2010 Alaskan Float Hunt

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Garion33

Guest
Hello all, I hope the new year finds everyone doing well and planning for this years hunt(s). I thought you might be interested in my 2010 float hunt.

We flew into our hunt area 2 days prior to the season. Here are a few shots of the flight in:

The colors are beautiful!
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We got to our drop point late in the afternoon and decided to stay the night. We set up camp and settled in for a nice, lazy evening. Here is my hunting partner, Brent, tending the fire. You gotta love a nice fire in the middle of nowhere!

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The next day turned out to be rainy, cold, and foggy. We crawled back into the bags for a few more hours hoping the weather would clear, at least on the river. Since rivers change from year to year, we played it safe and chose to wait till we could see more than a few yards in front of the raft. When the fog finally blew out, we loaded my raft, a SOTAR Radical, and floated down about 10 miles or so. We dealt with both heavy and light rain, cold winds and slight sun. Typical Alaskan weather. We set up camp for the night and prepared to hunt the next day. We did do some calling and scraping to see if we could get a bull interested for the next morning.

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BTW, I loved the Kelty Noah's Tarp 12, you see over the tent. It provided a nice cover when coming out of the tent in the rain, sitting in front of the tent glassing, and overall staying dry. It held up well, though we didn't have any really heavy winds to worry about. There are other tie down points if needed, but we didn't use them.

I love a good rainbow. Hopefully it was going to bring us good luck the next day

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Finally, it was opening morning. Brent and I split up to cover more area. We were hunting an area that had ridges to the west and south of us, and the river on the east. There was a long meadow, over a mile plus long by a 1/2 mile wide or so. We each took different parts. I went towards the rainbow, Brent right behind camp. We didn't see anything but great looking Moose country and Moose sign. We spent the middle of the day glassing the ridges from camp as the wind was swirling and we didn't want to contaminate the meadow area.

We went out again around 4pm planning to stay out till dark. We lost shooting light around 830pm near the trees. I went out into the meadow and tried to pick the highest spot I could glass from. I had to stand on a tussock to see any distance and was able to glass a 600 yard by half mile stretch. I would periodically cow call, grunt, and do a little scraping. About 730ish, I caught movement coming out of a dip in the ground. All I saw initially was brown, and thought Bear. Moments later I saw that it was a Moose. The head was down, but the body was dark, so I was hoping bull. When the head lifted, I saw antlers. Since I was in an any bull area, he was legal. As I glassed some more, I saw it was a bull, approx 40 inches, maybe a bit more. He wasn't really heavy or had some outstanding feature that would make me want to pull the trigger on opening day, knowing I had 9 more full days of hunting. I wanted something bigger than last years bull, which was 45 inches. I passed on him, but decided to try my calling skills and see how close I could get him.

I let out a grunt, which got his attention quickly. At this point, he was about 200 yards out, going in a route the would take him roughly parallel to me. His head swung my way and he changed his course to come directly towards me. He was swaying his head and grunting about every other step. At about a hundred yards, I let out another grunt. The bull stops, lifts his head to look around, then kept coming my way. I wasn't worried as I thought he would change directions soon. I was standing behind a little tree to break up my outline. He kept coming directly towards me. I had my rifle next to me, but still wasn't worried. By now he was about 50 yards out. As he kept coming, I could see the grizzled hairs on his neck standing up, he was grunting with each step, and I could see bloodshot eyes through the binos. I took a close look at his antlers to see if anything had changed that would make me want to pull the trigger; it hadn't. As he hit the 35 yard mark or so, I thought that this might be a good time to jack a round into my .375. I didn't think my little tree would protect me, as it was about an inch in diameter and 4 feet tall. I was thinking, crap, I might have to take this bull anyway. My initial thought was if he cracked the 15 yard mark, he may not stop. I would shoot at this point, unless something made me shoot earlier. When he hit 25 yards, I stepped out and loudly went Hey Bull! I wanted to show him I wasn't a rival bull. At this, the bull stopped and sized me up for about a minute. I had the .375 up, the safety off, and looking through the crosshairs at his brain. I was ready to put a 250 grain Trophy Bonded Bearclaw into it if he decided he wanted to press the issue. Finally, the bull grunted, then turned and paralled me me at 25 yards. He would take a few steps, stop, look back at me, then keep going. He did this 3 or 4 times before finally he got tired of the game and kept going. I took a deep breath and relaxed. I didn't realize how tense I was after this encounter. By now, it was close to dark. The bull was headed in the general direction of Brent. I was hoping he may get a chance right at dark. He was hoping to take a bull with his bow, though he carried his .300 Win Mag, in case the bull was farther out. This would be a perfect 1st bull with the bow.

