Heading to Atlin for Caribou.

[tigrr]

If nothing else take a shotgun. The game birds are second to none. Caribou, well good luck with the changes of migration and falling numbers.

[BCHunterFSJ]

Lots of old mining roads, good quad access. I got one there in 2006
How time flies... Good luck!

[RustyBrit]

I decided I should probably do an update on here as I did get some great help from some guys and thought sharing the story would be fun. So here goes!


My hunting partner was stuck on the great lakes at work, bouncing around between steel towns, as the August 15th opener came and went. He finally flew across the country on the 30^th and I graciously gave him an entire 37 hours to see his girlfriend before picking him up at 3:00am on Sunday of Labour Day weekend and heading for the ferry. The longest part of any journey for an islander is the part between home and Hope. We have all seen it way to many times and you just can’t seem to fall into a comfortable driving groove until you turn either up the canyon, or the Coq.

[RustyBrit]

We made 100 Mile for lunch and then Burns Lake for dinner, strangely keeping the menu strictly Mexican by complete accident. We made great time and by 10:30 we were in New Hazelton rimming off the diesel and filling a single jerry can for the red-eye push up the Stewart Cassiar. The two of us had done the exact route (the other way around mind you) together 10 years earlier when life was much simpler and we could just get in the truck with a tent and explore. I finally succumbed to vertical pressure on my eyelids around midnight and grabbed some shut eye in the passenger seat while my partner took the wheel for a few hours of dodging what we still cannot identify on the roads. About the size of a large raccoon, black or dark brown, and they don’t even flinch when my 6.0L diesel comes bearing down on them in the midnight darkness. Maybe staying warm on the road?
Anyways without much excitement we passed through Dease and somewhere between there and Jade my partner said he couldn’t drive anymore, being too stubborn to catch some sleep most of the previous day. Back behind the wheel I climbed and made it only a few more hours down the highway before deciding I couldn’t anymore so we pulled into a rest stop, put it in park at 4am, turned the heat up a few degrees and both had a much needed snooze.
The brightness of dawn and light rain woke us both up and away we went up to Nugget City to pay 1.62/L Diesel and then on up to Teslin for lunch, with a quick stop at the “welcome to Yukon” sign to flash up the Jetboil for some Starbucks VIA.
Arriving in Atlin in the early afternoon we topped off with fuel and took a quick tour around town. If there is a prettier view from town (and this coming from an islander who is no stranger to amazing vistas) then I would like to see it. What a spectacularly beautiful place to live.
After snapping a photo we headed off in the direction of our quarry. Much to my appreciation a couple HBC members gave me some fantastic intel and where to go. Chinooker gave me some help on how to get to where I was hoping to go, and Cub Driver gave me tons of great info and drainages and accessibility to where he thought I should go. Without Cub Driver’s help this wouldn’t have happened and I sent him a thank-you email on the way home saying as much.
My first goal was to get where I wanted to go first. I am famously bullheaded (ask my wife) and when I get an idea, no matter how many people say “don’t bother” I just have the need to prove it out myself. Well over two hours of bumping down what turned out to be a really cool, although by Island standards insane, road and crossing through a few streams and creeks, we stumbled across a fellow from Vancouver set up in his homemade trailer. Moose hunting for 6 weeks (wish my wife was that flexible!) all by himself (“it’s just easier that way” he said) he gave us some tips and directions and we wished each other luck and off we went to our destination which ended up being on a placer gold tailings pile operated by a friendly guy who turned out to be from the Island as well and mines up there in the summer. We set up the tent, went for a walk-about, ate a sack of ‘House and then crawled into bed and crashed.

[RustyBrit]

Up not-so-early the next morning we threw on the packs and boots, and spent the next day walking in the howling wind peeking over every mountain top and glassing every valley we could see into without seeing anything but Marmots out sunning themselves in front of their burrows. Never having hunted in the alpine buck brush forests it was so cool to be able to glass the enormity of the landscape completely. We made our way back to camp, and were having supper when our friend from the valley floor came up on his quad to see how we were making out. “Don’t bother with that mountain, or that mountain, or even that one” he said. “You are in the right place, but if you don’t see anything go back to *Nunyabusiness creek. I have had caribou chase me in my ATV up there!” We bid farewell and decided that we would spend one more day and see what we could find.

