Every year since I retired from the guide business, we have tried to go on a family hunt. Our family hunts usually include my son-in-law Sagen, my grandchildren, Sagen’s brother Thor and his children. It’s mainly a moose hunt with caribou thrown in if anyone gets drawn. Sagen and Thor were born in Alaska and grew up doing family moose hunts. Most of you know moose is my least favorite animal to hunt but I have always enjoyed being with my grandkids no matter which animal we were hunting. We have shared so many wonderful memories.
I think most of my grandkids enjoy this hunt the most because of the camp life. We have a wall tent with a wood-stove where we gather for our meals and when the weather is bad. It’s a great place for playing games and drying wet clothing. Our hunts have been quite successful with each one of the kids that have applied being drawn for an any bull permit. Each have taken a moose with antler spreads between 40 and 50 inches. The problem with this particular area is that the number of permits issued keeps the size of the antlers down below 50”.
Jared, age 13, took the first moose for the kids. A 42 incher. (L to R) Jared, Jens, Thor, me, Sagen, Rachel and Nathan.
Rachel packing out the antlers of her 50” moose.
When we first started doing these hunts, we used the road system to get us into an area to camp then, we used the four-wheelers to get us off the road. There are hundreds of hunters that camp along the road system using pull-offs and the numerous gravel pits. Sagen and I really don’t like that so we expanded our area by using four-wheelers to get the camp away from the road system. That helped a little but it wasn’t the same as the areas that I hunted in the guide business. You had to fly into those areas and that is too costly with the number of people we take on our hunts. In Alaska, it is always about your mode of transportation that gets you away from the other hunters. You go from walking to riding four-wheelers, or using boats and then the best of all, airplanes.
Nathan with his 46” moose.
Jens with his 44” moose. This one died in the creek.
Last fall we finally decided to spend some money and fly in to one of my old camps, Otter Lake. We were hoping for a big moose, 65+”, two or three caribou and one or two brown bears. Over the years, AAA has taken some nice moose out of this camp including a 67 incher. On this hunt however, most of us didn’t see a single moose. So much for flying in! We did harvest three brown bears and truly had a wonderful hunt. See the post, “The Family Hunt To Otter Lake”.
This year we decided on plan C, which was using boats to get to our hunting area. I haven’t used boats for moose hunting since I was in the Air Force and stationed at Galena AFS, AK. Galena is on the Yukon River.
Jack with his 54” moose. The largest rack taken my any of the kids.
Two years ago, Sagen’s brother Thor and a friend of his who had an airboat, took Thor’s youngest son Jack into the area that we planned on hunting. Jack harvested a 54” moose which was the largest that any of the grandkids have taken. Thor felt we could get a couple of moose and a few caribou out of this area. Everyone seemed excited about the area.
Thor is the proud owner of a new Solar inflatable which has a tunnel on the bottom for running in low water. It’s definitely an upgrade from my old Zodiac for sure. I hope to purchase one next year. He couldn’t swing a brand-new motor so he borrowed one from a friend. I will have to say that was the hardest starting motor that I have ever seen. He also had an 18’ Jon boat with a Go-Devil drive engine on it. He felt these would work in the low water where we were going.
Ready to go on the first load up river.
Once we arrived at the launch site the water level was even lower than we expected, with numerous sandbars exposed across the whole river. There were eight of us with a lot of gear so we knew we would have to make four or five boat trips. It took all day but we made it about 10 miles up the river. We stopped there because the water level was so low that the Go-Devil couldn’t go any further. We finished setting up the wall tent about 11 PM. Everyone was pretty beat by that time, mainly because of dragging the Jon boat through the sand and silt.
Wall tent.
We finished setting up a really nice camp the next morning. It was on a big sandbar. The water level would have to come up four feet to get into the camp. We thought we would have time to move it into the brush on a little higher ground if that happened. That would secure us another couple of feet before we were really in trouble. Over the years AAA had its share of floods, so I knew there was always a possibility that the water could come up, see post “Hell Or High Water”.
