StoneChaser
10-01-2007, 10:14 AM
A buddy and I headed up north for a late Sept caribou hunt...and hunt we did. We hunted hard, averaging well over 20km/day of hiking in weather that was predominately horizontal precipitation. We managed a few decent "half days" of reasonable weather, and while the country was seemingly devoid of critters, he managed to kill this nice bull.
We spotted him the morning of day 8, ~4km away with 2 cows and 3 smaller bulls, and off we went. We were fortunate that this was one of the only good days of weather we had...which turned out to be a good thing (fresh tracking snow and good visibility).
Two hours after we left after them, we were above where we thought the herd was amongst the srubby subalpine fir choked mountainside. After a little game of cat and mouse and 5 caribou spotted, we determined that the bull had carried on his merry way, and we did a loop above the herd and then back around, finally backtracking on their trail until we found where a single critter had left the trail.
We struck out on the bull's track, close to 2 hours behind him. It led us along the mountain through the thick crap, and then straight up over the top, and the bull never even slowed his long strided breakback pace (anybody that has seen caribou go will know what I mean).
After ~3hours of steady chasing (we were nearly jogging in an attempt to chew up some ground) we came across a bed that was iced over...we were still a ways behind him.
We picked the pace up a bit and kept pushing, and by now had gone over the mountain, halfway around it and were heading back in the direction we had started...still no sign of the bull. It began to look promising though, as the tracks were getting a litttle sharper, and he was grabbing the occasional mouthful of grass and he went.
As he doubled back, we began to see more and more sign that he was feeding, and knew we were getting close now. Rounding a little knoll I spotted his antlers outlined against the snow a scant 150yds away.
The wind was perfect, and as he fed we crept to within 79yds of the bull...one well placed bullet from my buddies 7 Rem Mag and he had his first mtn caribou (first one either of us had been in on actually).
He is a super cool character bull, and was hog fat (nearly 4" of fat on his back!)...with meat that was downright AWESOME (no rutted up taste that I'd heard about on the occasional late Sept caribou).
We deboned him and STUFFED a hind quarter and the head/large cape in my buddie's pack, and the other 3 quarters in my pack and slugged him the 7+km back to camp.
Another 4 days of waiting for the plane and we were headed home...finally!
Although the weather was brutal and critters reasonably scarce, it was an amazing trip and the fishing was good (we even packed rods with us one day on our packs)...we're already for booked next year (different area this time though).
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/StoneChaser/Caribou1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/StoneChaser/Caribou6.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/StoneChaser/Caribou4.jpg
We spotted him the morning of day 8, ~4km away with 2 cows and 3 smaller bulls, and off we went. We were fortunate that this was one of the only good days of weather we had...which turned out to be a good thing (fresh tracking snow and good visibility).
Two hours after we left after them, we were above where we thought the herd was amongst the srubby subalpine fir choked mountainside. After a little game of cat and mouse and 5 caribou spotted, we determined that the bull had carried on his merry way, and we did a loop above the herd and then back around, finally backtracking on their trail until we found where a single critter had left the trail.
We struck out on the bull's track, close to 2 hours behind him. It led us along the mountain through the thick crap, and then straight up over the top, and the bull never even slowed his long strided breakback pace (anybody that has seen caribou go will know what I mean).
After ~3hours of steady chasing (we were nearly jogging in an attempt to chew up some ground) we came across a bed that was iced over...we were still a ways behind him.
We picked the pace up a bit and kept pushing, and by now had gone over the mountain, halfway around it and were heading back in the direction we had started...still no sign of the bull. It began to look promising though, as the tracks were getting a litttle sharper, and he was grabbing the occasional mouthful of grass and he went.
As he doubled back, we began to see more and more sign that he was feeding, and knew we were getting close now. Rounding a little knoll I spotted his antlers outlined against the snow a scant 150yds away.
The wind was perfect, and as he fed we crept to within 79yds of the bull...one well placed bullet from my buddies 7 Rem Mag and he had his first mtn caribou (first one either of us had been in on actually).
He is a super cool character bull, and was hog fat (nearly 4" of fat on his back!)...with meat that was downright AWESOME (no rutted up taste that I'd heard about on the occasional late Sept caribou).
We deboned him and STUFFED a hind quarter and the head/large cape in my buddie's pack, and the other 3 quarters in my pack and slugged him the 7+km back to camp.
Another 4 days of waiting for the plane and we were headed home...finally!
Although the weather was brutal and critters reasonably scarce, it was an amazing trip and the fishing was good (we even packed rods with us one day on our packs)...we're already for booked next year (different area this time though).
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/StoneChaser/Caribou1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/StoneChaser/Caribou6.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y284/StoneChaser/Caribou4.jpg