I headed back to camp, got the fire going, and dinner started. When Brent strolled into camp, I asked if he saw the bull, or anything else. He hadn't, but had seen a cow and heard something in the trees, but it was dark and he couldn't see what it was.

We didn't see anything the next morning and went back to camp to glass the ridges. As we glassed, I happened to catch some movement about 100 yards from camp, directly across the river. A cow moose poked her head out, sniffed the air, then trotted out with her calf right behind her. She stopped at the rivers edge, then walked into the middle of the river and started walking down river. Here are a couple shots of the cow/calf:

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I'm not sure what caused the cow/calf to do this. Maybe a wolf or bear chased them. Water is where they go in case of trouble. Maybe they smelled the smoke from the campfire? If FullCry Hounds happens to read this, maybe you might have further insight as a guide who spends more time out there than we do. We watched the pair walk down the middle of the river for approx a half mile before they swam out to our side of the river in deep water. This was pretty interesting to watch.

Earlier in the AM, we saw a couple bands of Caribou in front of camp:

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The back bull had nice tops!

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The second band saw us while in mid river, didn't like what they saw, and headed up river. Oh well, they were nice to see, but for us, the season wasn't open.

Brent and I hunted the evening in the same place as the first night. Brent didn't see anything, and I saw a really small paddle bull. I tried calling this one in as well, but he wasn't having anything to do with it. I saw him about 300 yards out. I cow called, then grunted. When he heard this, the young bull stopped, looked around, then stood absolutely still for the next 25 minutes. It didn't matter what kind of call I did. I assume he was scared there was a bigger bull near and didn't want to get whipped?

We loaded the raft the next day after the AM hunt to head down to our next spot.

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I always love to see Bald Eagles when I'm out hunting

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Here we are enjoying a nice day on the river

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We floated about 12 miles down to our next spot. We had harvested a 49 inch bull last year at this spot. Maybe we could take another bull here?

We spent 2 days hunting this area and only seeing 2 cows and a calf. There were some nice blueberry patches that we ate a lot of berries out of.

We decided to move on and see what other areas we could find. There was a cabin near a nice meadow about 12-15 miles from where we were that we thought we might check out. We had to float through a small, rough stretch of class 3+ water and wanted to do it early in the afternoon. After about 10 miles of floating, we came around a bend and passed a really long meadow. We kept thinking that maybe we should stop and check it out. Finally, curiosity won and we stopped to check it out. It looked great. It had 2 long ridges running into the meadow, thick trees at the bases of the ridges, and good aspens/willows around the edges. We contemplated staying here, but ultimately chose to move on. Before we started floating, I looked down river and saw some shapes in the water. I asked Brent what those were.

As he was glassing them, I looked back up the way we came and spotted a moose on our side of the bank, just stepping into the river. I looked through the binos and saw it was a bull. I hissed to Brent, Bull! He was about 500 yards back up river. As we both glassed him, I said it looked like a good bull. He asked if I was going after him. I said, I don't think I can get to him before he crosses the river and goes up the other side. He said if I run, there was a slight chance. Brent also said that if I didn't try, he would. I grabbed my rifle and took off up the bank. I ran on the edge of the meadow to cover my movement. After about 200 hundred yards of hard running, I was beat. I had busted my butt 2-3 times hitting tussocks wrong, got clocked in the face by my binos as they bounced on my chest, and face planted into a blueberry patch after tripping on another tussock. I walked to the edge and looked to see where the bull was. He was still about 300 yards or so up river, and on the other bank. But, he was slowly walking towards us. I got back into the meadow and ran another 150 yards or so, slower than the first 200, I think. I took a couple of deep breaths and looked for the bull again. I didn't see him and my heart fell. I then heard Brent grunt and heard the bull answer back from up on the ridge he was going up. I spotted him about 100 yards up the hill. I sat at the edge of a cut bank, wedged my foot for a rest, jacked a round, and put the crosshairs on the shoulder of the slowly moving bull. He was headed uphill, going from my left to right. When the crosshairs were firmly on the shoulder, I squeezed the trigger, felt a light push at my shoulder, and heard the 250 grain Bearclaw hit the bull with a loud Whap! The bull swapped ends, and I lined up on his other shoulder and squeezed a second shot off. I heard the hit and watched him fall. He struggled to get up the hill and get away from whatever had hit him, but just couldn't do it. The bull was down for good. I let out a loud, happy yell! I watched him for few minutes to make sure he was really down for good, and to make sure I could mark him on the hill, as it all looked the same. I was spent after the long run. I got down to the rivers edge and laid my rifle down out in the open where I couldn't miss it, to mark the spot. I looked to see what Brent was doing, and he was pulling the raft up river towards me. I guess the yell let him know what happened. I walked down to help out, grinning like a foolish kid. Brent laughed at me, asked me how I felt, then asked how big the bull was. At that point, I couldn't be sure, but guessed mid 50's. I did notice heavy brow tines. Brent told me that he had called the bull back down to the river 3 different times as he tried to go up the ridge. Its nice to have a good partner help you out, isn't it?

