EP 92: DIY Caribou in Alaska with Jeff John and The Epic Crew

When we started getting into the caribou, there were caribou everywhere. This is the definition of velvet dreams. Well, you got quotas and things, yeah, that could close in a matter of days, so you may need to adapt and move. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey, everybody, Jason Carter and the Epic Outdoors crew. We got Jeff John, John Peterson, and Adam Bronson here with us here in the studio today, kind of a rare occurrence. We're going to be talking about Jeff's caribou hunt in Alaska, so it's going to be a lot of fun. He did it start to finish from basic maps, even locating Alaska, to going up there and killing bulls and fishing and doing it all on their own and trekking across Canada in a truck and trailer. So pretty fun, pretty fun stuff, pretty awesome time for these guys. Before we get started, we want to thank Under Armour for sponsoring these podcasts. A great job that they do in developing great gear. And, of course, we appreciate our relationship with them. They've supported us from the start and have a lot of great gear and products hitting the website at UA.com.

And then, obviously, you can go under men and sports and click on the hunting, and all the hunting gear will come up. All summer long, we've been listening to Jeff at times, maybe talking to biologists or different people. So, you know, to tee it up for you, you and your dad and brother, and I guess your mom went up with your dad just because they drove up. But a do-it-yourself, learn Alaska hunt. A do-it-yourself caribou hunt, which Adam and I have never done. No. And so this is kind of a cool story. Okay, I've never been to Alaska. How do you go about, like, I've never been to Alaska, first off. So it was like, okay, I want to go up there, but there's a hundred things I want to do. So you ordered a world map to see where Alaska was. There you go. Okay, we started with the world map. We started with the world map. Ran the world map. Stopped into Jason Adams' office.

So, you know, what is Alaska like? All right, all right. So here we go. So basically it was just from beginning to end. We wanted to do a lot of stuff while we were there. We wanted to be able to travel around, see some things. We wanted options, you know, hunting options. And so we, you know, through the research we found out, okay, the 40-mile herd is as big as they've seen it. Like it's, like, you know. Bursting right now. Bursting right now. Normally 40,000 animals, they think they're 67,000 to 75,000 animals right now. These are barren ground caribou? These are barren ground caribou. They naturally have, they're a little bit bigger once you go up through, you know, from the Fairbanks up through the 40-mile herd to the, basically the Alaska range kind of has some of the bigger caribou.

You get up into the far north Brooks Range, carib, or the, oh, central Alaska herd, or the porcupine herd, they say these caribou have a little better genetics, okay? Yeah. So, you know, chance for a little bit better caribou. But regardless, I don't know that that mattered so much to us in our hunting as just, you know, what can we do? What can we make happen? We talked to, ended up talking to several guys, biologists, you name it, and the herd's awesome there, right? The 40-mile herd was awesome. We're like, okay, we're hunting that. What hunt's available? We can do a fly-in that opens up a little bit early, goes a little bit later, or we can do this drive-in hunt with the four-wheelers. And so we're like, let's try the four-wheeler hunt. Yeah, we have a truck. We have a four-wheeler. We have a trailer. Yeah. So we did it.

Do you remember, did you odometer-ed it on the way home to know, like, how many miles are we talking from southern Utah to, let's just say, toke or something? What did I, I think, 3,400 miles? Oh, not bad. One oil change. Did you take a oil filter? 3,700. Hey, these trucks can go 5 or 10,000 now. So they're good. No, literally, it needs it. Like, trust me, it needs an oil change. I was going to tell you, y'all just, since you had it in Alaska, you should have just sold everything. You should have sold the truck, the trailer, because they're worth way more up there than they are now. Oh, I don't even know if they are. Oh, they are. And then you would jump on the plane and come home and be like, honey, I sold my truck. I had $175,000. I sold it for 30 grand. It's both four-wheelers. They're probably worth $2,000 more apiece up there, because the shipping and all that to get stuff up there.

Yeah. It's tough to get stuff up there. So I was like, dude, that, it would have been, if Adam and I do that, trust me, one of us is selling trucks, drivers, roaders, side by sides. And pay for the trip. But it is, everything's a little bit more expensive. All right. So there you are. Your dad and mom go up there? What's that? So they were going to drive up. So we split it up. We didn't want to have to, everybody drive up, everybody drive home. So my mom wanted to go fishing. She wanted to go on the scenic tour. They'd never been there either, right? Mom and dad. No, they'd been there fishing. But they hadn't really, you know, of course, hadn't been. They'd flown up, they saw them flew home. Sitting in Anchorage, run down to Kenai or whatever, fish, and then fly home. So they're like, well, we'd love to try out some more stuff. So they loaded up, drove up, loaded up all of our gear.

So three four-wheelers, like a cargo trailer, full of gear, like you name it. We were prepared for anything and everything, because, of course, we're starting off hunting here. But we knew if that wasn't going to work. Well, you've got quotas and things, yeah, that could close in a matter of days. So you may need to adapt and move. Yes. And so in your brain, the pressure, the same as your bear hunt. Your bear hunt had me freaked out. With storms coming in and, you know, like you can't see or something. Well, you might as well be going to a foreign country. I mean, it's such a big continent. You've got all the gear that you might need. You don't know if you need chains or, I mean, for your truck. I mean, we had chains for trucks. We took a raft. We took everything you could think of. Dude, because we don't know. Like, we heard about you have a lot of rivers that you might have to cross.

