A friend asked me to describe the hunting experience, so I'll give that a quick shot.
First of all, for those unlucky enough to have never hunted in remote Alaska, it's difficult to describe how wild and untamed the land is. We were hunting inside what was simply "one" of the interior fires in Alaska in 2002. The amount of acreage allowed to burn in this "one of several" fires in 2002 was more than triple in size to all of the acreage burned in the L48 in that same year. Unless structures or towns are threatened the State just lets nature take its course.
No roads, no trails, no paths, no 4-wheelers, no guides or outfitters, no trucks parked in or near camp - none of that. When that plane leaves you are on your own. You and you alone are responsible for everything from your toothbrush to toilet paper. Food, shelter, clothing, hunting technique, optics, gear, everything. It's a 100% DIY hunt and that's all I have done now for the past 31 years, every year.
It's odd for me to see stories about hunts where trucks are parked beside tents or read about animals falling near trails and then to assign the word "remote" to such hunts. In this location the air taxi operator takes in ONE party of two people each year for a single hunt. That's it. It's about as original and raw and unspoiled as you can find most anywhere on the face of the earth. Perfect!
Each day we'd load up our packs with close to 50# of gear (extra clothing, rain gear, food, water, binoculars, spotting scope and tripod, survival gear, meat bags, tarps, knives, sharpeners, rope, and anything else we might need to hunt, survive, and harvest meat. We would choose a good vantage point, sit down (hopefully out of the ever-present wind), start glassing, and once a bull was spotted we would devise a plan to go after him.
Then we'd bail off of the end of the ridge and go down several hundred vertical steep feet to the valley floor below us and try to work our way in close enough to call to the bull we were chasing. Usually by the time we got off the ridge and closed the distance to the bull (all while he was out of sight) he had chosen to move on. If that happened we'd hunt into the wind and make several setups where we'd attempt to call in a nearby bull. At the end of the day we'd haul outselves and everything we had with us back up to the top of the ridge and back to camp. By the time we got back to camp we were usually so tired we just boiled some water, reconstituted our freeze dried meal, shoveled it down our throats, and went to bed.
Water was about 450'-500' below camp, so every couple of days we'd have to carry our two 2.5 gallon dromedaries down to the stream in our backpacks, fill them and our 4 water bottles, and then haul it back uphill to camp. Nothing too dramatic there, but it was a necessary and unavoidable demand on our time.
It's a physically demanding hunt. Not as difficult as spring brown bear hunting and it didn't require us to cover as much ground or climb as many vertical feet as a typical dall sheep hunt. But it was plenty challenging and demanding. I know my pants fit quite a bit more loosely after the hunt than they did before, and that's a good thing!
Topic: Longbow moose, Wrangell Mtns, 2009 (Read 4169 times)
