- Thread Starter
- #21
OP
cocky84
WKR
After having a little time to reflect on the hunt of a lifetime, I have decided to add a few more details about how we went about our hunt. I will touch on what went into our planning, how we educated ourselves on an area and an animal we had never hunted, some of the gear we used, and what we would do different if we had to do it again. I am by no means an expert, there are a ton of guys on here that have killed a ton of moose and know waaaayyyy more than I ever will. I just figured some people could relate to this info, because I assume most people reading this are in the same shoes I was in last year.
PICKING AREA (AIR TAXI)
One of the questions I got asked the most is, how did we pick our area? Well we didn’t. We decided first that we wanted to do a unguided, public land, diy hunt. So we where basically looking for an air taxi to drop us off. I believe on the Alaska Wildlife website you can find a list of transporters or air taxis. We picked ours based on price and reviews. Did a lot of reading reviews on different forums and finally made our choice. Each transporter we talked to booked a little different. Some were booked up for a few years and some only booked one year in advance on a first come first serve basis. The one we decided on only booked one year in advance but for the first two weeks they booked to repeat customers only. If there was any spots left, which I was told was rare, then they opened it to new customers on a first come first serve basis. They also had designated spots that they dropped hunters off in, so that there was not any other hunters in the area we where hunting in. I guess there is also an agreement among all the air taxis on who will service which area, for the same reason of not dropping hunters in on one another. That does not mean a private individual will not fly in there. When we called to try to book there was one spot left. At first we were excited but that faded when we found out why it was available. There had not been a single moose killed in this area in the last 8 years. We decided to go for it and if nothing else it would be a cool adventure, and we would be repeat customers the next year and get a better hunting location. We would be dropped off on a very large lake with smaller lakes around it.
PLANNING AND COST
1. Tags and license. The cost for an OTC moose tag in Alaska for a non resident is $400, that cost is doubling for 2017. Then we had to buy a hunting and fishing license. I added a wolf tag and I believe it was a total of around $100. So total for tags and license was $500
2. Airfare. We signed up for Alaska Airlines credit card. They give you a 25,000 mile sign up bonus, plus your first checked bag is free. We spent a little money on the card and by the time we booked the flight to and from Fairbanks from Kansas City Mo, it was free. There is like a $30 fee that you cant pay for in miles. I also had an extra bag so $25 each way. So $80. Parking was $70.
So the total at the airport was close to $150. I used a SKB golf club case, put my gun in a soft case and put it in the golf club case. I then was able to pack other items in the case around it. I kept it right at 50lbs. Anything over that gets charged extra. I then put my remaining items in my Kuiu 7200 with plenty of room to spare. At the last minute I decided to bring a carry on with some of my very important items that I thought would be hard to replace in Alaska if they got lost. So I put my optics, rain gear, gps…… whatever is most important to you.
3. Transportation. We used priceline for vehicle rental and motels. We were able book a F150 4x4 from Alamo at the airport for 9 days for $435. We used it to drive from Fairbanks to the air taxi airport.
4. Motels. The average cost for the motels was $80 per night. We had only planned on 2 nights in a motel but since we tagged out early we stayed 2 more night because we could not get our return flight changed.
5. Satellite phone rental. This is a must if you are getting dropped off by a bush plane and I would recommend if for anyone hunting in Alaska because cell service is almost none. We used Fairbanks Sat Phone Rental. I believe his name is Justin. Very nice, will meet you at your motel to drop off and pick up phone. For 8 days and around 40 minutes cost us $150
6. Getting meat home. The cheapest way we found if you wanted to get the entire moose home was Alaska Express Trucking. His name is Charlie and he drives a refer truck across Alaska at the end of the season. He will haul back the entire moose. Rack unsplit, cape, and all the meat for $750. His truck is at zero degrees, so it is rock hard when you get it.
7. Storing meat. We checked around for a place to store the meat so that the truck could come by and pick it up. If you plan on using the truck I would suggest calling him and seeing where to store your meat near your hunting location. Our storage cost us $150 each
8. Processing. We decided to have our meat processed once we got back. If I could do it over I would of probably tried to have it done in Alaska so that the meat didn’t have to be frozen twice. I think the quality is better if you can cool it process it then freeze it. In our case it was cooled, frozen. Then the processer thaws it, processes it, then freezes it again. I havnt got it back yet, but estimating around $250.
9. Taxidermy. I got pretty luck here. I live in the Midwest so the taxidermist I use has never done a moose before. He is the very best around on whitetail, or pretty much anything he mounts for that matter. He was really wanting to mount a moose so he cut me a good deal. $1200. If you plan on having one mounted I would highly recommend learning how to cape out the face. Bring a havalon for sure and watch some videos. If you don’t cape out the face the antlers, skull, and cape will all be one. Which my guess would be over 200lbs. They pilot might not even transport it like that.