You know, talking to everybody, you get all this gamut of information. You don't want to get up there and you need a $400 app to cross that. A ranch hand bumper for your truck in case you hit a moose on the way up. I had a Cadillac hit me in the bumper a couple years ago, and I've been like, oh, I need to get a new bumper. So finally, I was just like, I don't want to hit a deer in the middle of a freaking British Columbia or a moose or something and be stranded. So I'm like, well prepared. Self-guided caribou hunt. And we're doing it. Cause is, brings on a lot of new gear. A lot of new fun stuff. But the wife again, we need to have your wife on this podcast. Dude, the inReach is amazing. I love that tool. I mean, some of these little things that you just buy for just because. You can use on all these other hunts. I'm using my inReach.

I'm sitting in a blind in Nevada and you've got the inReach. I'm like, I could sit here a little longer now because I could get my little fix. And you know. My little electronic fix. You know what's going on. Yeah. Or you just touch base and know that there's nothing blowing up at the office or at home. And it just gives you the comfort. All right. I'm good out here. Okay. I'm good. Yeah. Or you can find out there is something blowing up at home and then you're freaked out. Yeah. Yeah. Could go both ways. We dealt with that while I was up there. You did? Oh. Yeah. Jason. You had to run over. Well, yeah. So, Jenna. So, Jeff's wife and my wife are sisters. Most of you guys know that. So, all of a sudden we get this phone call Sunday afternoon. And I mean, you know, we're having a Sunday nap, chilling out, doing. And this is opening day of the caribou hunt. Yeah. Opening day.

Jeff's up there. Jeff lives. What do you live? Probably five miles away or something. Yeah. Maybe a little less. Anyway, a little less. And so, we answer this phone and the phone's ringing. It's Jeff's wife. And she's screaming. Jenna, I need you to answer the phone. She didn't realize that, you know, it takes a minute to get to the phone. You know? And she's just screaming. And so, we're like. And she's like, I need you. Jenna, answer the phone. I need you now. Dude, we jumped in the car. We jumped in Jenna's car. In between my house and your house, the speed limit's 40 miles an hour. I hit 100. No way. Oh, no. I hit 116 miles an hour before Jeff's turn on. Which truck? I'd like to know. No, it's Jenna's Dodge Durango. It's unbelievable. That machine's unbelievable. You figured. Red line, red line, red line. All the way through the gears. He had 116. Rolled in.

I would say 35, 40 seconds. I don't know what it was. It felt like that. Angie was like, I have no idea how they got here. I felt like I hung up the phone. And they were at the door. We jumped. We opened the door. I'm like Jeff's kids on the floor. The baby. Ashlyn, yeah. Ashlyn had fallen off the table. Eyes rolled in the back of her head. Quit breathing. Turned white. And it was like. And by then, the baby had come too. She's two and a half. Your youngest. Yeah, my youngest. So, but the baby comes too. While you're there. While we're there. Well, she comes too, but right before we walk in the door. And so, anyway, by the time she had called the ambulance, by the time we wrapped our head around it, we're like, you know, you could call the ambulance off, go to the emergency room. Ambulances take forever to get there anyway. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. So, you. You drive her there as fast.

You can drive her there as fast. And without spinal injury, let's just go, you know, and have her checked out. And they did a brain scan and a few other things. But like, she's like literally, literally, the eyes rolled in the back of the head, turned white, couldn't breathe, wasn't breathing. And so, and Jenna's a nurse, you know, so just, anyway. Yeah, so it was crazy. So, I'm like, Jeff, did you hear what happened to your family? Oh, yeah. On his in-reach, getting updates. And, of course, of course, the in-reach that I get. The husband that needs to go on the self-guided care. The message that I get is, spent most of the afternoon in the emergency room, not good. Not good? Or all is well now? Or she says, everything's good now, but it was scary. That's it. That's the message I got. Well, and I don't know what it is. It's the Murphy's Law.

But my wife and I talk about this, like, bad stuff happens when I'm not there. I don't know. And I know in the fall we're not there a lot. It's because you're not there very often. I know.

I know. That's probably true. But my kids have broken arms and done it. My daughters have gotten in a car wreck when I was guiding the Henry's a couple years ago. Got T-boned by people in town and ER'd. Just like you did. As soon as you leave. My wife says something's probably going to happen. Well, and last time we were down here hunting, we were archery hunting deer years ago. Well, my kids are over at Jason's house. One kid throws a ball, hits a clock, chops off the top of his fingers. Just so happened to the same doctor. The clock falls off of our wall. And scissors him. And scissors him. I mean, and it's a heavy, freaking metal, big, round, two-footer. Amazing that that was all that happened. And it was like a shard that came off and hit him or something. It hit your arm. Oh, it was a little kid's wrist. A big, heavy clock falling 12 feet.

