It was great to be back in some of my old stomping grounds, not only in Alaska, but Alaska’s Arctic! I love this part of the world, and as many of you may know, my wife and I were school teachers on the North Slope through most of the 1990s. This is an amazing land, unlike any I’ve encountered; It’s a place my first book was written about, Hunting The Alaskan High Arctic (still my favorite work).
This eight day adventure found fellow writer, Paul Atkins and I going after grizzly and moose. Paul has lived in Kotzebue going on 15 years, where he currently teaches math at the local college and high school and is a freelance outdoor writer, and a good one.
Headed to camp
We hopped on a bush plane and headed out, 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle, on the southern slopes of the Brooks Range. I’d drawn a prized moose tag, while paul held a grizzly and moose tag.
All started well, with Paul taking a gorgeous blond grizzly on the afternoon of day 1. We saw four other grizzlies, and though we had tracks around camp, never had any bear encounters.
Over the next four days we saw moose, but no bulls big enough to shoot. We called amid treed thickets, rafted the river (which was freezing over more with each passing night), encountered winds up to 35 mph and single-digit temperatures. On day five we decided to relocate to the south.
Paul and I jumped in a 180 Cesna, while camera man Ty Cary hopped into a 206, packed with most of our gear. On our first attempt to take off from the gravel bar, the 180 struggled. Getting a longer run, we finally got air born, but we knew something wasn’t right.
When the seasoned pilot banked into the wind and followed the river–not in the direction we should have been going–Paul and I knew something was up. Despite the high winds, the pilot stayed pretty low, clinging to every meandering curve in the river.
Ten minutes into the flight the plane sputtered and the engine started failing. Cranking knobs and pulling levers, the pilot got back some juice, but we lost even more elevation. Minutes later the engine gave out, and all the gauges on my side of the plane (I was in the co-pilot seat) went flat.
Wasting no time, the pilot banked into the wind and quickly set us down on the first gravel bar we came to. I’ve flown in many bush planes over the years, and though there has been some tense moments, this was too close of a call. Had we not had such an experienced pilot, who knows what the outcome would have been.
The 206 was able to land nearby. With darkness coming, a storm looming on the horizon and temperatures in the low ‘teens, we unloaded what gear we could into the broken down 180, piled the rest underneath the plane, then all hopped into the 206. By 10:30 we were back in Kotzebue, all our clothes, guns, camp and gear stuck an hour’s flight away on a remote gravel bar.
The plane that crashed near our camp
The next day the pilots returned to fix the 180, only to discover the engine had blown. We didn’t get our gear until late the next day, which cost us some hunting time, but given the circumstances, filling a moose tag seemed irrelevant to what could have been.
Paul and I did get out duck hunting around Kotzebue, which was wonderful. I also got to guest-speak in a few classrooms, bringing back many fond memories. On the last evening we were photographing the sunset from the beach near the Kotzebue airport…that’s when we heard the thundering beat of a helicopter. In-tow was a wrecked bush plane–not ours, but one that crashed at the same time, near our camp. Both passengers of that plane were in critical condition, last I heard. It was a solemn reminder of what could have been. The next day our plane was returned to town, airlifted by the same helicopter.
The Arctic is like nowhere I’ve been, and though we left with moose tags in our pockets, we were fine with that. We were simply pleased with being able to return safely home, to our families.
You’ll be able to see these adventures on next season’s episodes of Trijicon’s The Hunt, on the Sportsman Channel.
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