Face To Face, Life-Changing Alaska Caribou Hunting Adventure

[Music] [Music] [Applause] it's just like you hear on the movies that gurgling sound as you're going under is this it is this the way it's going to end this way we're going to die but i just remember locking eyes with them and then it just became ultra real i'm gonna die right here my biggest fear and it's gonna take me and if that was my time i was okay with it why would you jump into something that is about to take somebody down to this day and that's been almost four years not one day i don't think about that hunt not one day [Music] my childhood i'll still say is one of the best times of my life it was it was fun it was hard [Music] we were building a trail pond we had one trail pond and decided to expand into another one and we were working on that and my dad had said something to the fact that i don't feel good you got to help me get into the barn so i got in there i got him a little chair to sit on and at eight years old i had no clue what was going on and we sat in there for a while and finally he said you got to get me up to the house [Music] you know i was back in the 60s you didn't go to town on a pair of blue jeans or shorts or work clothes i mean they changed and went and got them in dress pants and a dress shirt and black shoes and i remember that because we were on the porch and we we got them all dressed right there my mom took him to the hospital ended up he had a heart attack and at that time he had to be 12 years old to be able to go visit in the hospital so my next oldest sister and i were not 12 and so we never got to see our dad again after that [Music] it was tough i mean you're eight years old and and you lose your dad and my mom decided to keep the farm going and so it was a lot of hard labor from us children my mom was i guess i'd call it uh pretty strict but i think she had to she had to she knew she had four kids and if she didn't make us tow the line we could have got out of control and and she knew that she was the father figure too i mean she was the first one to take me deer hunting i mean i don't know how many moms you know are the first one to take their son deer hunting but it was something i wanted to do and she knew it so she went out and bought herself a new gun and decided to go deer hunting with me i've only got very very few memories of my dad and i i cherish them and i i don't have much pictures because at that time there just wasn't a lot of photography happening i've got a couple years after my dad passed away my mom remarried and they lived close to the mississippi river and so one time in the winter they invited me to come ice fishing so i'm like yeah my mom finally said you know you get your work done you can go on saturday so [Music] unfortunately we made a decision we got a hold of some cigarettes that day and decided to smoke a bunch of them and uh then their dad was supposed to come out and check on us in a few hours so we had all these cigarette butts laying on the ice and for whatever reason i'm like well i'll pick them up and instead of throwing them in the fire i thought well i'll just go take them out in the ice farther and and throw them and get rid of them you know he'll never see him obviously the farther i walked out into the mississippi the thinner the ice got and all sudden i went down i broke through i popped back up and then i got my feet on this log and luckily the log went upwards towards the thicker ice so i was able to keep my hands out and just kind of walk my way and the other my two stepbrothers now they both ran and i was hollering for them to help and i don't blame them now at the time as a young kid i was like why would you leave me there but i was scared i was i mean i i thought this is probably gonna be a bad situation i'm probably gonna drown there and uh but i was able to get myself out and got up and then we probably had about a mile walk if we decided to go back to the house so we decided to just hang out by the fire and their dad was supposed to be coming and it was a cold day but from that day on i've i've had one fear and one fear only in life and that's dying by drowning well it's probably in the early 20s you know it was where i first started seeing some magazine articles you know books maybe once in a while a tv show that would show them hunting caribou and i always wanted to go and i would say yeah it's probably 20 22 when i first started thinking about it you see the scenery and the videos and it just draws you i i like that open concept i like the freedom and you know now in this day and age the no phones the disconnect from people for a while and and just watching how life works in a whole different world than what we see it [Music] my wife's cousin had passed away from cancer and we were in southern iowa for the funeral and i get along really good with the other brother we talked quite a bit and we were driving around the day before the her day after the funeral and talking about how sad it was that he wanted to go with his son to alaska on a ram hunt and from the time he started talking about doing it and actually getting it booked and he developed cancer and didn't last very long [Music] so we were talking i said yeah i said i've never really had the the desire to go on a ram hunt but i said i've always wanted to go caribou hunt and he got under an underpass and he pulled the truck over and he parks and traffic's going by honking at us and he goes are you serious i said i'm dead serious he goes it's been my dream too so let's make this thing happen [Music] and he knew of you and i obviously knew you and we came back he said we're going back to the house and we're going to tell the wives we're going to alaska i'm like wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait i gotta have a little chance to talk to my wife about this for he said there's no talking we're gonna do it my wife and his wife both kind of were like you know what if this is that important to you guys you guys need to do it because we do not know if we will be here tomorrow let alone two years from now and so they both kind of said we should do it and i think it was that evening we got on the phone and got a hold of you and tried seeing what some options were and move forward [Music] did i sign up for something different than what i thought because the first 15 20 miles coming in is not what i anticipated from the plane but then as we got close into the base camp kind of got the river going on the one side more of the mountains and and tundra on the other is like okay this is gonna be okay also in the the pilot be like hey there's some caribou or there's a grizzly