Fly in Drop Hunts

[19hunt92]

Looking to see if i am missing something on my research and planning. Long story short, i am looking to "book" a caribou hunt next fall and wanting to fly into fairbanks and then have a pilot drop myself and 2 buddies off for a week and then come pick us up. No scouting, no renting anything, no need for the pilot to do anything other than dropping us off.
Now where my question/surprise is, i did this exact same thing on kodiak island a year ago and came out happy and paid what i expected to pay for this. Doing the same research for a mainland caribou hunt shows that this will be up to 3x the amount for the flight in plus a trophy transportation fee. I am not sure why the difference in flights and it is looking as its pay the larger unexpected expense or do a foot/atv hunt in. That is fine, just trying to get out like i have in 2 other alaska hunts and enjoyed both of them equally.

Guess the question is: why the signifcantly higher flight cost regardless of weight + trophy fee? Am i missing something in my questions for booking? Kodiak has a significantly different business model with transporter costs/fees which is odd being the same service in the same state.

 

[VernAK]

In most cases, those providing bush flights for hunters have spent years developing a handful of landing spots where they can drop hunters in the migration path. They have a limited amount of these locations thus can take a handful of hunting parties. I'm speaking of the ethical flight services. AS our caribou herds continue to decline, some of these caribou herds are on a registration quota and the hunt can be closed by emergency order as the quota is met or nearly met. Therefore, some of these pilots are reluctant to book non-resident hunters as the season may get closed prior to their hunt and the $$$$ would have to be returned.

A flight out of Fairbanks by a commercial flight service will take you to your landing strip which is usually a quite popular strip occupied by multiple hunting parties.

There's more to this than just the cost of flight time.

Good luck on your quest but you are seeking something for which the demand far exceeds the supply.

 

[PORK]

Sounds like your research has been with transporters. You need to contact air taxi’s. One of my friends tried to book with a very popular transporter that is mentioned on this site a lot for last fall. They were booked up and couldn’t fit him in. I gave him contact info for an air taxi that took him to the same area as the transporter. But it was half the cost.

Good luck in your search!

 

[BrooksRanger]

Thanks Pork, that will help everyone going forward.

 

[19hunt92]

That may be the issue. I was thinking transporter sounded right but not sure of the correct lingo either. Let me do some research for air taxi's as well.

I copmpletly understand the issue with going in "blind" and may fly in to a few groups of hunters as well. Same issue we could have had on Kodiak but got lucky with the area we picked and only saw 1 other camp with miles in-between.

As far as the quota, we are looking to go to an area that is not easily accessable by road and at the beginning of season. The specific area never reached quota the last couple years so i feel comfortable going there. The back up area has no quota.