Hunting in Alaska takes you to places you would not head out to see on any other occasion. This past weekend a long time Alaskan friend and I hiked up into the Kenai Mountains in search of the elusive and unpredictable caribou. This is the good friend that helped me with my first Dahl sheep in the Wrangell Mountains back in 1991 or 1992. We were both wondering about the years, but were certain as to the events that unfolded on that memorable trip. This time it was my turn to help. So, we met on opening day in the Chugach National Forest with the best and easiest alpine access we could find. These days we to tend feign away from too much extra effort. Often times we would look at an ascent and question if it was worth the effort to climb a thousand feet through the alder patches, the mountains gods first line of defense for the clumsy bipeds. Alders are tightly bunched together and when you try to barrel through them any branch becomes loaded with enough energy to through most folks of the average size down to the ground. At this point the hunter carrying the 40 pound back struggles to get back up like an upside down turtle. As you struggle to get up you are usually sweating profusely, while biting insects are flying around and trying to get into any orifice or exposed skin for blood. At this point you are struggling, soaking wet with sweat and rain from the alder leaves, questioning why you should not just buy some reindeer meat at the grocery store and call it good. Instead, we decided to skip alder patches and the fields of waist high grass, false hellebore, and cow parsnip. This is akin to walking through an automatic car wash, but you cannot see the ground, resulting in stumbling, swearing, and sweating while you stir up even more biting insects. No this time we are older and wiser, and yes possibly lazier. Instead we hiked up existing mining trails and game trails.
Day one of this adventure found us at 4000 feet scouring the tundra for caribou, while the rain and wind blew. It was chilly and we did not see any animals. Dejected we headed back to camp. Day two we went up into an area that we had intended to hunt the day before, but someone was a head of us that first morning and Rich said the valley only supported one hunting party. Once we reached the crest that revealed a beautiful double cirque. Here we saw a tent near a snowfield with game bags that had meat in them. We figured the party had shot a caribou and were just our getting the rest of the meat. This meant we were the only ones hunting the drainage that day. We got on the highest point and scoped the tundra until 8 pm that evening. The day was pleasant, but still the cold northwest winds blew. We saw one caribou two hanging valleys away. The caribou hung out on a snowfield for 15 minutes and then ran off, away from us. Again dejected we headed back to camp. The next morning and our final day, we decided to look at alternative access points for future trips. Other hunters had gotten up into the valley we had hunted and we lost any motivation to climb. Ironically, the last day within a two-hour time span we saw five caribou and seven black bears. All of these animals were at least a half-day away, a half day that we did not have.