10. Gear. Some of our other expenses were gear, but I really don’t feel I should figure that into the cost of the hunt. I had a lot of it already from multiple backcountry elk hunts. I will talk about some of the gear in a later part.
11. Air taxi. The air taxi was $800 per trip. That means $800 to fly ya in. $800 to pick ya up, and $800 for each moose. It was a Cessna 185 so we had a total payload of 700lbs. So we could split the cost of the fly in and fly outs since we could fly both of us at same time. On other hunts were you have to use a piper cub that is not possible, you can only fly 1 person at a time and 50lb max of gear.
GETTING INTO SHAPE
At the time we booked I was the heaviest I have ever been in my life. Im 6’1” and weighed 210lbs. Since our total payload was 700lb, it gave me a reason to lose some weight, let alone just getting into shape for possibly the hunt of a lifetime. The single biggest thing for me was I was drinking around 5-6 Mt Dews a day. Yeah I know. I quit drinking soda completely and started running a 5k 2-3 times a week. The scale was literally going down every single day. I contribute that mostly to giving up soda, although im sure the running obviously helped. When I quit drinking soda my cravings for junk food pretty much disappeared with it. When we left I weighed 170lbs. So I lost 40lbs in less than 4 months then maintained that weight. We were hunting around 2500 ft so for the first time ever my legs would get tired before I ran out of breath, unlike 10500 elk hunting Colorado.
Educating ourselves
Neither of us had ever hunted moose before. We had stumbled upon a few while elk hunting in Colorado but that’s as far as it went. I read a couple books on diy moose hunting in Alaska. It was fairly helpful. I also bought a 4 dvd set that is i believe Gouthros Moose Madness. It has some very valuable info in it. It is very dry and hard to stay focused at some points but it did help. Most of it is just general hunting common sense but it does a pretty good job showing how to call moose. Which is VERY important. Especially in the area we were hunting. It was very flat and no vantage point to glass at all. My partner made several calls to biologist and game wardens. They were a lot more helpful then most I have talked to in the western states. Im sure its because they don’t get near the volume of calls in Alaska as per say Colorado. We studied google earth a ton, ordered several topo maps, and made phone calls to people who had hunted this area in the past. (we requested names and numbers from the transporter) I would say that talking to the biologists and learning to call where the two most important factors that led to our success other than the obvious number one factor which is hunting hard as hell!! Good gear and being in shape is a big factor. We were lucky that both of our moose were close to the lake so the float place could get to it. The fitness part would have been a lot more important had we had to pack two moose very far.
The Hunt
As for the hunt, I think I covered pretty much everything in the original post. If I find later I left out some important details I will post them later.
PICKING AREA (AIR TAXI)
One of the questions I got asked the most is, how did we pick our area? Well we didn’t. We decided first that we wanted to do a unguided, public land, diy hunt. So we where basically looking for an air taxi to drop us off. I believe on the Alaska Wildlife website you can find a list of transporters or air taxis. We picked ours based on price and reviews. Did a lot of reading reviews on different forums and finally made our choice. Each transporter we talked to booked a little different. Some were booked up for a few years and some only booked one year in advance on a first come first serve basis. The one we decided on only booked one year in advance but for the first two weeks they booked to repeat customers only. If there was any spots left, which I was told was rare, then they opened it to new customers on a first come first serve basis. They also had designated spots that they dropped hunters off in, so that there was not any other hunters in the area we where hunting in. I guess there is also an agreement among all the air taxis on who will service which area, for the same reason of not dropping hunters in on one another. That does not mean a private individual will not fly in there. When we called to try to book there was one spot left. At first we were excited but that faded when we found out why it was available. There had not been a single moose killed in this area in the last 8 years. We decided to go for it and if nothing else it would be a cool adventure, and we would be repeat customers the next year and get a better hunting location. We would be dropped off on a very large lake with smaller lakes around it.
PLANNING AND COST
1. Tags and license. The cost for an OTC moose tag in Alaska for a non resident is $400, that cost is doubling for 2017. Then we had to buy a hunting and fishing license. I added a wolf tag and I believe it was a total of around $100. So total for tags and license was $500
2. Airfare. We signed up for Alaska Airlines credit card. They give you a 25,000 mile sign up bonus, plus your first checked bag is free. We spent a little money on the card and by the time we booked the flight to and from Fairbanks from Kansas City Mo, it was free. There is like a $30 fee that you cant pay for in miles. I also had an extra bag so $25 each way. So $80. Parking was $70.
So the total at the airport was close to $150. I used a SKB golf club case, put my gun in a soft case and put it in the golf club case. I then was able to pack other items in the case around it. I kept it right at 50lbs. Anything over that gets charged extra. I then put my remaining items in my Kuiu 7200 with plenty of room to spare. At the last minute I decided to bring a carry on with some of my very important items that I thought would be hard to replace in Alaska if they got lost. So I put my optics, rain gear, gps…… whatever is most important to you.