It just so happened to be the same exact doctor that stitched my kid's fingers back on is the one that looked at Ashlyn. Like, what are the odds of that? But anyway. You know what? I'm going to turn you in for abuse. You see there's something going on in your house that isn't healthy for all your kids. Luckily, 10 years apart. But, you know, DCFS is on their way.

But still, so, caribou hunt, we planned it out. We were as nervous about the rain. There's so many things that you're thinking about. Okay, so we know it's been raining like crazy. It's forecasted for rain. And it's a quota hunt, so it is likely going to. As soon as the quota's filled. It's over. Yeah. Like, they said it's only like 650 animals or something like that. Which I think it's actually more than that. You mandatory have to check them in. You have to check them in. You have to call them in. So they just have a quota out of, so 650 animals out of 75,000. That's what we heard. I'm doing some quick math in my head. There's a lot of polls. They felt like they could shoot a few more than that. But anyway. Yeah, and I think that's just a number some random guy threw out one time. I didn't check them to see exactly what it was, but I think. It's a modeling, computer modeling.

Who knows exactly how many animals are out there? So we're nervous about that. We're nervous about the rain. We're nervous about being soft in. You've got to check in every day, right? On the quota? You're supposed to check in every day, like once a day on the quota. Kind of like what we do with Montana Unlimited Sheep or bears. You're supposed to. Well, you have three days from the time to start. No, no, we didn't. Didn't have self-service. We didn't. Killed a couple caribou. We're good. We didn't need to. I mean, because, of course, we fly in. We land at like 2 in the morning. Dad and Mom drive up there. They drove up there. They make it to Alaska. They fish for a couple days. My dad picks us up at the airport. Me and my brother walk off. We jump in. We roll into a hotel. No bearing issues with the trailer. Nothing just far out. Nothing. Awesome.

Well, we took, trust me, we took everything in. You took bearings, grease. We had stuff gone through. I replaced everything on. Before you even left. Because I was like, I just don't want to deal with any. Well, you're in Alaska. Injectors. I need new injectors anyway. Throw them on there. Let's put a new tranny in this thing. Dude, you're thinking everything. You're like, I don't want to deal with it. I just want to fix and be done. The wife's like, this is for a caribou. Yeah. No. Yeah. But these discussions have gone for 10 years perfectly. Luckily, my wife probably doesn't listen to the podcast. All right. All right. Yeah. You ready to hunt? You're there. All your gear arrived. Wake up in the morning. We go in, check in to get our, they call it like a registration hunt, right? So we go in and get our registration tags.

We have to wait until 8 o'clock to get that from the, from Walmart. Your harvest ticket. All this. Walmart. Yeah. And then you print your other ticket offline. Harvest tickets. Yeah. The RC 860. So anyway, we take off up there. We're driving up the highway. It's like 150 miles, 200 miles to get up to where we knew the caribou were kind of intercepted. Probably on the way they come. Part of them out of the Yukon, right? They're rolling. You could probably. These caribou are rolling down the highway. You could probably hit Google Earth and see these things coming. Oh, dude. If you had a live feed. If you had an update, you could. Oh, there's no doubt. Because you get up on top, it's open. Like the snow tail monitors in Colorado, you could just have like a snow tail video and all of a sudden, here comes the house. There's no kidding.

But they got collars on them, so they know where they're at. But anyway, so we're rolling up there. There's caribou driving past us. Like people's trucks filled. We're like, come on. Oh, shiz. When did it start? It started that morning. It started that morning. And you were late to the day. You were a few hours. A little late. Like we're a few hours late, basically. Nine or ten by now. But we're like, we're here for ten days. Like we weren't like super. We're going to kill some ptarmigan, fish for gray land, and maybe shoot a caribou. When we start seeing these caribou rolling down the road, we're like, oh, shiz. They're on the highway. Like they must be here. So we pull up and we hit this canyon. We can tell there's a lot of trucks and trailers and some guys loading up a caribou. Okay, we're hitting it. We jump out, jump on the four-wheelers, roll up the road.

And it's like there's people with freaking dead caribou. Hunter orange? No hunter orange? What? No hunter orange. No, you don't have to wear it. Yeah, bullets everywhere. But we were warned by the fishing game. Like if the caribou are on the highway, you probably will want to wear hunter orange. And a lot of them were like, we don't even go over there on opening morning because if they're on the highway, it could be a war zone. They said on the highway there was 2,000 caribou on the highway the day before, like that goes through there. And they said, you pull up into that and there's Trish Chucks parked there. Trish Cross and you turn to applesauce. And we didn't, yeah, we didn't want it. We didn't really want to deal with that. Like we were a little worried about it. So there was this area that you could ride four-wheelers into. So that's what we wanted to do. So we rode up there.

And sure enough, when we started getting into the caribou, there were caribou everywhere. But it's raining the whole time and you're just like, you don't know. We didn't know what we were in for. You don't know if it's going to be better or if this is the best. Well, you're trying to decide, what are you holding out for? Yeah, what are you holding out for? What's your caribou goal? Because it's like, you know, you're thinking about it and you're like. I get to shoot one of these and there's like hundreds or thousands around. Like, this could be over in 10 minutes and we've gotten a lot to get here and maybe that's good. But maybe I should wait. We don't want it to storm in on us, soak in on us and we can't see anything. We don't want it to close on us. To you, your brother, and your dad. Yes. Three of you. Your mom has flown home. She's gone. She flew in the same time we flew out.

