Enjoy the Journey

As a hunter there is something about Alaska that just draws your attention like nothing else. Maybe it’s the feeling of it being a truly wild place full of wild animals. Or maybe it’s being so far away from civilization that you feel like you’re traveling back in time to when frontiersmen traveled west. One thing is for sure Alaska is a place most hunters dream of going to. After graduating college in 2016 I made a promise to myself by 2020 I would go on a hunt in Alaska. At the time I had no idea what I wanted to hunt or how much it would cost but I knew for sure I wanted to experience what I felt to be the last frontier for myself. Maybe it was the danger or the unknown, but Alaska has always drawn my attention.

After the realities of life coming into perspective and realizing what the real world was actually like that dream fell by the wayside my first few years of working.  I had other priorities and I just stopped thinking about it for a couple of years. After paying off student loans and starting up a career I started looking into seeing what it actually cost to hunt out of state. Well, that sure put a stop to my dreams of a moose, Dall sheep, and Grizzly bear hunt. Most of the animals that you can hunt in Alaska you either need to be a resident, related to a resident, or hire a guide in order to hunt them. One hunt did stick out as doable Alaska on a budget without hiring a guide and that was a DIY drop camp caribou hunt. After seeing the prices of the sheep and bear hunts, I thought my Alaska dram would just stay a dream, but a DIY caribou hunt gave me that light at the end of the tunnel. Right away I shot a text to my long-time hunting partner Austin seeing if he had any interest in heading west and chasing some caribou.

Having spent my college years in Bozeman Montana I have had a few years of spot and stalk hunting under my belt. For Austin this would be his first hunt in this style, He is what I would consider a true archery whitetail hunter. If it’s not archery season, he is getting ready for archery season. He wanted to give this spot and stalk thing a try and see what Alaska was all about. He only hunted with a rifle once and that was using iron sights, he really only uses a bow when hunting big game. I spent the next couple of weeks heavily researching companies that would fly us out. Next thing I know we are on the phone booking our hunt for the 2020 season.

For the next year and a half all I could think about was 1) I am going to Alaska, and I finally get the experience only what I’ve seen on tv. 2) I have to start getting ready. I was still skeptical about actually being successful without a guide hunting a place and a species I had no idea anything about. I started running trying to get myself cardiovascular in shape to hike miles a day in hope of filling my pack with a caribou. I actually really started liking running and actually ended up running a solo half marathon, which wasn’t far off from the amount of hiking I ended up doing on a daily basis in Alaska. I was constantly watching videos on the hunt and reaching out to people to get any bit of advice I could, reading as much information as I could find on hunting Alaska, so I was as prepared for this hunt as possible.

One of the people I reached out to be a friend’s dad that I had never met before that use to live and hunt in Alaska. We spent an hour talking on the phone. He told me everything how to hunt caribou how they react to what gear would be best for when I was out there. I don’t think I’ve ever taken such detailed notes in my life as I did on that call. The other person I reached out to was Austin Manelick who I met on Instagram through his Mission Alaska page. He gave me a lot of tips on gear and things like how to keep meat from spoiling out in the field. this was an important hunt to me, and I wanted myself to be as prepared as possible for it.

Before I knew it, it was time to pack up and fly out to Alaska. In 2020 fashion there was of course a few obstacles in the way. As you may know Covid- 19 came in and make traveling a mess, we had to pass a test showing we were negative within a 3-day period of arriving in Alaska or you couldn’t enter the state. They also canceled the early bear hunting season to nonresidents so we were worried they would do the same to our caribou hunt. Luckily everything worked out, at the end of the day I was happy and stopped worrying once the plane tires hit the tarmac in Kotzebue. Austin and I got our luggage Headed to Joe’s Airbnb and walked around the town looking for a place to get a good meal. Coming from Pennsylvania it was a long day of flying, it took us about 24 hours, and 3 separate flights until we reached the town of Kotzebue. That 24-hour layover in anchorage was pretty brutal having to wear a mask the entire time but we were able to sleep on the benches. We ended up meeting another hunter J.P who was going to Kotzebue as well to go hunt brown bear with his brother who lives up there. We talked to him for a while he had been up hunting in Alaska a few times before, so he was telling us what to expect and such.

