Looking back at the caribou hunt

The first trip to fill my DC485 caribou drawing permit is history. That statement should be a hint as to how much meat was added to the freezer — exactly zero. The trip, however, was far from being a failure. Let me explain.

As I mentioned last week, the “Keystone Kops” part of the hunt was over. Those folks going were set to meet at a pullout on the Glenn Highway just north of Palmer Monday morning. Everybody showed up, more or less on time, introductions were made between those of us unknown to the others, and the trip north to the Denali Highway began.

The caravan of four vehicles made its way to Glennallen in relatively fast time. Gnarly Dan was driving his truck pulling my flatbed with the six-wheeler on board. He was carrying his four-wheeler in the bed along with some camping gear. The father/son team was driving their truck pulling a covered utility trailer which contained their two four-wheelers and other camping gear. The sheep hunter was driving his truck with his four-wheeler and gear in the bed.

I was driving my 22-foot motorhome and pulled a small 4-by-8 covered utility trailer containing camping gear, extra fuel and water, etc. We were prepared to set up a complete outdoor kitchen under the motorhome canopy and a separate, stand-alone 12-by-12 canopy. That set up turned out to work very well for cover from the rain and as a place to eat, hangout, and discuss the day’s events. Everybody had their own chairs and I set up some collapsible tables to help with cooking and eating space.

We stopped at the intersection of the Glenn and Richardson Highways to stretch, take a bathroom break and refuel the vehicles. This was Labor Day and the lines through the “Hub” station were really long. All told, we took close to an hour to get everybody past the fuel pumps and in and out of the bathrooms.

Both the Glenn and Richardson Highways rode more like rollercoasters than paved roads. The frost heaves made driving at or near the speed limit interesting at times. At about Mile 160 on the Richardson, we had a group of 7-8 cow and calf caribou cross the highway right in front of Gnarly, who was leading the caravan on this section of the trip. We saw a couple of hunters field dressing a caribou just off the side of the road a couple hundred yards past where the caribou had crossed. I took this to be a good omen for our hunt.

After turning west onto the Denali Highway, we travelled about 41 miles to where we ultimately set up camp. The road was full of potholes once we left pavement around mile 20. The excitement of beginning the hunt saw me driving faster than I should have and the motorhome did a lot of banging and clanging before I finally wised up and slowed down.

After getting camp set up, the father/son team and the sheep hunter began exploring the area on their four-wheelers. Gnarly and I stayed near the camp. Gnarly found a good spot to glass the surrounding area and I went for a walk down the gravel landing strip located near our campsite.

The Fish and Game caribou information “hotline” had said caribou were scattered in small groups all up and down the Denali Highway, so animals could walk through camp just as likely as moving by far off the road. As things turned out, we only saw caribou nearly a mile or more from the road.

Gnarly was the only one without a caribou permit, but he hoped to find a legal moose as we hunted. We did see almost as many moose as caribou, but all the moose were either cows or calves, with one exception. Later in the week when the sheep hunter and Gnarly and I were following a trail south of the Denali, we did glass what appeared to be a bull moose probably a mile away with no possible approach, either by foot or ATV. The animals had been hunted enough to be very wary of hunters.

On Monday, we experienced heavy rains and on Tuesday, we were kept awake most of the night with high winds flapping the RV canopy and 12-by-12 cover. I was hoping everything would survive undamaged once the winds died down and the sun came up. I was pleased to find both canopies came through undamaged.