Or she flew out the same time we flew in. So, you know, we're just all these things. We're like, we've got to kill some caribou. One guy's on the side of the road packing out a caribou. Oh, they're closing this sucker down today. You know, like, oh, she is. And you're like, is that true or not? Yes. Do I got hours? Do I literally have hours? This comes from Jeff. He can hold out. This guy, he had that Rocky Mountain sheep. Jeff hunted. He can hunt. Well, you can hold out. I can hold out. I can hold out. Yeah. I mean, I'll eat a tag. I'm not afraid of eating a tag. But at the same time. I am not eating a tag up here. I was going. But I was not eating this tag. Dude, we were going to kill some stuff. And I was like. All right. It's just. So here comes bulls. Bulls, cows, everything. You're not prepared for it. So you glasses. We glasses side hill over here, you know.

And they're like, there's a couple nice bulls in there. We got to go. Out of how many? Oh, there was probably in that group. There's probably 60 caribou in that group. And so we're like, well, let's go kill some. And so we rode around to try to intercept them. This is the definition of velvet dreams. Yeah, exactly, dude. It really is. Like, the velvet is gorgeous. Oh, I looked up in the pictures. I did. All right. We run around there. We park the four-wheelers. We take off hiking. And that's probably the biggest mistake you can make. Like. Don't get off the bike. Don't get off the bike. Like. Because you can't catch up to them. And the hills. Like, you've been up. Like, I don't know if you've been up there. But it's just round. Everything's round. Like, long round. You can't. You can't catch them, dude. And they won't stop moving. They just move continually forever.

You just need to get in their way and wait for the next big bull. Yes. We'll wait for the next group. So anyway, I'm hiking back off that hill. And I. And I'm stopping. I'm glassing. I'm seeing the side hill. All these caribou pouring over the side hill. I'm like, there's a pretty nice bull. He's got a lot of cool stuff on top. Just a neat looking bull. I'm like. I might go hunt him. Me and my dad split up at the time. My dad and my brother. My brother comes over the hill. I walk down to the four-wheelers. My brother comes down to the hill. I go pick him up. Take him back to his wheeler. I'm like, I see a caribou over here. I might just go kill him. Is he alone? No. He's with. In a group. He's with probably 20 to 25 with probably five, six bulls in it. How far can you see? Five miles? Ten miles? You can see. Well. I mean, you're in some mountains. It's a little rolling. Yeah.

With the rain and everything, you can see a long, long ways. But you can see three, four miles. You know. At the right time. Black dots as far as you can see. Yeah. And there's patches of them. You know. And some of them, you're like, you don't know if there's a bull in there worth hunting or not. And it's going to take you half the day to ride over there. And why would you? Because they're coming my way? Or there's more going to be coming my way? Yep. So, you see this bull coming. And I'm like, I'm going to go check him out. Get a little bit closer. So, I ride down, ride over. Get in position. And he's gone on the side hill. I'm like, what the heck? And all of a sudden, I start seeing caribou like lying out underneath me. I'm like, oh, man. They're right here. I roll up there. And freaking sure enough, all these cows and bulls are coming. And I see this bull.

And he's by far the biggest bull in the group. You know? And I'm like, and he's cool looking. And I'm like, I'm done. Boom. I just put him down. Close. Close. He was 150 yards. Oh, dude. Ridiculous. Chip shot. Oh, it was ridiculous. Boom. Done. Dark. Dark velvet thing. Yeah. The one he's black. He's really dark looking. I didn't even know that he got that dark, dude. I'm not a character. He was black. They were pretty. Oh, you are now. And he's a little bit more. You're a caribou hunter now. Oh, I've been educated. You and Santa are judging reindeer and caribou on the hook. He's a little bit more compact. He's not that long, long, long main beam. You know what I mean? But he's. A lot of cool points and cupping. A lot of cool points. Tops were good. Yep. And a little bit wider than a lot of. Even some of the bigger ones weren't as wide as he is.

The thing about caribou, there's so many subtleties. Yes. Yes. If there's that many, you will just wait for the one you like. Well, and we were sitting there. So I sat there and my dad and brother finally came over and caught up and sat down and we're chatting. And here comes this bull, like lone bull. While you're standing over your dead bull. While I'm standing over my dead bull. And your brother's like, I'll take that one. And so my brother and dad are like, and I'm, I'm about 30 yards from him when the bull shows up. And I'm like, Hey, look. And they look down there and they're like, Oh, I don't know. Maybe we should shoot that one. I didn't hear all the discussion over there. Cause I, I take the bull and I, so I'm laying down. I'm like, I got to give him a chance. And the bulls kind of acting nervous. And anyway, I just give him a minute, but he's still watching.

