Well we made it back in from the caribou hunt. Had a good time but we had to drop a couple days off the hunt. We didn' t get out until Friday afternoon instead of Thursday morning, and ended up coming out Sunday night instead of Monday, so we only hunted all day Saturday and then Sunday morning.

Saturday morning we got an early start and motored up the river. The water level was higher this year, so going up was easier, but we still managed to tag a rock and put a small leak in the bottom corner of the boat. We pulled it up on the beach to patch it, and while we were waiting we did some grayling fishing. I had just cast out, and over my shoulder I see two bulls running right at me! I quickly ran back to the boat with the lure flapping behind me and got my bow, and my dad picked his rifle up and we headed in front of them to cut them off. They worked their way out fairly quickly, so I ran to try and get in front of them, but couldn' t quite make it, so I' m trying to get my dad to drop a gear, up the RPM' s and catch up, but he stopped, hunched over and I ran back to him. Since we only had the rest of that day and Sunday morning to hunt, I grabbed his rifle, ran up another 300 yards and cut them off at about 150 yards. I yelled and the bulls stopped broadside, I put the scope on his shoulder and squeezed off a round. Dropped him in his tracks. Dad made about half the distance to me by that time and I ran back to him to give him the rifle. He sat down, got a good rest and shot the smaller bull which was hanging out by the larger downed bull. Two shots, two dead bou. We pulled them up to the beach, about 200 yards, and cleaned them out, bagged em up and by that time the boat was patched and we drove right up to them and threw them in the boat.

We motored upstream some more and within half an hour we spotted two larger bulls. My brother shot a small one last year, so he really wanted a nice rack this year, and there was a dandy in the pair. We stalked up to some brush about a hundred yards from the shore and the bulls were working their way right to us. I had the binocs on them to make sure he put a round through the larger bull, and we waited patiently as they worked back and forth in our direction. My dad was about 100 yards behind us, and my god father had his gun ready about 30 yards off to the side of us. The bulls worked their way up to about 120 yards and the large bull offered a perfect broadside shot, so my brother squeezed off a round from the .243 and no reaction from the bull. He started turning some, and trotted quickly off to the side. I saw red on his side, but wasn' t 100% sure, so I told him to shoot again. The second shot dropped him, and the other bull ran about 50 yards, stopped and turned back to see what was going on. My godfather worked his way up to us, and had about a 200 yard shot on the other bull. He knocked him down with one shot, and we all had out caribou cleaned out and in the boat by 3:30 in the afternoon. The load was a bit too much for the boat to get on step, so we barged back 2 hours to camp.
My brothers caribou had a real handsome rack, 27 points, 3&1/2 foot spread, and what I guess you could call a double shovel. One was huge, the other was about 4" tall.

My godfathers rack was nice as well. Double shovels, no points on the bez though and about 5 points on top of each side. Mine didn' t have any points up top, but a few points on the bez, double shovels and back points and dad' s bou was a dink.

I kept a couple of the quarters up here to cut up and freeze to take down south with me, but the rest of the meat is southbound to Fairbanks right now. We got blasted with nasty weather coming out on Sunday afternoon, so its nice to be back in out of the elements. We had a couple more opportunities on Sunday morning, but couldn' t close the gap. A couple of the bulls were monsters, but the closest I had was a 250 yard running shot. A tad too far for me even standing still, I don' t like shooting over 200 yards.

Phish, did you find out about access to your bou hunting grounds yet? How was ole SEAK looking? A little different then last time you saw him I bet. He' ll be back up on Tuesday, so hopefully we' ll get out a couple of nights and chase some more bou around with the bows. I used proxies out in the rifle area, so I' m still freed up for bow hunting them. Ptarmigan opens up on the 10th, so hopefully we can decapitate a few birds for dinner too.