I have been looking forward to
this hunt for many months. The 2020 caribou season was the first time the
Harris family would go on a hunt together, with nobody else. I was excited
about the opportunity to get away from work, go camping in the cab-over camper,
expose Ashton and Josie to harvesting a caribou, hunt for ptarmigan, fish for
grayling, putting meat in our freezer, help our neighbor fill their freezer,
and most of all… spend some good quality family time together.
August 10 marked the start of
caribou season. We would only have a couple days to hunt due to the need to get
home to open Kinder Ready Kids for the start of the school year on the 13th.
This limited our hunting time drastically, but it was plenty of time to get the
job done.
We decided to get to the hunting
area on the 7th to setup and get acclimated prior to opening day on
the 10th. We got to our camping spot late on the first night so we
only had time to watch a movie and go to sleep.
We gladly slept in the next
morning since we didn’t have anything we truly needed to do by any certain
time. We eventually got around and started our day outside. We packed a lunch
for the day, the fishing gear, and headed out on the ATVs to explore the area
and get a feel for our hunting day options. During our ride, I gazed up at the
mountain and saw a couple caribou hiking the ridge… this was a great sign for the
upcoming hunt opener. The trail was in great condition and easy to ride.
Unfortunately, a silly beaver decided to dam up a creek which flooded the trail
and prevented us from exploring about 5 miles of it. Ashton was curious about
the beaver lodge and dam so we explored this area a bit and decided to have
lunch here as well.
If you know Ashton, you are
likely aware of his obsession with catching “baby fish”. He could spend his
entire summer trying to catch fish with his net, putting them in a bucket, and
just playing with them (Josie is starting to catch that obsession too). Of
course, that’s what he wanted to do at some point. We couldn’t find a pool of
water with minnows, so we stopped at a lake and tried our hand at fishing. I
hooked into a couple grayling and gave Ashton one to keep in his bucket; the
plan was to cook it over the fire later.
Rain looked like it was moving in
so we decided to pack up and head back to the camper. After about 30 minutes of
riding, a cold blast of air hit us, signaling inevitable rain. We sped up as
the skies started dumping on us. We got back to the camper 10 minutes later and
were glad to have a comfortable place to warm up and dry off in. This was the
first time we took a camper with us hunting and we admit that we are now
spoiled by the luxury!
It rained for the rest of the
night and we just watched movies, wrestled, played dinosaurs, and snacked.
The next day was more of the
same… no real plan except have fun and prepare for opening day. I spent a good
part of the day looking through the binoculars and spotting scope at the
mountain side. Of the many hours I was glassing, I only saw one caribou. I was
able to center it in the spotting scope and show Ashton. He was very excited to
see his first caribou!
I took a .22 pellet, pump action
rifle with to introduce Ashton to shooting a more realistic gun. We reviewed
gun safety and expectations. He understands to always act like the gun is
loaded and to never point it at anything he doesn’t plan to shoot. This was his first experience with a rifle
type gun so we spent some time going over the proper way to hold a rifle, where
to place it on the shoulder, how to use the safety, trigger finger placement,
using the sights, breathing, and aiming. HE ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! He was a good
little shooter too. I have a feeling he will be reminding me about this
shooting session many times, and likely convince me to set it up in the
backyard (which I will gladly oversee).
Our task at hand for the day…
find baby fish to catch. We jumped on the ATVs and headed down to the creek. We
quickly found a couple slack water creeks with minnows in them. The minnows
were FAST and smart. Any time Ashton would get close to them, they would hide
under rocks. If he took a net swipe at them, he would always come up empty
handed. DAD TO THE RESCUE! I had to be sneaky and hide behind bushes next to
the water for a while, but finally got a good swipe at a rising minnow. Dad 1,
Minnows 0. I placed the minnow in Ashon’s bucket and he was excited.
The score eventually became Dad 1
Minnows 15 because these things were incredibly elusive. I finally notched a
second point in my column eventually but that’s all I could manage with these
speedy minnow missiles.
I then turned my focus to bigger
fish. We found a couple holes with grayling in them and Ashton gladly landed my
fish in his net. He wasn’t able to fly fish but was perfectly happy being the
netter.