And finally my dad was just like, boom, just shoots him. Didn't even really ask. He just, boom, done. Son, this is mine. So where's all the people? Where's all the vehicles? Is there other people? I mean, well, dude, there's people like a lot of guys had already peeled out of there. But this particular draw you guys had. We were up there. Four wheelers alone. Well, no, there were still guys around. There was bikes cross country. Yes. Everywhere. Like just. There's no, there's no rules on the bikes per se. I mean, I don't know what other states are like, but if you've done a Utah general deer hunt. Very similar. Very similar. Like Northern. Now I'm not talking about, I'm talking Northern. Let's say that's a whole new level. Let's take the cash. It felt like, it was like the cash or Box Elder County or something. It's like, there's a lot of people.

The only public land unit in Northern Utah. Let's take that. Yeah. All right. So anyway, boom, he dumps them. We killed bulls 200 yards apart from each other. And then we were like, they walked up on it and it, you know, it's. It's as long as mine, but it does. It just doesn't have the length, but it was cool. Cause he's got like eight inch back scratchers. They're long. You know what I mean? Just kind of neat. Like you got big fronts or double shovels, which are rare. And then you got eight inch back scratchers and not as good at tops, but like, yeah, there's no two that even look alike. They're amazing. Amazing. How different. Right. So, so, you know, we were like, oh man, like, what are we going to hold out for? For Dusty? You're it. I can already see this. So this is an epic, an epic staff reunion. We're going to do this every year. We're going to do something. Well, I got, it is.

I'm telling you, if you know what's happening with the herds, you could do it in two days. You could fly up there. If you don't, you might take. Kill your caribus. Get back and you're done. So we sat there. Dusty walked over and tried to get on. We had a couple, we had a herd of like 200, 300 caribou up on a mountain. And there was a couple dandy bulls, like big bulls in there. So Dusty went over and was going to make a play on bulls. So did you clean your bulls real quick? Or do you still hunt? I did. No. Well, I'm cleaning the bull. My bull, my dad's cleaning his bull. And Dusty's. Took off. Yeah. Took off. Jeff's got the rubber gloves clear on up to his armpit. And his brother's looking at which one he's going to whack. Yeah. There you go. Well, because you got your wheeler pretty close or right to him. Right to him.

So you can literally just cut him in quarters and take the whole carcass basically. Got it. I did, dude. I threw my whole caribou on my caribou. You just got it. I just got him and threw him on there because you've got to take. Everything is there anyway. You've got to take everything. Yeah. Just get the guts out and everything else is there. All right. So Dusty goes over, goes up the hill, sees, you know, the bulls just aren't moving down and it's wide open. There's no way he's going to get it on them without blowing them out. And so I'm watching. Is this after? Did you make him help you? No. I just sent him. Just sent him. Go. And so then I, you know, I'm sitting there glassing and here's some more caribou coming over. Same direction mine came. Jeez. And I'm like, well, there's one pretty good bull in there.

So I ride over after we're watching Dusty for a couple hours waiting for these caribou to come down. And they're just not coming down. There's too much pressure down there. You can tell they're just pooling up up there. So we're like, okay. So I run over, grab Dusty. I'm like, hey, you might want to come look at this other bull. So we ride over there and there's probably 200 caribou in this group. They walk out and there's 30 bulls maybe. And the bulls are kind of pulled up together. And there's one that's obviously, he's a tank. You know, there's one that's bigger on, like the one side is amazing. He's big. He's everything. Double shovel. The other side comes out and he's just, just like broke off the top of his arm. Messed up. He's garbage. So he's the bull that I would have killed if he was equal.

But, you know, there's this one bull and you can tell he's definitely body, horns, everything. He's bigger, double shoveled. And we're like, okay, we're killing him. He's pulled up so tight. What guns are you guys using? Thompson. Mark Thompson's. Yeah. We both have our 270 Thompsons up there. Okay. You both have 270s. Yeah. Yep. We each took 40 rounds. It took two. So we brought a lot of ammo home. I love that gun. Love that gun. Thompson does a great class that you can take. Learn more about how to, you know, you build your gun with them. Start to finish. You set it up. You see all the parts that are setting it up. You're able to grow intimate with that rifle. You're seeing what it really takes to go to 1,000 yards. He makes it look too easy. He really does. But literally within a few hours, you are taking a gun out of the box.

Setting it up with a scope that he's already done the back work on. He's already done all the, you know, he knows what speed to have that bullet going. He knows everything about it. He's got multiple different calibers available. We chose a 270. My next gun will be a 3378 from Mark. Awesome guns.

Does a great job. Give him a call at 1-800-584-4079. Or you can look up, see a bunch of the options that are available at www.thompsonlongrange.com. You can kind of look at all the different options he has on there, all the different guns. So they're pulled up. You can't get a shot. They're jumbled like this. And the big bull is right in the middle of them. Like right in the middle, surrounded by all these other bulls. It's just a sea of horns right there in that group. They walk out onto the side hill. We're like, shit, so we've got to try to get a shot. So we run back to the four-wheeler, jump on right over, get in the spot. Dude, this is just a Western deer hunt. I mean, it's just redneck, it's all get out. It's what it is. And we're like, you've got to embrace it for whatever it is. Well, it's going to be, blows it down in a day or two, you're done. There's two guys.

