This was one amazing hunt. From a 200 mile jet boat ride in a 25ft Alumaweld Super Vee to the 16ft Smoker Craft sled taking us up the small tributaries of the Mulchatna river. This region is vast Alaskan tundra of low lying vegetation, spruce forests and rolling hills. One day at a time is the theme of this hunt, as the terrain is beautiful but can be very unforgiving. Let’s begin the story.
I arrived in Dillingham, Alaska on August 24th. Dillingham, if you have never been is a remote town on the Southwestern coast, near the head of Nushagak Bay, above the Bristol Bay which encompasses many river systems. The region isn’t on any road systems so all logistics are by boat or air.
The early start to this trip is to allow time to get our gear and boats ready for this long, but rewarding adventure. Getting organized for a two-hundred-mile Jet boat ride, and many days in the bush, isn’t something that you take lightly. Especially, when that trip takes you into one of the most desolate areas in Alaska. There isn’t much going on in that part of the world, and any mishap can result in complete disaster. Motor troubles, crashed boats, stuck on a gravel bar, a hunting accident, just a few of the many things you can encounter on a complicated journey like this. These are all things to consider when taking this type of adventure. So, a lot of thought needs to go into this.
For this trip we were going to take two of my 25ft Super Vee’s along with 5 adventurers. Myself, Eric and Barry, the hunters, Tim from New Zealand as an observer, and Manuel my best buddy from Mexico. Eric, who knows his way around a boat or two, will be driving the other Super Vee for this trip as he requested before this adventure started. Experience is key as these snaking and winding rivers can throw you a surprise around any corner, which requires very quick reactions and skill. His father-in-law will be the one hunting for the moose. The hunters arrived on the 3rd of September and the goal was to leave the next day, September 4th, to head up the Nushagak. Then onto the Mulchatna, about halfway up, the same day. We were planning to overnight on the riverbank. Unfortunately, this did not happen.
When Eric and Barry arrived, the baggage handlers at Alaska Airlines had dropped their gun case. In fact, the impact was so hard that it bent the top turret of Barry’s rifle and almost broke it off. Not what you want to happen on your long awaited trip to Alaska.
Lucky for us we had Starlink and were able to call Sportsmen’s Warehouse in Anchorage, and get a new scope sent to us the next day. The next morning the new scope arrived to the Alaska Air cargo desk just as we hoped. It’s impressive that these remote, minimalistic, rugged airports can still receive and ship things quickly. Once the new scope was on, we sighted the rifle in and now we were ready to head up the river.
The adventure up the river takes about 8 hours but the load we had in the boat slowed us down a bit so we got to take in some of the wild untamed sights along the way. Being delayed out of Dillingham, the decision was made to hunt another area short of our original hunting spot.
The new zone is a great spot where I have taken some nice big bulls in the past.
The first day of the hunt we spent most of the morning checking out the local swamp fields where some bulls were active the year before. These swamp areas are waterlogged tundra and vegetation where the moose like to graze. There was a bit of fresh sign there but no sightings. After lunch we headed up to a high lookout off the Mulchatna with 360 views of low mountains and hills. We had a great night of glassing for moose, and an even better evening for finding Caribou. We spotted a heard of around 20 Caribou, several of them being bulls. This made for a great memory for the guys.
On the way back to camp, about a mile upstream was a nice young bull rubbing his small antlers on a patch of willows. This was a definite sign of the starting rut and the moose population getting more active.
The next morning I decided to take a long boat ride up the river. We went to an area where several bulls have been taken by my past clients over the years. About 25 minutes into the trip, coming around one of the many turns, I spotted a patch of Black Spruce along the bank of the river where a client of mine took a great bull just 30 short years ago. About 10 seconds into my flashback, Eric shouts “MOOOSE!!!!!” There, standing not 50 yards from where that same memory was, stands a crusher of a bull. Lucky for us the bull was rutting and the boat didn’t seem to bother him as it slid to a stop on the gravel bar. Barry lifted his rifle and asked me if it was big enough.
I quickly said “Barry, that is a giant bull. Shoot now!” Three shots later the bull was down, unfortunately it was in the river.
Getting the bull drug over to the shore was the first challenge of this ordeal. The moose floated and was pretty easy to get into the shallows. Once there, taking off one side wasn’t that bad. With half the bull in the boat we made the first trip of two total down the river back to camp. After grabbing some more game bags and a sawzall to cut the ribs and antlers off. The entire process took about 5 hours and with the final load loaded into the boat we headed down stream back to camp and to get dried out.
On the way down we had a few encounters with logs and shallow water, lucky for us we’ve done this numerous times and had a pretty easy trip down the river with that small boat full of moose meat, a head and 4 guys.
The start of the trip down the river to base camp.
The trip down river:
Once we were back at camp we needed to dry out the soaked meat that obviously was wet from laying in the water. Now the meat stays really clean but the water can get into the meat and start bacteria growth right away. Getting that meat back to Dillingham and hung in our walk in cooler was top priority. The day after we took the bull we spent time getting the meat as dry as possible.
Packing our gear up and loading everything in the boat. We headed down river on the kicker motor for the first 40 miles or so. We were hoping that maybe a bear would be standing on the shoreline and easy target. No such luck, so we fired up the big motor and headed home. The next 5 hours was spent running down the winding river smiling the entire time from the successful hunt. It was late when we made it to Dillingham, but we were able to get the moose meat hung in the beautiful walk in cooler. Saving the meat and finishing out an awesome trip.