Once again, rain was moving in
and we retreated back to the camper for the night. The plan for opening day was
to ride ATVs about 2 miles in, walk about a mile up to a plateau, and hang out
there for the day while we look for roaming caribou around us.
Around 7PM a car pulls into the
camping area. Two people get out, grab their packs and rifles, and hit the
trail on foot. It turns out they went exactly where we were planning on
spending opening day as a family. They set up a tent and claimed the area…
bummer!
I told Danielle that if it’s
raining and the weather is bad, we won’t need go get up early. We were going to
be fair weather hunters this trip. The key to getting kids hooked on and enjoy
anything outdoors is to make sure they have fun. Kids don’t have fun if they
are cold, wet, hungry, or tired. The last thing I wanted to do was push Ashton
and Josie to hunt in the rain and cold after waking up early. This would surely
drive them to dislike hunting in the future. I would much rather not shoot
anything and have them love the experience instead of shooting two caribou and
them hating every moment of it.
I woke up at 5AM the next morning
and it was pouring rain. Regardless, I spent some time outside glassing the
terrain. Around 6AM I spotted a single caribou on a ridge right next to the ATV
trail. I told Danielle if saw something in the morning while glassing, I was
going to go after it without them… and that is what I did. I could hear a group
of people on the road getting ready to go in for the day, so I quickly got
everything together that I needed and hit the ATV trail before others could get
in front of me.
I was looking everywhere for the
caribou as I approached the spot I last saw him. Normally, I would stop well
short and then quietly approach the last known spot, but I was not able to do
this knowing a group of hunters were close behind me. I rode my ATV all the way
to the last known location; I looked hard, but he was nowhere to be seen. This
surprised me because typical caribou behavior is for them to spook, run away,
and stop many times on different high points to look back and gaze at the thing
that spooked them. This guy simply vanished; lucky for him though.
I spent the next hour in the rain
looking for the ghost caribou or any others in the area. I came up empty handed
and decided to head back to the camper. On my way out I passed a different
hunting group on their way in. I gave them the intel on the caribou and they
took over the spot I was just at.
The rest of the family eventually
woke up. I told them my story and we decided to simply hang out at the camper
until is stopped raining. Well, it never stopped raining; it was wet and gloomy
the entire day! On top of the bad weather, the clouds were low and made looking
for caribou extremely difficult too. Despite the conditions, we witnessed 6
different parties with a total of 15 people that entered the area to hunt for
caribou. That was a bunch of people in such a small area, with little to no
signs of caribou.
With no end in sight for the rain,
we simply hung out at the camper. At one point, I looked up at the mountain
side and noticed the couple on the plateau had a bunch of white objects laying
on the ground… those were game bags! The pair bagged a caribou in the rain. I
would later find out it was the caribou I saw earlier that morning, and the only
one they likely saw. Apparently, my ATV ride to intercept the morning caribou
resulted in me driving it directly to them. Talk about being in the right place
at the right time.
Often times when caribou hunting,
straggler caribou are seen running by camp. We were hoping this would happen at
some point.
The day ended as it started… wet,
windy, cold, and caribou-less.
I was able to get service enough
to check the forecast for the next day. Unfortunately, it was going to be
colder with more rain throughout the day. Instead of simply staying at the
camper, I proposed to Danielle a plan for me and Tundra to head off on foot, in
the rain, to find caribou while she hung out at the camper with the kids. She
agreed.
I woke up at 5AM again the next
morning. There were no caribou in sight so Tundra and I set off on the ATV. We
parked a couple miles in and began our hike through the tundra toward the
mountains. We made our way over the plateau and to the top of a pass between a
couple mountain ranges. There was a fair amount of caribou sign, with droppings
and foot prints in many areas.
Tundra and I made ourselves
comfortable on top of the pass to watch the vast amount of ground for any
movement and caribou in the area. It was still pouring rain and not the most
fun sitting still and waiting. We didn’t see anything for a couple hours. This
was extremely disappointing, but it was obvious the caribou were far from this
area. I then told myself that I would look one last time in my binoculars and
if I didn’t see any caribou, we would return to the ridge above the plateau,
closer to camp. I didn’t see any caribou on this last gaze, but two white
objects caught my eye. Yes, I saw two sheep!
