Muskox '05

[Kusko]

My friend's and I were successful this weekend during our muskox hunt on Nunivak Island. I don't have any pictures of Dottie's animal, but she took a very nice, mature bull on Friday with her drawing permit.

On Saturday, Ross and I both got our cows with handguns. We found animals as soon as we got to the south side of the island, but they were all bulls. We cruised the dunes for 3 hours without any luck, so we decided to head back. On our way back, we spotted a herd of muskox with cows, calves and bulls in it and were lucky enough to get our animals.

The .480 Ruger is a very good caliber for muskox. I was impressed with the results. My attempt with a bow was aborted after the winds picked up in the 40 mph range. There were a lot of foxes out there this year and I shot an arctic fox with Ross's rifle. I didn't get any pictures of it. I would say we saw between 50-100 foxes on Saturday.

Ross and I ended up in a whiteout after butchering the animals and were forced to use the GPS to get us back to a cabin near Cape Mendenhall. We didn't want to risk going back to Mekoryuk in those conditions, so we spent the night there. Because we had to go 11 miles in the opposite direction to get to the cabin, which took us 2.5 hours because of conditions, we were short on gas to get back to the village. We woke up early the next morning and had no less than 6 foxes in our sled full of muskox. They wouldn't leave and had no fear of us even after we started the snowmachines. A .22 pistol or rifle would have been handy on this trip.

Ross, pulling the sled with two muskox and gear, ran out of gas 10 miles from Mekoryuk the next morning. I was also very low on fuel. We called on the VHF and Kevin came with some gas so we were able to get back without trouble after that. If we would have packed 6 gallon cans, like we normally do, instead of 5's, we would have made it back with the gas we had.

Note: We did this hunt without the aid of a guide or transporter.

Yes, this site has been slightly dead, but as you can see, I've been a little busy.