down there and you just you start looking out i remember just being in awe you know millions of acres in one chunk undisturbed natural habitat you watch caribou running you watch a grizzly bear running across the tundra looking for its next meal it was everything and more than i had hoped it would be [Music] but i'm here i'm finally living my dream this is what i've wanted to do i want to see these animals in their habitat in their wild if i harvest a caribou i i don't care it was about the experience of being there and seeing it was worth it just to be on that [Music] tundra so july 31st earliest i've ever hunted guided i'm gonna do uh a little caribou hunting before sheep season rolls around a little smoke in the air from some wildfires up at the head well near the head of the yukon nice breeze today keep the bugs down it's fairly warm got caribou scattered around on the ridge tops here getting up in the wind staying away from the bugs so there's a few around they're not all jammed together there's some decent sized bunches but getting ready for another two and a half month [Music] stint [Music] [Music] so [Music] so i think they're running from the bugs this is lane it was really really hot sun was shining there for a while so laid down in the tent on the change heard the rocks rolling around pretty buggy hot got got some cloud cover now so it's not too bad i remember when we landed on that little rock runway across the little river where he camped i mean i'd watch the videos and that's exactly how i perceived it and i get out and i'm just i mean you just go 360 around you and it's to me it was just beauty so how many years has it been you figure you've been kind of wanting to do this 32 33 years i think i was 21 when i dreamt of doing a caribbean [Music] [Music] the strip's pretty gnarly isn't it i was even a little bit surprised when he lined up to land here i was like really yeah we were coming around the corner i'm like oh my it seemed kind of weird we're going to travel across the stream right here yeah at first i thought he was going to land on that ridge when we banked up there and i'm like i don't see no tenth i don't see that then pretty soon you banked around there and i'm like still don't see it and also here we are gravel runway at best gravel rock yeah there ought to be i did see one pretty good bull just up in that saddle there actually right before you guys came in very nice the whole crew is here in wisconsin iowa crew don's pretty much my neighbor greg and mike where what part of iowa you guys living come on ah that's easy enough [Applause] [Music] it's gonna get pretty quiet here real shortly uh that's pretty tired he's probably already in bed yeah he's standing up but i'm pretty sure i hear him snoring yeah i don't know i don't know who will snore the loudest tonight i got a bunch of earplugs they're five bucks a plug and if you don't and every day you don't buy them they go they double in price morning day one rain and wind you know when you can see hundreds of caribou in a day it doesn't matter if it's raining and you're cold even if they're not close enough to even think of going after it it was fun watching them [Music] this weather clears up we look out and hear these caribou come right along the ridge we're going to pack up quick make a stock down the valley okay stay on use the one to the left ah not far left here step out into the clear they'll stop here dude don't move don't move come on okay yep get up just get on the caribou uh third one from the back third one from the left shoot him right in the shoulder he's moving his head he's moving his head wait he's that wide one going away from us okay wait for him to separate we just don't want to shoot two okay he's kind of stepping out in front yeah he's now he's kind of looking towards us they're gonna have to separate it's kind of yeah we just don't want to shoot too we don't want to move too much so just stay on him he's got his head down there's a calf to his right yep okay wait for him to turn broadside in that calf to clear wait for that calf to move go off safety wait wait wait wait drive one right reload you missed he's all alone see that one kind of by himself the farthest one away that's the one you want take him right there reload you hit him wait wait wait wait wait stay on him wait just stay on him yep yep drilled him no you're hitting him i think he's still get the aftermath on video anyways oh i got the audio on but all right wait just stay on him hold it still facing the left are you on him yep go ahead i don't know if you hit him that time or not there he's down day one we got a caribou right out of camp i didn't i didn't get it on video it was too wet there was too much going on we were chasing after these buggers but he took him pretty good yeah he wasn't even i don't know your first shot i think was good because he wasn't going very fast that's for sure awesome man put her there you gotta that didn't take too long this is uh what is it eight o'clock day one we kind of had to hurry out of breakfast and get her done yeah there's a couple other good bulls but i think this is a good way to do it just get one at a time yeah and all those other ones are kind of scattered awesome we're on the board i'm going to put this video camera away it's too foggy anyways a little wet those back scratchers that's pretty rare this herd i think the genetics kind of disappear and you don't get those very often that's a dandy awesome shovel and he's close to camp if we get one any closer than this it'll almost almost be unsportsman's like but i don't think any of us would run away from it he's got him half a field dress for you he's got good mass on his uh beams there too oh that is cool look at that just kind of i can see his spine there pretty good they pretty much got him just like the deer all they got oh yeah look at how old that thing is yeah that's probably like an eight-year-old caribou can just see from his spine he's a little bit bony that's the perfect caribou to take well i told you guys the one guarantee in alaska is you're gonna have some poor weather it's actually not too bad right now but eight o'clock day one we got a nice caribou greg and mike nelson and don johnson are here in a three on one adventure and uh yeah how did it go this morning here greg quick that's a good way to describe it had to scramble this morning yeah eating a little breakfast and all of a sudden we noticed them out from the camp and we weren't quite ready and and we were encouraged to hurry we got going and greg was first up and and uh we've waited a long time for this this has been our hunt of a lifetime and uh we've talked about