G
geriggs
Guest
So we are home a week early. We all tagged out the first 5 days. We had a blast. All moose were shot with rifle. Longest shot 250 and shortest about 100. Couple of things (lessons learned) i want to share.
The good: Great outfitter. I cant say enough good things about Papa Bear. Steve and Robyn run a tight ship. The pilots were great as well as deck hands. They put you on moose. No doubt. Everyone was getting moose...some small, some huge 60+. the hunt was great. Experience was cool. We saw lots of moose. 4 shooters for sure. 2 of which we took....in 6 days
The bad: Costs can get out of hand if not planned properly. This hunt probably cost us 7-8k when all said and done. I think we were over tipping but everytime a pilot came out to get our meat (3x) we would tip him. FLight in and out we tipped him. Deck hands got tipped, hostess (Robyn) gets tipped. Steve is the only one who doesnt get tipped. Now Robyn did go out of her way for us on our meat and liqour store trip (yes there is a liqour store now). she makes an awesome french toast caserole. She charges $40 bucks for rubbermaid tubs you can get for $15 here. She advocates for those over fish boxes but they are not necessary. Fish boxes are cheaper. We spent almost $275 on rubber bins. Because we decided to come home early we had to change our flight. That was $500!!! It would have been more expensive to room in Bethel (why would you). I will get into why we wanted to come home early in the "ugly" part. We also shipped 1300 pounds of meat, hide, and antler home. Alaska Air Cargo was about 94 cents a pound ($1250/4). Preferred shipper or not. Papa bear can help you with that. You are responsible for wrapping your antlers though. There is no great way to do it.
The ugly: The location....this is not the pretty part of alaska. You are in a swamp. Bugs, wind, rain..etc etc. Not a tree within 3 miles. Just willow/alders. There are plenty of moose but when you are tagged out and there is a grizzly within a mile of your camp....wolf and black bear hunting was just not that important to us. We wanted a shower, dry clothes, and to be home. Had it been gorgeous views and decent weather and dry ground.....yea maybe we stay longer. In our area I would suggest waist waders as a minimum and chest waders would be better. Your butt was always getting wet in the boat...chair, whatever. Every step was muck, it was suction...was hard to walk in. The crazy thing is there were guys we talked to from other camps that said they didnt have to wear their waders to hunt at all if they didnt want to. We HAD to. We had to float 2 of the 4 bulls back to camp and gut them and cut them up on shore in knee to thigh deep water. Thanks God one of us had chest waders but he did more work than he should have cause the rest of us didnt want to get wet. I would love to go again but just not to that area. On the positive note...tons of blueberries and they were delicious.
Things i would do different or bring.... come along would have been money. Trying to quarter or clean moose in water is no fun. Tarps, Tarps, Tarps. WE had one big one as a shelter from rain and lots of small ones. I think we had a total of 6 and it was barely enough. We would have brought another large one. Anything to get you out of wind/rain. If going with 4 people I would suggest you get two motors. We had one and one boat had to tow the other one around. Too much wind for paddles.
Anti-Fungal medicine. I thought we had brought everything we could think of for medical. We forgot one and it crippled me. Because there is so much moisture fungal infections can happen and without shower, something to stay dry with (towel) and medicine it can go bad quick. Took a lot of the joy out of my trip but another reason I had to get out of there quickly. None of us had towels, couldnt wipe up water in tent or dry yourself. the sawyer gravity filter we had was the MVP of the trip. We always had good water. Screw the pump ones (bring one for back up). The gravity filter never clogged and we always had drinking water and cooking water if needed.
Everyone rain gear worked well, had sitka and Kuiu and it worked great. Dont bother with crocs unless they dont have holes in side. Even walking around in camp we had to have rubber boots on. water would get through crocs.
