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Author Topic: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt  (Read 43938 times)

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #15 on: August 27, 2016, 07:56:53 AM »
In Alaska, you are not allowed to hunt big game the same day that you fly in, so we started glassing.  At first, this proved frustrating because we were seeing caribou, including what we thought were “big bulls” everywhere. 
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #16 on: August 27, 2016, 07:58:26 AM »
This bull passed less than 300 yards from camp, and PathfinderJR was laying behind his scope wishing he could shoot.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #17 on: August 27, 2016, 07:59:43 AM »
It’s actually a good thing he couldn’t, because the positive affect of not being able to shoot that night was that we were forced to look over a lot of bulls.  That’s when we first started noticing that not all bulls are created equal.  I have been watching a lot of Youtube footage, trying to get comfortable with how to judge bulls and deciding what caliber of bull I would be happy with.  But, you truly can’t get a good handle on it until you are looking at them in the flesh.  Right after dinner, a bachelor herd of bulls walked within 200 yards of our camp and really gave us a good look at how to compare bulls.  One of the pilots that dropped us off told me that the first thing he looks for in a bull is beam length.  He said a lot of hunters shoot the first bull they see with good tops and are disappointed.  Watching those bulls at 200 yards, I could see what he meant.  One young bull had huge backscratchers and great tops, but standing next to an older bull you could tell that he was clearly not mature.  It was a great education.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #18 on: August 27, 2016, 08:00:54 AM »
Just before dark, we spotted one truly exceptional bull.  He was over two miles away, and was with another mature bull.  He was clearly bigger than any other we had seen and had everything, including very long, thick beams.  Unlike any other bull, he had light, tan-colored velvet.  Another thing we had learned (using the spotting scope and the rangefinder) is that caribou cover an incredible amount of territory without even seeming to try.  Leif, the owner of 40 mile had told us that “you cannot walk as fast as a feeding caribou”, and I think that is a good rule of thumb.  We ranged a few of them that were walking and feeding, and they came from 620 to under 300 yards in just the time it took me to range them, set up my spotting scope and find them in it and range them again.  At that speed, we figured that bull would be 3 drainages away by the time we woke up the next morning.
To our shock and surprise, when we woke up at 5 am (full daylight), I put the spotter on the finger he had been on the night before, and there he was, bedded with the other bull in the open.  The finger they occupied was fairly covered with spruce trees and tall brush (much less open than the rest of our surrounding territory).  We quickly threw some oatmeal down our gullets and grabbed our gear to make a long, looping stalk. 
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #19 on: August 27, 2016, 08:01:53 AM »
It would be a 2 ½ mile stalk from our camp, around the basin we were in, then across 5 finger spurs to get to the spur the bull was on (the 6th spur).  The last glimpse we got of him before we dropped out of sight showed him up on his feet and beginning to feed down his spur into the wooded draw below him.  He was still easy to spot with binos, even at that range, because of his tan colored rack.  On the way towards him, we passed up several good bulls, including a bachelor herd bedded down in a draw with one bull that had great beams and good tops but weak bez points and a weak shovel. 
Finally we crept up on the draw we had seen the bull feed into.  Nothing.  We stopped and started glassing and finally spotted a bull bedded down next to 3 large fir trees, but couldn’t tell if it was him, so we crawled closer.  A clearer look proved that this was the other mature bull we had spotted with the big bull from camp.  So we waited.  And waited.  And glassed.  And waited.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #20 on: August 27, 2016, 08:02:56 AM »
After about 45 minutes, PathfinderJR jumped up onto his knees and said “I just saw a flash of tan in the bottom of the draw!”  He pointed, and I saw it too.  It was the bull, running for the mouth of the draw that led to the main canyon.  I know he couldn’t have smelled us because we had the wind, so I don’t know if he saw us, or if something else just happened to spook him.  Not able to get a shot through the timber he was running through, we raced down the spur to try to get ahead of him before he squirted out into the canyon.  Nothing doing.  By the time we got there, he was long gone.
Disappointed, we made our way back to camp.  It was afternoon now, and activity had slowed down.  We saw a few cows and smaller bulls on the hike back, but that was it.  Made it back to the tent just in time to get out of a storm.
After the rain slowed down, we cooked up some mountain house and recharged for the evening.  Shooting light where we were lasts until about 11pm, so there was still a lot of hunt left in the day.  We climbed the ridge behind our camp and settled down to glass.