it and we're very thankful yeah it's not very often to get uh really even any but usually you don't get any back scratchers too much anymore he's a real old caribou teeth are real wore down you can kind of see he's a little bit bony along the spine kind of a little bit thin in the neck so i'd say he's probably just slightly declining from the peak so got the biggest bull out of the herd we were kind of lucky to do that the camp is actually just right in those willows over there so it was a bit of a mad dash but it all came together yeah it worked out so well very good well again greg congrats thank you yeah greg spotted a grizzly bear and he was loping and i said that's kind of strange and then he ran chased off a wolf the grizzly bear is on the left the wolf is on the right chased off a grizzly bear grizzly bear out of kale looked like a caribou i'm sorry the wolf had a kill grizzly bear ran the wolf off and grabbed the kill and drug it away chased the wolf off that's pretty cool [Music] they get nervous they like to pee like that well it's kind of an exciting five minutes there i don't care that's what coming here is about all seeing things like stuff like you never see at home yeah that's pretty cool have him run right up to [Music] [Applause] [Music] we got greg's caribou loaded up [Music] [Music] morning of day two anybody have any words of wisdom for us go big or go home i knew i knew mike won't let us down i'm gonna get some beer tenderloin for breakfast this morning don's allergic to everything else i know how to cook [Music] guilty yeah cheese cheese and beer the wisconsin staples you can eat those we're good to go [Music] that's caribou any good oh it's excellent really good [Music] he probably knows we're here does he ah yeah the wind was actually blowing from our camp to him this morning now it's not it's switched from the northwest but he's kind of getting out of dodge getting out of the valley that's a different wolf than we saw yesterday the grizzly bear came and chased a wolf off of a caribou kill that wolf was a gray wolf this one's pretty much snow white [Music] [Music] when i woke up that morning and i heard the rain and the wind i questioned whether we should even go out hunting that day but we had two caribou yet to get and i knew that river was gonna come up fast and i knew we were probably gonna have to move and so that was gonna cost us the day of hunting and so i knew we were gonna be taken down to at the most three days of hunting with two caribou still left to go that morning i got up i went behind the tent and i looked and i'm like you've got to be kidding me that the river that was somewhat narrow and there was rocks where you could just kind of walk your way through and you wouldn't get wet all sun was dark brown and it was wall-to-wall water rolling down that river and so i just assessed the situation in the morning and just figured let's walk across get up on the hill see what we're dealing with and i always go downstream angle downstream the water's got a lot of power doesn't it [Applause] so look ahead about 10 feet 20 feet maybe a little water in the boots huh yep just keep angling downstream angle downstream angle to your left a little don you almost got her they touched him and kind of go sideways it's a little cool that water is powerful isn't it strong on there just wants to take your life a little bit here hold [Applause] this day three starts off with a bang we got four wet feet one man down in the river a few caribou around it rained all night last night that river came way up probably came up two and a half feet hopefully the ceilings lifted hopefully we'll get some dry weather today i doubt that river's crested by any stretch hopefully it'll crest during the day before we got to go back i think we're going to get back across that river i'm like and i told mike i'll bet you at least six eight times that day i don't know how to swim i said i don't know i said i'm scared already i said i'm afraid we're not going to get back across then what do we do we get up on the hill and i was watching this gravel bar down below us there's this wide stretch of river there and i kept an eye about every hour so i was watching how much of that gravel bar was disappearing and i figured the river was rising in between an inch and two inches an hour it was over an inch an hour i figured an inch and a half two inches an hour as a guide you're always pushing your client as hard as you figure you dare and there's a fine line there you want to get your hunter an animal but you also have to keep him safe so it's the guides job the old adage is let your guide be your conscience and that's kind of true and in this hunt i knew from the moment we woke up that we would be pushing that envelope got a bunch of bulls up in this hillside they were bedded for a long time there was no way to approach them but we're gonna sneak along this ridge wind's pretty well angling that way working a little closer see if we can make something happen and we spotted this band of bulls and they were kind of working our way and i'm like all right guys if we're gonna make a play on any on any caribou today now's our chance and so they were roughly a mile away we started walking and i remember mike goes and what if we get one what are we gonna do like cross that bridge when you get to it i said in my mind it's like okay we need to be back across the river on the camp side of the river by noon but you're that close now even though the alaska experience is what i wanted now you've got them in your sights i mean you're close you're you're within a mile of going after them or two [Music] you go after them you know going after the caribou and they're a mile away that was fine but by the time we got over there to where we thought they would be they were gone and once we got there there's this little ridge and we could see you know miles and miles except for this there's this little bowl and i thought well it's only going to take us 10-15 minutes to get up over this lip this little ridge look down in that bowl that's where the caribou gotta be but there's no caribou there well there's this other another little ridge and while i know for certain the caribou gotta at least in my mind i'm certain caribou gotta be in that next bowl so there's another five ten minutes we decide to go up there well we do get up on that ridge and sure enough the caribou are there so we get loaded up and we start heading right for the caribou and just then the caribou all get up and then they start feeding towards us well so we figure well they're coming to us let's just wait there again that cost us another 20 minutes uh 30 minutes