We pulled the raft up to the spot my rifle was at, and started unloading the raft. We had a lot of work ahead of us. It was about 4pm now. We loaded the raft with our packs, meat care items, and pulled it further up river, so we could angle across without the current taking us too far down river. As we crossed, Brent asked me why I shot the second time as the bull was coming back down to the river. I said, if you look at the river, it's about 8 feet deep where he was headed. I didn't want him to fall into deep water and us getting stuck trying to pull him to a shallower spot. I have talked to folks who butchered moose in the river. They all related it was miserable. I didn't want to find if this was true or not, so I tried to anchor the bull before he reached the river.

Here is a shot of my bull on the hill. You can just make him out in the left center of the picture. It doesn't look too steep, does it?

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Here is a shot of the cut bank that he went up. It doesn't look like much, but there is a near 6 foot bank here. We crawled up by cutting steps out of the bank and pulling ourselves up. The bull easily went up this. The patch he used is right in the middle of the picture.

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The hill was actually really steep. Here are pictures of the bull:

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Moose are big, and I don't know if this can give you an idea of the body size. we couldn't move him from this position, so we had cut him up as is.

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We started working on him about 515pm and didn't get done until 1130pm. I know there are folks who are much faster than we are at butchering a moose, but wanted to be slow and steady. I admit I am not an expert, but know how to do it. We took the quarters off of the side that was up, then took the backstraps, neck/rib meat, in as large a chunks as we could. We then flipped it over and did the same thing on the other side. Lastly, we took the guts out to get the 2 tenderloins.

Starting about 9pm, we had a spectacular Northern Lights show. This one was all white and filled over half the sky. The lights would make different shapes, change to a really bright white, then tone it down a bit, then light back up. I had never seen the white before. I wish I could have gotten pictures. Its hard for words to describe it. This was an absolutely gorgeous show!

As you may have noticed, we didn't set up the tent before cleaning the moose. Big mistake, as we were exhausted from moving 500lbs of meat pieces around. We finally got the tent up, our mattresses filled, and bags spread about 1am. we slept till around 10am.

Here is a shot of good work, trying to get the antlers off of the skull.

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We loaded up and headed down river. At this point, Brent had tweaked his back a bit and decided he would only take a bull right at the river. We also had a 1/2 mile portage in a day or 2. We were not looking forward to that. We still had the class 3+ water to go through, and now added 500 more pound to our raft. With that much weight, we weren't exactly a nimble raft. Here is picture of the start of the big rapids:

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We made it through without incident, except Brent got pretty wet in one of the larger rapids. I was luckily (maybe unluckily) the oar man.

Just after we went through the big rapids, we spotted this young spike/fork bull just off the river:

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We passed on him as he was right above very deep water.

We floated 2 more days to reach our portage point. Here is a shot of the rapids we chose not to run:

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I am contemplating a long portage and all of the meat/gear we have to carry:

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Here is Brent, tweaked back and all, carrying a hind quarter. I'm still not sure how he managed it. This is a great friend and partner!

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It took us a full day to do the portage. This is the loaded raft afterwards.