The camp.
Beautiful Alaska fall morning from camp.
Later that morning we headed up river to a high bank from where we could glass. Sagen made two trips in the Solar since the Jon boat couldn’t make it any further up the river. It was a beautiful fall day and we spotted quite a few moose including two legal bulls. We also spotted five or six small bull caribou. It was late afternoon and the two bull moose were in different locations on a hillside a good mile or so away. They were across two different channels of the river, not to mention the swamp in between. We weren’t even sure we could get across the last channel and the hill was in a non-motorize area. Nate, Jared and Nathan wanted to give it a try or at least see if they could get across the far channel. Sagen dropped them off on a sandbar across from the glassing hill. Everyone else stayed back and continued to glass the area and watched as the boys made progress. We could see it was swampy and slow going. Once they got to the far channel and finally found a place to cross, they were still another half mile down river from the moose. We watched them as they climbed the hillside going away from the moose. We found out later that they had spotted a small band of caribou bulls. They all turned out to be two-year olds, not what Jared or Nate, who had the caribou permits, were looking for. Jared had already taken a 346 B&C out in western Alaska when he was 9. He wanted something bigger and wanted to take it with his 30-30 with open sights that his grandmother and I had given him a few years before. That’s all he hunts with now days. Nate, my granddaughter Jordan’s husband, just started hunting a few years ago and has yet to shoot any big game animal. He still wanted a caribou larger than Jordan’s which was around 320 B&C. They made it back to the sandbar around 8 PM so Sagen could get them back to camp before dark.
While we were watching for the boys to come back, we spotted three other hunters dragging a canoe up the far channel past were the boys had crossed. That meant we had to rethink where we were glassing from. There were also a few other boats including a hovercraft and an airboat hunting that same hillside. It was way too crowded with too much competition.
Night in the wall tent.
That night back at camp after a great meal we decided to hunt the hillside across from our camp. I suggested that the boys climb to the top of the ridge and hunt caribou on both sides of the mountain where we had spotted the caribou that day. All of us “old guys” stayed back to glass from camp.
The boys spent the whole day on the mountain and never spotted a caribou. They did spot two groups of moose with a possible shooter in one of them. In this area to be legal, the bull must have at least a 50” spread or four brow tines on one side or be a spike fork. Sagen and I wanted to take something around 60” but Thor who says he is a “meat hunter” is fine with a spike fork.
The next day after an eggs and bacon breakfast we headed back up the river past where we had gone the first hunting day so we could glass a different area. Hopefully this area would be better for spotting caribou. This was Nate’s last day and he had one of the caribou permits. He is an Anchorage fireman who was using his four days off for this hunt. It wasn’t long until Thor spotted a nice moose two miles farther up the river. Since Jens was the first moose shooter, Thor came up with a plan and a time for Sagen to pick him and Jens up that evening.
Nate and me right before he left.
Later that afternoon another two-year-old bull caribou came through the brush within 150 yards of us. Nate passed on him because of his size. Around 3 PM Sagen, Nate and I headed back to camp so Nate could pack and get down the river to his vehicle for the long drive back to Anchorage. When Sagen returned from dropping Nate off, we unloaded some gas and supplies that we had left back at the vehicles. He filled the gas tank and headed back up river to pick up everyone. He made two trips. That night during dinner Thor told us the story about how close they came to shooting the moose. The problem was Jens never got a clear shot as it moved off through the brush.