probably so there again that river comes up another inch should be able to tell he's the biggest one wait for him to turn broadside and go off safety so he's walking away from us now you like it squeeze it real slow just wait you can probably get a better one unless you're dead solid okay wait if it's absolutely dead perfect squeeze it real slow reload he's the third one from the right aim a little bit high up just second he's coming to the front yeah let's see second stay on him stay on him he'll stop let me get the yardage to make sure the rest of them are scooting out of dodge yeah we won't shoot him laying down i think he's just yeah well i thought you missed them but the guide was wrong of course this wind is pretty strong maybe that's why we didn't hear a report but he didn't really lunge like he hit him i think it was just a little locked off yeah yeah i just like how can i miss it we'll see it in the video but i thought for sure i saw like steam going out of him and so i'm like oh looked like he hit him maybe and then but he just didn't act like it his head went down he's done what a rush you were i think you were were you trying to like calm your breathing down there a little bit walking through the water and having great fall on the crook all kinds of fun all kinds of fun yeah he's a pretty good bull yeah he looks really nice more impressive than me double shovel good tops back scratchers [Applause] big wide palmated oh yeah beautiful rack that that's just about exactly what i would have jumped out if i had to pick one out so he's got that white knight that uh white on the neck that's always pretty nice yeah makes a pretty amount gotta find caribou here don onto my lifetime something i've dreamt about for about 33 years so i want to thank mike and greg and special thanks to billy for getting us out here and surviving through these elements of rain and floods and high waters and and a special thanks to my wife for letting me understanding about coming here and let me experience this hunt of a lifetime so i'm just very blessed and very thankful [Music] i'm starting to grow impatient trying not to let it show you know i wanted the guys to be able to take photos and you know celebrate it's a happy moment you know but in the back of my mind i'm just thinking let's butcher this sucker throw it in our packs let's get back to camp the guys responded really well i basically i didn't mess around i just started barking orders and they did good i was slinging the knife they were bagging it went pretty fast we were ready to leave and i remember saying something about well we should have a sandwich probably before we head back and your comment was as serious as i've ever seen your face was we don't have time you want something you got a bottle of water and you got a bite-sized candy bar i'd suggest you eat it now and let's go and billy or mike turned around he goes we're screwed that river's up he knows it too and that was the first time where i just felt like i crossed that line like i knew in my mind i saw i knew those guys understood the severity of it at that moment and i think that was maybe the first time that they knew i knew the severity of it and i'm like anybody everybody got everything and i was like yep yep yep don's like well i i don't have my binoculars then i had left my binoculars on top of the hill so i'm like whoa where are they well i think i laid them down when i shot the caribou he's like ah don't worry we'll get them tomorrow i'm like we are not coming back here tomorrow i said see that willow bush over there open tundra there's one willow bush you guys get there as fast as you can i'll go up get your binoculars and stay at that willow bush i will meet you there and i race up the hill thankfully as binoculars we're right there i charge back down we basically meet at the willow bush at the same time and like i'll often do as a guide it's not good practice in certain situations for a guide to be way ahead of the hunter but in that situation like when you're packing out i like to stay ahead of the hunter because i know it's going to be killing them that heavy load the long pack back you're wet especially if you've got rain gear on restricting your legs and you're walking through brush and that's hard work right and so what i like to do is i like to stay well 100 well ahead of the hunter not too far but far enough to where their ego will drive them a little bit where they kind of almost think they can catch me also that gives me a time to pick a trail or find the path of least resistance so if i go somewhere and it's really thick and brushy and i realize okay this is not the best path that gives me time to back up and then find a new trail and it doesn't they do a they don't have to go that extra distance and b it saves us time and so i'm going ahead of these guys probably a few hundred yards at one point a wolverine comes right out in front of me i had my video camera stuffed in my pack because at this point i am not focused on i don't care about videoing anything i know that river crossing is going to be super deep so i have my video camera up in the top of my pack but this wolverine comes out he's like 20 yards away he's got a rib bone or something i didn't really pay a ton of attention but he had this bone with some meat hanging on his mouth and he just locks eyes with me and kind of stares at me for about three four seconds and then takes off through the brush i didn't even look back to mention it to those guys because like all it's going to do is slow us down and so we i get to the river first and it was it was bigger angrier louder than i possibly imagined i mean it was like deafening it was so loud i'm just like this this is going to be a test and i didn't want to freak those guys out but just said a prayer i just said lord grant to safety helped me to make good decisions today when i got there my gut just turned i mean i listened to that river roaring watched the speed of everything going down there how wide it was compared to what it was before don's like i don't know about this i don't know about this he said it about 10 times and i'm just like man what are our options i said you know it's basically i'll go across first and just watch me but i mean we got to at least try i was so scared to the point where i didn't know if i even wanted to try i knew the river was up a foot and a half at least probably closing in on two feet higher than it was that morning when we crossed it and and i think i even made the comment well maybe maybe we should just stay on this side of the river tonight maybe the rains will quit and the river will go down and i think your comment was