Caribou- Beyond the Kill

[fishngamereaper]

During my research I had a hard time finding an all-inclusive comprehensive article that covered an Ak caribou hunt from A-Z. 
Ill do my best here. Some info will be personal preference stuff for obvious reasons, but it should give people a starting point.

Travel:
We used AK Air up and back from SeaTac to Fairbanks. Super easy both ways. Both ways the baggage check personnel where more than helpful with our oversize items. We had 50lb duffles stuffed in large Husky wheeled totes. We also brought up antler wrap material. Our totes weighed about 95lbs going up. Both of us had MR packs cinched down and were allowed as carry ons. My pack is a Selway and it had all my optics, boots, changed of clothes etc in it. Weighed about 60lbs. Hard gun case had both guns that where in soft cases, box of ammo for each gun and my own locks (not TSA locaks)Just under 50lbs.  Being an AK Air card holder I used companion fair, so our round trip tickets where pretty cheap.

From Fairbanks we used Wright Air to get to Bettles and as our return flight. Per person cost wasn’t bad, but they get ya on overweight gear over 40lbs going up. The gear is considered freight coming back so its half price. This helped a bunch coming back since all of our stuff including meat and antler box was 500lbs.  Wright was easy to deal with and efficient.

Our transporter we used Brooks Range Aviation. Mainly based off reviews and location they fly into. They get a little further north/east than the transporters out of Kotz. They were a pleasure to deal with. Judy was always willing to answer questions. The ground crew was also very easy to deal with and very helpful. The pilots were top notch and professional. Weather delays in Bettles caused some tension with other clients but its Alaska and you need to expect delays.  We where two days late getting into the field. We also waited for two days to get picked up. This caused a little stress as we had returning flights booked and a hotel in Fairbanks. But everything worked out. In the future I don’t think I would pre book any returning flights/ hotels. I would just deal with it when I got out of the field.

BRA has an office you can hang out it, some frozen food for cheap to snack on etc. They have a large hanger where they sperate everyone’s gear by group. It doubles as a sleeping area if you get stuck there. They also have a bunkhouse and a couple cabins for reasonable prices. FS has an office there for bear cannisters, and Bettles Lodge serves pretty good meals. It’s a small laid back little town and suited our needs perfectly.

[fishngamereaper]

Gear-
We were not going to be anywhere near our weight restriction for BRA so most of our packing was done to stay under limits for AK Air. And we had no interest
in trying to rent any gear or buy anything on the trip up.


I used an Osprey 130 duffle. It held most of my camp gear. Stuffed in the Huskey tote, with my food stuffed around it, as well as antler packaging stuff. I brought cardboard from a freezer I had bought last year. I cut half way through it so I could accordion style fold it. We also had shipping wrap, tape and foam pipe insulation for the antler tips.

My MR pack had spotter, tripod, binos, range finder, boots, some clothes and other misc stuff that cant be checked like recharging power banks.
Duffle 50lbs- to be at allowed as normal checked bag weight upon our retuning flight.
Food- 18 lbs
Antler wrap- 8lbs
Tote- about 15lbs.
MR carry on- about 60lbs.

Rifles/ Optics;
6.5 PRC and a 30.06. Both performed flawless. We both brought 40 rounds. Could probably get by with 20.  Hard case for Commercial travel and soft cases for the Beaver trip.
Spotter – Vortex Razor HD. Spotter is a must in my opinion. Looking over animals 5-10 miles away to determine if good bulls are in the mix.
Slick tripod- worked flawless
Swaro Binos- I use 10x25 when I have my spotter. worked flawless.

Camp;
Tents- Hyke and Byke Yosemite, (held its own), MSR Hubba hubba (worked well), Luxe Hexipeak Xl ( cook tent, shelter. Worked great until 60mph blew a seam)
Sleep- Marmot 0 bag (worked as expected) TheramRest Neo ( worked fine)
Water- Kayytadan 10L gravity filter bag (worked awesome) Sawyer mini’s as back up.
Cook- Jetboil (worked great) – buy cannisters at BRA in Bettles. You cant fly commercial with them.
Spork- or fork spoon combo. I brought two only used one.
Tarps – cant have enough. I brought two old tent fly’s I use as ground tarps, two sections of washed Tyvek and we had two 10x12 glassing tarps. We used them all at some point.
Trekking poles- they are a must.
Para cord- I had 100’ , probably used 20.
Tote- we brought one of our totes with us into the field and I’m glad we did. Quick dry storage area and  a nice cooking/ table area.
Small garden shovel- digging bathroom holes.
Hygiene- two rolls of TP (barley used a half of one) baby wipes (pack of 72 lasted 6 days) flosser picks, fingernail clippers, pain meds.
Med kit- basics with quick clot, tourniquet, band aides, pain meds, compression bandage, mole skin. Only thing we used was band aides. No matter how careful you will most likely nick yourself cutting up an animal. We both had small little knife cuts on fingers.   
Re charging cells- I brought two Ankers, a 10000mha and a 20000mha quick charge. The 10000 charged my phone every night for 5 days and topped off my In reach twice. It still had 30 percent charge left.

