Musk Ox Hunt Booked
 

I just booked the hunt that will put me at 9 of the Super Ten. I was lucky enough to draw a Nunivak Island musk ox tag for the winter of 2014. I'll be hunting unguided but the only feasible way to hunt is to hire a transporter from the Yupik Eskimo village of Mekoryuk to the south end of Nunivak, via 50+ miles on a snowmachine. I booked with James Whitman for the first week of March. That hunt has about a 98% success rate...if you can make it to Nunivak. I'm planning on using my bow and I'm leaning towards a skull mount.

Here's a few pic ox pics...

A mature bull ox that I snapped some pics of on the North Slope of Alaska.

A dandy fall season Nunivak ox that one of my hunting buddies bagged year before last when he used James as his transporter.

The kind of skull mount I'm leaning towards, minus the gawdy base. It's a little presumptuous to plan the taxidermy before the hunt, but the odds are pretty dang good for this one. I'll probably tan the full hide and use it as a large rug. If you've never seen ox hair it is incredibly long and thick.

Best of luck Jeff!

Watching the males butt heads is pretty entertaining... good luck on your hunt.

Yeah it is. I've seen some pretty good fights along the Sagavanirktok River in northern Alaska. The noise of the impact is incredible.

Good Luck AKJ!!

Good hunting bud! Many misfits, myself included, want to see pix of your big smile above a musk ox bigger than your dreams.

AK Jeff, I hope you have a great hunt. I think Muskox are neat animals. I hunted them in northern Canada about 10 years ago. It was also a fall hunt combined with Caribou.

I figured that I would only hunt them once in my life, so I had mine mounted lifesize. It's one of my favorite mounts.

Im pretty jealous, it runs a little above 10k for that hunt doesnt it?

Id go for full head mount on something like this, but thats just me im not into skull mount

Thats awesome. how much is that hunt going to cost including the transportation. I am wanting that to be my next guided hunt I do. Good luck

It should run about $4,500 for airfare, transporter fee, Alaska resident musk ox tag, and excess baggage back to my home in Fairbanks. Guided hunts are substantially more expensive but I'm going unguided with a transporter. Not a cheap hunt but that's about the only way to cross it off the bucket list.

awesome animal! best of luck.


pretty sure I'm doing a full mount when I get one.


bow sounds pretty tough, rifle pretty easy.

I thought you had to pay something like $9000 for the federal conservation fee or something? $4500 isnt bad at all. Does that include shipping your mount back to Alaska?

There's no federal conservation fee in Alaska. The transporter is $3,000, AK resident muskox tag is $500, airfare between Bethel and Mekoryuk is about $500, and there's a $100 trespass fee to the village on Nunivak. I'll use Alaska Airline miles to fly from Fairbanks to Bethel. Meat and trophy shipping between Mekoryuk and Fairbanks will probably run $300-$500.

You have to draw the DX003 permit before you can even consider this hunt. Odds of drawing last year were about 3%.

Albert,

I did a musk ox hunt on Victoria Island, NWT, Canada for around $6000, when it was all said and done. The adventure of getting to the island was as much fun as the hunt itself. These beast's shaggy, sand filled, coats stop an arrow like a bag target. I would recommend a 3 to 1 ratio two blade broadhead for the best penetration, and a heavier arrow if possible from your 70 pound bow.

A life size mount is a great way to capture the uniqueness of this animal. I did the work on mine myself. It cost $800 for tanning and another $800 for the form. Add another $50 for eyes and incidentals. It took me two days to stitch him up...

I had this one come up behind me while hunting Caribou on the "Sag" in Alaska.



This is the one I took on Victoria Island

Hmm I wonder what website I looked at that made the price $9000-$12,000. $6,000 is a bit more affordable and only slightly more than what Jeff is paying.

$1650 to have a full body mount is about 1/4 of the price it wouldve cost a taxidermist to do correct? Pretty interesting, Id like to mount alot of what I hunt but ive heard it is about 1-2 year wait and it costs alot.

Jeff are you stationed out there in Alaska? I met someone over here in Afghanistan who is really big into big game hunting and deep sea fishing, said he got most of it knocked out while he was stationed there. Im thinking about trying for Alaska, but that is a few years away. However, I wouldn't want to get stationed at Ft Wainwright and would prefer Ft Richardson, I dont do well with extreme cold weather and im an absolute terrible driver in snow.

No I'm not stationed in AK, I just live there. It's a really tough and expensive place to hunt but it has it's perks. I much prefer Fairbanks to Anchorage myself. They're both cold and the traffic in Anchorage is awful.

By tough you mean weather, by expensive do you mean the cost of living? or tags/gas/lodging and all those other little things which become big?

