Rose's Caribou Hunt!

It's been a while since we've done a blog post and I know people have been waiting for our next one. Things have been very busy between Rose and I, she's been extremely busy with work, taking on more responsibilities and what not. Most of you know already but I was offered a full-time position at Providence hospital back in August, which I took. I work mostly three, twelve hour days and often find a bit of over-time which is nice. The long days have me getting off mostly at 8 or 9 at night and Rose is typically in bed by the time I get home so she can start her early morning the next day. So we often don't see much of eachother during my three or four days on. However it is nice having my schedule condensed so that I can pick up extra shifts more readily at various facilities around Anchorage and even out in Wasilla.

Anyway, enough about the boring stuff...This story actually starts last fall, I had just returned home from my sheep hunt and Rose asks me, "What do you think about me getting a bow and learning to hunt with you"? In so many words, I said, "Let's go get you a bow"!!! So, we went down to Full Curl Archery and got her a bow and she began practicing and got proficient at 20-30 yards pretty quickly. She took her bow certification course and passed with flying colors.

Long story short, we took two trips up the Haul Road that year for caribou and struck out with her only having one shot opportunity at 30 yards. Fast forward to this fall and we headed back up in September, only this time, there were no caribou to be found. We knew that we'd be returning at the end of October for one last hurrah!

The time flew by and we were once again on our way up, for her fourth attempt to arrow her first big game animal. Rose has come a long way as a hunter, she learned quick about all the intricacies of hunting. She came up with good game plans and strategies and had become a great hunting partner. However, I was worried that without getting any shooting that she'd lose interest but that didn't happen and actually just drove her more to be successful.

I had everything ready to go on Monday, October 29th and picked Rose up from work. We were on the road north and decided instead of pushing through the night that we'd stop and stay at Pike's in Fairbanks and continue on in the morning. What a nice change of pace that was! The next morning we kept on moving and arrived north of Atigun pass around 3pm and chose a place to camp. The weather wasn't too bad, visibilty was a little low but not bad. We hunted that evening and made two stalks on a couple bulls. We got close on both but they just knew something was up.

That night the wind picked up and I couldn't sleep at all, it was deafening. After a long night we got ready to hunt and were worried about even trying to shoot an arrow in such high winds. I said, we'd probably have to be 20 yards or less and hope we can catch a break in the wind. We saw a few caribou but with visibility so low with blowing snow, we were missing lots of caribou I'm sure. We decided to try for a group of bulls up right at the base of atigun pass on the north side. They were up the hill a little ways and we thought if we went behind and over the top of the hill we could get a nice 20-30 yard shot and the wind wasn't as bad right there. So we tried climbing the very steep frozen shale hillside and part way up, Rose just slid all the way to the bottom. It was just do difficult to get footing in the frozen shale. We said it's not worth it and headed back to the truck.

We headed north and visibily went to zero and we went back to camp to find our tent collapsed. I thought the poles broke but had just folded inward. I'd guess the wind was blowing 60-70 mph? Inside the tent was another surprise, SNOW! The wind blew fine snow dust up under the rain fly of our Alaska guide model tent and it sifted down through the mesh in the top! We'd had enough and decided we needed to break camp and get to the south side of the pass where there was hopefully better weather and at the very least cover in the timber.

After camp was loaded up we slowly made our way towards the pass, you could only see one road delineator at a time! We ran into a guy that had gotten stuck and helped him get out. He was from the Toolik station further north and was trying to get out too. We teamed up and chained our rigs up and started up the pass. A short ways up I drove right into a small snow slide that was completely invisible, couldn't see what I was stuck in till I got out of the truck! Our new found companion pulled me out backwards as I was high-centered. We dug the road out...thankfully I brought a shovel...and after 4-5 runs at it I got through. We reached the top to find the other side closed due to avalanches and spent 3 hours on top waiting for it to re-open.

When we reached the south side it was clear blue skies and calm! What a contrast! We got camp setup below Chandalar Shelf and as I was getting gear ready for the next day, I pulled Rose's bow out and noticed the sights were dangling from her bow! I was in disbelief, how could this happen? In all my years bow hunting I've never had a piece of equipment on my bow break. I felt bad for Rose and all I could think about was that she's done hunting. We'd come all this way and dealt with all these conditions and this is how the trip is going to end? I thought for a minute and said hey, I'll just take my sights off my bow and put'em on hers and we'll sight the bow in in the morning! Thankfully I brought the target! Turns out when she'd fallen down the hill side, she said her bow hit pretty hard and that had to have been when they broke.