we'll be dead by morning [Music] if we spend the night here it's going to be dicey the the ceiling was low there was going to be no flying at that point and i was like you know for a helicopter to get in here that could take a day and the weather might turn the weather been so bad the visibility could be so poor they maybe couldn't get it in here to get us at all but i mean i i at that point i we were scared i mean there was no doubt and so i told the guys before i left one thing i've learned over the years is you got to give guys simple instructions if you try to you give them 10 things to do they'll remember none of them but i had watched when you went across that first part of the water and i watched how high the water come and i could still see through your crotch so i estimated that and i'm like okay and then that last ten percent there was a deep cut where the main channel was and there it was just slightly above my waist and things changed that five six inches of depth of water makes a huge difference because now instead of passing through your legs it's got to pass through your your pelvis area you know so i'm thinking your waist is probably my belly button so that's a lot deeper than what that first part was and and mike and i i know i told mike i'm like i can't swim i don't know if i can do this i made it across just fine mike was next took him a while we went one at a time mike made it across then i yelled for greg to come across greg came across walked to that island which is you know most of the way across 80 percent 90 now that island is basically shin deep so there's a foot foot and a half of water on that island i remember the last thing i did is i looked down that stream that river and i looked and i'm like [Music] is this my grave you know i mean it was it was like is this where i'm going to end up i knew he was scared and the old adage what i believe is true what you fear you create uh and so i was pretty nervous of don coming across he did pretty well he went slow kind of coached him through it he got to that island and i just told greg you stay there don you finish it out i was much more scared i guess than i was in the first half of that river so mentally i think i had checked out a little bit you know i probably almost concluded that something bad was gonna happen so i've got my pack off i go about 20 yards downstream of where don's gonna cross i had my walking sticks and i was using them and you're trying to feel with your feet because there's all kinds of rocks in the river and i thought i was doing good i was i don't know i had to be over halfway across probably two-thirds of the way so i mean i wasn't that far from hitting the shore again but i was also in the deepest part of the river and so that fast river washes down small rocks and so all that's there are big boulders so it's it's just ripe for disaster and he's right in the middle of it you know you got water up to your belly button trying to push you downstream and you got a backpack and i had the antlers on the back and some meat in my pack and had my walking sticks and and when i set the left one down that one time and i don't know if just the speed of the river snapped it or if i actually hit a rock or something in between the rock and the river but it broke and i did one of these you know where you kind of wobbled i caught myself and and he kind of writes himself and you could just see his eyes and you could just picture his face and he pulls up the one pole and it's basically a perfect l and i can just remember you guys hollering you know straight ahead look straight ahead one step in front of the other you can do this you can do this and i'm like yep i can do this five more steps and you've got it i mean he literally had 10 15 feet at the most and he was at the bank and got my balance and did the next one but he goes to take the next step in his muscle memory he goes to use that pole and that walking stick was l-shaped so there was nothing there you just did it instinctively and he goes down to use it and that pole's not there and he goes too far and all of a sudden he rears himself back and goes down and he goes completely under it's just like that fast don has disappeared all of a sudden don pops up his eyes were huge and i just saw his mouth open and he just gasped for air and i can just see the water dripping down from his face and i was going down the river and i could hear you talking about release your pack release your pack so i remember trying to get my hand and trying to find the strap and i couldn't even find it i couldn't feel it i couldn't and half the time my hand the current would take it downstream so i'd start over and at that moment i just i could just sense that this was real and i'm like i had my head above the water at that time and i thought okay we're okay and i i don't think i was that scared at that point and then all of a sudden i must have went into a little bit of a hole because i could feel the water coming up the backside and i could just feel it rising i want to get it under my ears and right to my chin i took one big gulp of of air and i thought i got to try to hold this and it's just like you hear on the movies that gurgling sound as you're going under and i thought this is it i can't i can't hold my breath that long i can't swim i can't get my feet dug in i can't let my pack go as he comes by i reach out and i grab him and all of a sudden something grabbed my my shoulder backpack and i could feel something and it was your hand coming under my head trying to get me back up and he's up ahead of me and i start to pull towards the shore and slowly he starts moving down and he's getting further down and i'm pulling and i'm making a little bit of headway pulling straight towards shore and then all of a sudden he gets downstream of me and then my headway was gone but that was enough to roll me kind of sideways so then i started banging off some rocks i remember that well now he's pivoting and so are those caribou antlers on the back of his pack which are you know huge and there's tons of drag and that water was so powerful it just it happened so fast and don pulled me right in with him and so i had my heels in the gravel at that point but it's just a split second later we're right out into the current [Music] we're like crappies just gasping for air on the surface i mean we're both right here but i just remember locking eyes with them and then it just became ultra real and i just said get your belt off get your belt off my comment was is this it is this the way it's going to end is this the way we're going to die this is the end ain't it i realize in that moment it's like okay