Earlier this year I went to Argentina and crossed a pretty big bucket list item off the list. It was a ton of fun, and got my blood pumping for something else to hunt this year. I was debating burning elk or mule deer points, DIY mule deer or elk OTC, or something different.
I was trying to make a quick decision and decided to answer a hunt invite post on a different website. The guy on the site had posted some pretty good caribou Kills over the years. I really didn’t know that it would go anywhere to start with, but we started discussing the possibility of trying to hunt together. We discussed all the particulars of the hunt, the flights, licenses, camping, but most importantly we got to become friends.

On the hunt, my new friend Logan and his family would be there, as well as another new friend from SC named Dale. Dale and I got together and planned our flights into Fairbanks. It seems like every time I want to go on a hunt, flights have to be half way around the world. This time things actually went really smoothly, but long flights still suck no matter how you shake it.

I have been blessed to have been pretty successful with my harvests, but the actual animal on one of these excursion type hunts is actually far behind the experience. If I can live my outdoor life with the experiences of my bucket list even more than the animal, I’ll be more than happy.

We landed in Fairbanks at 1230 on Saturday morning. Logan picked us up at the airport and after a few minutes we were off to grab a couple of hours of sleep. Up at 6am and ready to get things together to roll out. Loaded the truck and trailer and started the 2 hour ride out Into the tundra.

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We set up camp along an active mining road. These cats are still pulling gold out of these areas and are pretty damn serious about it. You can pretty much drive around to hunt wherever you want around the claims, but I think if you had a shovel you might end up as a “casualty”.

The season opens on Sunday in this area, and since it is drive-in, you have a good bit of other folks on the area. Scouting for a spot really has more to do with getting away from the crowds than the animals. Caribou move at a 10-12mph pace all day long and don’t have much of a pattern. They eat on the move and boy can they move.


With all that said, the first spot we checked out had more people than caribou. Last year most of the good bulls were taken in this area, so the word got around and everyone had the same idea. It was pretty obvious very quickly that we had to find a different spot. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get off of the beaten path and back to an area where there were less folks.

We found a small trail that lead back to a pretty open area. The elevation change going into this area was pretty interesting on a side by side. I am used to riding in the mud and through the trees, not up Nir sheer walls of rock. We found a location that we thought looked pretty good and didn’t have a ton of people. In fact the only person that I talked to up there actually went to the Citadel and graduated with a guy that used to work for us. It’s a small world even that far away from home.

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We got to talking for a while, and as part of the conversation he told us of an “easy” way into the area. We did a little research and it looked to be a definite upgrade, the problem was that we only checked the first half out. That would end up biting us in the butt at 5am.

Despite being extremely tired, sleeping at camp was not particularly easy. In Alaska this time of year, its daylight until 11pm and daylight again at 3am. Also, while not really a problem, it got into the 30s at “night”. Anyway, we were up at 4 and off to our spot. We made the call to go the “easy” route. Sometimes in life the ole saying “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” is exactly right. We fumbled the route and ended up cutting up the hill way too soon and ended trying to scale a 30% grade for 2 hours without success. We made the call to backtrack an hour and go the way we knew.

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As soon as we crested the first set of hills on our known route, we started to see caribou, and people. We decided to start glassing before we reached the top because, well its hunting, not riding. Logan and Kodi both have shot caribou in the past, and they were mainly looking to get some caribou meat in the freezer. Within the first 20 mins we had done just that, and their two caribou were on the ground. Both caribou proved these animals can suck up some serious lead.

After dressing out the first two Caribou, we made the call to get up to the highest peak in the area and start to glass again. We ran into my citadel buddy who had just shot a really nice caribou. He had spent the whole night on the hill under a tarp at his 4 wheeler. He had really earned his first, as it was in the low 30s with wind an one hella rain storm. We talked for a few minutes and he told us that everyone he had seen go over the next ridge had come back. As we were cooking breakfast and discussing this, a herd of about 30 animals appeared in a gap on the hill we were watching. In the group were two pretty good bulls, both we could see from 5-600 yards off. They played the game, and moved down into the draw below us and gave us the angle on them.

I left my mountain house on the mountain, and we hauled ass down the vertical rocks. As we were hurrying all I could think of was tumbling face first off these damn things and having a fun hunt end totally differently. We quickly got into place and immediately I had my bull at 300 yards. Quick turret click and boom. My buddies bull was shot at 175 and his shot was what seemed like 2 seconds after mine. Just like that by 1230 on opening day, our hunting was all done.

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The work however had just started...….