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Alaska-Yukon Barren Ground Caribou in Grizzly Country

I have been told that the first step on the road to recovery from addiction is for one to admit one has a problem.  So, I have a problem.  There, I said it.  I’m addicted.  Not to drugs or alcohol and, no, not to buying guns.  I mean, I am addicted to buying guns, but that’s not my problem.  Well, it is a problem and one I probably should also work on before I’m broke.  But the addiction that is relevant to this article is my addiction to hunting dangerous game.  Come to think of it, my addiction to hunting dangerous game may eventually solve all my problems.

I’ve heard that many people can become addicted to crack cocaine on their first use, and I’m here to tell you I was immediately addicted to hunting dangerous game the very first time I heard the smack of a big bullet hitting a big shoulder.  In my case that was a Hornady 300 grain XTP-Mag out of my Freedom Arms Model 83 in .454 Casull into the left shoulder of a big, old Cape Buffalo bull in the Zambezi River Delta in Mozambique.  Several days later I repeated that feat selecting a much wider horned bull from a herd of 600 or so Cape Buffalo standing about 50 yards from me in a sea of tall grass with absolutely nothing to climb up or hide behind within 20 miles if the events got too sporty.  Luckily, they didn’t.

Checking the Cape Buffalo off my bucket list was a thrill of a lifetime.  And I WILL do it again sometime soon.  But the event that really cemented my addiction was a nighttime hippopotamus hunt along the border of Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga, R.S.A. a few days later. I wrote about that hunt in the Q1 2018 issue of LSA Quarterly, so I won’t repeat the details here.  I will remind the reader, however, that the hunt was short, violent, and ended when I put a Hornady 400 grain DGX bullet between the hippo’s eyes at 10 yards from my .450/400 Nitro Express double rifle when he was in full charge.  Unfortunately, an annual trip to Africa just is not financially feasible; however, there are dangerous game hunting opportunities in North America with costs that are a fraction of the price of an African safari.

At the 2016 Safari Club International Annual Convention in Las Vegas, I was still a dangerous game virgin.  I spoke to the people at Deltana Outfitters of North Pole, Alaska about a caribou hunt for August 2018 about a year after my planned 2017 Mozambique safari.  The price was right and the chances of taking a nice caribou bull were good.  I booked the hunt.  As I was writing the deposit check he told me I could add grizzly and wolf to the hunt by simply buying the tags.  There would be no trophy fee if I took a wolf, and I wouldn’t have to pay the grizzly trophy fee unless I took one.  Honestly, I wasn’t too sure.  I decided to wait and see how my Mozambique safari went and how I felt about dangerous game hunting after I had gone one-on-one with Cape Buffalo.

As soon as I got home from Mozambique, I knew that I was going to hunt grizzly.  However, I also knew that carrying a double rifle in Alaska was out of the question.  In the summer of 2017, I owned three rifles that were appropriate for hunting grizzly: (1) my Krieghoff Classic Double in .450/400 Nitro Express, which is way too heavy, (2) a CZ 550 FS in 9.3 x 62 Mauser, and (3) a custom .35 Whelen Ackley Improved (AI) built on a Springfield action.  The good people at Deltana prefer clients use a .375 on grizzly, so I scoured the internet until I found a reasonably priced MOA Evolution rifle in .375 H&H Magnum.  This rifle is made for the wet weather of Alaska with a stainless-steel action and barrel seated in a synthetic stock.

I thought I was set for Alaska.  Then, I made a bad discovery.  In fact, one I know I will live to regret for years.  Double Guns of Nashville, which sells fine rifles and shotguns, is located just a few blocks down the boulevard from the hotel I use when I’m working in Nashville.  Oh, snap!  I resisted.  Really, I did.  For a whole day I refused to visit them.  A full day after I discovered where they were located, I walked into their store and looked up and down their display racks. I saw that their stock was all shotguns.  Whew!  I had dodged a bullet!  I already own three shotguns, which is two too many in my opinion.  The very nice salesman asked me if he could help me.  Knowing I was safe and with complete confidence I asked, “You don’t have a Krieghoff Semprio in stock, do you?”

“Yes!  We have a nice Semprio in .375 Ruger.  The previous owner shot it a few times and the recoil was just too much for him.  We got it for a killer price!”  Oh, no.  “We keep the rifles in the walk-in safe.  Come on.”  Like a Zombie I followed him into the safe.  There was a rack along one wall full of beautiful double rifles.  The Semprio was sitting on the display table in the safe, which was the size of an average master bedroom.  They had several Semprio rifles in stock.