3. Transportation. We used priceline for vehicle rental and motels. We were able book a F150 4x4 from Alamo at the airport for 9 days for $435. We used it to drive from Fairbanks to the air taxi airport.
4. Motels. The average cost for the motels was $80 per night. We had only planned on 2 nights in a motel but since we tagged out early we stayed 2 more night because we could not get our return flight changed.
5. Satellite phone rental. This is a must if you are getting dropped off by a bush plane and I would recommend if for anyone hunting in Alaska because cell service is almost none. We used Fairbanks Sat Phone Rental. I believe his name is Justin. Very nice, will meet you at your motel to drop off and pick up phone. For 8 days and around 40 minutes cost us $150
6. Getting meat home. The cheapest way we found if you wanted to get the entire moose home was Alaska Express Trucking. His name is Charlie and he drives a refer truck across Alaska at the end of the season. He will haul back the entire moose. Rack unsplit, cape, and all the meat for $750. His truck is at zero degrees, so it is rock hard when you get it.
7. Storing meat. We checked around for a place to store the meat so that the truck could come by and pick it up. If you plan on using the truck I would suggest calling him and seeing where to store your meat near your hunting location. Our storage cost us $150 each
8. Processing. We decided to have our meat processed once we got back. If I could do it over I would of probably tried to have it done in Alaska so that the meat didn’t have to be frozen twice. I think the quality is better if you can cool it process it then freeze it. In our case it was cooled, frozen. Then the processer thaws it, processes it, then freezes it again. I havnt got it back yet, but estimating around $250.
9. Taxidermy. I got pretty luck here. I live in the Midwest so the taxidermist I use has never done a moose before. He is the very best around on whitetail, or pretty much anything he mounts for that matter. He was really wanting to mount a moose so he cut me a good deal. $1200. If you plan on having one mounted I would highly recommend learning how to cape out the face. Bring a havalon for sure and watch some videos. If you don’t cape out the face the antlers, skull, and cape will all be one. Which my guess would be over 200lbs. They pilot might not even transport it like that.
10. Gear. Some of our other expenses were gear, but I really don’t feel I should figure that into the cost of the hunt. I had a lot of it already from multiple backcountry elk hunts. I will talk about some of the gear in a later part.
11. Air taxi. The air taxi was $800 per trip. That means $800 to fly ya in. $800 to pick ya up, and $800 for each moose. It was a Cessna 185 so we had a total payload of 700lbs. So we could split the cost of the fly in and fly outs since we could fly both of us at same time. On other hunts were you have to use a piper cub that is not possible, you can only fly 1 person at a time and 50lb max of gear.
GETTING INTO SHAPE
At the time we booked I was the heaviest I have ever been in my life. Im 6’1” and weighed 210lbs. Since our total payload was 700lb, it gave me a reason to lose some weight, let alone just getting into shape for possibly the hunt of a lifetime. The single biggest thing for me was I was drinking around 5-6 Mt Dews a day. Yeah I know. I quit drinking soda completely and started running a 5k 2-3 times a week. The scale was literally going down every single day. I contribute that mostly to giving up soda, although im sure the running obviously helped. When I quit drinking soda my cravings for junk food pretty much disappeared with it. When we left I weighed 170lbs. So I lost 40lbs in less than 4 months then maintained that weight. We were hunting around 2500 ft so for the first time ever my legs would get tired before I ran out of breath, unlike 10500 elk hunting Colorado.
Educating ourselves
Neither of us had ever hunted moose before. We had stumbled upon a few while elk hunting in Colorado but that’s as far as it went. I read a couple books on diy moose hunting in Alaska. It was fairly helpful. I also bought a 4 dvd set that is i believe Gouthros Moose Madness. It has some very valuable info in it. It is very dry and hard to stay focused at some points but it did help. Most of it is just general hunting common sense but it does a pretty good job showing how to call moose. Which is VERY important. Especially in the area we were hunting. It was very flat and no vantage point to glass at all. My partner made several calls to biologist and game wardens. They were a lot more helpful then most I have talked to in the western states. Im sure its because they don’t get near the volume of calls in Alaska as per say Colorado. We studied google earth a ton, ordered several topo maps, and made phone calls to people who had hunted this area in the past. (we requested names and numbers from the transporter) I would say that talking to the biologists and learning to call where the two most important factors that led to our success other than the obvious number one factor which is hunting hard as hell!! Good gear and being in shape is a big factor. We were lucky that both of our moose were close to the lake so the float place could get to it. The fitness part would have been a lot more important had we had to pack two moose very far.
The Hunt
As for the hunt, I think I covered pretty much everything in the original post. If I find later I left out some important details I will post them later.