We had 2 bulls down on our first day, that zapped us for day two. Day 3 I killed mine in camp. I had to go the bathroom and the guys were sleeping in a bit. after i was done i decided i was up so As i was cooking breakfast i looked about 100 yards away and saw my moose. I whispered to the guys i was going to shoot. They didnt believe me at first but then they heard my racking the bolt and they knew it was on. one guy had his ear plugs in and didnt hear me whisper but he heard the first shot and i heard a "WHAT THE F...???!!! It happened really fast. The biggest bull was only 600 yrds from camp and the guys closed the distance on him while i watched it all from camp. Moose got in water and swam across after getting our wind and my buddy dropped him on the shoreline (waist high water).
CALL From camp. Call every half hour if you want. They were coming to camp but taking their sweet time. 2 guys killed their bulls on 1st day and I think they wished they would have waited. We saw bigger bulls after those 2 were dead. Its hard to judge these animals if you have never seen them on the hoof. They are sooooo big. I passed on a bull the night before i shot mine. Im glad i did. Mine was significantly bigger. I debated for an hour on that bull i passed becuase he just stood their in front of me and never ran. He saw me but never got my wind. BE PATIENT!! Dont shoot the first bull unless he is big. There are lots of moose in this unit. We saw lots of cows too.
Grizzly!!!! One or the guys went to hunt his gut pile on day 3 and found a grizzly coming in to feed on it at last light. He was big and my buddy was by himself. The bear ran at him and my friend stood up and did the "Hey Bear" thing. It stopped at 40 yrds. raised up for a sec and walked around him into the alders. He then came back out towards my buddy a bit and he had enough and fired hi .44 into the ground to scare him and that worked....but now you dont know where he is and its getting dark. Luckily the guys in the boat could here he sense of urgerncy on the radio and got to him quickly. A little hairy. We didnt think we would see any. Apparently its pretty rare, lcuky us. He was beautiful. 2 of the guys went back to see if he or anything else was back on that gut pile and he was there again but this time they got video of him. Man he was big.
Heard wolves at night, saw their track but never them. Never saw a black bear but saw tracks. Thats about all. Was a great trip but glad to be home. Went by way too fast...especially since we were slated to be there another. week. Any questions just ask.
The good: Great outfitter. I cant say enough good things about Papa Bear. Steve and Robyn run a tight ship. The pilots were great as well as deck hands. They put you on moose. No doubt. Everyone was getting moose...some small, some huge 60+. the hunt was great. Experience was cool. We saw lots of moose. 4 shooters for sure. 2 of which we took....in 6 days
The bad: Costs can get out of hand if not planned properly. This hunt probably cost us 7-8k when all said and done. I think we were over tipping but everytime a pilot came out to get our meat (3x) we would tip him. FLight in and out we tipped him. Deck hands got tipped, hostess (Robyn) gets tipped. Steve is the only one who doesnt get tipped. Now Robyn did go out of her way for us on our meat and liqour store trip (yes there is a liqour store now). she makes an awesome french toast caserole. She charges $40 bucks for rubbermaid tubs you can get for $15 here. She advocates for those over fish boxes but they are not necessary. Fish boxes are cheaper. We spent almost $275 on rubber bins. Because we decided to come home early we had to change our flight. That was $500!!! It would have been more expensive to room in Bethel (why would you). I will get into why we wanted to come home early in the "ugly" part. We also shipped 1300 pounds of meat, hide, and antler home. Alaska Air Cargo was about 94 cents a pound ($1250/4). Preferred shipper or not. Papa bear can help you with that. You are responsible for wrapping your antlers though. There is no great way to do it.