Up earlier the next day we walked a short ways up to a nice glassing tit as the sun came up and set up the glass. Within 10 minutes I caught a flash of movement; “Matt come check this out!” I said. We then spent the next 15 minutes watching a pack of 4 adult wolves and 8 pups make their way around the mountain in almost our exact footsteps from the afternoon before. Having only ever seen coastal wolves from a helicopter it was awesome to watch them do their wolf things. Man do they boogie! The puppies almost having to run to keep up with the adults, only stopping to wrestle when the adults needed to sniff a rock or investigate a bush. As they rounded the mountain out of site we looked at each other and said “well that decided that doesn’t it” and we hiked back down to the tent, broke camp, loaded up the truck, and bounced down to the valley to head over to *Nunyabusiness drainage.

[RustyBrit]

We found a wall tent camp set up at the intersection of our turn but no one was home so up we went climbing up above tree line and into an even more spectacular vista. We drove the truck until the buck brush closed in and wanted to touch the paint, so we put it in park and went for 5 minute walk. “Holy shit there is a caribou!” I exclaimed through my binoculars. “And another one!” We both watched the first caribou we had ever seen (not including the ones on the highway we had seen 10 years earlier West of Liard Hotpsrings) for a few minutes before we scrambled back down to the truck to get the spotting scope. We walked back up a little further to get a good glassing spot and realized there were two quads parked on the trail. And now the two caribou were replaced by 3 guys on the horizon. “Well shit I guess we are not going to be alone” we said as we went back down to the truck. We took the other quad trail in another direction and only 5 minutes down that trail I spotted another 4 ‘Bou on the tippity tip top of the mountain in front of us. “That is a hell of a climb” we said watching through the spotting scope trying to figure out if there was a shooter bull through the mirage of the mid-day heat. Soon enough we were both snoozing, as one does, in the sun beside the buck brush.

I awoke with a shiver as the sun ducked behind a cloud and got up to take a look around and see what had changed in the hour or so we were out. “Matt! Wake up! I see another couple ‘Bou! And they are down in the valley way closer to us!” I said. We spent the next few minutes watching when Matt sees another animal with ground come out of one of the folds in the landscape. “Wow that one is pretty big dude” he said so I took a look through the spotter. “Man… He is nice” I agreed. They were feeding and wandering towards us; our bull, a smaller bull, and a cow about a kilometer away. Just then the three guys rolled up on their quads. We had a quick chat about what we were looking at. I got the impression that they had seen this bull earlier, and they said they would leave us to work while they went back to camp early for the day. Cudos to those guys by the way as we were on the only “other” quad trail for them to drive that day.
Our watches said 4pm and the bull had bedded down when I finally decided the old adage “don’t pass on something the first day that you would shoot on the last day” rung true enough for me to at least give it a go.
Matt stayed behind on the spotter with his blaze orange toque, and I headed off down into the creek to walk upstream, looking back to him every few minutes for arm signal directions on where to go. Two hours later I found myself on my knees in the buck brush having spooked out both the cow and the smaller bull as Matt waved frantic direction that made no sense to me. “Why is he telling me to go that way? He should be over here” I kept saying until I finally realized the bull was no longer bedded, but on the move! Trusting my spotter I kept moving towards his directions until his “down down down” directions indicated that I must be close. I scanned around for a few minutes until I caught a movement of antlers. Up came the range finder, which is very hard to use with so few trees to bounce off of. 300 yards. Just a bit too far for me I thought. I picked out a tiny evergreen tree and scrambled up to it as quickly and quietly as I could. 200 yards it said now; good to go!

[RustyBrit]

I grabbed the tree with my offhand and steadied the rifle as the bull kept grazing around, waiting for him to show me a broadside shot while I tried to get my buck fever under control. Finally I felt steady enough and the bull turned and stopped showing me only his shoulder and head. Matt is now standing directly behind the bull, still on the spotter, about 1000 yards away as the crow flies. If I were to tilt my gun up a few degrees I would have seen his orange toque. “They don’t talk about this scenario in hunter safety” I chuckled to myself feeling perfectly comfortable that I wasn’t going to accidently shoot my best friend today. “Well I am definitely not doing the neck shot” I thought and moved the crosshairs to his shoulder blade. “I will give him another couple minutes to move but if he doesn’t I am going to do it”.
Boom! I sent my 130gr Hornady Superformance GMX right through his shoulder blade and he dropped out of sight. Regaining my hearing and not seeing any motion I grabbed my binos and looked at Matt. The universal sign of “Victory” was plain to see and I breathed a sigh of relief. I slowly made my way up to the tree I had ranged and saw the bull lying down taking labored breaths. A quick insurance policy shot put an end to any movements.
I started a quick skinning job, having previously decided this was to be my first gutless method job. (Side note: it’s awesome and I will never do a full gut job again if given the option). With Matt arriving and taking a few pictures we made quick work of quartering him out. We loaded up half of him and headed back to the truck just as the sun set. We set up the tent, choked down another sack of ‘House, set up the tent, and crawled into bed saying a few silent prayers to the Grizzly bear gods to leave our ‘Bou alone this night.

