My mom sent me these pics. A friend of her coworker took these. Along with the following story:
Quote:
Attached are some pictures of the caribou float Dave and I just wrapped up. Dave is 33,000′ in the air at the moment cruising back south so I’ll let him fill in the details later as his knack for story telling greatly trumps mine. Here’s a quick run down of the hunt. We were out 7 days, floated 50 some miles over three of those days. Weather started out decent (albeit chilly) but went to crap towards the end. Then again it is fall in AK. We saw roughly 100-150 animals over the first couple days though most were several miles from camp up high on the ridges. Late in the evening of day 2 Dave spotted a group of 22 bulls across the river from camp. Luckily they were still there the morning of day 3 and we were able to pull off a successful stalk in the fresh snow. Dave took two bulls, I took one. Three shots over the span of 20 seconds resulted in lots of work. Three animals on the ground by 8 AM, all packed to the river gravel bar by 6 PM. I’ll let Dave send pics of his bulls. Mine had good mass on top with some neat character. The caribou herd photo was taken after we shot our animals, you can see there were still a few sizeable bulls left in the herd. Each of the bulls we harvested we individually looked over the night before and specifically IDed them prior to the shot. We broke camp the morning of day 4 and started floating. All we saw the rest of the trip were 2 grizzlies and a ptarmigan. Good thing we were done hunting. We saw seven different bears but nothing within stalking distance or the right situation. No moose seen though we had plenty of sign around camp the first few days. Three caribou was plenty for the raft, adding a moose would have created some challenges. Based on the groups we talked to on the mainstem river we did far better than average. The sight of a raft loaded with antlers floating downstream never fails to draw attention. Another fun adventure logged through some cool country.
