Hunting season started a week ago

 Actually it opened quite a bit earlier than that but it STARTED for a couple pards and me back on 8-21.  A mere 5 airplanes and 29hrs of travel and layover time had us setting up camp on a gravel bar in the Canning river 50-60mi SE of Deadhorse AK.


We put on quite a few miles the 1st day through some very nasty ankle twisting deep soft tundra.  We were almost back to camp when we spotted 1 shooter bull about 1/2mi away, but he headed up over a hill and was gone.

Day 2 we were milling about camp trying to decide where to go (we could see 50-60 cows/calves from camp), when up on the river bluff behind camp a shoot bull showed up about 1/2mi up river.  We snuck down the gravel bar to 346 yards and couldn't get any closer without walking out in the open so I found a good spot to shoot from, steadied up my 270 and squeezed the trigger.................no reaction to the shot, but, I'm sure I heard it hit.  So I shoot several more times, all with the same non-reaction.  At this point I'm sure I'm hitting him and I'm beginning to regret not bringing a 300 because these things are darned tough.  My hunting partner is about 20' away and is insisting that I'm shooting over the critter by almost 4'!  A quick look at my table taped to the stock, some quick math in my head, and I realize that somehow I'm 1 full spin of the turret too high, 15MOA.  I take 1 spin down, settle a little high onto the shoulder and this time the caribou rears up on his hind legs and tips over, he's DRT.




We'd just finished caping/quartering and loading the packs when a 2nd 'bou stepped out onto a gravel bar in the river.  My hunting parter dug his rifle from his pack, found a good rest and put 2 well placed shots through this guy:



We spent the rest of the day hauling them back to camp.  Filleted the sliver crap off of one hole backstrap sliced it up along with one Ptarmigan and put the Coleman stove to good use.

Next day found us up the bluff West of camp and when we topped it we found a little bowl with a shooter bull in it.  It took a little waiting, a little crouching, and a little belly crawling but the 3rd 'bou fell about 1.5mi from camp.



As we're finishing up the caping/quartering and loading up the packs this guy walks up to 200yds:



The camera lens is almost 13x and at the prodding of the others I take a closer look, notice the double shovels and fair fronts, at which point I swap from the camera to the rifle:



We spend the rest of that day getting the 1st one back to camp got in early and had some caribou cubed up into spaghetti.  We spent the next getting mine back.  We took a little rest that afternoon and made up some alfredo with more of the cubed up caribou.

The next day we found a good vantage point over the river and sat for a few hours glassing, taking pics of the tundra and river valley,and yes, napping in the sun.  Late afternoon a good caribou appeared out of nowhere down in the river valley.  One pard had a rifle snafu, the other miscalculated reticle subtension/scope power and the nicest bull we'd seen all trip looked like he'd get away scott-free.  We packed up our stuff and headed back to camp and split up a bit when one pard spotted the big bull feeding out on the tundra just about 600yds from camp.  We slipped into the river  and used it's cover to get to about 350yds, I rolled video from there while the other 2 snuck another 25yds closer, set up and put the hurt on him:



Got him back to camp and it was Mexican rice/Caribou tacos for dinner.  That evening we heard wolves in the middle of the night and woke up to thick fog the next am.  The next morning over coffee we discussed the wolves howling just to make sure we weren't dreaming when one appeared on the riverbank between 275 and 350yds.  The fog was too thick to get an LRF reading and later when we could, we had trouble deciding exactly where he'd been standing.  At any rate, he was dead away from me and I rushed my shot a bit as I often do with coyotes, I'm always sure that they're just about to bolt.  I missed and he didn't stick around for a repeat performance.  We heard a 2nd wolf howl from out near the freshest 'bou carcass, then we started howling back.  I tried to sneak one out on the tundra but in true predator fashion he was out in the open where he couldn't be approached.  We howled back and forth for over an hour with at least 4 different wolves answering, and then when the fog lifted the wolves left.

The caribou in the valley must not have liked all that wolf activity because they left.  We saw 1 bull that our part with the only remaining tag passed on, and then saw only 2 cow/calf pairs the last day.

The Cub came in and picked us all up the next day as we broke camp and on the 20min flight back to Kavik River Camp I only saw 2 'bou.  We spent the night @ Kavik River Camp (the place that Sarah Palin hunted out of on her show last year) and didn't have anything else to shoot at.  Pard and I did catch what were assuredly the 2 smallest Arctic Char in the river and after that we called it a trip.  5 more airplanes and we were back in Fargo.  A late charter due to fog and a luggage snafu has most of my gear still sitting in Deadhorse as I type this but a very nice lady from Northern Air Cargo has bent over backwards to help us out on the logistics of getting our stuff home so I just need a little time on the Fed Ex website to get things straightened out.

It truly was an adventure.