One of them's from Utah, in fact. But there's an Air Force base, and all the Air Force guys love hunting, right? So they're all up there crushing the place. Well, these two guys park, and they take off hiking. And I don't know how far they hike, but they were gone. These caribou almost run over their four-wheelers. I mean, they run within 100 yards of their four-wheeler. You're using the four-wheeler as a rest for the ride. Dude, leaving a note on the handlebars. Thanks, boss. Here's a tenderloin.

Like, they walk out on this hill 450 yards. We watch them for 10 minutes. We still can't get a shot. They're pulled up too tight. Like, shiz. They walk around the ridge. We ride over, ride up on the mountain, you know, and we're looking down. On the bikes. You're going around them in the bikes. Yes. Getting in front of them. And so we ride up, get to a point where we can take off hiking and get down to a point where, sure enough, they just come walking right in front of us. This time, they're on a little bit steeper. They kind of thin out, and they line out. Yeah, string out. And then we're just like, okay, okay. And so we're just doing the, okay, clear chute. Okay, nope. Okay, clear chute. And there's one bull you want. There's one bull that we really want. And so anyway, we waited until the bull was clear. I'm just done. We're done. It was a matter of four or five hours.

Yours is back at the truck. No, not even back at the truck. Still tied up on the four-wheeler. Just gutted, thrown on the four-wheeler, waiting. And then we both took the one four-wheeler over. Oh, I got you. Used him as a decoy. You could have. Could have. But you don't need one. That one looks sick. You know, and I will say, like, the locals were like, I don't know how you guys got so lucky to come up here on this year. This is like, and they called it the National Geographic Day, like, it's not always like this. You know, we usually ride 34 miles. Usually we have to drive 20 miles and only see 200. 30, 40 miles, and we see two or three bulls that we'd even shoot. Oh, really? Yeah, and they'll kill a dink bull. You know what I mean? Because they'll just kill whatever's there. Wow, that's awesome. But, so this year it was just like the caribou were on the high.

Fishing was terrible in Alaska compared to other years. Oh, collectively I've heard that. Collectively. It was terrible. My kids went up there, you know, with their grandpa, and it was tough. They did, you know, Sean did catch a 25-pound king, so it was kind of a highlight of his trip. But fishing was terrible. Caribou was off the charts. Off the charts. So you're going to inspire a lot of guys to go up there, and they're not going to have the same experience. Well, and that's what I worry about is you need to know what you're doing. You've got to do it twice. You've got to tell your wife. Well, and you've got to have a backup plan. I've got to make sure that it wasn't just a luck deal. Yeah, you can't. I don't think you can go up and 100% bank on that hunt because in a day those herds can move on, and you're back to seven days of riding four-wheelers. So you've got three caribou.

Tell us about the meat processing. Oh, they were so loaded because the caribou were right on that. Nobody processed. Nobody took it. Oh, no. They were like, well, I can take them in, but I don't know when I'm going to get it to you. It could be three weeks, and we'd be shipping. Did you guys take a freezer and stuff up? What did you take in your— So we went in. We went to Walmart. Went in Walmart and Fairbanks. There was a $230 freezer. Boom. Bought it. Took it back to campus. You had a generator. We had a generator. You brought it up because you might need some air tools to fix whatever. Exactly. All right. You know us, Jason. Yeah. You know us. Might need to use the air wrench to change the tire. So instead of using the star wrench by hand, we're using the air wrench with this generator. You laugh about that. We had a power battery.

So we started the generator, and the generator didn't stop. Didn't stop. We cranked that. We chopped up our caribou, freaking threw it in there. Well, you've got to separate them because it takes too long. The big muscles. Yeah. While we're talking about that, Jeff, I just want to bring up, did you happen to use the outdoor edge knife on your caribou? Absolutely, I did. What did you think? Okay. Well, you remember, you're breaking the caribou down. This is the Epic Series. Probably had a little Epic. Oh, it was. The Epic logo on it. Epic logo got caribou gore on it. Every part of it. But basically, you're breaking it. You have to break them all the way down. You know, I mean, when you kill something in Alaska, you're breaking it down. How many blades did you use? I went through, I mean, honestly, from beginning to end, I went through three blades.

That's from cutting them, gutting them, caping them. Deboning them all. Deboning them. I went through three blades. So, you know, I had to separate. I froze them all, and then we tore to Alaska. We tore from one end of Alaska to the other. Just checking everything out. We went up. I wanted to see. You went up to the areas that you might have had to hunt. Yes. Had this area closed in two or three days. We had a bow with us. You went north. So, if we went up and we wanted to hunt. The bow zone off the hall road. Off the hall road. We wanted to check that out. Dude, it's doable. We saw a nice bull 150 yards off the road that sat there and watched us. Like, the hall road archery hunt is doable. And that's what I wanted to see. I'm like, is it really doable to kill one off there? Oh, it's doable. Like, I don't think that, of course, we didn't see quantities like we saw down there.

