We have spent multiple days looking for caribou without seeing good bulls or opportunities to pursue bulls. We can only harvest bulls. This gets tough because cows grow antlers and immature bulls have small antlers. The way to determine a small bull is a bull is to look for genitals…
Day 5: We went to our vantage point close to camp and did not immediately spot caribou migrating. We have been discussing that we need to find new areas and we decided to hike to a mountain peak about a mile away… However, a mile in the tundra is like 3 miles at home. The hike to the peak was through a forest and swamp… Upon reaching the peak we realized there was no way to chase caribou. We could not travel fast enough through the forest and swamp to cut off the caribou. After a couple hours looking for caribou we decided to head back to camp. We went back to our vantage point and started to look for caribou moving before evening. We didn’t see any caribou, but we were able to see other hunters a few miles from us. These hunters were up river to the North, which is the direction we expected the caribou to travel. Basically, blocked all opportunity to get a caribou coming from that direction. We contacted the transporter and arranged a move for the next morning…
Day 6: We woke up to a clear morning with virtually no wind. Perfect to fly and come get us. We broke camp, took down tents, repackaged food and resources and pack the gear to the airstrip. We were picked up by 1 plane and shuttled to a new location 2 at a time. The new location showed promise and offered the hope of opportunities. We spent the remainder of the day setting up camp downhill from the airstrip out of the wind. We hiked a bit to find water and haul it back to camp. Then we spent a couple hours gathering firewood. There were only willows and we unsuccessfully tried to burn the larger pieces of willow we cut with a hand saw and hatchet. We found out that the green willow twigs would burn so we stripped off all the twigs to burn. Scouting that night, because we cannot hunt the same day we fly, we spotted a herd of decent bulls. However, they were out about 5 miles and on top of a mountain. Hopefully they would migrated down the next day for an opportunity…
Day 7: We got to our vantage point and immediately began looking for the bulls spotted the night before… Nothing… We moved to another vantage point to get a better view of the river bottom and came across a lost calf. The calf was all we would see that day. Our transporter contacted us that night and asked if we would like to move… Immediately we responded with “YES”. They are coming to pick us up in the morning…
Day 8: We woke up early to break camp and haul all of our gear up to the airstrip. Our transporter contacted us to tell us the weather in Kotzebue was not good and they could not fly. “Check back in at 11.” At 11 we checked back in with a response to check back in at 12. Eventually they came and picked us up to move us 70 miles north. There were reports of 1000s of caribou in the area. We landed at the next airstrip and during the flight we spotted multiple herds of caribou and our hopes were rejuvenated. We set up camp, gathered wood and water, and set out to scout. We spotted multiple herds moving but they were all about 5 miles away. We made a plan for the next morning and knew we would have only 2 days to make something happen…
To be continued…