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We didn't realize it at the time, but we had been leap frogging another party that we had met early in the float. We found out that they had run the class 5 rapids (portage) by accident. They didn't know exactly where the takeout was for it. By the time they spotted it, they were in too fast a current to get out. They said it was the scariest 60 seconds of their lives. They almost flipped their rafts in two different spots. In the shot above, it may not show clearly, but there are a couple of 3-5 foot drops amongst the rushing water. If you don't catch it right, it is easy to flip a raft. As it was, they said they hit a big rock and bounced up in the air several feet. Luckily, they made it through ok.

Once past this, we had a couple more uneventful days on the river. We fished the entire trip and Brent caught the only fish, a grayling.

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Near the end of the float, we stopped here and found this wonder:

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An outhouse in the middle of nowhere. we opened up the door to look inside and found this:

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After squatting against trees, sitting on rough logs, and burying our stuff, seeing/sitting on warm 2 inch foam was fantastic! Sorry if you think this is a bit crude, but I thought it was a great luxury.

Here is Brent with the raft on our last day

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We floated the last 12 miles or so to our take out point. Here is what we had to put up with:

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Unfortunately, our float was over. Here is our last look from the take out:

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Overall, we had a great float. The weather, while at times wasn't great, really wasn't bad. We did not see any Bears (we both wanted Brownies), no Wolves (we wanted to help the Moose out). I saw 8 Moose, with 4 bulls. Brent saw 7 Moose, with 2 bulls. I was sorry that Brent didn't harvest a bull, but we split the meat, so he does have some winter meat. Brent was a great partner and better friend. I thoroughly enjoyed his company. As you all know, good hunting partners are hard to find. After I got back home, I measured my bull. He came out to about 52 inches. I really loved his thick brow tines.

I am sorry if this is too long for folks. I know I can get long-winded and wordy. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and hope I didn't go overboard with those as well.

Take care,
Garion33
 
That sounds like another amazing hunt! Didn't you post about a river float last year???
We're making our third summer trip up this year.
I've been planning my first Alaska hunt for 2 years now. Not sure when I get to pull the trigger on the hunt but its great to read about yours.
thanks for sharing!
ds
 
Congratulations on a GREAT bull!!!
Thanks for taking the time to share the story and pics!

Lien2
 
Great story and pictures. Definitely a trip I want to make in the future. I have the raft and gear, just need the time, money and logistic to make the trip. I would like to talk to someone who has done it and is willing to offer some help on areas etc.

Bill
 
Great story and pics! I think your probably correct about the cow and calf. Last May, flying back from our brown bear hunt, we flew over a cow and calf standing in the middle of a pond. A wolf was out as far as he could get to them without having to swim. Not sure what the outcome was but it was neat to see.
 
Forgot to mention. Try thrashing a willow or similar bush instead of calling. It seems to work better for me. I've used the plastic lid off a five gallon water bucket with great results if you don't have a paddle or scapula to use.
 
That is my dream hunt!! Thanks for sharing your story and photos and congrats on a successful hunt!!
 
Thanks for sharing your hunt with us. Very enjoyable read. Congrats on a great hunt.

Hiker

Proverbs 3:5-6
 
Garion33
Congrat's on a nice bull, great Pics and story. Sounds and looks like you guys had an awesume time. Now you will have me looking for your annual hunting trip posts...:)

))))........>
 
congrats on a great hunt and thanks for the story, did a good job writing it up.
Mntman

"Hunting is where you prove yourself"
 
Guys, I appreciate the feedback. If I can help anyone out there, feel free to let me know.

Garion33
 
This was a awsome trip. Are you an Alaskan Resident? How could an old Pa. Boy get in on a trip like this?
 
Zody, I am an AK resident, but a non res could do it as well. It would just cost more and take some additional planning. Let me know and I can most likely point you in the right direction. If you take a look at the 2009 Alaskan Float Hunt further down, I think I put most of the costs down. One thing to keep in mind, the costs go up the further out you fly from the anchorage area. There are folks flying out of the western areas that charge about $4K plus for some of the float hunts. It all depends on what you want. If you hunt out of some of the villages, I'll use Kotzebue for instance, you'll pay for your flight from PA, your flight to Kotzebue, and your flight out to your float area, and sometimes, a cost to fly your meat back to Kotz, then back to Anchorage with the meat. Unfortunately, the cost to hunt Alaska isn't cheap, but well worth the time, especially if you've never done it before.

Take care,
Garion33
 

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