You know, we only saw probably seven, eight bulls. But, dude, we drove there. We drove up past, out of the brooks. Drove up another 30, 40 miles. On the north slope. On the north slope. Still south. Still south of Dead Horse. Because Dead Horse and Prudhoe Bay aren't very far. Like, it's clear up there. But I drove that. Purpose is on the end of the earth. We drove that. That was my first doll sheep. It was out of Happy Valley, just south of Dead Horse. Not very far. On the north slope. Oh, on the north slope. Yeah. Yep. That's where my first one came from. So. It was wild seeing all the country. I mean, it was amazing. But it was like, like, we saw big grizzly bears. We saw a wolverine, doll sheep everywhere. Did you take grizzly spray? What's that? I mean, I don't know. Oh, yeah. Dude, we had bear spray. Yeah, the hole spray. What about pistols? You guys were talking about pistols.

And I'm like, did you take those through Canada? Oh, no. No, we flew them all up there. Flew your pistols? In there. And then your dad flew home, right? And then my dad flew home. Did he take the pistols from Fairmont? He flew the pistols home. Yeah. You tried to get that into Canada? No. It ain't happening. Yeah, it ain't happening. The borders were slick. So you guys had pistols, rifles, bow. Yes. Air tools. Freezers. Air compressors. You name it. Extra tires. New bumper for the front truck. Two extra tires for everything. And how long did the caribou hunt last? From the time the first trigger was pulled to the third? I don't know. Maybe four to five hours. And then you went fishing, right? Then we went salmon. Dude, we had time. And we had food. Like, we're loaded. We had all this freeze-dried stuff and everything. We're like, we're just going to run around.

Your dad stayed with you for that turnaround? Yeah. So it was you three. That's an awesome father's sound trip. So he flew home. We flew him home. And then you drove. And then me and Dusty drove. Made it home in three days. So it was good. Went down. You head over to Whitehorse, Yukon. And all the way down through BC and into Alberta. How about that extra fuel tank that you put a transfer tank in? Have to have it. Was it awesome? Awesome. Loved it. To get through Canada, all those long old roads. Well, and you don't know. And we even had to refill it a couple times in Canada. You know what I mean? Because it's long road. But still, you get in a spot and our power's out here. Pumps are down. Wow. You don't camp there for 24 hours to wait and forget. You don't want to have to go to Coldfoot, Alaska. And the gas is $5.50 a gallon. You know what I mean? You paid for the transfer tank.

Oh, easy. Oh, yeah. Just in the gas. Yeah, three or four times over. And it's something we can use on the farm and everything anyway. So what do you figure? Do you know roughly? If a guy's going to drive, not buy all the extra equipment. You're not doing that. But if you're going to drive, how much is it going to cost you in fuel? How much is it going to cost you? Or did you have a piece? Three grand in fuel is what we spent. Oh, three grand in fuel. No, $1,000 a piece is what we were. Yeah. For fuel. For fuel. For a truck up and back. And then, you know, you bought it. You probably had to use it for the freezer anyway. I mean, there's some things. Well, and there's like the, you know, and I bought the bumper. I bought all this stuff. So I spent a bunch of money on that stuff. But it's all stuff I'm going to use. The inner each and everything. Okay. I blew some money on that stuff.

But I'm going to use it forever, right? But you're not going to do the hunt. All told. What are you into that? You're not going to do the hunt for under $3,500. There's no way you're going to do it for under $3,500. By the time you get your airfare, even if you're flying up. Yep. You're going to have to have a couple of hotels here and there. Bad days. So can a guy. Your hunting license and your caribou tag. Caribou is what? $600, $800 now? You're $800. You're like $840. Plus your license. Yeah. Yeah. Your license is $160. So you're almost a grand just in a hunting license and one caribou tag. And maybe you've got a wolf tag or two. I should have gave you my only use bear tag and let you freaking kill me a caribou. Okay. That's illegal. Don't do that. If there were 20 guys with me, we could have all killed decent bulls. Wow. It didn't matter. Just the year you hit it.

Well, my dad was sitting there and we were over killing Dusty's caribou. Like the herd that we were waiting to have come off the mountain came off the mountain. Right by him. And they walked within 200 yards. He had 1,000 caribou. Where are they going? Where do they end up? What are they migrating for? They're just going. They migrate for what? Timing of the year. Where do they migrate? I think they're just naturally wired to walk. To walk. And they don't stop. They're like a kid on a sugar rush. They're just aggressively walking. Do they even? And then they stop for an hour. And feed. And feed, lay down. Get up and they're on the move. Get up and they're on the move. Did you see wolves? Never saw a wolf. No. There you can kill up to 10 without a tag. You don't even have to have a tag. But once you have a kill 10, you've got to go get a tag. So you don't even need a tag to kill them.

But we talk to the locals. Very tough wolf hunting there. The guys have been out there. They hunt moose and caribou every year. And they've seen one in 20 years. You know what I mean? Pretty tough. But they're thick. From what I understand. They're just savvy. So what's on the schedule now? You're home. Happy. Your dad's got a sheep tag. I mean, I don't know. What's on the schedule? Yeah. So I got an elk hunt coming up that I'm helping a buddy with. What about that Montana one? That one's coming right after that one. So I'm going muzzleloader. Hunting with him. You're going to hunt towards the end of the archery hunt in Montana, right? Yes. Early October. It's a six-week season. And then at the very end. You get a lot of the people that clear out toward that end of the first of October. So what are you doing from now until the Utah muzzle elk hunt? I'm chilling out.

