doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT back from a successful 14 day float hunt

There are a lot of advantages of a drop trip too. Both styles of hunting have there pluses and minuses. We drop camped into the Yukon Delta and killed 2.



I'd love to do a float trip someday, but I would probably do another drop camp first.

Nothing is as good as moose meat

4 weeks until I leave for Kodiak.
Love seeing your pics!
These two-a-day stalking exercises are exhausting.

wonderful thread...thanks for posting...

I am too. The 1st night I tired a cot & I switched to a mattress, which I forgot to self-inflate. It was indeed miserable. But after I remembered to inflate my mattress and put a tarp down, it was great sleep. We had some novel folding chairs but there is just so much you can ferry via Bush Plane to an old Gold Mine path. And then you are space limited on a raft. With all that kit on it, it was a Bear to navigate.

But with all that dry float wood on the rock bars, I could make a fire one in about 10 minutes one could see from the Space Station, without Boy Scout fluid.




Serbus,

Raimey
rse

That's awesome sir

Very nice! Some good eating for the winter!

One of the things I miss most is the fall moose hunt, from when I lived there. I hunted a time or two out of a F&G check station off the mid-Yukon river due to knowing the F&G employee that manned the check station and various other places around the Y-K Delta, including the Aniak river! Moose meat is much better as far as I was concerned than whitetail or mule deer, a toss up with elk. Never did a 14 day hunt, usually 4-6 days and having a plane, along with my hunting buddy who had a Cessna 180, we'd usually fly somewhere, where we could land, such as a sandbar or hardened lake bed on a remote river or slough and hunt out of the camp we'd set up. I had an 11' Zodiac with a 9.9 hp motor we take along to ply the rivers. Very slow going in the Zodiak with the two of us and a whole moose loaded in it!

I did fly around the Salmon river, off the Aniak looking for a strip to land on for a bear hunt, but never did follow up with a bear hunt. I wish I had!

Raimey,

Yes, the Eskimos do live, to a large degree a subsistence lifestyle and harvest whatever salmon is in the river at the time, which is first the kings, then the reds, dogs and humpies with the last run being the silvers! There's also a lot of trading between the coastal Eskimos and those that live farther inland. Moose meat mainly from the inland natives for salmon berries and marine mammals, mainly seal meat, seal oil and some walrus from the coastal Eskimos, where there isn't much of any kind of big game i.e. moose, caribou, etc. They also hunt waterfowl in the spring when they migrate back after breakup and collect waterfowl eggs out on the tundra when the birds are nesting. Of course, things may have changed some from 30 years ago when I left the Y-K delta after 14 years there, but I doubt it's changed much!


About the only time I saw an Eskimo get prosecuted for shooting game was when some musk ox hitched a ride on some pack ice off Nunivak Island to the mainland. Some Eskimo was out running around on the tundra on his sno-go and came across the musk ox. He shot, if I remember correctly, 6 of the musk ox and left them there. He didn't get prosecuted for wanton waste of a game animal, but was prosecuted, again if I remember correctly, for shooting an animal that wasn't a traditional subsistence fish or game animal! He basically just got a slap on the wrist!

Cameron:


No, it has not changed @ all. Eggs are still collected as you describe. The Eskimos hunt pretty much as the Bear & Wolf. Yeah, it is difficult to keep up w/ the types of Salmon: Chinooks, Kuskokim Chum, Coho and I think Sockeye?? Too, within the Salmon, you hear the term Silver as well as Red. Then there was an Eskimo term for a Salmon that had run its race, spawn and was well passed defending its young. It would just float until it was beached or picked up by an Osprey. Rainbow Trout were very common but protected. All was very interesting indeed.

Serbus,

Raimey
rse

BrentD:

Nice Moose & we ate a lot of Moose meat that was given to us. What is the chambering of that rifle, 45-70?

Serbus,

Raimey
rse

My hat's off to the Bush Pilots though. I guess the Best survive and a landing is more of a controlled crash. But on a Float trip, anything that falls off, you pretty much lose. If you shoot a Duck or a Goose & it falls in the River, probably a lost cause. So, there's a lot of planning on all aspects and a battery powered chainsaw is pretty much an essential.

Serbus,

Raimey
rse