**2021 AK Moose Hunt** DIY Float Trip

[Hardware]

Awesome story so far and congrats on the bear and bull.

[gglover]

Heck ya. Congrats. Can’t wait to hear the rest of the story

[Killer]

Just FYI both bulls were legal from looking at your pics

[elhefe]

simply awesome!

[Quackerbox]

Legit recap sir!!!

[breederbuck33]

Very good write up! Congrats!

[EliteDriver]

Awesome hunt! Thanks for bringing us along!!

[ATXArcher]

Amazing hunt...

[bownutone]

Thanks to you for posting this adventure. Congratulations.

[Tomkat70]

Congratulations on a great bull and pics and really exciting write up. Thanks for sharing your story.

[Agdog]

Such an incredible trip. Thank you for taking us along.

[diamond10x]

**2021 AK Moose Hunt** DIY Float Trip

Day 17

We all sleep in this morning, not waking up til about7:45 since we didn’t get to go to bed til 1:30-2:00am. It’s pretty cold out, according to the weather report from the inreach it’s mid 20’s. There’s a thick frost on everything with a light dusting of snow. We get the stove rolling and enjoy a nice warm breakfast. Go outside to check the bear meat and two bags of moose meat we brought back last night. All is frozen solid. We’re also getting little snow flurries as well. Luckily we don’t have much to do this morning so we can get to work on hauling meat. We find a good strong spruce to cut to use as a stiff leg on our meat pile, as it is a dead fall log wedged between two trees. Get the stiff leg cut and grab our packs and head out. It’s a mile and a half to the moose carcass from camp and take between 30-40 minutes to get to depending on your route. First loads out me and my brother decide we’ll take heaviest first and just work our way down. I strap a ham to my pack and my brother a shoulder. It takes a group effort to get up off the ground from your butt. We help each other up and begin the hike. Since this meadow is a bit of muskeg we are in waders today. Reason is because after you walk one path it becomes so saturated and wet that you need waders to walk it again. We’re working around the same area all day where the meat is so it’s no option other than wearing them. It takes us a good hour to make it back to camp with the first load. One down 3 more to go. We go back and do the same thing. A ham and a shoulder. These quarters are all well over 100lbs and there is absolutely no reason to try and get in a rush and end up hurting yourself. Also, it’s a 2-3 man job getting the meat hung because it’s so heavy. Slow and steady we get my bull back to camp after a 12 mile day. That last load of the antlers and skull never felt so good even though it’s 70lbs+. We finally get done hauling and hanging meat about 7:30-8:00pm. By now the temp is dropping again and we have to cut and split more wood for the stove. We enjoy a hot tent and a hot meal after a hard days work.


Day 18

We wake to snow flurries and frozen meat. My goodness is this the complete opposite of the last time we were moose hunting. Freezing temps and frozen meat instead of hot weather hand having to cook meat in plastic bags in the river. We have a semi long and serious talk over breakfast about hunting the next two days. I’m out at this point because I got mine. Y’all decide and I’m good with whatever y’all want. We’re all beat at this point. We look at the weather on the inreach real closely. Out here weather dictates absolutely everything. There is supposed to be a big storm roll in with 30-40mph winds and temps in the teens. No matter what we do we have no less than 15 river miles to go and possibly 50 river miles to go to get out of here. The decision is made to, disappointingly for my brother, die to weather we need to try and make a push down river to get out of here. We break camp, load the rafts, and head on.





We float on and come to the first place we thought might work as an extraction. The runway is too short on the sand bar and the lake is too shallow to put an otter on. As agitating as it is we have to keep heading down river. It’s about 4:00 pm and the storm comes blowing in. We make a bend i. The river and all of a sudden the wind is howling straight up river. It’s blowing so hard unless you can find somewhat of a break and constantly paddling you’re either stuck or going back up river. It’s so bad we have to get out and drag the rafts for a mile at a time in numerous sections of river. We’re really getting behind schedule and starting to stress a bit. There’s one more point we had marked to get picked up before the final take out. We really don’t want to have to float 50 miles if we don’t have to. This last spot is a strip on a sandbar that hopefully has a mining cabin still on it.


