"Little" Pathfinder's Alaska Caribou Hunt

[Pathfinder101]

Some of the long-time members on this site may remember when my older son (PathfinderJR) graduated from high school 9 years ago and I took him caribou hunting in Alaska for his graduation present. I chose caribou, since being a high school teacher, it’s about the only big game animal that you can hunt before school starts in the fall.
https://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,200485.msg2661410/topicseen.html#msg2661410
Well, last June, my youngest son, (Little Pathfinder) graduated from high school and signed with Eastern Oregon University to play baseball and major in education.  I had been planning a trip for him as well and we just returned a few days ago, so I thought I would post our story, particularly for those who may want to plan something similar.  My sister and brother in law decided they would come on the hunt as well, since caribou is on their bucket-list, and neither of them had ever hunted them before.

[Pathfinder101]

I had originally intended to hunt with 40 Mile Air out of Tok, since that is who we used last time and we had a fantastic hunt.  This was a DIY drop camp hunt with our own gear, and we both killed great bulls.  40 Mile Air has a policy that if you are a “returning hunter” that has booked with them before, you can call in on a set date to book your flight, so that is what I did.  Unfortunately, a monkey wrench got thrown in last December, right from the get-go.
Apparently, the numbers in the 40-Mile caribou herd have suffered and due to the 2023 winter counts, the decision was made that in 2024, they were not going to issue any non-resident caribou tags for that herd until the 24-25 winter count was done, and bios could assess the health of the herd.  40 Mile Air explained the situation, and said they would take my number and call back in March once the winter count was complete.  So, we were stuck in limbo until March, waiting for Alaska F&G to release tags. 
In March I finally did get a phone call from 40 Mile Air:  Good news and bad news. 
The good news was that fish and game decided that the numbers were good enough to sell us caribou tags.  The bad news was that we were number 12 on “the list”, and there were no more spots left for the year. 
Feeling pretty bummed out, I started calling around to other outfitters and air taxis.  Of course, being March, everybody was booked solid.  We had just about resigned ourselves to the idea that we were going to have to wait and do this another year, when we got a call back from Trace at Willow Air.  He had an opening, as long as we could go early. That worked great for me, since I was going to have to be back in Walla Walla by the 13th of August to start work.  We booked our hunt for the very beginning of the season; August 1st.
We would fly from Walla Walla to Seattle to Anchorage to Deadhorse, with plans to get dropped in the next day by Cessna on a lake in front of the caribou migration.  The plane had floats, not tundra tires, so we would have to go in on water, somewhere between the north slope of the Brooks Range and the tundra that stretches to Prudhoe Bay.  Trace said they would drop us based on where they were seeing caribou.

[Pathfinder101]

July 30th we loaded up on a red-eye, my sister and her husband flying out of Spokane, and LP and I flying out of Walla Walla.  We met up in Anchorage and boarded the flight for Deadhorse arriving at about 8 am. 

[Pathfinder101]

Trace met us at the airport to talk with us about the hunt, check our license and tags, and get us checked into the “hotel”. 
If you have never been to Deadhorse, you might be under the false impression (since it has a name, and it’s on a map), that it is a “town”.  It’s not.  It’s a work-camp for oil workers.  There are no stores, no homes, no businesses other than companies that cater to what oil companies need to operate.  The “Hotel” is basically a barracks (very similar to what you would find on a military base) that you pay a nightly rate.  There are very few queen or double rooms, most of the 500 or so rooms in the hotel are singles with a single twin bed.  Roughly $200 each per night, with meals included.  The food is good.  Served cafeteria/chow-hall style, the food is good, and it’s plentiful.  Honestly, reminded me a lot of the Army.  Hard not to “over eat”.  Kind of like having Golden Corral for every meal, just not “fancy”.  LP has been trying to put on weight to play college ball, so that part was great for him.  We were originally supposed to stay for one night, then get put into our hunting spot the next day.

[Pathfinder101]

Weather delayed us the next morning, so we did commo checks with Trace, his staff and the pilot (Ron, a great guy and a great pilot).  I have a Garmin In-Reach and we had planned to use that as our required satellite communications device when we were in the field.  Trace seems a little concerned that they hadn’t been seeing many caribou from the air yet.  The weather had been hot (over 70 degrees, which in Alaska somehow felt like 90) and animals seemed to be waiting for cool weather to start moving.  Most of the herd we were told, had not started migrating yet.  Being there that early, we knew that would be a risk when we booked the 1 Aug start date (be aware of this if you go to book this hunt and you have more flexibility than I do). They asked us if we would prefer hunting tundra or mountains, since it looked like we’d be waiting for animals to show up for a few days.  Being elk/mule deer hunters, we opted for mountains.  Trace also said they would move us if necessary.

[Pathfinder101]

That afternoon the ceiling lifted, so they drove us out to the airfield.  We got our flight-brief from Ron and got ready to get put in, two at a time. 

[Pathfinder101]

Unfortunately, we were only going to be able to travel two at a time.  I decided to have them put in my sister and brother in law first, then come back and get us.  Two hours later, we were sitting on the tarmac when the Cessna come back in.
That was when everything started going haywire.
The plane damaged a wheel/tire when it landed.  The pilot is not allowed to fix it (FAA rules), so it was going to take a mechanic.  And parts.  They had to be flown in from Anchorage.  Okay, no problem, right?  A flight every day into Deadhorse…
But it was right at “shift change”.  Most oil workers in Deadhorse work on a two-week rotation.  Fly in, work for two weeks, fly back out.  It was fly in/out day, so everything is booked.  And then to make matters worse, the flight out the next day got cancelled for weather. So everyone got shifted by a day.  It was Sunday.  No way to get a mechanic and parts in until Tuesday. 
Here’s the worst part.  It never occurred to us that our party could get split up, and I had the Garmin with me.  My sister and her husband had been dropped off in a remote lake, at the foot of the Brooks Range, and no communications.  And with the plane grounded, no way to get to them.  And no way of communicating to them where we were, and why we weren’t coming.  Honestly, this was our fault.  Ron asked us if we had communications and I said yes.  It never occurred to me to toss my In Reach to my brother in law since they were getting put in first…

