Back from my short caribou hunting trip. Flew up to Fairbanks to meet my boss who was there on a business trip and we used his truck to drive up to the Haul Road (also called the Gravel Road, officially called the Dalton Highway). It's about a 10-14 hour drive up there, and at least 17 hour drive from our house, all within the state of Alaska. This is early for caribou hunting, but neither of us had seen the area before and wanted to go and see what we could find. Very few caribou in the Central Arctic herd have started migrating, so we only saw about 4 bulls (this archery hunt was for bulls only) and there was at least three times that number of hunters trying to stalk them, so neither of us ever got close enough to one to get a shot, but I had cow caribou with calves pass right by me while I walked across the Tundra looking for bulls. There are three main herds that migrate south-southwest for the winter; The Western Arctic herd of about 300,000 caribou, the Central Arctic herd of about 100,000 and the Porcupine Herd of about the same size. They migrate mainly in September-October, so I might go back to bowhunt then. We did see lots of wildlife, saw the Arctic Ocean, visited Prudhoe Bay, spent three nights out on the Tundra in tents and I learned to fly fish in some rivers on the way home (and caught my first Arctic Grayling with a fly rod). We passed two Musk Ox herds and the trip gave me a chance to buy that Rutger Super Redhawk Alaskan .44 Magnum revolver I've wanted, since my other pistol (a Colt .45 auto) is not powerful enough to deter an Alaskan Brown Bear or Grizzly. Polar Bears also visit Prudhoe from time to time, but not this time of year. Here are the pics: Musk Ox along the road, our first Caribou sighting, a pic of the only gas station in the last 500 miles (we carried several spare tires and 30 gallons of extra fuel in the truck because if you break down - you're on your own in the Tundra for maybe days before help arrives), tractors made for work on the north slope oil fields, caribou cow that entered our camp on Saturday while she was running from the bugs (the bugs are pretty bad in the one month of summer), a pic of the bear print I came across (a young grizzly print) while stalking the caribou, the scenery I saw overlooking the river while I ate lunch one day on the hunt about three miles off the road, a pic of the oil pipeline paralleling the gravel road on the drive, mountains along Atigun Pass, the Arctic Grayling I caught while fly fishing, a pic at the Arctic Circle sign on the way back home, the Yukon River and bridge and a fairly clear shot of Denali (Mt McKinley) on the way home.