he's totally despondent he's in shock and i think that fear that's when that fear just just took over and at that point i don't even know if i was really in the mode to try and save myself because i think i was thinking about other people my family i was wondering why you were in the water i was wondering where we were in the river because i couldn't see i mean everything was looking up just face to face looking at him and i in that moment i realized that we had 20 yards downstream before all this wide this wide stretch of water narrowed down it was like a man-eating pool as real turbulent white water i mean we had a 60 70 yard stretch of river narrows down to about 20 and it makes an a complete 90 degree corner and it's a cut gravel bank so there's nothing to grab onto and at that moment i recognize that with that heavy pack if don makes it to that corner he's dead when i started going down the second time i could hear the water coming up i could feel it and i could when i got right under my ears and my chin i took one big grasp of air tried holding it and uh you know and i couldn't once i was underwater i took at least one gulp of water and and i'm thinking this is it this is i'm going to die right here my my biggest fear and it's going to take me i just realized all right billy you've got a decision to make you can either hang on or let go and in that moment i thought of my wife i pictured her face and i thought of my children in that moment i had this confidence this peace that i was as secure with god as i was ever going to be and if that was my time i was okay with it and once once those thoughts passed through my mind and i just accepted the consequence they never came back and from that moment on it was my sole focus was to get don out of the river and my my thought was if don dies i die with them [Music] and when you finally got a good good grasp my my back pack strap and then started pulling and got my head above water i mean i felt like a comfort came over me like okay i got a chance now and i'm looking ahead to this turbulent bend in the river this rapidous white water i'm just like we cannot hit that we have to get to shore before that comes and it's only it's less than 20 yards away [Music] but i just knew it was like we're going to be in this white water like just in in seconds and fractions of seconds and all of a sudden i felt gravel on my feet as i'm swimming and so i just tread for all i'm worth and that gravel and then start to lean and pull down as much as i can and lean towards shore and digging that gravel digging that gravel and it was like a couple of steps yeah it wasn't much i mean it was it just happened so fast and at the last second i felt is just like i gotta i gotta go for it because i didn't know where that lip at that point i didn't know where that lip was going into that deep water and so i just dug for all i was worth and at the last second just kind of lunged with don i don't know if i knew that it was shallow enough or i was hoping it was shallow enough but we just kind of lunge forward and we land basically in the water i mean our faces go down in the water because at this point we're somewhat out of water as we're digging into the gravel with our feet and so we lunge down we land in the water we pull ourselves up and i just remember don kind of popping back up i'm sure i look the same way but there's water dripping off of don's face and he's catching his breath and it's like at that moment i realize we're stable like the current no longer has us [Music] and greg's watching this whole thing like you're all right greg he's like yeah you know i'm like just take your time take your time so i assume the position again just in case greg goes down greg did fine makes it across so we all huddle together and i'm like okay guys you know we're we're all okay and i i suggested we say a prayer everybody was okay with it and in my head i'm first thing i'm thinking is really we're gonna pray now we should have been praying on that side of the river that was the first thing don's like wait a minute i can i i'm just soaking wet i bet you are i had one pair of dry clothes in my backpack in the in the wet pack and i want to take these pants off at least and get something dry on i'm like well there's no sense in it we gotta cross more water on our way back to camp and don looked at me he just glared into my eyes man i'm like no no we don't no but no it's not a river it's just standing water if he'd still had his rifle i'm not so sure he wouldn't have shot me at that moment i was like no no it's just it was like a backwater slew i figured it wouldn't be much over knee-deep and there wasn't any current to it and so he was okay with it so we marched back to camp [Applause] i'm in the hunter's tent doesn't smell quite as bad as the guides shack but it's pretty bad well what do you guys have to say for your experience thus far true alaskan getting free showers probably more of a shower than i needed later but you didn't you took a shower and a bath i did as well and uh also donated a little bit so yeah unfortunately for me the great wilderness uh just inherited the 270. whip your butt with my scroll with my hand i almost lost my bag we saved the antlers yeah you had to choose what went the antlers or the the rifle oh i can always get another rifle you might have to do the best thing to get another one got to play your cards right on this one you can don went swimming today it was uh a bit dicey to say the least yeah i haven't been filming much on this hunt because i'm starting to grow gills and i'm embarrassed about it but that's been pretty much raining non-stop we had an interesting creek crossing today to say the least so creek river we're uh we're darn near getting to the nitty-gritty with as much rain as we're getting as much as this river is coming up we might have to evac a little early we'll uh we'll see i get these guys something hot to drink some freeze-dried i go back in my tent just kind of lay down relax a little bit we were not gonna tell the outfitters what had happened because we did this as a group and there was no blame there was no no point in the fingers at anybody and got on the satellite phone called base camp told them what happened and more or less just kind of told them that hey i told them more than anything because i wanted them to realize that hey we need to move this river is just too high so we need there's no more hunting to be done here at this point we're kind of in a survival situation and i was worried about the river coming up so high that it would flood out our airstrip and i mentioned the incident with don and just told them you know