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Hunting and Fishing

I enjoy hunting and fishing. Most of the meat I eat is wild game like whitetail deer, elk, caribou or moose. (I am cooking the meat from the caribou shown above as I write this.)

I am extraordinarily lucky to be able to live and hunt in Alaska. A few years ago I did a six week solo hunt for sheep, caribou and moose. After my return I decided to put together documentary of that trip, below.

Click here to visit my Alaska hunting page with Alaska hunting packing lists and for a list of other Alaska hunting books and DVDs. There is also a link to my documentary page, which has a highlight clip of film, below, now available in streaming or DVD.

A few years ago I wrote a popular deer hunting book called Hunting Big Whitetails, now in it’s third printing. Click here for more information on my book and hunting whitetail deer. Pictured is my 2011 whitetail, which weighed 250 lbs field dressed, on a good scale.

250 pounds, dressed

Have you ever dreamt of “living off the land” for weeks or months at a time, eating nothing but fish and game and berries, and other plants you’ve foraged. Now you can read all about it in my book Alone in the Fortress of the Bears: 70 Days Surviving Wilderness Alaska: Foraging, Fishing, Hunting Now available in paper, Kindle and audio book!

I made a video about a fishing trip on the Goodnews River in Alaska. The fishing for silver salmon and rainbows and char was great. You can stream it right now on Amazon. I also fish for kings. Jim Griffin, shown, with a freshly landed fish. Click here for more information.

Griff lands another one

Alaska Caribou A nice caribou I took out of the Mulchatna herd way back in 1988. My dad and brother each took bulls that were as big, or bigger. On this hunt we spent the worst night any of us have ever spent camping out. There was a FIERCE windstorm, where the wind screamed for hours out on the open tundra and it rained about 4 inches! One of our two tents was destroyed and we got thoroughly soaked. Because there was no firewood around, it took days to get dried out completely. Make sure you have a good tent, and set it up out of the wind in a spot with good drainage. We were prepared, but not prepared enough for that storm.
Dall Sheep A Dall Sheep from the Alaska Range. Tom and Lisa helped me pack out this big ram. Wild sheep might be the finest wild game meat.
Idaho Elk A fine bull elk from Idaho. This resulted in the most brutal pack-out of my life, one heavy load each day for five days. Each load was 15 miles and a 6,000 vertical-foot round trip!
Alaska Moose A nice Alaskan moose. A 12-mile round trip packout. This was my second worse packout because my smokejumper buddies and Lisa helped me pack it out, in 100 lb. pack loads, all in one trip. They won’t let me forget that!
Montana Mule Deer A mule deer buck taken during the height of the rut in Montana. For the first time hunting muleys, I saw several nice bucks in one day.

2 Comments

  1. marcus

    Buck, I have hunted Alaska multiple times, but I have never done a float hunt. After watching your video on your dall sheep, caribou, moose, combo float hunt, I need to do this before I get to old. My problem is I don’t have contacts in that part of Alaska for the logistics, rafts, flight services, and other things. I was wondering if you would be interested in working with Me on planning something or could you refer Me to someone who could. what I think I would like to do would be a two man caribou float hunt on the Sheenjek River. If you can help me or,point me in the right direction I would very much appreciate it. Either way I enjoyed your video. Thanks for your time,, Marcus.

    • Bruce "Buck" Nelson

      Hi Marcus,
      I’m glad you liked my video! Congratulations on already hunting Alaska and on starting your plan for another hunt.
      I don’t do hunt planning, but here are some places in Fairbanks that do raft rentals. Check them out and compare:
      First is Pristine Ventures,
      The next is Blue Moose Rafting.
      Another is Yukon Air, which is also an air taxi.
      Two books I’d highly recommend for your planning (and I would start planning a year ahead of time) are:
      Hunt Alaska Now. I’d read that book cover to cover.
      Float Hunting Alaska’s Wild Rivers. Another outstanding book.

      I have a list of air taxis here.
      High on that list would be Yukon Air Service. Also good is Coyote Air. Book far in advance and compare total cost of flying in and out and transportation to where the air taxis depart.

      Good luck!

      Buck

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