Okay, I thought, I don’t have the money to buy this Semprio.  Be strong!  I looked the rifle over.  It was gorgeous.  I picked it up.  Oh, no. It was light.  Really light.  So light I could imagine walking all day in the tundra carrying this piece of art.  My will was starting to give.  I looked in the case and the previous owner had mounted a Swarovski Z6i 1.7-10X42 scope in a quick detachable mount.  Hell, the scope and mounts probably cost as much as the rifle.  My voice was steady.  “How much?”

Salesman one turned to salesman two.  The price they quoted me for the whole package was significantly less than the price of the new rifle alone.  And they’d ship it to my FFL in Slidell at no cost to me.  Crap.  My cell phone rang.  I looked at the screen.  It was my boss.  “Excuse me, gentleman.”

“Hey, boss.”

“Jay, I have some great news for you.  Your bonus is going to be higher than we expected, and we’ll be depositing it into your checking account tomorrow.”

“Hold on, boss.”  I turned to the guys.  “I’ll take it.”  They smiled.  I smiled.  My checkbook wept. My wife threatened legal action. (That is, in fact, a true story).

Maybe my addiction to buying guns is worse than my addiction to hunting dangerous game.  I really should investigate that more.  Anyway, now I had four contenders for the caribou/grizzly/wolf hunt.  Of course, anything I would use to kill a grizzly would also kill a caribou and a wolf, so I only needed to consider the grizzly when deciding what to take.

It’s not so much that grizzly bears are particularly tough to kill, but they do have a certain reputation for being disagreeable. One might say they’re a lot like the famous boxer Sonny Liston; they have flat heads and mean dispositions. However, unlike boxer Sonny Liston, they have big freaking teeth and claws. They’re also extremely fast; in fact, they can outrun a horse over a short course. Once the lead is in the air and the bruin is wounded there is no chance of running. It’s a knife fight in a phone booth. Someone is going to die. It’s called dangerous game hunting for a reason.

In my mind there were only two contenders for the hunt: the .375 H&H and the .375 Ruger. I had already made the decision to use either the Nosler Partition or the Swift A-Frame bullet. I’ve had great results with each of these bullets and am completely comfortable shooting a dangerous animal with either bullet. In a moment of complete idiocy, I decided to take all four of these teeth rattling rifles to the range for an afternoon of pleasant “plinking.” Not surprisingly, the recoil from the .375 H&H was substantial, but the rifle is heavy and has a well-designed muzzle brake. I could keep my eye open throughout the recoil cycle and could see the dust fly behind the target through the scope. This surprised me the first time I shot it, as every other .375 H&H I’ve ever shot pushed the scope into my forehead on each shot. The .375 Ruger on the other hand, kicked like a mule. All I could do was hold onto the rifle as the butt plate slammed into the fat part of my shoulder on each shot. But man does it shoot! With good trigger control the rifle has sub-MOA accuracy. Time after time the Semprio put three Swift 300 grain A-Frames into less than 0.5-inches at 100 yards.

One intangible concern of mine was the pump action of the Semprio rifle. The action is fast, and it would be perfect for pumping four shots into a charging bear in a few seconds. But I was worried that if I got into a high stress encounter, I might freeze from lack of experience with the action. The bolt action is admittedly much slower than the pump action, but I’ve shot many thousands of rounds through a bolt gun over the past five decades and knew that I wouldn’t freeze on the bolt gun. In the end, I decided to take the MOA Evolution in .375 H&H Magnum. Honestly, it was never really a fair fight.

I left MSY on a hot, humid August Friday morning and landed in Anchorage on a cool, dry perfect Autumn Friday evening. As the plane touched down at somewhere approaching 150 MPH, a cow moose went whizzing by the window as she grazed along the runway. To my relief, my rifle and other gear met me in baggage claim and my hunting buddy from Pittsburgh, PA and I barely made it to the Courtyard by Marriott at the airport before passing out. 