Around 4pm we spotted a good bull in the large bowl close to where we had filtered our water the day before.  He fed out into the bowl, then seemed to settle down and stop moving.  At a mile-plus he looked good, so we climbed down off the ridge to get a better look.  After setting up again and looking him over, PathfinderJR decided this was the bull he wanted to take.  He was in a very stalkable position, and didn’t appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere, so we began our stalk.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #21 on: August 27, 2016, 08:04:22 AM »
We dropped off the back side of the ridge and made our way around the rim of the bowl in a long, looping arc, coming out next to a pointy gravel knob that we had picked out from the ridge that we thought we could get a shot from.  When we poked over the knob, the bull had moved lower in the bowl and was out of sight, so we backed off and made another looping arc, hoping to come out on top of him (though this was a blind guess).  We eased over a grassy knob and spotted him feeding less than 200 yards below us.  PathfinderJR took another look and decided to take him.  Flipping out the bipod legs, he pushed the rifle over the top of the knob and took aim.
All this time I had his iphone out and was filming.  I filmed him, I filmed the bull feeding, I filmed him again.  He took aim, and fired.
An instant later, I caught movement to my left.  A fox ran out of the brush right in front of me.  As I swung the iphone over at it, a wolverine ran out right behind the fox!
I don’t know what the deal was with them.  The fox didn’t appear to be alarmed or being chased.  The wolverine wasn’t acting particularly aggressive.  They just trotted out in front of us at less than 20 yards and stood there for a second.
I said something to the affect of “Oh my God!  There’s a wolverine!” and PathfinderJR swung the rifle around and pointed it at them.  “Can I shoot?” he asked. 
Wolverine season doesn’t open until September 1st and we didn’t have a tag for one at any rate, so I told him no.  The caribou wasn’t acting hit (actually, the first hit was a little far back in the ribs), so I said he better pay attention to his bull.  He anchored him with two more shots behind the shoulder and the bull finally dropped.  It was right at that point that I looked at the screen on the iphone.  The timer read 00:00…
….I had not filmed a single ^%%$#ing thing the entire time.  I had missed the stalk, the shot, the fox, the wolverine, and the kill shot.  I feel like a *censored*, but PathfinderJR was so happy with his bull that he didn’t get upset at all.  I fired myself as camera operator though.  PathfinderJR doesn’t get to drive rental cars.  I don’t get to film hunts.  Period.
For those who haven’t hunted them (I never had), a caribou is about a 400 lb animal.  Between the size of a big mule deer and an elk.  Once we had taken pictures, we started cutting up the bull to haul the 1 1/2 miles back to camp.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #22 on: August 27, 2016, 08:06:08 AM »
After splitting the skin and getting off a front quarter, I sent PathfinderJR back to camp to drop the first load and any gear we didn’t need while I stayed to continue cutting up the bull.  JR is a track and cross country distance runner, so I figured he would make good time and be back quickly to get another load before I was done quartering.
The bull was down by 5pm.  By 8 pm, PathfinderJR still wasn’t back yet.  I knew something must have gone wrong.  I put the backstraps and a hindquarter in my pack and started back towards camp.  The 1 ½ mile trek back to camp was not a stroll.  The bowl we killed his bull in was marshy and full of tussocks, some of them waist high.  It was like picking through a maze, trying to keep traveling in generally the right direction, sometimes the brush was taller than your head.  And all the while walking on thick, wet sponge.  50 minutes later I made it to the airstrip and dropped off my load.  I heard a voice yell at me from down in a draw.
PathfinderJR had gotten turned around and walked into a completely different drainage.  When he hit a river (realizing that he had not been near a river the whole time we had been there) he knew he was lost.  So he picked out the highest point he could see and climbed it and from there spotted a jagged, sawtooth mountain that we could see from camp.  That gave him sufficient bearing to get him back to the bowl.  He had logged nearly 3 hours and an additional 6 miles on his little detour, and I have never seen him so relieved as when he walked up to the airstrip.  It took us until midnight to finish hauling the rest of his bull back to camp.  We collapsed into bed and slept in until 8am the next morning.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #23 on: August 27, 2016, 08:08:27 AM »
The next day we took care of his bull, caping it out, fleshing out the skin (except the nose, good Lord I have never seen anything so fleshy.  I honestly didn’t know what to do with it).  2 things I learned about caribou that I had not expected; although their bodies are only a little bigger than a big mule deer, their front shoulders are enormous.  We got almost as many steaks off the front quarters as we did the rears.  The other thing was how big their heads are.  It was like caping out a horse.  And hauling the head and antlers and cape out took a trip in itself. 
The weather was worse that day, so we alternated between working on the head, glassing from the tent, and trying to stay dry.  In early afternoon the weather broke and we saw a Supercub fly over to check on some sheep hunters.  He circled and landed (in the stiff crosswind he actually had to try three times before he was able to land) and picked up the meat (we were still working on the head, so he left that) to take back to the cooler at the airfield in Tok. 
After the work was done, we made dinner and climbed the ridge again behind camp to do some glassing.  We saw some scattered bulls, but nothing I wanted to hang a tag on yet.