With Nate gone we spent the next day mainly glassing for moose. They split into two groups with Thor and his boys hiking and hunting up river and Sagen and Jared going back to where the boys went on day two. Nathan, who has some disc problems, and I hung around camp and glassed. Everyone made it back at last light and we had to use headlamps to see on the last trip crossing the river. Suppertime is when we always share the actions of the day. Tonight, it was Jared’s time to share. They had spotted a big moose with six or seven cows. They could have taken a shot at the bull at 300 yards. However, Jared decided he wanted to see if he could get within 100 yards and take the moose with his 30-30. Sagen stayed put so he could finish off the moose if needed and he also wanted to video the kill. There was a spruce tree out in the middle of the opening where the bull was standing and that was where Jared was headed. He slipped in just like he planned but when he stood up behind the spruce tree all he could see was the rear end of the bull as he walked into the trees. He was within 75 yards. He was sure the moose must have heard him right before he made it to the tree. Sagen was filming and just waiting for the shot. After the moose went into the trees, he tried to call the moose back out but that wasn’t happing. Sagen showed us the video and wanted to know how big I thought the bull was. I could see one side turned in a little more than the other so my guess was right at 60”. It was definitely a shooter even for one of my clients back in my guiding days. Thor couldn’t believe that they didn’t take the 300-yard shot, but that’s not what Jared wanted to do and he was happy with the stalk. Sagen told Thor to go back up the next day because they knew the moose didn’t spook.
The moose standing in the opening right before Jared stood up behind the front spruce tree.
Early the next morning Sagen dropped Thor and his boys off on a sandbar across from camp. Then we headed up the river about a mile and drove a big stake in the sand on a sandbar and tied up the Solar. We crossed the last channel and climbed above the brush line. Later in the afternoon Jared spotted a small band of caribou about a mile and half away in the flats heading toward the mountain. It had the largest bull in it that we had spotted on this hunt. To me it was a long shot to think he could catch up with them while they were moving. The weather had also started to change with passing rain and snow showers. Sagen told Jared we were leaving the mountain around 6:30 PM so he needed to be back at the boat by around 7. Jared climbed above the last alder and disappeared. Right after he left it started to snow. Sometime around 5 to 5:30 PM we heard shots from Thor’s direction. We hoped that was good news.
Looking back toward camp.
We were just packing up when Jared came back down the mountain. He had decided to just hunt the hillside in the snow. We never spotted anything the rest of the evening.
Back at camp we waited for Thor and his boys to return. Once it was dark, we knew they had taken a moose but wasn’t sure if they were going to spend the night out or make it back to camp. Thor had told Sagen that no matter what time it was they were walking back. Sometime after dark we heard shots down river but it was too dark to run the boat other than just from camp straight across to the other side using headlamps. We took the lantern out on the sandbar so they could see where camp was and waited. Around 9:30 PM we could see their headlamps down river and at 10 they were straight across from camp. With all of us using our headlamps Sagen was able to make a trip across the river to pick them up.
Jens and Thor with the moose. Our largest a 58"incher.
They had killed the moose in the same area where it was the day before. They gutted and quartered him and brought two pack loads down to the river. They said he was close to 60”. We had a great evening celebrating the kill.
Ready for the pack out. (L to R) Jack, Jens, Thor and Jared.
Jens and Jared having fun.
The next morning everyone except Nathan and me was ferried across the river for the big pack. We were to pick them up once they made it back to the river. It was a little over a mile pack and they were going to do it in one trip. That meant they would take turns going back for the antlers. They ended up down river again because it was easier than going sideways thru the trees and swamps. Sagen showed up right before dark and Nathan and I picked him up. Sagen then made three trips down the river to get everything back to camp. The moose turned out to be a 58 incher, close to 60” for sure. That night we celebrated eating moose tenderloin and having a big camp fire.
A “Big camp fire”.
Early the next morning, we started breaking down the camp for the trip out. It was going to be 5 or 6 loads depending on how the boats were running. The borrowed motor had made it this far but it had many issues for sure. We left on the first trip downriver at 10:45 AM. Our last trip finished close to 6 PM. A long day of boating, then a six-hour drive back to Anchorage.
This was another great experience and I look forward to another trip up river but this time we need at least two good operating boats. Three Solar’s would be even better and no borrowed motors please!