Unit 23 reports

[Jcoop2000]

Holy cow. That sucks.

Is it just Arctic Air that is completely backed up or are the others unable to get people in and out as well?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Holy cow. That sucks.

Is it just Arctic Air that is completely backed up or are the others unable to get people in and out as well?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Golden Eagle reportedly got 12-14 guys into the field yesterday. Ram supposedly was caught up too. We have know idea about anything, limited details provided.

 

[WildGooseChase]

Golden Eagle reportedly got 12-14 guys into the field yesterday. Ram supposedly was caught up too. We have know idea about anything, limited details provided.

Heard Golden Eagle is on schedule.

 

[mitschkeb]

It looks like arctic air took down there social media pages. Must not want bad publicity.

Sent from my Nokia 8 V 5G UW using Tapatalk

 

[AKBorn]

16+ Arctic Air customer who had not been placed in the field yet from Aug 26-28 were told our hunts were over today and to arrange travel home. We all just spent 6-8 days in the hotel waiting. No refunds offered as of now.

That really SUCKS. Sorry to hear that this happened to you and your group, and to the other AA customers.

Future AK caribou hunters - this is a very real risk that you run if you opt to book with an outfit that runs a single plane flown by a single pilot. The weather is going to win sometimes in AK.

Best of luck to all of these groups in hopefully recouping their deposit...

 

[william schmaltz]

Ya, that seriously sucks, sorry to hear about cancelled trips!

I would go a step further and be careful booking with hunt factories that just seem to book as many hunters as possible. Ask the questions about how many hunters they take and how many rigs they're running. There are outfitters in AK with a handful planes that can hardly afford to have two consecutive weather days. Sometimes that's baked into the trip, but if you're the unlucky bastard that books on a year when there's 5 consecutive weather days, you run the risk of a cancelled trip or even worse; flying with someone who has put safety aside for the sake of catching up. You can track some of these outfits pretty easily by looking at how many wrecks they've had over the last several years.

 

[VaHntr]

Ya, that seriously sucks, sorry to hear about cancelled trips!

I would go a step further and be careful booking with hunt factories that just seem to book as many hunters as possible. Ask the questions about how many hunters they take and how many rigs they're running. There are outfitters in AK with a handful planes that can hardly afford to have two consecutive weather days. Sometimes that's baked into the trip, but if you're the unlucky bastard that books on a year when there's 5 consecutive weather days, you run the risk of a cancelled trip or even worse; flying with someone who has put safety aside for the sake of catching up. You can track some of these outfits pretty easily by looking at how many wrecks they've had over the last several years.

Agreed. I posted earlier in the thread the success I had in Unit 23. AA was my transporter, but they kept us in the field 5 extra days and sure didn’t do much to maximize our odds. Hunt factory is a good description for them.

After being through the process with AA, they’re a volume operation focused on flying hunters into and out of the same tents / same spots. We replaced a group that went 1 for 4. We went 2 for 3. Mine was the nicest bull. They replaced us with 5 other hunters in the same spot. They did not scout the herd at all. Just drop hunters into prepositions tents where they’ll “likely” come thru as weather pushes them. On our flight into the field, the pilot even commented how weird it was that we hadn’t seen any caribou on the flight up.

They were also running a second camp with another group of hunters on the opposite side of the lake we were camped on. When I travel to Alaska, I don’t want to be watching other guys hunt / camp / cook while I glass. Ymmv.

Just thought I’d elaborate on my experience for others looking for a transporter in the future.

 

[Slugz]

I really hope my gut feeling is wrong but....
The consulting company that Artic Air uses is due to go into the field the 4th. I hope they didnt clear out/ cancel all just so they can get them in.
Time will tell but it appears I made a mistake.

 

[Jackal7]

The comments in this thread are accurate for my group’s experience with AA in 2019. We were promised a fresh unused campsite. In an area scouted for caribou. Neither was true. We did ok but worked our asses off by hunting hard. But going into a preset camp where the previous groups had shit everywhere and left caribou heads and carcasses in the lake by camp -where we were expecting to get drinking water-was infuriating. The site was to say the least the worst camp site ever. But convenient for the pilots. That seemed to be the only consideration for this outfit.

Future hunters beware of AA. I withheld commenting for two years. But the previous posts justify me stating my opinion.

 

[AKBorn]

The comments in this thread are accurate for my group’s experience with AA in 2019. We were promised a fresh unused campsite. In an area scouted for caribou. Neither was true. We did ok but worked our asses off by hunting hard. But going into a preset camp where the previous groups had shit everywhere and left caribou heads and carcasses in the lake by camp -where we were expecting to get drinking water-was infuriating. The site was to say the least the worst camp site ever. But convenient for the pilots. That seemed to be the only consideration for this outfit.

Future hunters beware of AA. I withheld commenting for two years. But the previous posts justify me stating my opinion.

In my opinion - you'd have been justified to describe the parts of your hunt that were not as you agreed upon, two years ago. If someone commits to drop you in an unused campsite, and then doesn't do it, that's worth mentioning on here and isn't being overly critical of the transporter.

If a transporter doesn't want to be called out on things like this, they shouldn't commit to things they can't deliver. Simple as that.

