What I learned my first caribou hunt

[mcseal2]

This is an excellent write up. What are the better dates to make this trip? Late aug? Early Sept? Mid Sept? I plan on booking with GE as well. Thanks!

I really can’t say for sure. We chose later September. It worked for us.

 

[mitschkeb]

We donated most of our meat. One guy in our group had a friend who works at the nursing home in Kotzebue, we donated the meat to the elders there through her. We brought home a total of about 95 pounds of meat.

Each caribou we shot would yield about the same amount of meat as a really big bodied muley buck. They look much bigger bodied, but so much of their mass is lungs and guts, the meat is not that much.

Bone in regulation to my understanding means all the quarters and the ribs come out on the bone. That's what we did.

We had a lot of luggage, and paid extra for it. We each had a Kuiu 9000 taku bag plus two other pieces, either gun cases or totes. The Kuiu bags are oversize but held our packs, boots, and other bulky gear. We had our optics in our carry-on bags. Coming home we had an additional antler box and a fish box with almost 100lbs of meat.

Going again, even though our Exo or Seek packs are technically oversize for carry on bags, we saw lots of other people use them without issue. We could have saved some baggage by using them that way. We took all our own gear and food from home and had a fairly comfortable drop camp. Not over our weight limit GE and us agreed on, but bulky. There are ways to reduce bulk by either renting camp in Kotz or taking more of a backpacking camp. To us the additional hassle was worth it to have our camp kitchen and area outside of the tent to hang out in bad weather. We had camptime Roll A Chairs, a 10x10 Seek tarp, and a plastic tote for a table. When it was socked in and raining and we couldn't glass we spent a fair amount of time out there. We also had a 28lb Cabelas Alaskan Guide Instinct 6 man tent that took up most of a tote. Flying into the field we moved a lot of items from the totes into our packs or Taku bags and took only one tote.

For fees I'd just check Alaska air. I don't remember for sure and they may have changed. Covid was changing things so regularly before our hunt I'd hate to give outdated information.

Hey mcseal what size tote did they allow in the 206?

Sent from my Nokia 8 V 5G UW using Tapatalk

 

[mcseal2]

1'6" tall, 1'9" wide, 3ft long.

Sorry for the late reply. I saw this while the tote was at my buddies place and then forgot about it.

 

[Swatters]

Nice write up on your trip. Planning on heading to Alaska for a caribou late August for the first time and this will information will be helpful! Thank you!!

 

[mcseal2]

Good luck, glad it helped.

 

[shinyboat]

Great story. I remember my first caribou hunt 10 years ago. Its my favorite animal to hunt!

 

[119bowhunter]

We are booked for September 3-10 2022 so I'm soaking up everything I can, this is a great write-up and very helpful as I start dialing in my packing list

 

[mcseal2]

Good luck.

 

[elkandsheep]

This thread is awesome, it really covers all the bases. My first Caribou hunt aligns with a lot of the same experiences.

 

[bgalloway01]

Booked for August 22-29 can't wait!

 

[wreckem6]

Great information. thank you for sharing.

 

[TXPredator]

Do you have a recommendation on a Bear fence. I am going Sept 16th, 2022. I didn’t realize it was going to get in the single digits. I got a lot of great advise from you. How many hours of darkness did you have. Did you ever need the headlamp that was stolen?

 

[mcseal2]

We did not use a bear fence. I think maybe Northwest Alaska backcountry outfitters rents them.

Temps can be anything that time of year from my research. I’m glad we planned for cold!

Glad this thread helped.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mcseal2]

We did not use a bear fence. I think maybe Northwest Alaska backcountry outfitters rents them.

Temps can be anything that time of year from my research. I’m glad we planned for cold!

Glad this thread helped.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We did use our headlamps, I can’t remember how many hours of dark we had but it was several. We didn’t need them much but a little around camp or in the tent. We had a spare or two in our group items for the trip.

Main light I used was the one on the rail of my 10mm when going out at night from the tent. Bear protection and light in on handy package.

We saw no bears but had a fresh track not far from camp one morning, it was made overnight.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Car_walk]

View attachment 220062View attachment 220063

Thanks for sharing! Bookmarked this for a future trip

 

[cfounta1]

thanks for the tips

 

[Bowtech55]

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience

 

[jbwright]

Just read this entire post…awesome insight. Thanks a ton to @mcseal2 and the rest. Can’t tell y’all how appreciative I am to get this type of insight. I know you learned some of this stuff the hard way and it’s easy for us young guys to read, but man does it make for an awesome read. Loved it

 

[MitchellNJ]

Good info in this thread. Looking to get up there this August with a group of four. Lots of planning and still working on deciding a direction to head. No draw, DIY with HT only. Seems there are a few decent options.

- Haul Road walk in
- Drop camp in Brooks (preferred option)
- Steese area

 

[PMDUMONT]

Thanks for the re-cap... This is no my bucket list for sure.