The next day was rainy again.  We replenished our water, hiked a little (I did see a good bull in the morning, but he was moving too fast and I couldn’t get in front of him) and glassed when the fog lifted.  After dinner we set up on the ridge again and started glassing as animals started moving again around 5pm.  Soon, we spotted a good bull down in the bottom of a canyon.  He was feeding, and soon began working his way up a draw.  He came to a point where if he went left, he would be in an un-stalkable position, but if he went right, would be in a perfect spot.  He seemed to hang up here for about an hour.  Meandering back and forth feeding and not committing.  Finally, a small herd of cows with a small bull fed out above him, moving to the right.  He joined up with them and we realized they were headed for a saddle where I would be able to get a shot.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #24 on: August 27, 2016, 08:08:51 AM »
My refresh button is getting worn out.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #25 on: August 27, 2016, 08:10:20 AM »
The stalk was more of a race than anything.  We were able to stay just off the crest of the ridge, on nice, hard gravel (trail most of the time) for the 1200 yards that took us to the top of a pointy hill overlooking the saddle.  Our timing luckily was perfect.  I peeked over the hill and the bull was just crossing the saddle, 220 yards away, standing in the trail that we were on.  I set up prone and broke both of his shoulders with one shot.  He died in his tracks.  It was almost exactly 9pm.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #26 on: August 27, 2016, 08:11:36 AM »
The pack back to camp was uneventful, except that by the time we got him quartered up it was completely dark.  It felt a little sketchy, making trips back and forth in bear country with all that bloody meat strapped to you in the pitch black.  I couldn’t decide if the headlamp was a good or a bad thing; would the light discourage a grizzly, or would it look a little to him like the sign for an all-night diner…?  Luckily, we didn’t have to find out.  By 3am we had the bull packed back and set up on the airstrip.  We collapsed into the tent and slept in again until 8am. 
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #27 on: August 27, 2016, 08:13:36 AM »
The next morning we called 40 Mile Air to let them know we were tagged out, but found out that the weather had them grounded in Tok.  So we spent the day caping out my bull, living in and out of the tent between rainstorms, shed hunting and hoping to see a wolf.  The 40 Mile Area is a “predator management” area in Alaska, meaning that you don’t have to have a tag for a wolf.  You can shoot up to 10 of them and report them when you get back and seal the hide.  That evening, having had about our full of dehydrated meals, we cut up a couple of steaks, made a twig fire and had a proper feast.  We cracked open a Mountainhouse Beef Stew, dropped the raw steaks into the powder and shook them up, coating the meat.  Then we skewered them and roasted them over the fire.  I think the picture speaks for itself. 
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #28 on: August 27, 2016, 08:15:47 AM »
The next morning we called again and were told that we could get out sometime between 9 am and noon if the weather broke.  We packed up camp and watched the storms roll by us (thankfully not over us though),  glassed caribou on the surrounding ridges.  PathfinderJR went shed hunting again.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Offline Pathfinder101

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Re: Pathfinder and PathfinderJRs Alaska Caribou Hunt
« Reply #29 on: August 27, 2016, 08:20:54 AM »
While we were glassing, I spotted what I thought was yet another caribou on a hilltop about ¾ of a mile distant.  When I put the glass on it though I saw that it was a jet-black wolf.  He came down the ridge in our direction and squared off with a caribou cow and calf for a moment, then continued past them in roughly our direction. 
PathfinderJR uncased his 7mm and got prone and for a while there it looked like we were going to get lucky.  Unfortunately, when the wolf stopped (looking in our direction-probably at us exposed on the airstrip), I couldn’t get a reading with my rangefinder.  I guessed that he was around 550 yards, but since I couldn’t get a reading, I was hoping he would come closer and I could get a correct range for the shot, so I had JR hold off.  There was also a very stiff (over 15 mph) crosswind quartering from our rear that would have complicated the shot quite a bit, even if I would have had an exact range.  The wolf dropped off the backside of the ridge, and we never saw him again.  JR jumped up and took off after him, hoping to get another glimpse and a shot, but never got another look.  When he got back, he guessed that the ridge that the wolf had been standing on was about 650 yards, so my guess would probably have been off by 100, and if I had let him shoot, we would have been way low.  Still, it was pretty cool to see.  And of course, it never occurred to me to try to get a picture until after he was gone.  Again, I resign in disgrace as a cameraman.
At around 11:30 am 3 yellow Supercubs landed on our ridge and we started loading meat and antlers.  On the hour-plus flight back to Tok we did spot a large bull moose from the air.  Didn’t occur to me to get a picture of that either, even though I had a camera sitting in my lap the whole time…
« Last Edit: August 27, 2016, 08:50:43 AM by Pathfinder101 »
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

 


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