Thanks for chiming in with this info, will help future hunters think hard and ask the right questions before booking their hunts.

 

[Ono]

Serious bummer on the transporter issues. That sucks.

 

[WildGooseChase]

We are here now and anxiously waiting for some clear weather to go out. Word is the rain associated with this weather has flooded the rivers. Many of the suitable landing sites are currently under water, drop locations limited, and groups are close....FYI

 

[Uintah]

@WildGooseChase who are you flying with? Which transporter?

 

[WildGooseChase]

@WildGooseChase who are you flying with? Which transporter?

GE

 

[alaska_bou]

You are entitled to a refund if your transporter cannot fly you out. It isn't your fault if Arctic Air is a one plane operation and they booked too many clients that created a log jam when the weather turned bad. Don't let them tell you that you must rely on your travel insurance. That is their scape goat to keep your money.

 

[JonS]

We are here now and anxiously waiting for some clear weather to go out. Word is the rain associated with this weather has flooded the rivers. Many of the suitable landing sites are currently under water, drop locations limited, and groups are close....FYI

Any luck getting out today WGC? I'll be there in 13 days, hope it's a great trip for you and all others!

 

[Chuckybmd]

I really hope my gut feeling is wrong but....
The consulting company that Artic Air uses is due to go into the field the 4th. I hope they didnt clear out/ cancel all just so they can get them in.
Time will tell but it appears I made a mistake.

I’ve had my suspicions of that as well. I was the 28th through the fourth and was canceled on Tuesday morning. Seems very suspicious that the broker that sold me my trip was flying out that weekend. Seemed like it was convenient to get us out of the way. Especially seeing that we had a group go out on Monday that had waited for about five or six days.

 

[Rockon72]

Looking for another 23 update out of Kotz.

Heading up next week, booked with GE. It looks like more rain this week and I noticed today there are flood advisories in some areas so I'm not expecting water levels to drop much.

Should I plan to be in waders the entire trip, seems everything will probably be just about saturated?

 

[Airohunter]

We arrived in town the 20th scheduled to fly in the 21st. We had a group of 5 in front of us and another group of two flying with the two of us. We didn't get into the field until Monday and were told our hunt days would not be extended so we essentially felt like we had four days. Our first hunt day was Tuesday and we got after it. Dropped our first bull on Wednesday and our second bull on Thursday. The communication wasn't good at times, it did however become obvious mid week that AA was behind because another camp near us was due out of the field Tuesday and didn't get their flight out until Friday evening. This communication would have been nice to know because I would have been more patient in my harvest. Needless to say we did not get out Saturday or Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it wasn't until Wednesday. Two things that frustrated me most. First, when they flew into our Lake on Friday they could have offered to take our meat and horns, the other hunters lost their meat and suffered damage to their horns due to bears. Ours hadn't been touched yet but later into the week we ended up loosing it all to bears despite our best efforts, they even chewed up my skull pretty good, should make an interesting Euro mount, haha but not real funny. Second, It would have been nice to have better communication in order to re arrange my flight, I basically bought another ticket and spent way more than I should have.
I expected to have obstacles but communication doesn't cost a dime and I thought they didn't communicate well enough. I'm glad we got to go, we took some nice animals but this experience has left me leery to take another trip like this. One plane and one pilot with no plan B is failure waiting for opportunity.

 

[AKBorn]

We arrived in town the 20th scheduled to fly in the 21st. We had a group of 5 in front of us and another group of two flying with the two of us. We didn't get into the field until Monday and were told our hunt days would not be extended so we essentially felt like we had four days. Our first hunt day was Tuesday and we got after it. Dropped our first bull on Wednesday and our second bull on Thursday. The communication wasn't good at times, it did however become obvious mid week that AA was behind because another camp near us was due out of the field Tuesday and didn't get their flight out until Friday evening. This communication would have been nice to know because I would have been more patient in my harvest. Needless to say we did not get out Saturday or Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, it wasn't until Wednesday. Two things that frustrated me most. First, when they flew into our Lake on Friday they could have offered to take our meat and horns, the other hunters lost their meat and suffered damage to their horns due to bears. Ours hadn't been touched yet but later into the week we ended up loosing it all to bears despite our best efforts, they even chewed up my skull pretty good, should make an interesting Euro mount, haha but not real funny. Second, It would have been nice to have better communication in order to re arrange my flight, I basically bought another ticket and spent way more than I should have.
I expected to have obstacles but communication doesn't cost a dime and I thought they didn't communicate well enough. I'm glad we got to go, we took some nice animals but this experience has left me leery to take another trip like this. One plane and one pilot with no plan B is failure waiting for opportunity.

Thanks for sharing your story, and very sorry that you lost your meat and that the communication sucked. I don't blame you for feeling leery of future trips....the only way that we can try to minimize the chances of things like that is by sharing stories when things go south. I know it's not any fun, but it will help people in the future. Hope the rest of your fall hunting is drama free and fruitful.

 

[WildGooseChase]

We were to go out Friday or Saturday. Got out early Sunday morning. Had a great trip, saw lots of animals, and filled tags. We did a ridge drop and never touched our waders. I can come back with more details.