Transportation is the big expense for hunting in Alaska. The state is huge and sparsely populated but there are very few roads and the ones that we do have get heavy hunting pressure. More remote hunts usually require air taxis which usually cost thousands of dollars. Winters are very long up here. Today is May 8th and the snow is still knee deep around my house. Tags for the most part are free for residents (with the exception of musk ox which is $500). Cost of living up here is some of the highest in the country even though we don't have state sales tax or a state income tax and when you're eligible you can receive the PFD payment. If you live in the bush the cost of living is exponentially higher still. It's cheaper for me to fly to Montana to hunt deer and elk as a non-resident than it is for me to hunt them as a resident here in Alaska. The scale of everything up here is hard to grasp for people that haven't been here. Take the Haul Road caribou hunt for example. That's one of the most affordable caribou hunts available, but it still requires an 800+ mile round trip drive on one of the most rugged roads in the country and there's still a lot of hunting pressure. Last fall the 40-mile caribou season near Fairbanks was only open for 24 hours. In terms of moose hunting some of the most productive moose habitat up here only has 1 or 2 moose per square mile so you can look long and hard before you even see one. I hunted a walk-in caribou area last fall and that still required a 250 mile round trip drive and over 20 miles of hiking, and that's considered pretty easy. If you like the lower 48 style of drive a few miles to a hunting area, walk a 1/4 mile and sit in a tree stand then Alaska probably isn't your cup of tea. If you like hardcore adventure that requires a lot of backbreaking work without seeing many animals then it might suit you just fine. There's opportunities here they just don't come easy.

Wow that does sound extreme. I get what you say about Alaska being expensive, im stationed in Hawaii, get paid more than my friends in the states but still feel really poor. No idea if its Alaska>Hawaii or Hawaii>Alaska. I don't mind backpacking and camping through rugged terrain, how do you pack your meat out though?

Would I be better off hunting in Canada?

Define better off. I'm pretty certain all Canadian provinces require guides for non-resident aliens. Guides mean higher prices. It's all relative to what you want and what your budget is. Hunting Alaska is very doable it's just much much harder than most people realize. People tend to think Alaska is awash in game animals when the reality is most of the state is effectively devoid of life due to the harsh environments. What it takes to hunt effectively here is just a lot more than most people can handle. Not trying to rain on your parade, just being honest.

Well I believe I read to hunt in Alaska alone, you need to have lived there as a resident for a year, otherwise you need to take a guide.

Hmm you are making me rethink, my options. Wondering how much more Canada would end up being with customs taxes and all those little things. I was also thinking that Alaska was awash with animals running around and deer chasing little bunnies but I guess that's not the case.

Jeff,

Been following your thread since the beginning. Not interested in Musk Ox hunting. But, I have become interested in your candid answers to all questions and comments. Your account of actual hunting conditions and requirements are far different than those portrayed on television especially the "reality" TV B.S.

Just want to say a sincere "thank you" for the thread.

Good luck.

Not true. Non-resident U.S. citizens are required to have guides or relative residents within the second degree of kindred in order to hunt Dall sheep, mountain goats, or brown/grizzly bears. Non-resident aliens are required to hire guides to hunt any big game species in Alaska. Non-resident U.S. citizens can hunt moose, caribou, musk ox, black bear, elk, deer, wolf, and bison unguided in Alaska.

In terms of musk ox specifically then you're probably much better off looking at Canada. All ox hunts (with the exception of registration and Tier 2) in Alaska are by permit drawing. You don't need to draw an ox tag to go hunting in Nunavut, Canada. For other species you can almost certainly figure out a DIY hunt in Alaska that would be cheaper than a guided hunt in Canada.

You're welcome. I just like telling things the way they are. Alaska is probably one of the most misunderstood states in the U.S. and the recent flood of Alaskan "reality" TV doesn't help. Like I said before, there's some great opportunities in Alaska, they just very rarely ever come easy.

You mean Sarah Palins show isn't an accurate depiction of all Alaskans?

Would the price in Canada also be around 6,000$? Muskoxen are wonderful, and their horns are just fantastic.

According to "iamyourhuckleberry" yes.

I about had a heart attack a couple days ago when I heard that the state was closing one of the musk ox hunts next year due to poaching. Luckily for me it was a Tier 2 hunt near Kotzebue that was closed, and not my permit area on Nunivak, but it's still very unfortunate that somebody decided to shoot five cow musk ox and then just left them to rot.

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/ap...05-15-2013.pdf

Kinda crazy why someone would do that. I would atleast take them for meat or fur.

Did you end up going on this?

The hunt isn't until next year. I booked with a transporter for the first week of March 2014.

Oh wow far out. Geez so you got notified now and a year later is when you can hunt? So much can happen betwee now and then.

Can't wait to see this hunt thread. Congrats on the draw jeff,be sure to get some good pictures for us.
-Jake

It takes a long time to figure out all of the logistics and expenses with a hunt like this. It's exponentially more complex than your typical lower 48 hunt. If you didn't have a year it would be tough to plan.

One of my hunting partners is a film maker and he's planning on joining me. He'll likely take some footage depending on conditions. I'll take plenty of pics too.