Greetings from Dillingham

[KC]

I'm in the Dillingham Public Library. Just got back from the first trip. Tom got a medium bull caribou. It's not the one that he wanted but the 'bou committed suicide by walking right into camp and Tom decided to take him. Tom dropped him rigth on the shore of the lake so we didn't have to haul him. The plane could taxi right up to the bull.

Then the pilot moved us onto Lake Kulik where there was a canoe waiting for us. We canoed down Lake Kulik, the Wind River, Milkchalk Lake, Peace River, Lake Beverly and down the the Agulapak to the bottom, where we caught a bunch of Northern Pike. Ate some but let most of them go.

All the fires have created lots of smoke so the views of one of the most beautiful places on Earth (Lake Kulik) have been obscured. Hope things will clear for the next trip.

Cooling my heels for a few days, until the 4th, when we fly in to hunt moose.

Pictures to come in a month or so when I get home. Don't want to risk losing them on this unfamiliar computer.

KC

 

[Ovis]

KC

You're making me jealous here. I'm packing up the house, tearing down swing sets, mowing the lawn, organizing things for the movers (i.e. setting aside my hunting gear) and I read this...wish I was there.

One more month though.

Rest up and good luck with the moose hunting. Bring back something bigger than Moosie did last year...shouldn't be hard.

 

[Pygmy]

KC....Glad to hear you are having a good time..

I've spent a few days in Dillingham myself... It ain't CHEAP, but you can get some pretty good chow there, including PIZZA...

Good luck on your moose hunt... While you are chasing moose in AK, I'll be chasing bull elk in your home state of CO...

Be careful and have a good hunt..

 

[Moosie]

KC, Thanx for Stopping by !!! I'm out of here in 43 Hours for 2 weeks, Unfortunately I'll have no Cafe' to post with... But I hope I'll live

Good luck to ya bud, Glad you're doing fine and good luck !!!

 

[MarvB]

Good to hear from ya KC!
Have a great hunt and tip one over for all of us!
Pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures............

 

[guppie9]

Welcome to Alaska...have fun and be sure to spend lots of money!!!

 

[Tom]

I'm back in San Antonio. Wish we could have gottem brown bear. We saw a lot of them. Three were about 200 yards from camp the last day in the bush. One looked pretty big, at least bigger than the others. The $10,000 to go with the non-resident guide requirement makes them pretty far away for me though. Way farther than the 200 yards, where they were standing.

We saw lots of fish, caught some, and had some good canoeing. I can post my pictures, but it will take a while, I just got back. Alaska is very nice, but the travel makes it expensive.

Only $260 for a non resident caribou tag, but a $3000 trip with lots of travel time and expense to get it up to that. The people and the country and game and fish are very nice though! Thanks to KC for inviting me on this first of three legs he is doing. All three legs go into the bush from Dillingham, AK.

 

[Nut]

Welcome back and congrats on the bou Tom.

 

[Tom]

I got my pictures in a webshots album.

http://community.webshots.com/album/184121011tkVZKw

Its from leg one of three legs KC is doing. Thanks to him for inviting me on this leg. He's doing leg two now with 3 other guys. Two rafts with two guys each. They float the same place and assist each other, hopefully. Even push moose toward each other maybe.

After that, he does a third leg with another guy for caribou. Hopefully, the caribou will be more bunched up by then and they can be flown into a big group of them.

The caribou I got was 4x6 with 32 inch main beam and in velvet. It was a deal, when it came down to the lake and called me in for the shots. Splush, splush, splush. Somethings in the lake! Its a caribou! Get your gun! Its got a rack! Whoo, hoo. Bang, . . ., bang, . . ., bang, ...
He went into the trees. I got him.

We caught some northern pike and had some bird to eat also. Alaska is a nice place, it just costs a lot to do things there. penair.com gets to some pretty remote places economically though. Maybe that's a way to work on doing it cheaper unless I move there someday.

Get a bag of popcorn and a beer and go look at the pictures with comments written below them at webshots there.

 

[whitedeer]

Great pictures, as well as a great narative on your trip.....Thanks, Tom!

 

[mtmiller]

Looks like a big time Tom. Way to go on the 'bou. One of these days when I find a rich wife, I hope to chase them with a bow. Maybe the way I shoot, I should stick to a rifle.

Thanks for sharing the pics and congrats on the biggest northern.

 

[1_pointer]

Hell, miller I can't wait THAT long! We need to go in the next two year!

 

[Calif. Hunter]

Tom - why did they even bother to put three strings of grated cheese on those salmon tacos?

 

[Tom]

It would be more like a Cali.vegan taco without them?

 

[KC]

Back in the Dillingham library again. Got back from the bush on the 15th. Joe got a moose, just at the 50" legal minimum. The local game warden (actually a state trooper) checked us out by landing on the gravel bar in a tiny plane with tundra tires. The antlers look great and they will make a nice mount. We saw only 9 moose; three cows with calves, two small bulls not legal and the one that we killed. That's for four guys who know what they are doing, who hunted hard and long for eleven days. Kind of dissappointing.

Saw three times as many people as moose. Six raft teams were on the river at the same time. One raft team of six people, took a 69" moose that might make the B&C book. Each raft team that we saw , was about 25% successful pretty consistently.

The rafting is hard work, not just floating; lots of small braids, rowing hard in narrow channels, dragging the raft through shallows, avoiding sweepers and log jams. "Floating" in the rain is miserable. Sometimes the wind came up when we were on a slow moving part of the river and we had to row to keep going downstream.

Tough hiking through alder thickets, willows, marsh mounds, muskeg bogs and bottomless back sloughs to get to beaver ponds, sloughs and to the tundra beyond. This place is not for weanies. We hunted the beaver ponds and did lots of calling. Hiked as far as three miles from the river to check out cottonwood groves and beaver ponds on side drainages.

We must be sick because we had a great time.

Frank Gulla and I are cooling our heels in Dillingham for a few days because the weather has been warmer than usual (highs in the 40s) and the 'bou are still spread out thin so the pilot can't tell us a good place to hunt. They haven't started to migrate yet and it's really late. We flew back from the bottom of the King Salmon River, about 150 miles, and saw only a couple of dozen 'bou on the ground. We're waiting for a storm to come through on Saturdy that might be cold enough to start them moving and to bunch up. If that happens, we will fly out. If they stay in the hills and spread thin, we will go home.

Pictures to come later when I get back home.

KC

 

[Daniel in Ak]

Tom,congrats to you on your bou.And I know what you and KC mean by the smoke covering.We had a time of it with the chicken and boundry fires.THe smoke played hell with us for glassing and when it finally cleared up the caribou re-migrated.Daniel

 

[KC]

After waiting in Dillingham for five days, the pilot said they couldn't find any 'bou so we might as well go home. So no third trip. That was really dissapointing. But it gives me an excuse to return for another hunt.

Here's a pic of Joe's moose.

KC