropped on a ridge that 40 Mile hadn’t used before this year; the couple hunting there before us had both been successful, and it offered a great view of several travel corridors, so we opted to give it a try.
While we began to set up camp, we had some interested spectators on the top of the ridge…
My typical camp setup – sleep tent in foreground, and cook/gear tent in the background. We don’t bring any food into the sleep tent.
Our sleep tent with the bear fence in place. Probably didn’t need it at this campsite, but had it with us, and it only takes a few minutes to set up (except for tying all of the ribbons on the electric wires).
As we were finishing setup of the bear fence, this guy came down to investigate, and got within 150 yards or so of the tents! He was as big as any bull we saw later, a trophy to be proud of…if it wasn’t fly-in day.
Tom all geared up and ready to hunt, with my backup pack and Kifaru Gunbearer setup for the rifle. That pack has hauled a lot of meat over the years.
Our camp, with mountain in the background, taken from the knob where we watched a saddle with multiple travel corridors.
If we walk in this direction, after a while we will get to Canada…
We were fortunate to see lots of caribou on a daily basis, more than I’ve seen on any previous hunt in the 40 Mile country. When a group without shooter bulls would pass, I would sneak a little closer and take some photos.
As we were about to head back to the tents for some dinner on Hunting Day 2, I glanced back at the saddle before leaving, and saw a group of 6 caribou coming with 2 nice bulls. I called Tom back to the rock outcropping we were sitting on, and he started to get setup; the caribou were about 400 yards out at that point. He had bumped his scope against a rock when we were preparing to head back to camp, and we were planning to check the zero after dinner; so I handed him my .338 Winchester Magnum. The caribou walked to within about 160 yards of us, and he dropped this nice bull with one shot.
We got him caped, field dressed, quartered, and hauled the meat back to the ridgetop just before dark. Tom was elated with his bull, and it wasn’t a bad pack as meat packs go – only about ½ mile, and the terrain was easy walking.
I had caught a bug just before flying into the field, wasn’t sleeping well, and felt a little run down on this trip; so I decided I was going to shoot a bull close to the ridgetop for an easy pack (if the caribou cooperated, of course). On Day 3 we didn’t see any shooters close to the ridge, so I took photos of some of the smaller caribou that passed through. I didn’t try too hard to stay concealed, so they would notice me and wonder what I was…
On the afternoon of Hunting Day 4, I saw a bald eagle fly onto a rock outcropping about 400 yards away, and convinced myself that was a positive sign. A short while later, 4 caribou came up the ridge from the trees, and a nice bull was leading them. I let them keep coming, and shot him when they were about 150 yards away. I’ve shot bulls with much bigger antlers, but this bull had the heaviest body of any I have shot – lots of prime meat for my sisters and family in Anchorage! I was only about 250 yards from the part of the ridge where the planes could land, so we didn’t even put the meat in the backpacks – we carried it to the ridgetop by hand.
After I shot the largest bull, the 3 others with him hung around for a while, trying to figure out what happened to their buddy. Gave me a chance to take some pics of them right on the ridgetop, only about 150 yards from camp.
After spending a couple hours the next morning trimming and bagging the meat, I called 40 Mile for a meat haul, and to see if we could get an early flyout since we had filled our tags. They had lots of flights scheduled that day, so it didn’t look likely at first. But Jake stopped by to grab the caribou a few hours later, and told us if we could get camp taken down they could fit us in that evening. We took camp down in wind and rain, and Jake and Leif came back around 6 PM to get us and our remaining gear. After drying the tents and gear in our hotel rooms for a couple of days, I was able to get everything clean and stored up for the next adventure.