[fishngamereaper]

Clothes;
I ran my Meindl boots- zero issues. Buddy ran Kenetrek- zero issues. I personally would not use boots up there that don’t have ankle support. A quality heavy oiled leather boot will do the job.
Socks- darn tough, a pair for every two days max and one pair for sleeping.
Gators- I ran Kuiu storm-zero issues worked awesome. My buddy ran OR, no issues.
Pants- Base, Peloton 118 ¾ zip off worked great. Mid layer I used Prana Zion and Kuiu Talus Hybrid. Both worked excellent. Outer layer I used Kuiu Northridge rain gear. Worked great. Only issues was some hip flexor seeping on a brutal hike head on into driving rain for an hour. My buddy had Kuiu Yukon pants and they seeped at the same spot.
Upper body- Poly or wool t shirt, Peloton 118 hoody, and I ran my Kuiu guide jacket or Puffy over that. In the wet I added my Kuiu Northridge rain jacket and had zero issues with that system. We spent most of our time in the rain gear, just made sense because of how damp the ground was even on dry days.
Head wear- baseball style hats, and two beanie’s, one waterproof and one for sleeping.
Head net- a must if its warm. Bugs.
Gloves- I brought 3 pair. Kuiu Yukon(great for cold glassing) , pair of fleece for hiking, and insulated rubber work gloves for camp and also used for breaking down the caribou/ packing/ fishing etc. ( the dirty work)
Over waders- we both brought Hodgman packable over waders but never needed them. Float plane got right on edge of Tundra. And we didn’t have any major water ways we wanted to cross. Even if I had good  waders or chest waders I don’t think I would chance river crossings in that country. You get wet your screwed.
Extras- Crocs where awesome as camp shoes.
             Aqua socks in case of boot failure. They worked great for wearing in the tent over my socks and      as a wx layer for wearing my crocs outside just milling around camp.

Travel clothes are a must- My travel clothes were left in Bettles in one of our totes which made it easy.  They have a dry connex box for storing peoples pre shipped gear or gear of people in the field.

[fishngamereaper]

Kill Kit-
Game Bags= Caribou Wapiti, worked awesome. Strong, durable, and quick to dry.
Knives- My Folding CRKT pocket knife got a ton of use. I used an Outdoor edge replaceable blade knife for processing, my buddy used a havalon. Considering location and lack of medical options we agreed the ease of replacing the Outdoor edge blade was a bonus. My buddy would not bring his Havalon again. His hands where cold and replacing the blade sketched us out. I would bring 5 replacement blades for whatever you bring.
Saw- I brought a Stanley fine tooth finish saw from HD. It worked wonders on bone, skull and around camp. And it was cheap enough I left it behind in Bettles to cut weight and space.
Leatherman- used it for unhooking fish mostly.
Knife Sharpener- never used it.
Para cord- brought 100’, only used a little for extra tent ties but good to have
Flag tape- about 20’ for antler tips to keep birds off.
Electrical tape- never used, nice to have
Citric acid- worked great for meat care.

[fishngamereaper]

FOOD-
I brought about 16lbs. My buddy had 20. We both had a ton left over.

Im not a dehydrated fancy meal lover so I did simple yet filling stuff. Most everything I took out of original packaging and re vacuum sealed for compression and better storage. I also was able to just dump hot water into my Vac seal bags and ate out of the bag to save from getting my jetboil smelly and dirty.
I made my own breakfast meals, granola, Kodiak oatmeal, dried blueberris, mini choco chips and PB fit powder all mixed together. Only ate a couple, I’m not a huge breakfast guy. I mostly ate a power bar with coffee in the am.
For snacks I brought two power bars per day, one luna -one honey stinger, one pack of beef jerky, target flavored almond butter, honey stinger waffles. I only ate about half of these. I thought I would boredom eat but I didn’t.
For lunch I had a ten pack of flour tortillas, squeezable PB and Squeezable Jelly. I would definitely use this combo again. Was the go-to when I wanted a quick snack.
Dinners I had instant mashed potatoes, cup a noodle, top ramen, mac n cheese and small snack packages of chicken. I also brought Au jus mix. The top ramen mixed with mashed potatoes was money. Mac n cheese didn’t cook up great, wouldn’t do it again. The chicken got added to a couple meals and was a good protein kick. The Au jus was a hit. Just making straight broth with it was super satisfying as well.
My buddy had mountain house stuff and ate well, but he got them at a screaming deal. He wouldn’t bring but a couple next time because of space. He also brough a roll of summer sausage which hit the spot. He had vac sealed some fancy licorice which also oddly hit the spot as a nice treat.