Be careful what you say. Office work. Be careful what you say. I've got a lot of office work to catch up on. Because Jason, he's looking for a spotter where there's no deer. I know.

I'm in. But no. So now I get to relax. There's five. And you might want one of them. 20 square miles. Anyway. That's a long goal. Awesome. That's an awesome trip. I'm actually ready to go. Well, what's up for you? I know you've got a little bit of guiding coming up with. Yeah. I've got a bunch of sheep now. I don't have any. You know, with that hunt that I had planned this year, I stayed clear of all the archery. If I knew I had a crystal ball, I was going to kill. I killed him on the evening of day five. Came home three or four days early. I wouldn't have missed much of the general deer hunt. I wish I would have got an archery hunt because I'm. Johnson. Yeah. I'm just fired up. You know, you're fired. Give me the next thing. You have to, you know, just like you, Jeff. Give me the next, you know, and then you're going to get humbled for 10 days and like, okay, I'm back to the real world.

That's probably what would really happen. But I don't have a personal tag now for about a month. And so. Yeah. Yeah. I've got. Yeah. I've got something in the September, but a bunch of sheep guiding. Yeah. The sheep guiding is what's going to be awesome. That's what I've got. That's what I've got. It's going to lay some big old sheep down. Yeah. Nevada, Utah. So that's what I'm doing here. And it's tempered. The, you know, we left in 106 or eight degree heat and went up there and froze my butt off. And now it's, you know, about a hundred in some of these desert areas. It's 98 to a hundred, which is totally doable. And, uh, raining. And so, yeah, looking forward to that. All right. Sounds good. What about you, Jason? You haven't really said much about. Archery deer in, around here. And then, uh, archery elk in New Mexico. Possibly. Depends on how these hunts go. So. Yeah. Anyway.

And then Colton's got an antelope hunt. Starts mid-September. September 15th. Right. Yep. Here in Utah. And then, um, it just, it's. One after another. Back to back. Back to back. Back to back. Back to back. Back to back. Back to back. So, anyway, you get a few kids and they're, they're needy. John, what are you up to right now? You got dedicated? Yeah, I got dedicated. Did the dedicated hunter project. Which is all three. Planted some bitter brush and stuff like that. So, are you going to go out and bow hunt a little bit? Or have you been yet? No, I don't think so. I think I'm going to. Muzzle and rifle. Yeah. And then. It's a war zone. Been doing a lot of. Don't feel bad. It's a war zone. A lot of stuff in the office. We're upgrading our website a lot. So, we're working on that. Guys will see that, you know, probably in November. Yeah. And also been, we've added maps to our website.

Yeah. And so, we've been selling a lot of maps and answering a lot of questions. Pretty cool. Guys can get maps that have the, the units, you know, printed right on the maps. They're waterproof. And centered on your, you know, if we've, if we all bought BLM maps for seven or ten bucks here and then, they're the paper ones. They're non-waterproof. It takes four of them to cover your unit. But inevitably, the area you were looking at is on the seam of about four of them. And it drives you nuts. And so, these unit maps, we've teamed up with MyTopo. Yeah. Yeah. Centers it. And you got it. Slaps an Epic logo on, which is awesome. Yeah. If you want to get that, just go to our website. Click on services. Go to the map center and follow the instructions. And you can get topographical seven and a half minute, one on 24,000 maps as well.

One of the, one of the greatest ways to do it is you go in and you choose GMU. So, you find your unit first. And then, you can either get the standard one that's one to 100,000. Or you can click, if you find your unit, and then right on the, on the left-hand side on the bottom, it'll say customize this map. Then you can go in and you can choose, you know, tons of different stuff. You know you're going to be in a certain drainage. You can kind of hone in center. Yeah. And the biggest ones on there are one to 50,000. Yeah. And you can choose satellite overlays. You can choose satellite overlays with topographic lines. Yeah. And it's just awesome. Lots of customization. You can get maps five feet wide by eight feet tall if you want. I mean, whatever you want. Well, for Jeff's caribou hunt, you might have needed them that big. They are 48 inches, buddy. Yeah.

That would cover about a 16th of Alaska, that five by six foot map. Tons of options on the custom maps. Okay. All right, guys. Well, we're about podcasted out, aren't we? I think so. Time for lunch. Oh, yeah. Let's do that. So, anyway, appreciate everybody. Keep in mind, we do get a lot of messages in here. Ask for Jeff first for the next three weeks. And then Adam and I do try to take care of our messages. But it is our hunting season, and it's brutal. We're out in the field a lot. But we'll do the best we can to help you out on anything that you've got going, which any questions that you have. Hopefully be patient. We have started. Jason and I yesterday got calls from people in some of these states, Arizona and Utah and Nevada. We've heard of a few people getting reissue tags.

We realize if you get a call from a state and it's a tag that's awesome and you want to take it, you may be trying to get a hold of us. Realize that the gals that we have up front, they can get an epic member experience list to you. Quick, get that going. If you need an outfit or recommendation, obviously you're – Jeff or I or Adam can help you. We can help you do that. One of us will most likely be in the office. We'll do our best realizing we're out doing what we like to do, and hopefully you're all doing the same. That's right. Okay. Sounds good. Good luck to everybody.