The 7:30 AM Alaska Airlines flight from ANC to Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse was full of hunters with a few oil-field workers interspersed between us.  The tall tales and flat-out BS was flying between us as our excitement buzzed around our heads. Nothing is better for the soul than a hunting excursion.  We were met at the two-room Prudhoe Bay airport by one of the owners of Deltana Outfitters, who drove us about 80 miles down the Dalton Highway to their base camp operation. The base camp is just a place to change clothes, eat a hearty warm meal, and catch the ancient but well maintained 1949 Piper PA-14 out to thespike camps.  After the hunt, hunters can take a hot shower and sleep on a bed before heading back to Prudhoe Bay for a flight out.

If you’ve never had the joy of seeing the Arctic tundra one can describe it in a single word: spectacular.  However, other words come to mind as well: beautiful, wild, barren, wet, cold, mosquito, gnat, lonely, desolate, and perfect.  The spike camp had been used by a successful hunting party the week before we arrived, so we had very little set up to do.  Alaska has a law that one cannot hunt on the day one is in an airplane, so we acquainted ourselves with our young native guide, ate a meal in our tiny dining “tent,” and hit the sack as rain poured down around us.

We woke the next morning to a spectacular, cool sunny morning, ate a quick bite, and started glassing for caribou.  We saw several bulls, including one very nice bull, but he was running, and we watched him go for at least 10 miles before he dipped over a hill never to be seen again. Apparently, when the biting insects get too bad, the caribou simply run until they find an area with wind to keep the bugs off them.

After a long day of glassing, we climbed into our sleeping bags and tried to fall asleep with the bright light pouring in.  At this latitude, the sun never sets, and the midnight sun is just as bright as the noon sun.  Around 2:00 AM the sun skims the tops of the surrounding hills at it reaches its nadir.  In a few more days, the sun would set below the horizon for the first time in months and, a few short weeks later the sun would set and not rise for months.

The next morning was cool and overcast. Our guide said that we would pay for the sunny day we had the day before. As if on cue, a light sprinkle began as we drank our instant coffee. “What is that?” I picked up my binoculars and looked (I was wearing long johns and crocs.

Our guide pulled his spotting scope to his eye.  “It’s a nice caribou about a mile away.  I think we should go after it.”

With no food in our bellies, we set off across the tundra. If you have not walked on tundra in the summer, words cannot describe how awful and difficult it is. One cannot describe it. It is exhausting.  We had decided that my buddy would take the first caribou. I fell behind because (1) the guide was 20-years-old and tough as a $2 steak, (2) my buddy, although only a few years younger than me, played football for Syracuse and has kept himself in great shape by hiking through the mountains of Europe with his four sons, and (3) I’m old and fat. I was on the backside of a hill when my buddy took his shot.  I heard the bullet strike the caribou and knew it was down.  I stayed in position until the called to me to come to them.  Just as I started to climb the small hill, a nice caribou appeared from nowhere and ran towards me. I ended up taking him at 350 yards with a nice shot to the heart/lung area.  We had two caribou down, with no food in our bellies, a little over a mile from camp across the tundra, and a whole lot of packing ahead of us.

We packed his caribou out first, each carrying a pack full of meat (about 75 pounds each) along with his cape, skull, and antlers.  They got to camp before me, dropped off their loads, called the base camp on the satellite phone, and met me coming in as they were going back out 100 yards from camp.  My guide said, “There is a big winter storm headed our way.  They’re pulling us out, sending in four airplanes in hopes of getting us out before it hits. Eat some food and start breaking down camp. We’ll get your caribou.” I left the camp at 8:00 AM and didn’t get back into camp until 4:00 PM.  They didn’t get back until 6:00 PM.

Before they returned, the first Piper Cub to arrive took meat and gear out. Shortly after they arrived back at camp, the same Piper Cub arrived back in camp and took the rest of the meat, the antlers, and more gear out. Shortly after that, two Piper Super Cubs arrived and transported my buddy and me out, leaving the guide at the Spike camp with emergency rations in case he couldn’t get out before the storm hit.  We could see a solid line of fog approaching camp as we departed from the makeshift 300-foot runway. The original Cub, that had already been to camp twice, made it back just in the nick of time to get the guide out.  He confided to us later that he was exhausted and not particularly looking forward to another few days on the tundra by himself.

If you’ll recall, this article was about caribou and grizzly hunting.  We never saw a grizzly because we only hunted for two days.  The winter storm brought freezing rain, snow, and ground hugging impenetrable fog that lasted for days.  My buddy and I were not too terribly disappointed; after all, there’s always next year…