Anyone hunt with North Star outfitters

[boliver29]

Just seeing if anyone has hunted with them


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[AU.MASHnKS]

I will be in 4 weeks.

 

[boliver29]

Let me know how it goes


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[Jdeck09]

Just seeing if anyone has hunted with them


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They have a pretty active facebook page. You might be able to track a couple guys down that way. From an outsider perspective, they seem to be decent and communicate. I feel like the end of the month produces better animals compared to the start of season but thats just me looking at photos.

 

[Nontyp]

3 times with them. They are good people and will put more space between their camps than the others up there

 

[RyanT26]

They run out of or at least used to run out of the same boat ramp as a couple other airboat outfitters. Talked to them very briefly two years ago as we were going out with another outfitter, they seemed decent.
Main thing to remember you’re going to be sharing that river or the different river channels with at least 2 other airboat operations. Northstar and Deadhorse seem like they communicated well and tried to stay out of each other’s way. There was newer group up there that was stepping on a lot of toes and dumping hunters on top of other camps.
About all you can do is hope that the migration is moving well and be ready to cover ground if needed.

 

[Jackal7]

Our group of four heads out with North Star on 9/3. Any reports from prior groups would be great. We have not used this transporter or hunted NS before, just SBR, so any advance information that is shareable in public would be great. Thx.

 

[Pochuck]

Our group of four heads out with North Star on 9/3. Any reports from prior groups would be great. We have not used this transporter or hunted NS before, just SBR, so any advance information that is shareable in public would be great. Thx.

How was the trip?

 

[BiggA]

And more updates on North Star Outfitters?

 

[T3ninja]

Yes. Went with them this August. Never again.

 

[RyanT26]

Yes. Went with them this August. Never again.

What specifically was no good?

 

[T3ninja]

Comms were terrible. We were lied to, and I feel we were misled. An extra $500 deposit requirement that was never mentioned when we were told we were able to get a second tag. Among other things.

 

[boliver29]

Did you kill anything


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[T3ninja]

My group killed 3. Northstar seems to have some good spots, but I feel they are trying to capitalize on people that are going on their first trip like this. They had camps stacked every 3/4 mile or less in the section we were. We asked about other hunters in the area and how many camps they had, those questions were avoided and not answered.

 

[boliver29]

Would a spike camp be a good idea


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[T3ninja]

Would a spike camp be a good idea


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I’ll pm you

 

[boliver29]

Ok


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[llynbrmm]

We went through North Star mid August. I assume it will be the same for any of the outfitters that drop off via airboat, but just something to make sure your expectations are set correctly, ours weren’t. North Star has 12 groups set up on a 20 mile stretch of river. 2 other outfitters utilize the same river. There will be a group set up every mile on either side of the river. In that country you can see 10 miles, so you’ll see all these people. Our first day we saw 23 people and 0 caribou. If any caribou come close to the river, a minimum of 3-4 groups will see them and whoever’s camp happens to be closest would get a shot. We saw 2 spikes close to the river the entire week. I assume opening few days there’s caribou along the river and it’s great hunting but they must leave quickly. Not sure where the migration was, but we never saw big groups. We drove up from Fairbanks and We saw a couple large groups right after crossing the Brooks, but none where we hunted. Killed 3/3 bulls, the only 3 we saw the whole week. 2 decent “meat” bulls and one probably year and a half bull. 2 were killed 2 miles from camp, one 5 miles out. I know North Star advertised a 90% kill rate, I’d be surprised if last year was 50% based on talking to them before/after and watching their Facebook page after we were done. We could watch the groups around us, we saw 2 bulls killed out of the 4 groups we could see closely. Our 2nd day actually a group crossed the river and killed a bull directly behind our camp. Was still an amazing experience, but honestly if/when I do it again I’d probably not pay the outfitter and hike in. Or pay a little more and fly-in so you won’t be so close to people.

 

[BigHunterification]

Sounds like a nightmare.

 

[AU.MASHnKS]

Some people have sent me PM's on my experience with Northstar. Here is what I told them along with a few other thoughts based on some of the comments above.

Overall Hunt and experience: It was good. There were five of us that went in and we shot two bulls on the first afternoon. After that the next two days more bulls were saw but they were 5 plus miles from camp. The three guys with tags left chose not to venture back up the hill behind camp the second day and likely missed opportunities to shoot because we saw bulls from camp on the hill that afternoon. To far from camp to shoot or try and chase them. We did not shoot another bull over the next 7 days but did see a lot of cows and calfs. The bulls just seemed to vanish after the third day.

It seemed the majorly of the Caribou we saw were 4-5 miles from the river and if you have hunted the tundra you know that’s not ideal. The bulls we did shoot were 1.3 miles from the river/camp.

I don’t have anything negative to say about NorthStar and I’m likely going to book a costal black bear hunt with them. I do not know if I would do another airboat drop Caribou hunt again though.

Here are the two we got I'm the luckily one behind the bigger one.

We all had a great time just the hunting was tough.


Some follow up thoughts:
1. Yes we saw plenty of other hunters. You can also see 10-20 miles on a clear day with some elevation. We never had another hunter within a half mile of us, but the hunters that were that close were on the opposite side of the river and unless you have a raft you were not crossing the river where we got dropped off.
2. If you rent camp gear make damn sure they pack everything in the boat. We rented a full camp setup with cots and cots got mistakenly left in a truck bed. Needless to say they didn't get those to use until the second day. If it was not for us being half dead tired from hauling the two bulls back to came that night we might of noticed missing them.
3. One of our hunters luggage and gun didn't make it from Anchorage to Deadhorse. NorthStar went above and beyond the call and helped us here. Once the bags made it the following day they were able to pick them up and brought them in to us. They even took him around town to help get some supplies in the mean time.
4. Discussions around Fly-In hunts. This has great potential, but the honest truth is these services get hammered with weather delays and ultimately lead to people camping in a tent village for days waiting to get flown out (Reducing actual hunting days). The best part is that these folks are getting flown into areas were people are not...... Or so they say. If your getting flown West of the pipeline your likely good, going East off the rivers you will be camping in a better location (based on where we saw the most caribou 4-5 miles from the river) but you will not be completely away from other hunters.
5. Spike camp - Would be a good idea for what we experienced and actually watch another group of hunters setup one. It would take around 2-3 hours to get to the glassing spots until we found a much more stable ground path and that cut it to 1.5 Hours.