The next morning after we finished sighting Rose's bow in, we were north bound with crystal blue skies and no wind!!! We spotted a couple bulls on our way up to the shelf and put on a sneak but it didn't work out. So again, northward! We got to the base of Atigun with no other sightings. The weather was beautiful and you could tell the weather was fine on the other side. I said to Rose, "How do you feel about going over the top"? She was nervous and didn't like it but knew that's where the caribou were. I knew the road was ok. It was clear the night before when we came over and crews had been working on it all night. We took it slow and had zero trouble, the road was in great shape.

We immediately started seeing caribou but didn't like the stalk options. We continued on and saw tons of fresh tracks and trails that led northward. With the heavy winds the night before these were all recent tracks and we just knew there were a bunch of caribou somewhere.

When we finally saw the herd, they were running. The binoculars revealed four wolves chasing them up the valley. The wolves quickly took notice of us stopped on the road, gave up chase and left the country.

We saw a small herd of caribou that was working south towards us and parallel to the road and thought they may try and link up with the large herd across the valley. We had the pipeline off the road a ways and the caribou working parallel to it and the creek and willow thicket beyond that. The large herd was on the other side of the thicket on the hill. We hurriedly made our way to the thicket as best we could and found a small flowing creek. With all the cover in the world, we just couldn't beat the caribou as they cut through the creek bottom and joined the herd on the other side. We saw them file through at about 80 yards.

I got up on a little high point to see if more were coming and sure enough I saw three bulls about 300 yards away feeding! I told Rose that they'll likely follow the same trail since the snow is deeper and it's the path of least resistance. An hour went by and hope began to fade as they hadn't moved much and contently fed right where they were. The temperature was around zero degrees and I told her to hang in there as she was getting cold, so was I! The caribou were feeding in a small wind blown area where food was more accessible. I said, as soon as they come over the little rise, they'll hit the deeper snow and stop feeding and start moving our way. A half-hour later they did just that! With me about 10 yards away and higher than Rose, I spotted and relayed with signals what they were doing and which bull in line to wait for. They came all the way and stopped, they didn't like the willows and started skirting around them. They stopped and fed at 40 yards but there was too much brush in the way for Rose to shoot. There was an opening behind her and I signaled to step back and look through for a shot. She did and the first bull went by. I signaled to shoot bull #3 and that it was 30 yards! She could barely see bull #3 feeding through the branches and he finally started to move. Rose drew her bow and I grunted to get him to stop as he stepped into her shot lane. I couldn't see the arrow but the bull lunged forward and sprinted about 40 yards before slowing to a walk. I knew he was hit by that reaction. I threw the binos up could see she made a good hit.

I jumped down to Rose and we stepped up on the bank, and said, you got him! He started getting tipsy and fell over at 60 yards! We were ecstatic! Hugs and high-fives! It only took less than a minute for him to go down.

Rose notching her first tag!

I was just so happy for her, to watch that bull for over an hour and to see him come almost like we'd planned and to sit back and watch her take her first big game animal was a proud moment! She hasn't seen many animals up close like that and she kept asking, "It's a nice one right"? I said, "YA! It's a real nice one"! After looking at it myself and showing some other people, it should make the Pope & Young Record book! We'll have to wait and see though.

We took lot's of pictures and I began caping it out and just then, here comes another herd of bou, following the same trail. They also went to go through the willows but decided not to as well, they ended up skirting around and came by us at 60 yards! So with that, we packed that bull to the truck and headed back to camp. Rose said to me, "can we go home now"? I made a deal with her, well more like she put it to me, that if we got a caribou or two early that we could head home and stay at Pike's on the way home and have a nice dinner. So I said, "yes, we can head home in the morning"!

What started out as a nightmare turned into a memorable hunt just like that! I thoroughly enjoy hunting with Rose and get more excited to see her try to get something than I do myself. I hope you guys enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed the hunt!