basically whatever you can come and get us to do so [Applause] [Music] and matt comes out of the plane and i think i was maybe greg was ahead of me and he's like hey don he said i heard you got a caribou today yep yep i said i got everything i ever wanted i mean great caribou i'm happy life is good and his next comment was yeah well i heard you went got a little swim in today too so we decided probably best just to take don out now and just leave mike and greg they didn't have time to move our camp that night i could tell in your voice and matt's voice like i think we need to get you back get you warmed up we don't want hypothermia [Music] i remember we took off off that runway and i seen the three you guys out there and my head just kept you know and i look back at that river and like you know that was just about my burial site and i just and yet i was like you can look back as far as you want but you can never move forward until you let the pass go [Music] the last one from camp got a grizzly yes going out of sight right back in there where we got don's caribou the wind's switched out of the east so i'm sure he's he's on it that's a different bear than we saw a few days ago that's a big big mature bear there so the rain is let up it's still kind of just misting a little bit we're not seeing much for caribou well day five still actually it's not raining anymore it's now snowing so the boots are they wet mike they're wet you're on lacing it and the water's coming off from your lace yeah they're just there you can see the steam rolling out of that one i actually can't dump water out of them yeah there's a little bit of moisture built up there so probably what maybe 40 degrees and they are just a wee bit damp but we're living the dream yes we are so we woke up again the next morning the weather had lifted it was still raining that morning by afternoon it cleared off and we were able to jump in the planes moved to a new camp where another guide was where they had tagged out and they were waiting to fly out so the plan was we just go in there basically hijack that camp start hunting [Music] so we got in late at night got settled in woke up early the next morning we had one day left to hunt hunting caribou on a time crunch can be really frustrating because then you do things that you won't ordinarily do in caribou hunting so we were hiking all over the place we were had to be super aggressive obviously [Music] it was late that evening and we saw this big group of caribou come by and there was some good bulls in the back and they go down in this big ravine and we're all set up waiting for them to come out and all these cows and calves and young bulls come and we're waiting for the big bulls waiting for the big bulls and they just never came after six days of rain finally got some blue skies and we finally got some caribou [Music] and i was starting to think i was losing my mind that maybe they weren't as big as i thought and the rest of the herd passes by and then sometime later sure enough those four or five big bulls that were in the back they eventually showed up squeeze it real slow reload use the one on the left hold a couple inches high just take your time the one on the left how many yards uh 200. i'm right on them dad whatever your ricochet you want to use use uh greg's gun once wait wait wait wait wait he's the one on the left put the crosshairs right where you want it yeah hold a little high he's getting a little far out there oh grilled him you smoked him running you tater them yeah he's flopping but i think he's done [Music] um he got his money's worth on the shooting that day but he got a really nice for the last day you got an acceptance you got an exceptional caribou all the way around but particularly for the last afternoon took us two guns but uh we got her done and and uh beautiful caribou i'm really really happy it's obviously been a trip that i've that we've planned uh for 20 years almost and so we appreciate everything that everybody did to help us with this trip it was uh to pack that bull out of the mountains mike and greg greg greg was great he was all about packing as much as he can it was a big physical test for him and he really enjoyed that aspect of it he took a bunch of the meat mike took a fair bit as well so they went up on a head and i was getting my stuff loaded and i watched those guys heading up on the hill towards camp and i just realized i was like man this is this is just one of those story book adventures it's one of the greatest hunts of my life and the significance of it i mean it had really sunk in at that point [Music] i was just glad everybody was safe and i was thinking about don back at base camp we get back to camp i had a little bit of caribou meat from don's caribou and we started frying up his caribou and we realized that we still had a 12 pack of beer that don had brought with him at the beginning of the hunt his idea was that it was divided into thirds and he had four cans so after each kill we'd each have a can of beer well we'd never we didn't do much drinking that didn't do any drinking at that point i was so proud that i was able to bring this 12 pack of coors light along to alaska to have some drinks at the end of the hunt so the three of us figured well we're not of course it's the law of the wilderness you can't fly uh alcohol out so we had to drink it so yeah so that was kind of sucked i went through a lot of work to get beer out there and didn't even get to have one that afternoon don greg and mike they were getting ready to fly out to town and don comes walking up to me and he's like hey billy you know i don't second-guess anything that happened on this hunt i've been sitting here reflecting on it last few days here in base camp and i don't second-guess anything i don't want you to second-guess anything he's like this this is a pivotal moment in my life he said but there's only one one problem i have with this whole entire hunt and i'm like um you know what what is he gonna say here it comes and it was almost like my heart stopped beating and the bottom dropped out of my stomach he said i can't believe you and greg i'm okay with it but i can't believe that you let mike drink all my beer without sharing it with me and so i felt a lot better a lot more [Music] relaxed [Music] you know you didn't you signed up to guide people which is also taking care of them while they're in your possession to a point i don't know that it's your responsibility or your job to do what you did that day am i thankful you better believe it and there ain't a day that i don't thank you for that either thinking i'm probably probably should have been there but so i