TRCP’s Western conservation communications manager recounts his recent caribou hunt in Alaska’s Brooks Range, our country’s most remote landscape  

A lot of folks who are lucky enough to take a fly-in hunting or fishing trip to Alaska say the extreme remoteness doesn’t fully hit them until the pilot takes off and the sound of the engine disappears. 

But for me, it was on the flight in. I knew the pilot wasn’t going to stay. He wasn’t included in our float trip plans. 

We flew over 150 miles from the airstrip, and once the Dalton Highway faded from view, the full expanse below was wild country. For 150 miles it was great mountains and long rivers and jeweled lakes and no roads or trails. To get out from where we were going was a distance that my brain was having trouble comprehending. I’d backpacked in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. I’d hunted wild country in the Rocky Mountains. But this place, the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, held a remoteness to a magnitude I’d never experienced. 

Our group of four (Dan, David, John, and me) and three boats (I can’t row in a pool) spent the first day unloading gear, blowing up rafts, and staring in awe of a landscape we’d dreamed of for years. Since hunting on the day you fly in is illegal, we took up the fly rods and waded into the river expecting grayling and resident char.  

However, when John made it to a cliff wall with an obvious pool below and yelped with excitement, I figured that must mean the sea-run Dolly Varden had made their way into the headwaters.  

The fish—20-30 inches in length—hugged the bottom and were strung out in a line on the inside seam of the current. We crouched above them and swung purple, gold, and pink streamers in front of their noses. The Dollies ate with anger and ran with marine strength. Their wide, heavy bodies rode the pull of the river and their color flashed brilliantly in the cold, clear water. A few males tail danced, but most wanted to bully in the deep, giving the 8wts as much bend as they could stand. 

The hens had bellies pink as a sunset and the tips of their mouths were lipsticked orange. The males sported blood-red bellies, kyped jaws, and sharp, jagged teeth. All sides were spotted red with blue halos. For an angler used to brook trout, this was the pinnacle of char fishing. That night, all I dreamed of was fish, despite being able to hunt caribou when the morning arrived. 

The next day we floated downriver spooking Dollies in every hole, but our focus was on caribou. We made camp six miles downriver, then spent the afternoon and evening glassing the wide basin that opened to the river valley. Blueberries were ripe all around us, and I found a matching set of sheds below the glassing knob. 

Yet no caribou showed in our hours of searching, though the landscape surrounding us displayed the scars of their meandering trails running south. The herd’s path was here, but the herd was not. Their presence etched in the foothills was a clear example of the massive ranges these animals demand for their seasonal movements. Despite supporting so much life, large mammals must travel thousands of miles across the Arctic to find forage and suitable habitats month to month. It will sometimes take a caribou herd years to use their entire range, but ensuring these habitats remain intact means the animals can move where they must in order to thrive. 

After another night in the teepees, we woke early to climb a bench to the north that overlooked a wide drainage to the east. Before mid-morning, we reached a highpoint to look into the river bottom. And there, as obvious as the sun, were four bull caribou on the white rocks along the river. 

We made a quick play down off the bench, following a spring seep to keep out of sight. Unfortunately, the caribou came up the bench one rise too far and spooked when the wind carried our scent to them.  

As they made their way up over the bench and out of sight, I was struck by how they almost floated over the ground we’d been stumbling through. Their bodies made no wasted movements. Their heads held high carrying the Dr. Suess-esc antlers. Their fur still a dark, summer coat that popped against the willows going yellow and the blueberries and Labrador tea burning red. 

The Brooks Range must be conserved to ensure future generations experience this remote country. To struggle through tussocks, to wade freezing rivers, to see grizzly tracks in the sand, to watch caribou cross country, to eat blueberries by the fistful, and to fall asleep exhausted at the end of the day and dream of doing it all again the next morning.  

We followed the bulls and found them in the riverbed feeding. Dan and David traced the end of the bench out toward them, while John and I made a beeline across the dry basin to the east. After 400 yards, we hit the dry creek bed and waited to see what direction the caribou would go.  

Either pushed by Dan and David or by their own sense of direction, the caribou crossed below us in a single file, and began to follow the rise that would curve them back our way. We scrambled to the cutbank, climbed up, and watched the group close the distance. 

One bull was larger than the rest. His antlers tall and bent in a C. I traced him in my scope as the group closed the distance from 300 to 250 yards, and when John called the final “189,” the bull stepped up on a rise enough for me to see his vitals. With the shot he dropped into the tundra and laid still. 

I thanked the bull when I set my hands on his neck and velveted antlers. The three remaining bulls made their way into the drainage to the east and disappeared. David and Dan arrived, and we all celebrated the first caribou of the trip, the immediate redemption of a missed opportunity, and the gift of good meat that would supplement the freeze-dried meals we all packed. 

The day was cool and having shot the bull in the middle of a dry plain meant a grizzly wouldn’t easily sneak in on us. The clocks hadn’t yet struck 10 a.m. and so we took our time around the bull; admiring his antlers and the body that had carried him across thousands of miles of this wild country before we broke him down into quarters. 

With many hands working, the quartering and packing was swift. And suddenly we were hiking back upriver, loaded heavy, with breaking down camp and meat care ahead of us. I shook my head in disbelief at the dream of a successful caribou hunt being realized so soon after our drop off. 

That night around the fire, fingers greasy from tenderloins wrapped in caul fat, I knew there was over a week left of this trip, and my pulling the trigger only an instant in the whole tale. There were three tags that needed to be clipped onto antlers, and miles of river to ply for char and grayling. Those days would pass as days do, but for the moment, it was all before us, which makes for an adventure. 

The hunt above occurred on the North Slope of the Brooks Range, hundreds of miles away from the proposed Ambler Road. However, the sweeping crescent of the Brooks Range running east to west across northern Alaksa offers, in its totality, the wildest country left in America. The land that the Ambler industrial corridor would cut across along the Kobuk River is different from the landscape of my hunt, but the remote character is similar, and barreling semis and thousands of culverts interrupting the movements of iconic Arctic animals and fish and degrading the wild space would ruin the experience that so many hunters and anglers travel so far to reach. 

The Brooks Range must be conserved to ensure future generations experience this remote country. To struggle through tussocks, to wade freezing rivers, to see grizzly tracks in the sand, to watch caribou cross country, to eat blueberries by the fistful, and to fall asleep exhausted at the end of the day and dream of doing it all again the next morning.  

The proposed Ambler Road would forever alter the wild character of this country. The 211-mile industrial corridor would slice across the southern foothills of the Brooks Range and require over 2,900 culverts with the potential to cinch off spawning areas for sheefish and Arctic grayling. The estimated 168 daily trips on the road would likely impact big game movement such as the Western Arctic caribou herd that migrates through the region. 

Fortunately, after an extensive public comment period where over 14,000 hunters and anglers voiced their opposition to the corridor, the Bureau of Land Management issued its final Record of Decision denying the Ambler Road permits in June 2024. The BLM has concluded that there is no way to adequately mitigate the potential impacts of any version of the proposed Ambler Road. Still, new threats to the Brooks Range are emerging. 

An amendment in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act would rescind the Bureau of Land Management’s recent decision to defend Alaska’s Brooks Range and force the Department of the Interior to permit the Ambler Road. It’s critical that the Ambler Road amendment be removed from the final version of this must-pass legislation, which funds our military and will be negotiated by lawmakers in the coming months.  

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