Fall Time

Fall Colors

Its getting to be that time of year here. It's 28 degrees and blustery one day and 65 and sunny the next. Then there are some rainy days thrown in for good measure. Caribou are on the move. It seems like every day somebody is telling me about caribou that they caught.

A View of the Mountains

I have been out on boats quite a few times this year. Up until last night I had not seen anything besides a few bears waaaaay back up a slough. The only reason I knew they were bears was because another guy with binoculars said they were. They were just dots moving in the distance.
With some of the recent rain we have been getting the river is up again. Everybody had moved their boats to the old boat harbor because the water was so low that it was hard to get in at the pit to park a boat. Now the water is too high to cross the side channel by town to get to the old boat harbor so everybody has moved their boats back to the pit.

Happy about Something

Wednesday night Kyle and I headed out to go hunting on our four wheelers to see how far we could get upriver. I had crossed the channel near town the night before. The river was pretty high and there is a small section of riverbank that you can land on. If you miss that you'll end up running a stretch of rapids for a couple hundred yards before you can get up the bank again. So on this night I started up a little bit higher to try to make up for that. BIG MISTAKE! I overcompensated and started out too high. I got about halfway across before I realized this. I tried to turn downstream to shallower water but I didn't quite make it. I stalled out right about when the water reached the top of the seat. This is equal to about waist deep water. Needless to say I had to hop off the wheeler into the water and drag it out. We got it all drained out and then limped it home. We didn't end up hunting at all that night.

Laughing at Dad for Swamping the Honda

Like I was saying it seems like everyone has a new story about catching caribou. The hotspots are places like Sugar, Thurston's, Quesok's, and Evelyn's. Yesterday (friday) I went with Timm, Brent, and Kyle on Timm's boat up by Sugar. We were waiting anchored up on the riverbank just bs'ing and waiting for caribou. We had been waiting there for about an hour and a half and suddenly there were four caribou right there. We all ducked down and waited to see what they would do. They went past us following the willows heading downriver. While we were watching that group another group of about twelve came trotting down the river bank past us. We waited to see what this group did. They followed the same group down past us. There were other boats waiting downriver so we didn't follow them. We waited for about another hour before we had to start heading down to make it back before dark. We made it a couple bends down and we saw Sauvik, Melford, and Frank parked on the bank waiting for a herd to cross. We pulled off the river because we didn't want to scare the caribou from them. The herd was just waiting looking like they wanted to cross but then we heard gunshots from down river. The shots started the caribou moving again and they headed downriver towards the gunshots. We took off again to see if they were going to cross. They headed downriver towards a point but they just hung out in the willows. It was getting pretty late so we headed out so that we would make it back before dark. The caribou started out of the willows at the same time. They got close to the bank about the same time we did and then got spooky and headed back to the willows. We probably could have shot at them numerous times but they were on the east side of the river and I guess your supposed to wait for them to get in the water before you shoot them so that other caribou follow their same path. There were quite a few other boats around and we didn't want them getting ticked at us amateurs.

A Herd of Caribou

I went out today (sat 9/17) with Stan. We went to pretty much the same spot, just a little ways downriver from where we were yesterday. We had been there for about a half hour when we saw a herd of about 20. This time they went upriver towards some other boats that were waiting. A little while later we herd a flurry of gunshots and sure enough those boats ended up with the caribou. The caribou that the boats missed headed back our way but they didn't cross by us. They headed back into the willows and we didn't see them again. We did see a couple of bear cubs eating fish.

Grizzly Bear