[Pathfinder101]

So, for the next 3 days, LP and I paid for rooms (two of them), ate like pigs (good for him, bad for me), prayed that Uncle Shawn and Aunt Heidi were okay, and worked out in the “hotel” gym (pretty good gym actually).  Trace did his best to keep us occupied while we were stuck in limbo.  During breaks in the weather those days, he arranged for us to go out and do a little fishing for grayling (arctic char didn’t seem to be running yet), sightseeing on the pipeline and we even got to see about 30 musk ox.  There were a couple of grizzlies running around Deadhorse, but they kept giving us the slip and we didn’t see them.  One afternoon we did see a pretty good bull caribou that would have absolutely been a shooter if he weren’t in the middle of “town”, about 200 yards from our hotel.

[Pathfinder101]

The Hotel Caribou

[Pathfinder101]

On Tuesday night the mechanic got in and fixed the plane, but there was adhesive that had to dry overnight, so the plan wasn’t actually operational until the next day (Wednesday).  And of course, the next morning was pouring rain, low ceiling and everything grounded.  That evening we got a call; there was going to be a short window in the weather.  Finally time to get put in.

[Pathfinder101]

On the flight out, we started spotting caribou from the air.  The good news was that the cool weather had finally started the migration, but it didn’t look like it had made it as far as the mountains yet.

[Pathfinder101]

When we landed on the lake, we were met by my very relieved sister at camp.  The area was absolutely beautiful, lake full of mackinaw, caribou shed everywhere… but not a single live caribou in 4 days.  When we landed, we saw a pretty good sized grizzly about a half mile from camp (he ran off when we landed, no chance for a picture).  Shawn said they had also seen several bears (including a sow with cubs). 
Ron was up against a tight weather window to get back to Prudhoe Bay, but he promised that as soon as he could get to us he would move us to where we had spotted the herds on the flight over.  LP and I set up our tent and settled in for a wet night.  Something that was different than my hunt 9 years ago in Tok; it never got dark.  The sun set around midnight, and if you got up to pee at 2 or 3 am, it looked to me like it was still pretty much “shooting light”.  When we hunted in Tok, it actually got dark for a couple of hours.
The next morning we awoke to fog and rain, so instead of hunting, we broke out the fly rods and sampled the fishing.  The lake trout all were carbon copies of each other; about 15-17 inches long, and hungry.  If you could get a wooly bugger in front of one, he usually hit it. 

[Pathfinder101]

The weather started clearing around 9, and Ron said he couldn’t get to us until the weather in Deadhorse cleared that afternoon, so we spent the day shed hunting.  LP, being young, in shape and with fresh legs made a sport out of it.  Us “old” people climbed a ridge and set up on the glass.  We would glass up a shed, and deploy the kid.  He’d pick it up, run it back, and by then we’d have another glassed up for him. For a kid that’s spent his life up to this point killing himself trying to find the odd deer or elk shed that’s been overlooked by the “professionals” that find them all here in the Blues, this was basically Nirvana.  The weather had turned gorgeous at this point, so it was a pretty pleasurable day, except for the lack of live caribou.  Our shed pile back at camp accumulated 21 sheds by the time Ron got back to us that evening.  We brought the best 6 of them home.

[Pathfinder101]

Ron flew us back about 50 miles into the tundra and set us down on another lake (this one unfortunately was devoid of fish), but right away we started seeing caribou.  A small, one-horned bull was feeding across the lake, bedded down, and kept us company until the next morning.  We named him Elliott (of course) and decided that if worse came to worse, at least we’d bring home some meat if nothing else showed up.  He did keep popping up the whole time we were there.

[Pathfinder101]

If you have ever hunted tundra before, you can probably skip this next part… because you already know…

Muskeg:  The whole place is built on a sponge.  Some of it is soaked, some if it less soaked, but either way, you sink down at least 4 or 5 inches with every step.  Sometimes, past your ankles in water.  And that is the “dry ground”.

Tussocks:  Balls of grass grow across the tundra in the muskeg.  Too tall and wobbly to step “on”, too close together to walk “between”.  Basically, in most areas, you are walking like you are drunk.  You are going to fall sometimes.  It’s always wet, but at least when you fall, it’s a soft landing.  Imagine walking across a waterbed with volleyballs anchored to it…

Bugs:  The mosquitoes were ridiculous.  Headnets, pretty much the whole time.  Big mosquitoes, like Boone and Crockett class.  You swatted them, and they just flew off, not even acting hurt or offended…  We doused with buy spray (the 98% Deet stuff that makes your lips go numb) and treated our clothes with premerethen and it helped some, but you still needed a headnet to maintain any semblance of sanity.  Mornings weren’t bad, but as the day wore on, the bugs got worse.
I’ve been asked by a few people “did the premerethen treatment on your clothing work?”.  For those that don’t know; you buy a spray bottle of this stuff, lay out all your clothing and gear, spray it down and let it dry a (we did 2 coats).  It’s supposed to keep the bugs off.  I think it kind of helped, here’s why; a couple of time, I was wearing a shirt that I know mosquitoes could easily “get through”.  And I didn’t get bit through my shirt.  Bugs still swarmed me.  Still landed on my shirt.  But never stung me through it.  It doesn’t make sense, since they were sitting on my shirt, and I know they could have stung through the light fabric, but they didn’t.  Can’t really explain it… but I think the stuff worked to some degree.