Sagavanirktok and Ivishak River Caribou

After getting off of work, I went home and we spent a couple hours getting loaded up and filling gas cans and whatnot. Finally hitting the road shortly after seven in the evening, I was in for a long night of driving. It was after midnight before I even hit Atigun Pass. I came across some hunters near Toolik Lake who were having some truck problems, and by that I mean, their tire came flying off, severing three lugs and bending the other three. There was no way they were going to get a spare on. I gave one of them a ride back to their camp near the UAF research center at Toolik Lake and pressed on… What else can you do? Two hours after that, a thick fogged dawn arrived and we were still driving. We finally arrived at the boat launch site north of Pump Station Two only to find the water in the Sagavanirktok was so low that only came half way up the tires.
Launching the boat was an interesting task. I backed the truck completely into the water and we had to dry launch the boat by lifting the front up enough that the boat finally slid down into the water. It was a rough job and I will try to avoid ever having to do that again. I spoke with a couple guys at the launch who had been up there before and they gave me some beta which I found to be valuable. He told me that the launch is actually in a channel off the main Sag River and it was pretty hairy for a mile or so to get up and out into the main channel. He also mentioned that to hit the Ivishak just keep an eye on the bluff about eight miles up and then head into the left channels once close and then offered an additional word of advice about coming back down… “Don’t miss the channel on the left cause you’ll just miss the launch and keep on going. It is easy to miss because it’s a little channel and when you are running down, you are focused on staying with the main current”. I’m glad I talked with him! So here we were, twelve hours since we left Fairbanks, getting into our boat topped off with gear about to buzz up some arctic river I had never been on in dense fog with an earful of beta and no map… Sounds good to me.
I ran the boat smoothly five miles up-river going full throttle weaving through channels barely deep enough for the tunnel jet flat bottom, gritting my teeth every time I tap a rock underneath going 20 mph. I finally cut a corner too close and hit a large rock with the impeller guard and it severed three bolts knocking the guard down into the river and leaving us high and dry. We managed to pull the boat ashore and I begun the task of wading up and down the river trying to find the guard (we could still run the motor at this point but the next rock I hit, we would be floating back). After ten minutes I got lucky and found the guard near a boulder in the river and we discovered that of the six bolts that hold it on, three must have jiggled loose on the drive up and fallen out while the other three were severed in place. So that was a relief, we took three screws out of the floor decking and screwed them up into the aluminum putting the guard back on but entirely ruining the fit (what other choice did we have). So yay, we are up and running again, just don’t hit anymore rocks! I tried to get on step and noticed we were dragging a lot so I pulled off the river again and turned the guard around (had it on backwards) and that helped! We ran another ten miles up-river with no problems, weaving in and out of channels. I eventually hit the Ivishak River and darted left to head up and around the first corner I saw fifty caribou wading across. I run up on shore and grabbed the rifle, but they were already a couple hundred yards off and running. Definitely didn’t like the boat. I could have shot one of the two large bulls that were bringing up the rear but I passed on the shot. We continued up the Ivishak for roughly six or seven miles and finally decided there that we weren’t going to run up the river any father because we could see several hundred caribou on the surrounding hills.  The caribou were here, why go further up-stream with an injured motor?
We set up camp pretty quick and my dad was ready to crash. He said if he heard a gun-shot then he would come out and help me but that he was going to stay in camp and sleep. That was fair, he was tired, I set off with my pack and rifle, and a hundred yards from camp, a small bull caribou popped up 50 feet in front of me all confused. He was by no means a trophy caribou, but heck, can you get any closer to camp? I shot him right there and my dad wondered over mumbling, “I just got into my sleeping bag”. Several hours later that small bou was hanging to dry in camp and my dad was snoring away. I decided to go up over the ridge and see if I can down a large bull. I wasn’t disappointed when I popped out over the bluff and saw well over a hundred caribou and several trophy bulls. I took my time and skirted around the group, flanking the bulls on the back side of a hill. By the time I got into shooting range, I was nearly a mile and a half from camp late evening. I shot the large bull and began the work of cleaning him up. I took my time and got all the meat packed but there was just no way I was going to carry all the meat plus the head and rack so I left it in the tundra and slowly made my way back to camp carrying the whole caribou strapped to my back. It was a long mile and by the time I curled up in my sleeping bag, we had two bull caribou hanging in camp on the first day. My dad awoke the next morning surprised to see another caribou but not energetic enough to walk out the mile and a half to get the rack. I wasn’t either. We broke camp and loaded up the two bulls into the boat and begun to head back to the truck by ten am after spending just one night on the Sag. There were so many caribou, I could have easily stalked and shot numerous trophy bulls that would have made any trophy hunter jealous like no other. the second bull I shot, would have done that jealous bit nicely and it was left in the field. what can you do, next time I'll bring it out!

I made a couple mistakes running down river, it is a lot harder to see. At one point I ended up in a channel that diverged from the main channel by nearly a quarter mile and then spread out so much that I got hung up trying to fly through, we spent a half hour dragging the boat down that channel until I could get back into the main channel. The second mistake was once we were near the launch, I ended up in the wrong channel again but I caught it pretty quick and was able to turn around and go back up and get into the right one. The final mistake was the worse and would've cost us the boat. There is a hairpin turn near the launch where you have to make a ninety degree turn in order to stay in the channel and not run aground. I unfortunately didn't see where the water was the deepest and cut the corner a little and hit a rock that forced the motor out of the water taking me off plane and unable to steer. I run straight into the river bank going almost full speed. We had just enough time to brace ourselves. the aft end of the boat sticking out up into the current was close to being pushed under by the current as our bow was up in the bank. We carefully maneuvered ourselves out of the boat and dug it out. and got it floating again and off we went. Smooth sailing the rest of the way. We loaded up and decided to start the drive south but to stop at Gailbraith Lake for the night and break up the drive. We found a herd of a dozen or so Muskox resting out in the sun along the Sag River and stopped to get some pictures and managed to stalk within about 25 yards or so. We spent the night at the lake and cooked up some beans with fresh diced caribou ribs and it was fantastic. Slept hard and finished the drive back to Fairbanks the next morning. All in all, we spent one night on the river, one at the lake (where I even managed to catch a couple smaller lake trout) and then back to town. A two night trip was quite a wham bam thank you mam trip for the arctic but it went well and I intend to do it again someday.