The ugly: The location....this is not the pretty part of alaska. You are in a swamp. Bugs, wind, rain..etc etc. Not a tree within 3 miles. Just willow/alders. There are plenty of moose but when you are tagged out and there is a grizzly within a mile of your camp....wolf and black bear hunting was just not that important to us. We wanted a shower, dry clothes, and to be home. Had it been gorgeous views and decent weather and dry ground.....yea maybe we stay longer. In our area I would suggest waist waders as a minimum and chest waders would be better. Your butt was always getting wet in the boat...chair, whatever. Every step was muck, it was suction...was hard to walk in. The crazy thing is there were guys we talked to from other camps that said they didnt have to wear their waders to hunt at all if they didnt want to. We HAD to. We had to float 2 of the 4 bulls back to camp and gut them and cut them up on shore in knee to thigh deep water. Thanks God one of us had chest waders but he did more work than he should have cause the rest of us didnt want to get wet. I would love to go again but just not to that area. On the positive note...tons of blueberries and they were delicious.
Things i would do different or bring.... come along would have been money. Trying to quarter or clean moose in water is no fun. Tarps, Tarps, Tarps. WE had one big one as a shelter from rain and lots of small ones. I think we had a total of 6 and it was barely enough. We would have brought another large one. Anything to get you out of wind/rain. If going with 4 people I would suggest you get two motors. We had one and one boat had to tow the other one around. Too much wind for paddles.
Anti-Fungal medicine. I thought we had brought everything we could think of for medical. We forgot one and it crippled me. Because there is so much moisture fungal infections can happen and without shower, something to stay dry with (towel) and medicine it can go bad quick. Took a lot of the joy out of my trip but another reason I had to get out of there quickly. None of us had towels, couldnt wipe up water in tent or dry yourself. the sawyer gravity filter we had was the MVP of the trip. We always had good water. Screw the pump ones (bring one for back up). The gravity filter never clogged and we always had drinking water and cooking water if needed.
Everyone rain gear worked well, had sitka and Kuiu and it worked great. Dont bother with crocs unless they dont have holes in side. Even walking around in camp we had to have rubber boots on. water would get through crocs.
We had 2 bulls down on our first day, that zapped us for day two. Day 3 I killed mine in camp. I had to go the bathroom and the guys were sleeping in a bit. after i was done i decided i was up so As i was cooking breakfast i looked about 100 yards away and saw my moose. I whispered to the guys i was going to shoot. They didnt believe me at first but then they heard my racking the bolt and they knew it was on. one guy had his ear plugs in and didnt hear me whisper but he heard the first shot and i heard a "WHAT THE F...???!!! It happened really fast. The biggest bull was only 600 yrds from camp and the guys closed the distance on him while i watched it all from camp. Moose got in water and swam across after getting our wind and my buddy dropped him on the shoreline (waist high water).
CALL From camp. Call every half hour if you want. They were coming to camp but taking their sweet time. 2 guys killed their bulls on 1st day and I think they wished they would have waited. We saw bigger bulls after those 2 were dead. Its hard to judge these animals if you have never seen them on the hoof. They are sooooo big. I passed on a bull the night before i shot mine. Im glad i did. Mine was significantly bigger. I debated for an hour on that bull i passed becuase he just stood their in front of me and never ran. He saw me but never got my wind. BE PATIENT!! Dont shoot the first bull unless he is big. There are lots of moose in this unit. We saw lots of cows too.
Grizzly!!!! One or the guys went to hunt his gut pile on day 3 and found a grizzly coming in to feed on it at last light. He was big and my buddy was by himself. The bear ran at him and my friend stood up and did the "Hey Bear" thing. It stopped at 40 yrds. raised up for a sec and walked around him into the alders. He then came back out towards my buddy a bit and he had enough and fired hi .44 into the ground to scare him and that worked....but now you dont know where he is and its getting dark. Luckily the guys in the boat could here he sense of urgerncy on the radio and got to him quickly. A little hairy. We didnt think we would see any. Apparently its pretty rare, lcuky us. He was beautiful. 2 of the guys went back to see if he or anything else was back on that gut pile and he was there again but this time they got video of him. Man he was big.
Heard wolves at night, saw their track but never them. Never saw a black bear but saw tracks. Thats about all. Was a great trip but glad to be home. Went by way too fast...especially since we were slated to be there another. week. Any questions just ask.
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