Struggling to make it down river we finally reach the strip right at dark. We’re staying here tonight no matter what because of the weather and it’s way too dangerous to float a river dang near blind, that we don’t know. As we pull up my dad jumps out to go check out the cabin while my brother and I drag the rafts up onto shore. We get the rafts up, grab a few things and go to meet my dad near the cabin. He’s got amazing news. The cabin is weather proof and has a big stove with a lot of wood ready to go. He says ,”it’s a little ratty but it’s all we got to get out of the weather.” We laugh and could care less. At this point we’ll take anything to get out of this wind and cold. We hustle back to the rafts to grab our packs, tie moth balls to the rafts, grab our food, and set up for the night in this cabin. From the time we left the rafts, talked to my dad, and came back to them, the whole sandbar and runway had frozen solid. All within about 7-8 minutes. We get in the cabin and it’s a bit rough and ratty but it seems like the Hilton after 18 days. We warm up nicely by the stove and get a great nights sleep.

Day 19

we wake up to snow and ice again. This time seeing it through a window from a cabin. We’re up early talking to our pilot and checking weather. It’s going to be another bad weather day. We’re relaying landing strip specs to the pilot so he knows which plane to bring and how many trips. The weather is so bad that we wouldn’t even be able to raft today if we needed to. We’re incredibly thankful for this cabin we came across. We find a journal in the cabin and go through it. The last entry was from 2015, whoever the owner was, that was his last time there checking on the place. In the journal there was entries all the way back from 1990. Basically the guy who owned it used it as a mining cabin for him and his buddies. Every few years a hunting party would stop in and stay a few days on their float. It was really cool to read all the entries. We also found another journal with entries back to 1986. It kind of took you back in time sitting there around the stove reading these out loud to each other.

Day 20

Today is basically just like the previous day and a half. Unbearable wind that doesn’t allow for any travel. We kill time throughout the day cutting firewood to replenish what we’ve used in the stove. We write a group entry into the most present journal for whoever finds it next. We also go and work on the landing strip as well as the ends and edges have grown up a little bit. For dinner tonight we have a meal fit for a king (of the Alaskan bush). I am going to cook some moose heart up on the skillet using bear fat. It ends up being the best wild game heart I’ve ever had and I like heart a lot. The only way I can describe it is basically having the best rare cooked tenderloin with a whole pack of bacon wrapped around it. Absolutely delicious. I’m not sure if it’s because we haven’t had a real home cooked meal in 3 weeks or it really is just that good. I only cook up 1/3 of the heart saving the rest for when we get back. After the main course we enjoyed some black bear chitlins that were left in the pan.


Day 21

Clear calm and really cold skies greet us today. First thing make contact with our pilot and he’s heading out on his way. It’s starting to snow real lightly and fog is starting to move in. We’re worried we might end up staying another day. Our pilot makes it in just fine. We know we will have to do two flights because he flies in in his beaver. He wants to take all the meat and two of us. He will Leave one of us and all the gear, then return this afternoon. My dad volunteers to stay and my brother and I go with the meat so we can get it unloaded when we land. The way in the snow is picking up. My brother and I over the radio ,”as soon as we get back I’ll hop out, you stay in here and just throw me the meat bags so the pilot can get the plane fueled and get back out there.” We get back and do just that. It doesn’t take but 5-6 min and the plane is fired up and taking off back down the runway. It should be about 3 hours til he gets back with my dad if all goes to plan. 3 hours turns to 4, 4 hours turns to 5. We go inside to the office to use the radio to call and see what’s going on. We radio and they’re about 15 min out. The snow got to bad they had to pull out of the pass that is the most direct and go down a ways and use another pass, taking a substantial about of time. They get back and everyone is glad the flights worked out safely because another storm was coming in and more than likely no flying for at least two days. When the pilot hops out first thing he says after all of it ,”you guys are pretty hardcore, even by Alaskan standards.” The three of us laugh it off and tell him ,”well we told you we were serious when we got this planned out.” He laughed and said something about a lot of people tell him that and he ends up picking them up early cause they haven’t killed yet or they can’t handle the weather.

We spent the next day and a half processing my moose ourselves. 600lbs of meat later it was worth every single ounce of it. While a little bummed we went 1 for 2 on moose but 1 for 1 on bear we decided for now on we are only going to try for one moose unless for some reason we come across an absolutely monster after we already killed one. It’s just an incredible amount of work, something you can’t truly understand until you do it first hand. I wish my moose would have been bigger and that I could have gotten it done with the bow but it just wasn’t in the cards. This definitely won’t be my last moose nor my last float hunt that’s for sure!


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[bps3040]

Awesome! Thanks for taking us along!


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[rut-ro]

Great write up. Was this trip comparable in price to the last one ?

[Killer]

Great story