[RustyBrit]

We woke up, hiked in, and loaded up the other half and head and started our walk out. The 3 guys on quads appeared and crossed the creek downstream of us. We exchanged waves and they continued on as did we, getting everything back to camp as the sun really cranked up its late morning warmth.

We pondered temperature, driving time, temperature, moose hunting odds (it’s over/under season), and temperature and made a reluctant team decision to head homeward.
We stopped in at the wall tent camp and left three ice cold Lucky Lager’s on their kitchen table as a thank you for the previous days’ hunter etiquette and then made our way back to Atlin where we refilled with diesel, attempted to contact the local Compulsory Inspector (without luck), and grabbed a cold drink from the trading post.
While I was outside chatting with a very friendly couple from Vancouver a local first nations lady interrupted and started asking where I put the nose. “The nose!?” I asked. “Ya, the nose!” I should have known what was about to happen, but I ignorantly thought she was actually curious and friendly. I was wrong. 5 minutes of “you people come to our land...” and I closed the truck door on her and away we went. Kind of a bad way to leave such a pretty town.

We drove to Teslin and stopped for supper where, when we were getting out of the truck, I heard the unmistakable sound of a hissing rear tire. “Great a flat” I said. 2 hours, 3 phone calls, and 1 super awesome dude (thank you Andrew Smith from Teslin) and we were all patched up and back on the road.

Driving the red-eye through the Northern Rockies wasn’t my hope, but here we were so on we drove. My god. The sheer number of animals on that highway in the dark is incredible. Two hears of bison, a handful of moose, and a truly uncountable number of elk had us driving well below the speed limit all the way to Fort Nelson where, at 4 am, we found there was no longer any 24 hour gas stations despite what the all-powerful google maps told us. Luckily for me I have a card lock account with Esso so we hit the industrial area south of town and managed to fill er up and keep rolling.

We made it to Fort St. John where we sat down for a civil breakfast before calling the local CI number and then heading to their place out towards Hudsons Hope at Peace Taxidermy. Super friendly folks and a beautiful shop (I use that term loosely as it is a gorgeous log building entirely filled with taxidermy and workspace) who did filed the required CI paperwork, chatted and bit, and then bid farewell.
When we got to warm sunny Chetwynd we realized no matter what we did we were going to miss the last ferries back to our island in the pacific so I pulled up this here HBC forum on my iPhone and started calling every single butcher and meat locker in the “Mainland” thread. After a whole bunch of “sorry we are full” and “we’re not here tomorrow” we managed to get an “I’ll go turn on the cooler” from an un-named business in 100 Mile. Just south of Quesnel I thought I should give him a call back to make sure it was all still good and he says “I guess it isn’t working yet, sorry”. Uh oh! It was in the mid-20s and now I am panicking. A few more pleading phone calls and the fine folks at J&D Meats in Quesnel, albeit reluctantly, agreed to hang our ‘Bou for the night.

We drank probably two too many beers at the restaurant that night and then woke up bright and early, retrieved our ‘Bou from the deli and then headed home without any further issues. I dropped the meat off at a local butcher who has since turned it into some of the finest eating meat I have ever had the pleasure of harvesting. As good as or better than the two moose I have been party to collecting over the past few years.

My only regret is not staying in the bush an extra day or two as the overnight temperatures (frosty) would have probably been fine for prolonging our hunt. I just wished we got to hang out and explore the country a bit more.
The odds of finding a moose in the same valley that our friend had been working for a month, without success, was on our mind when we made the decision to roll out.

This was the first year I had put in for this LEH hunt, and at 43:1 odds it was a longshot at best but I am so glad I got to experience it. What an awesome area of our province. Our ridiculously MASSIVE, province.

[skyeco]

Wow, what an awesome story. Congratulations and thanks for sharing. I worked up there in the Tulsequah valley for a bit and it is a very special place. Beautiful part of the world.

[kodeman]

Just an awesome story...this is bucket list hunt for me. Thank you so much for posting it