Once we finally made it to Kotzebue we went straight to our Airbnb. Joe’s place was a cozy house full of muskox and bear hides, doll sheep skull on the wall, and antlers throughout the place. It was the perfect place to stay and if you have ever been to a small Alaska town the prices of rooms are very expensive, so it was nice to stay in a place a little lighter on the wallet. We walked the town saw some seals out in the ocean and got a lay of the land before we went out for dinner. We did some researched before we flew in on what there was to eat, and we found a pizza place that seemed like a safe bet until we saw their menu. They had a cream cheese and shrimp pizza that cost $40… that was a hard no for us. We ended up in an Asian restaurant that served the biggest plates full of food it was more food than we could finish and if you know me that’s saying something. To our pleasant surprise the food was actually really good, I’m sure a lot better than that pizza we read about. We walked back to Joes place, that night felt like Christmas eve the excitement and anticipation of being in the field made it near impossible to fall asleep. One thing I sure was happy to spend one last night in the heat and sleep on a comfortable mattress.

The next day we woke up and got the call that we are scheduled to fly out around lunch time. We packed up all of our gear and headed to breakfast to get one last real meal in us before we survived off mountain house meals for a week. The crew picked us and our gear up and loaded up the plane. We jumped in the float plane and off we went. This was easily the most beautiful country I had ever seen. Just nature in its purest form, not a person or a building even remotely in site. We flew east for an hour and a half, two hours. Flying low over mountain ranges and the bluest rivers you have ever seen; the colors of Alaska were truly amazing. Finally, the piolet found the pond he wanted to drop us off at. He circled a few times to make sure conditions were safe to land and figure out the best rout of action he brought us down for a smooth landing right on the pond. We unloaded all of our hunting and camping gear, and our food for the week and just like that he was off again, and it was just Austin and I and a big pile of gear.

We found a good as flat as it gets spot to set up our tent and cook station, right on the edge of the pond. We had the tent about 75 yards from our cook station just to play it safe since we now were in grizzly bear country. We were getting antsy to start scouting for the next morning when we could actually start hunting. So, we set everything up as fast as we could and off, we were looking for caribou. Our camp was in between two ridges with a river winding Infront of us, and in the far-off distance you could see huge mountain tops. You could see for miles in that country all without signs of anyone had ever even been here before. The piolet suggested we check out the river and the ridge tops to glass for caribou, so we did just that. He also suggested if we get a clear sky at night to wake up around 2-3 am to check out the northern lights.  Taking his advice, we started heading towards the river first. We quick checked our guns to make sure they were sighted in properly and did a little bit of fishing and scouting down by the river. We ended up seeing 3 really nice bull caribou that day, they were across the river about a mile and a half away on the move. Surprisingly those bulls walking across that hillside were a lot harder to spot then I expected. They blended into their surroundings pretty well considering it was the wide-open tundra. Those 3 caribou were more than enough to keep our hopes of and excitement up for big things to happen the next day. Where we were the sun was up around 6:30 am and set around 9 pm. We were so worn out that we decided we better head back to camp get a meal in us and get some sleep before the big day. We must have stayed up 2 hours in the tent just talking about the day to come, and maybe a little freaked out that there might be a grizzly bear right outside of our tent. I guess the danger or thought of danger added to the excitement of the hunt.

The big day was here we got our gear on heated up our mountain house meals packed lunch and off we went. We were so excited to get the day started it felt like we were basically running to the top of the ridge to scout, which is a lot harder than it sounds considering the barren ground is some of the weirdest surface you have ever walked on. One second its flat and hard then next its giant tufts of brush or spongy moss that is full of moisture. The tufts of grass actually came in handy to the ptarmigan because even though they were white and brown the tufts of grass were just high enough that it would hide them from plane sight until you spooked them, and they all flushed. The plants were full of all different colors from reds, greens, and yellows. The hillsides were scattered with bushes of wild blueberries. When we got to the ridge top, we both separated by a hundred yards or so and started glassing for animals. I will admit I sat right next to a big area full of blueberries I could have sat there glassed and ate them all day. Although it wasn’t long before I see Austin flagging me down. Three bulls about a half mile down the ridge and headed our way.

 Maybe this would end up being like all the videos of large groups of caribou walking by in spurts all day. We quickly got in position and closed the gap so they would walk right into us, we wanted to get as close as possible to these bulls. That’s just what happened the 3 bulls got within one hundred yards just feeding along the undergrowth. They weren’t quite what we were looking for but the excitement of the first day right off the bat having 3 bulls right Infront of us kept our hopes up for big things to happen. Since they weren’t bulls either of us were interested in, we decided it would be ok if we moved around and if they saw us. Caribou are very curious animals at first, they were a bit spooked by us and backed up but then they started getting closer to us trying to figure out what we were. Eventually they walked off we spent the rest of the day hiking around and glassing from both ridges not seeing anything else but a fox.