The sheep were too far away to
tell if they were legal, but I could tell they were rams by the faint hardware
on the white background of their heads. I looked over at Tundra and told him
the caribou aren’t here yet, and then asked what he thought about turning this
into a sheep hunt? It was about noon at this time. I had close to a three to
four hour hike ahead of us to get around the mountain and above them. Considering
the possibility that one was legal and I dropped it, I would need to spend an
exposed night on the mountain and get out the next morning. I told Danielle
that I planned to be back that night and to not worry or send a search team
unless she didn’t hear back from me by 7AM the next day… with that time in
mind, this mission was possible. The caribou hunt just turned into a sheep
hunt.
We made our way toward the valley
of the mountain ridge they were in. The plan was to walk the valley down,
sidehill a little to not lose too much elevation, circle around the ridge to
the bottom of the valley, and approach from the start of the ridge to get above
them. As we were close to the base of the valley, we noticed a lone ram through
the clouds at the very top of the ridge heading higher on the mounting.
It didn’t take too long to cover
the valley, but the hard part was going to be hiking to the top of the
mountain. We were now out of site of the rams and the clouds had dropped low
enough to cover the entire mountain. It took a while to get to the top of the
ridge, but once we got there, the clouds started to periodically clear with
patches of visibility every once and a while. I didn’t realize it at first, but
it turns out I got fairly disoriented in the clouds. This has never happened to
me before, but the ridge I was peaking over was not the ridge I thought it was.
Only when I looked at my GPS did I realize I wasn’t where I thought. This was
an extremely weird feeling to have, especially since I consider myself a good
navigator. If I didn’t have the GPS, I would have likely got lost, or traveled
far out of my way before realizing I was off course.
After regaining my bearings, we
walked the ridge to get above the rams. Once at the spot I thought the sheep
were at, we slowly made our way down the mountain to intercept them. The
problem with this plan was… it didn’t work. The sheep were nowhere to be found.
I’m not sure if my valley hiking spooked them and the ram that was high on the
ridge was one of the two I spotted earlier, if they were in a different spot on
the mountain and I pushed them out while hiking in the clouds, or if they just
decided to leave for no reason. Either way, there was no way to tell if the
rams were legal because there was nothing to judge.
Bummed, we decided to explore a
little more before making the long journey back toward the camper. We walked
the ridge a little further before descending the mountain, climbing the valley,
and backtracking through the pass.
The clouds started to disappear
and the sun was poking through. I decided I would check out one last ridge with
a great view of miles of tundra to the east before heading all the way back to
the camper. Tundra and I got to the ridge by the pass just as the sun came out
in full force. We were both extremely tired, overheating, and needed a break.
We stopped at the ridge to look for caribou, get a snack, look for some
caribou, and take a break before heading back.
Surprise surprise, there were no
caribou anywhere. I did see one caribou from this glassing spot… the dead
caribou the couple shot the day prior. It was about 200 yards below us and an
eagle was taking advantage of the scraps left behind.
We tucked our tails between our
legs and started the final leg back to the ATV. On the way, we noticed a huge
wall cloud creeping toward us, dumping heavy rain on everything in its path. We
knew we weren’t going to make it back before the weather got bad, so I put on
my rain gear and prepared for the added insult to injury from the unsuccessful
hunt.
The skies opened on us before we
got the ATV. We were instantly soaked from the down pour and brush busting. It
didn’t matter though… we would have a warm and dry place to retreat to. With
that to look forward to, we pushed on and eventually made it to the ATV.
Instead of switching in to my heavy-duty rain, riding clothes, I opted to
remain in my wet hiking clothes.
We made it back to the camper a
little after dinner time. I changed into dry clothes, had Danielle crank the
heater, put Tundra on the fold down, and got our dinner ready. After a warm
meal, we were beat and ready for bed.
We weren’t planning to hunt the
next day, so after slept in a bit, we started tearing down camp. We were
hopeful to see a wondering caribou while preparing to leave, or even on the way
out. Again, no luck. That’s OK though, even though we weren’t successful
caribou hunting, it was a great time spent camping with family.
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