felt i probably felt worse for you than i did for myself for my family i'm 100 certain that don gives me way too much credit for anything that i did that day the way i see it i'm the one that put don in that position and there was no blame and i will never blame you but i but i really questioned why you did what you did the thing the thing of it is that i look back on that had i let go of dawn in that river whether don would have lived or whether don would have died if i'd have walked away from that scenario having let go that would have ruined my life i've thought of it a lot and i would have never and you would have never known it but i would have had no remorse if you wouldn't have jumped in i wouldn't have blamed you why would you that that river was no place for a man to try to go save somebody that guilt that i would have held on that i was too big of a coward to hang on i mean it would have killed me probably might have been a slow death i don't know it might have been a quick death i don't know but i knowing me knowing my conscience i'd have never forgiven myself for that [Music] i've often talked you know sandy and i was like well we should get billy something we should buy i don't know how do you replace a life there's nothing i could give you or buy you or send you that would bring back that day and make me feel and replace it i can't i mean we've talked about it months on end you know we should go get them you know i can give you a gift certificate to go out to eat also what that don't bring me back you know and so i don't know i i've struggled with it but yet i feel like i owe you so much [Music] nothing in nature has fear for an extended period of time nothing if a sheep gets chased by a wolf it runs away and as soon as it feels like that danger is passed it lays down and chews its cut cutter it goes back to feeding again we as humans we don't do that we'll dwell on things we'll look back on the past and we'll worry about things that may or may not happen in the future nothing in nature does that i mean i've spent way too much time way too much of my life doing that we will never have the impact on others on the world that we're supposed to have you know what i came to alaska and i won i won and not only a win with alaska i won with fear i won with i mean i look at things so differently now i mean things that used to just get me worked up and and stressed out i'm like you know what could be worse it could be so much worse be thankful for what you have even if it's a bad day you know you don't like your job or you don't like what's happening make adjustments you got to overcome those fears you have to fear can be all-consuming and it holds us back from growing learning and if we're not growing and learning we're basically dying and if we're dying we have no life in us if we have no life in us we have nothing to offer others to give to the world and what i've discovered is that freedom and peace and ultimately life it lives in the fear where the fear is that's where we need to go because somewhere in that fear we are going to find something we're going to learn something about ourselves that is going to elevate us improve us and give us more life give us more courage give us more confidence that's what makes you feel alive when you go into the alaskan wilderness you know that there is a very good chance maybe even a probability that you are going to be up against something that you can't predict in any way shape or form something that you've never experienced before and there's a reason why people are in such awe of going on a hunting trip in alaska is because they're afraid of it every person that goes to alaska i don't care how many times you've done it myself included there is a certain element of fear when i leave my kids in you know and i'm going to be gone for two months and i kiss them goodbye and my wife when i hold her i recognize that this may there there is a reasonable chance that that will be the last time i ever see them i ever talk to them and they ever see me hell yes there is fear in me when i go but why do i go because i know that there's going to be growth there if as long as i come back my life will be better because of it life is like the ultimate adventure in that you you will constantly be tested you will constantly be tried and if you don't work through those strong holds in your life you will never find happiness and peace and freedom [Music] and so just like don when we're face to face with our fears if you want peace the only way to get it is to go right into it [Music] greg took a few more shots he i want you to want to say how many shots you took greg uh i want this on film declined the answer oh yeah it was just a bad day for you the day i came down to hunt with you one day about 1988 88 89 halloween day and the stock remember because the stock market crashed and you lost a pile of money and i come down there and you were so freaking ugly months later after we got home don had borrowed a bunch of my gear him and he was coming over to give it back to me you know this is in like october or whatever after i had got home he pulls into my driveway and outsteps uh his wife sandy out of the passenger seat and i remember kind of peering around the corner to make sure she didn't have a baseball bat with her hey hey you're done your animal's on the ground pressure's on the old man now squeeze it real slow reload use the one on the left hold a couple inches high how many shots you took greg i want this on film the one on the left how many yards uh 200. i'm right on them i want this on film yep yep reload after a switch of one gun and uh took us two guns but we got her done and beautiful caribou i'm really really happy for more information on other dvds books and modern day mountain man apparel log on to billymolesadventures.com here you'll also find information on alaskan hunting opportunities with billy for doll sheep caribou moose brown bear grizzly bear as well as whitetail deer hunting in wisconsin much of billy's offseason is devoted to public speaking he travels across the country sharing his knowledge and passion for the wilderness at corporate events schools conservation organizations wild game dinners christian outreach events and much more billy is a master storyteller attendees are sure to be entertained educated and inspired log on or call for more information

Channel: Modern Day Mountain Man

Views: 401,471

Keywords: Alaska caribou hunt, Hunting film, hunting video, best hunting video ever, best hunting story, best hunting story every, hunting story

Id: WH99-V0xIxA

Length: 76min 8sec (4568 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021