 For a couple of east coast boys who mostly spend our time in the deer stand identifying bulls from cows wasn’t as easily as we are though. We could only shoot a bull and caribou of both sex sport antlers. The best way to identify that it was a bull was by seeing its penis sheath, other than that we went off of antler size. Probably not the most accurate way to do things but we gave it our best effort.

We decided to switch this time we hiked to the opposite ridge and set up and spent the entire day scouting the opposite basin. The ridge overlooked a huge basin as well as the river bottom so we could see everything for a few miles Infront us and to each side. Pretty early in our day we saw 2 wolves the opposite banks of the river a gray one and a white one they were trotting in our direction. We hiked down with just our guns in attempt to intersect them farther up the river, we were a bit too late, and they headed into the brush where we lost sight of them before they were in range. I’m sure they saw us attempting to shorten the distance a mile off and up and boogied on out of there. So, we headed back up the ridge and got back on the glass.

It wasn’t long until Austin pointed out 2 large brown spots across the river chasing each other all over like they were playing. At first, we thought they were 2 Grizzlies since we saw one headed that way earlier in the morning but the more, we looked we realized what they actually were. They were two giant muskox headed our way. They chased each other around for about an hour getting closer and closer to us. Well eventually that grizzly that we saw first thing that morning must have gotten wind of these muskox and the chase was on. The muskox ended up getting separated from each other in a mass confusion. We watched the bear chase the one muskox full speed for what must have been 3 miles until we lost sight of them. I couldn’t believe that a bear and a muskox with the size they both are could for one run that fast, and two run that far. That encounter alone was the coolest things I had experienced and made the trip worth it right there.

Seeing Wildlife interact like that was unreal to me and the fact of seeing a wild muskox I didn’t ever expect to see that. Side notes but when we got back to Kotzebue, we stayed at Joe’s place again, when we opened the door there, he was cooking Muskox on his stove to have for dinner that night. He is a big muskox hunter and has been fortunate to shoot a few over the years. He told me that witnessing an interaction between a muskox and a grizzly is something special and you don’t see that every day.

Back to the story that day we only saw one caribou and it was a failed stalk. It was a lone bull out in the middle of the basin. We were able to get down to him and set up to take the shot. Right before I was about to pull the trigger off the started running. It wasn’t a shot that I was able to make, and he made it out clean and across the river without an issue. I was starting to get discouraged. I didn’t understand why we weren’t seeing any caribou. We were putting the miles in that’s for sure one day we hiked 14 miles. One plus to all of this hiking around was once it was lunch time, I got to sit up on that hillside eat my fat peanut butter and jelly sandwich and all the candy I could handle. We also spent the majority of our day just glassing that wide open country. We just couldn’t seem to find any caribou. Or at least what we envisioned and what everyone was telling us we would see. We were told we would see between 20 to a couple hundred caribou a day, well it was far from that. The groups before us told us to hold tight wait for something good because you will see plenty. It started taking its toll on me I was in a place I couldn’t wait to get to and explore and I was having a blast but mentally it was really beating me down and I was feeling very depressed. This feeling went on for the entire week out there. I don’t know if it was the extreme remoteness, or the dead quiet of the country, but it was beating me up. Well, we ended up wrapping up the day went back to the tent and got the stove ripping. We heated up our mountain house meals and fell asleep fast. That day wore me out, my fear of those bears outside the tent was long gone all I could thing about was sleeping.

