Photo Essay: Caribou Hunts from Seasons Past

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Photo Essay
  • The drive north from Fairbanks usually involves plenty of blown tires. My brothers Danny (left) and Matt (right) prepare to swap one out.
  • Here we are pulling canoes up a river toward one of our hunting locations. We usually dragged canoes for a day or two, reaching camp locations between five and nine miles upstream from our point of departure.
  • Grayling can usually be found along the way. The flesh is white and delicate. It deteriorates very quickly, though, so the fish must be eaten soon after they are caught. They’ll bitchslap a dry fly if you catch them in the right mood, but they seem to prefer spinners. I’ve caught a lot of them on Panther Martins.
  • Grizzlies can usually be found. They seem to concentrate along the rivers, where they dig a variety of roots. And no doubt they are drawn by the possibility of caribou gut piles left by hunters. One time, my brother Matt had to wade into the river to head off and spook a grizzly that was fixing to swim over to our camp. But usually they’re pretty skittish and bolt once they smell you.
  • Here’s a bull I killed in late-September. By this time they’ve usually shed all of their velvet. This bull had nicely polished antlers.
  • My brother Matt butchering some bulls.
  • An October caribou camp. This is a bit late in the year for a good hunt in the far north. Gets bitterly cold and the rivers start to freeze.
  • A sow grizzly with two sub-adult cubs. They stared at us until they smelled us, and then they hightailed. The bears were still running in the other direction when they were a mile away.
  • A pile of late-season caribou meat and heads.
  • Our good friend Ronny Boehme with an early season bull. You need to peel away the velvet right away. It rots very quickly and flies will lay eggs on it. When it’s fresh, though, it’s very soft. I want to start producing bras and panties made of tanned antler velvet, fur-side in. I’d put Victoria’s Secret out of business.
  • A rain storm in the Brooks Range, miles away, sent down a flood of water that inundated our gravel bar camp on this September hunt. Ronny Boehme lost his beer in the flood and nearly had an emotional breakdown. He persevered, thanks to mine and Danny’s Nalgene bottle full of vodka.
  • My brother Danny with a bull that’s begun to shed its velvet.
  • Another caribou camp. Notice the layers of willow limbs used to separate bags of meat to ensure proper airflow.
  • Muskoxen are a not-so-rare sight in this area. Even if you don’t see the animals, you’ll still find tufts of their wool hanging from willows along the trails that parallel the rivers.
  • My brother Matt and our buddy Matt Drost cleaning ptarmigan on our first-ever caribou hunt. That year we had five guys, killed five bulls.
  • Cooking ptarmigan.
  • Boned-out meat, ready to be transported.
  • An October hunt. Notice that the river is frozen and that we’re actually dragging our canoe down a waterway that we paddled up a few days before. The upside is that meat keeps very well under such conditions. And there are no flies.
  • Heading back to the put-in with a load of antlers and hundreds of pounds of boned-out meat. This is a treacherous activity with overburdened canoes.
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This Sunday, we’ll kick off the New Year with a fresh episode of MeatEater. The show takes us up to the Western Brooks Range for a fly-in caribou hunt with the writer Timothy Ferriss. Over the years I’ve been lucky to do a fair bit of caribou hunting, but this was the first time I ever flew into a remote location with the specific purpose of chasing the animals. In the past, my buddies and I have always gotten into good caribou country the hard way, by dragging canoes upriver on the Arctic plain that stretches from the Brooks Range northward to the Beaufort Sea. The following photo essay includes images culled from a variety of such hunts, beginning in 2002 and stretching up to around 2008. For anyone who thinks that adventurous hunts are beyond their budget, keep in mind that we usually pulled these off for less than a thousand dollars per person. And we always killed bulls.

5 Responses to “Photo Essay: Caribou Hunts from Seasons Past”

  1. jryoung

    Steve,
    If you could I (and probably many others) would love to hear some general details on how you did it. It sounds like you rendezvoused in Fairbanks, drove north towards the Beaufort and at some point when on the north slope you parked and hiked back south (in general) up stream.

    Can you give some of the details about the “less than a thousand dollars per hunter” and what it included?
    - Licenses/tags
    - Transport to Fairbanks
    - Rental car/truck
    - Meat transport back to the lower 48

    Looking forward to Sunday’s show.

    • Steven Rinella Steven Rinella

      Like all advice, mine was particular to my own set of experiences. I have friends and family in Alaska, so have access to trucks and canoes. But I’d usually fly to either Anchorage or Fairbanks and then hook up with friends. We’d head north from Fairbanks and hunt off the Dalton. Fly home with frozen meat checked as luggage on the plane and then ship clothes/gear home because they are lighter and there’s no rush. I’m sure if you spent an hour on the phone you’d price the whole thing out according to your particular needs.

      • jryoung

        Thanks Steve, I’ve been poking around the last couple of days trying to ballpark some pricing. Having family/friends and their equipment up there is a huge plus. So much of the challenge with AK is just the logistics. I’m hoping to be able to get up there in 2014 or 2015.

  2. lokidog

    Watching the show tonight and noticed you said the Grayling is in the Char family, it is actually in the Whitefish family. Enjoy your shows.

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