Chad and Brooks Range

Chad Hood went on a caribou hunt way up in the Brooks Range of Alaska, and I asked him what the big draw was to that animal. For us, it wasn't necessarily a draw to the animal. It was a draw to the location and the animal just happened to be the one that was there. And I had really wanted to do a Brooks range or Arctic sort of float trip and we were out about as far from civilization, as you can imagine. And we never saw another person in seven days of being out there. But the caribou’s a great animal because they're generally fairly plentiful. Now, on this trip, we only saw 60 animals and maybe 10 of them were bulls. At the time, I could have shot five a day because I was a resident and I didn't really care what they were. But they're tasty too, especially in August. And we were there late August, early September, and they hadn't really gone into the rut yet. And they were delicious. They're the right size. I think we got about 80 pounds of boned out meat. So they're not huge like a moose. They're kind of just about the right size. And then for folks that like antlers, the antlers are really big for the size of the actual animal. And so I think those are all the benefits. But boy, that Brooks range is something special.

Every hunter I know that's ever been out there would agree with Chad about the beauty of the Brooks Range.