I brought instant coffee and coco which I had every day. I brought Mnt Ops hydrate and recover singles and used them every day. I had other water flavoring things, Mio, Emergency C, and just didn’t use them.
Im a vitamin freak so I brought a  ton and used them all, C, D, Zinz, Elderberry, Immune support, etc.

[fishngamereaper]

Additional logistics-
We didn’t have to but to keep the BRA pilot sane we cut our skull plates in half to fit in the Beaver better. I offered and he didn’t argue. They need to be split to make AK air travel easier anyway. I Z cut them to make re assembly easier. I also took 3 width measurements before cutting.

We picked up another hunter and gear on the out way out. Be prepared to put in some work loading gear, managing the plane, etc…this isn’t a sit back and watch kind of trip.

Back in Bettles at the hanger they had some make shift tables set up for use to cut meat. They have a meat hanging shack but we found the outside temps just as cool so we set our meat out on the tables overnight. We slept on the floor that night also because everything else was full.
First thing in the am we dealt with the meat.  We cut everything off the bone (sine you cant take meat off the bone in the field) and did a quick trim of fat and anything poor quality. You can donate meat and the night before we asked about it. They said everyone pretty much has the meat they need for the year. Funny thing is the pilot commented on the dryness of our game bags and quality appearance of our meat. Once word got out people all the sudden were interested in wanting our meat. Probably a good thing we gave some away as our totes where over 90lbs on the return flight. We also had our capes wrapped up in the totes with the meat. Luckily, and its not a guarantee, we found some freezer space and got our hides frozen before leaving Bettles.
We spent about 2 hours wrapping and boxing antlers. We wanted to have them ready for the whole trip without having to re wrap or deal with them at a later time.  The antlers where nested in each other and zip tied together. Our antler box was carboard, wrapped in packaging wrap, then secured with shipping tape and duct tape for durability. We used pipe insulation to protect the antler tips. Our box held up great the whole trip. It looked a little beat up when we got home but I found TSA had sliced it open right down the middle for inspection and did a crap job re taping it…ugh.

We had an overnight in Fairbanks on the way back. The hotel I booked has Suites. Which was perfect as they had full kitchens with full size refrigerator/freezers. We turned the temp down and fit our hides in the freezer and meat in the fridge. The next day the hides where good and frozen and the meat was nearly frozen. Hotel also had an airport shuttle that surprisingly fit all of gear and made getting to the airport a breeze.

On the return flight our duffels held their own as checked bags, and the totes got stuffed with meat and capes. Both our totes where mid 90lb range but AK air didn’t bat an eye. Our MR packs still passed as carry on’s.
AK air was awesome through the whole process. TSA kind of ticked me off. Flying out of Sea tac with the guns was no problem, open the case, verify guns empty, put my locks on and done. Flying out of Fairbanks I offered to open the case and the gal said they would open it if necessary. I told her they were my locks and per TSA rules I had the only key. She said they would figure it out and they probably had a key to fit….WTH…wrong answer. I offered again to open the case and she said no..I let it go as I didn’t want to get blacklisted….ugh….Also,  Besides cutting the antler box as mentioned earlier they also opened our meat totes as I found the TSA inspection form inside when I got home. We had the capes and meat all double bagged and tied up tight in garbage bags to insulate and prevent leaking. TSA unwrapped the garbage bags for inspection and didn’t re wrap or re tie them. Losing a layer of insulation didn’t help things stay as cold as possible. After 8 hours of travel from Hotel to home the meat was still cool to the touch and the hides where cold but had started to thaw. All in all it worked out but I was a little ticked.

I think that’s about it.

One thing I would say to be prepared for. You can’t budget this trip to the dollar. Prepare for cost expenditures you didn’t see coming.  My buddy and I agreed you need to plan on spending an extra $500- $700 minimum in cost overruns during the trip.

As some already have feel free to reach out for more details. Im sure I forgot something.

[fishngamereaper]

And who can forget...the most important part...

[gee_unit360]

Great info and story… very cool.

[cooltimber]

Great   trip and thanks for the pictures

[full choke]

Thanks for sharing the info and telling your story! 

[ShaneTyTrey]

Awesome sharing all that stuff!