The next day we woke up from our frigid tent ready for another great day of hunting. We got up put on our freezing old gear ate our meals and packed our lunch and off to hiking we went bright and early. If you aren’t aware of Alaska weather in early September, it is all over the place. One minute it is raining and 30 outside the next the sun is beating down and its 60 out. It’s a very wet place it must have rained every day we were there at some point in the day. So, we had our packs stuffed with the appropriate clothes no matter what the weather would bring us. Maybe my boots weren’t the best, but they were soaked for the entire week and my feet were freezing cold the entire trip. We got set up on the ridge top and glassed but didn’t see anything for the first handful of hours. Until all the sudden Austin in excitement says to me “Dude Caribou”.  Its go time let’s get ready to make the stalk on this bull. This was the second bull this trip that was hanging out all by himself. We both came to the conclusion that the time of year the mature bulls were separation from their bachelor groups and going their separate ways. I don’t know how true that actually was but for us east coast whitetail hunters it made sense to us.  He turned the corner out of site. We ditched our packs and booked it into high gear to the ridge top he was under. We knew that a caribou on the move is a caribou you most likely won’t catch up with unless you are able to cut them off. Luckily it had no idea we were there and was only feeding off into the other direction so we were convinced we could catch up to it. Adrenaline was pumping Austin was up on the gun we had time to set up and take the shot this bull was just munching away. Austin couldn’t get the sights on him comfortably, so he rested the gun on my shoulder lined up the shot. We had plenty of time to make sure Austin could make his first shot count. BOOM… WHACK. He made a great shot, but that bull wasn’t going down so easy he ran to the creek bottom and into the bushes. “Did I hit Him!?”. As we rushed to the next vantage point “oh you hit him alright, but you better keep shooting he isn’t down yet”.  Austin set up on my shoulder again.  I said, “you better shoot him quick has getting into the thick stuff”. With all of the excitement and adrenaline pumping Austin has having a hard time finding him in the brush. Just in time he lined up on him again and BOOM... WHACK. BOOM… WHACK. Two shots and down he went. We ran to that creek bed and there he was a monster of a bull. Dark chocolate antlers with a beautiful white mane. He was a stud mature caribou. We were both through the roof excitement. After a quick photoshoot we got to work and butchered and packed up the Caribou before the fly’s got to it or the bears and wolves we saw the day before.

It was a long way back to camp up and down ridges with all that meat. We got it all to the top of the ridge and Austin let me keep hunting as he took a few trips of the meat back to camp. I sat on the ridge skinning out the head of his caribou as he packed meat back. as I was trimming meat from the cape of Austin’s bull when a very confident fox came within arm’s reach taking the scraps from the pile next to me one at a time hiding them in the hill below. I didn’t see anything the next few days, but I helped him bring some loads of meat and the cape back to camp. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful we saw one. A group of maybe 12 cow caribou with one really young bull coming right towards us from across the river which was a good way to end the trip. I ended up not filling my tag which was fine by me because I left feeling like I really got the full Alaska experience and that’s what I came to Alaska for. We were even fortunate enough to have one clear sky night that we woke up briefly for to see the northern lights. I was thrilled for Austin on shooting a great caribou and it was a hunt I don’t think either of us will ever forget.

After the hardest week of hunting in my life Austin and I were ready to head back to Kotzebue. We were a bit worried because the weather was getting rough, and a storm was coming. Luckily the pilot picked us up and got us back just in time before the storm arrived. Back in Kotzebue after packing up Austin’s caribou in boxes to send home we went straight back to Joe’s place. I never realized how much I appreciate a nice warm shower and to finally warm my feet up they tingled for the next week. After we each got our shower and fresh change of clean clothes, we called our families back home and went straight to that Asian restaurant. Finally eating real food again was nice to say the least and this time we both finished our mounding plates of food.  After paying our tab we went back to Joe’s and were able to sleep in beds again. I never realized how much I took for granted everyday comforts till I got back to town after that trip.

Alaska was a strange place, as a hunter before I got there it felt like I was going to the promise land definitely a place of dreams. Don’t get me wrong it was even more beautiful than what I imagined, but the thing that really through me off and I wasn’t expecting was the toll it takes on you. Even though I was with my best friend the entire week and in a place, I have dreamed about for years doing my absolute favorite activity in the world. Alaska was a brutal and lonely place to me. It was also a very physically demanding place which was fine by me I trained for that for a long time, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that tough. The entire week we hiked 64 miles through surprisingly rough terrain. Even though it was a mentally challenging trip the reason I feel Alaska is such a strange place is because the second I left I couldn’t wait to go back again. If it wasn’t for my Fiancé waiting back at home for me, I would have landed back in Pennsylvania packed up the car and moved there. It’s a place once you go it grabs on to you and there’s no shaking it off, just can’t stop thinking about going back. Alaska is hands down the most amazing place I have ever been and no matter if you’re a hunter or not I would highly recommend everyone to see it for themselves.  

At first, I was worried about getting a caribou but then the second I set foot in the tundra I realized it was about a lot more than just harvesting a caribou. I took it all in, really tried to step back and enjoy just being in Alaska, being in this wild country. Everything from seeing these animals I have never seen before to living out of a tent all week with one of my best friends. I quickly realized it’s not about the kill anymore its about enjoying the hunt and realizing what you’re doing and experiencing. In hunting as well as in life itself it’s important to set those goals for yourself but not be so hyper focused on the goal and take a step back and enjoy the journey.