Sept 1
Jamie and I loaded up the truck early in the morning and we were out the door at 5:05am from Kamloops. We were Dease Lake bound. We were to fly out the following morning to our lake of choice with BC Yukon Air. The truck made it to our first stop 15 hours away on 1.5 tanks of fuel which was very surprising (new to me GMC Sierra 3500).
The drive was uneventful, we saw a lot of bears on the highway as usual, a porcupine and a few chickens.
When we got to our camp, we unloaded some hippy killer stoves that we bought for our buddy as they are discontinued but ideal for the small cabins he is building out in the back country. We also left him a box of wine which is a tradition, some years we get to meet up at camp with him and drink it while we tell stories, but other years hes out and so we just leave it for him and his clients as a small token of gratitude for letting us crash close enough to the airbase that we can make the drive easily the morning we fly out. We unloaded our overnight bags and whatever we needed to have to be ready to fly tomorrow, started a fire in the cook shack and read some magazines. We were both wishing we had shorts on for the drive, it was hot and the trucks AC wasn't quite enough to keep us cool...always planning on it getting colder as you head north but I think it actually got a bit warmer. Being too warm continued as I lit a small fire in the cook shack just for shits and giggles really, but it keeps the edge off as the sun goes down and we were both pretty excited so sleep wasn't going to come early even though we had been up and driving since 4am. Being done with the heat I ended up taking my pants off, lol what a site that would have been if anyone was around...I continued to read stories of mountain hunting adventures found in the numerous hunting magazines collected from over the years. Eventually I grew tired, I had woken Jamie up and told him to go to bed about an hour earlier. I was still content to read and sip on an adult beverage for a bit longer. Eventually the sandman came a calling and off to bed I went. We would be up at 6:30 to be at the airbase to check in around 9.
Sept 2
Woke up in the morning, first thing I noticed was that the moon was so bright, it was just past full. Normally I don't like hunting around full moons, but having clear bright nights might actually allow the caribou we were after to move around more which could mean we would be seeing more animals and new animals as they started their migrations in preperation for the rutt. The weatherman says it's going to be a low of -1 at our lake today, it's been so hot all summer this is going to be a shock to the system but a welcomed break from the heat. We were on the road just after 7, we seem to always arrive early at the airbase, I didn't see the point this year as its always a waiting game anyways. Had a splash of bailey's in my coffee, thanks R!
We arrived at the airbase and were greeted by Alex. We've developed a pretty good relationship with him over the last few years so it was some fun hello's until he gave us the bad news that the plane's starter had failed the day previous and they were waiting on the part which should be in town and installed around 2pm. I asked if there was any chance we would get out around dinner time that day, but unfortunately there were a few groups ahead of us and there was only the 1 Beaver operating at the time so it was pretty unlikely. We offered to help with loading and unloading to get the plane turned around quicker but they still said it probably wouldn't change anything and to not bother. One thing I've learned over the years is to not get to frustrated with situations you can't control, so we took the bad news in stride and said we would be back tomorrow morning. We grabbed some groceries at the gas station for a nice dinner and headed back to camp. Might as well have a nice meal with fresh veggies and what not one last time before we would be confined to freeze dried food and bars.
We decided to take the extra time at camp to confirm our rifles were zero'd at the bench behind camp, them we reorganized all of our gear again and managed to condense everything down into 1 less tote which we then filled with split dried firewood from camp, thanks R! Again we found ourselves waiting 1 more sleep, we were getting itchy to get out there and start the hunt. It never can come soon enough once you've left home and are just stuck waiting.
Sept 3
Was really just a repeat of the morning before, got up made coffee and headed out, but I hadn't bothered to check my messages before we left. Once we got to the airbase we realized we had gotten a message from Alex telling us to be here for 10:30, we could of slept in and taken even more of our time, but ultimately we would of just been counting the minutes anyway so being a few hours wasn't a big deal. We hit the office and lounged out on the reclining couch seats. It was a bit wet outside so I went back and put a tarp over our gear that was sitting waiting for our turn which was still a few flights away in the queue. Eventually our turn came up, we finally made it out, it was 330 in the afternoon.
No big deal though, delays should be expected on these types of adventures, the pilots can't control the weather and there's always a guide or something that will come up causing a delay. The flight was uneventful until the pilot did a safety pass over the lake and we spotted 4 bou right beside the lake, 1 bull for sure. Once we touched down and got the plane unloaded, we watched the plane taxi out and take off. The pilot purposely turned away from the caribou we had spotted, and I remember saying thank you in my head to her. We unpacked and inflated the boat and decided first things first we would go for a quick scout to see if the bull was legal. The law says we have to wait 6h before hunting after flying, and that time frame gave us zero huntable hours that day so we just took the bino's and spotter. I went to put the plug in the boat but was shocked to see it missing. Its normally tied to a string off the back end of the boat...wtf, that sucks. We decided the boat being an inflatable wouldn't take on too much water and we really wanted to put eyes on the caribou so we said screw it we will deal with this later and we took off across the lake taking on water the whole time lol. We managed to locate the bull, and although he had decent mass on top, he was only a 4 point so not legal and no need to keep track of it. We drained the water out of the boat and headed back across to our gear. We had about a 1km boat ride with everything to get to where we had planned to camp.
Once we got back to the beach, I cut a branch and whittled us a new drain plug. Making sure it fit really snug so we wouldn't have to be draining to boat all the time.
When I went to tap it in with the axe something caught my eye...
Right there in front of us...the plug, on the string its supposed to be on, just not hanging out the back of the boat but rather hanging inside the boat lol. Getting too excited seeing caribou right off the bat had us rushing and making a silly mistake.
We loaded up the boat, managed to get everything in so we didn't need to make a return trip and headed down the lake.
We docked to boat on the rocks and I went for a quick reckon to find our camping spot. We had gotten some good intel from another HBC member about where we might want to make camp, and as a bonus the spot came with a meat pole already setup. We cooked some dinner and planned to spend the last couple hours glassing from the hilltop above camp hoping to turn something up for the morning. This is when I realized I had assumed Jamie grabbed my bino's off the beach and he assumed I would take care of my own shit, so back down the lake I went. We didn't turn up anything that evening but were excited to get after it in the morning.
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