The Hunt of a Lifetime | British Columbia Caribou & Moose (Amazon Episode)

when I was in seventh or eighth grade as in my high school library and I read an article about this person who had come to northern British Columbia and the hunted Mountain caribou and the Cassie I region mountain caribou has been in my mind for so long for 40 years this hunt that is now going to be reality is isn't gonna meet the expectation I don't know but I know tomorrow when I get on that plane and fly out for 10 days of mountain caribou hunting we're going to do this [Music] [Applause] [Music] here we are go find out what's going on [Music] the excitement of going to do this after 40 years Oh a ting is the closest I think I can get to Christmas for a five-year-old I'm sure some of you who are watching this are saying Randy all of your stuff for the last 12 years has been self-guided and yeah they have and I bet you going forward for the next 12 years after this they'll probably all be self gang I could go haunt barren ground caribou I could go other places and hunt caribou without again there's something about mountain caribou in northern British Columbia that has been this tree in the only way you can do that is with an outfit [Music] some of you listen to our Hancock radio podcast I had Dustin Rowe who owns this back country BC and beyond operation I had him on the podcast after that podcast Dustin and I were talking he was like well what's your real dream huh and when I said Mountain caribou he got a smile on his face I had no idea that Dustin had a mountain caribou operation I said you should go do it I said yeah I know I said this landscape of northern British Columbia and even further north into the Yukon is some extremely wild untouched country then I come to a place like this it reminds me of how valuable our loud places are [Music] [Music] then we're trying to stay out of everybody's way they're packing up everything and getting the horses ready the idea is to go around the mountains to the next camp they're probably my favorite thing to look at they have special pleasure power yes Jim yo probably you've got kind of so your knees might hurt a little earlier and you take the gray one facing towards us yeah the tallest one I'm not a horse person I've ridden horses before I've done a few hunts where we've had horses but I've never hunted from horses like this kind of contest and it was ride horses until dark here without trails the country is so difficult I can't even explain how impressive the landscape is just unique it is to any of the hunting I've ever done I guess there's something about hunting in country that kind of shapes you in a way the remoteness the logistics to get here I don't know how you could do it without the aid of capable people like James and Goliath little Nicky this morning out for two inches of snow last night prime class additional [Music] and now we're splitting up so Braden and Jim are gonna moose hunt somewhere up that way and James is taking me and Marcus and we're gonna ride a horse another five or six hours that way looking for caribou there's a chance right there I'm thinking of renaming it to dot because the shortest distance between two dots or two points of the line he goes in a straight line Theodore Roosevelt said only he who has partake in there can understand the keen delight of hunting the lonely lands a lot of hunting stories are written about the Casio region where we're hunting right here one of those stories back when I was in junior high school is what was the incubator for this dream that I had it spoke of the remoteness and the wildness of the Cassie Honor my wife said you know since I've known you you've talked about it it's her encouragement I said all right I'm gonna go do it [Music] I'd say we were on horseback mmm eight nine hours at least we did see a decent bowl we're driving on the trail no sudden but he came across the trail down below us and he got downwind of us and as quick as he got downwind of us he turned and look and he was gone and maybe in the lower 48 you say well I'd go after that thing but here without trails the country is so difficult to navigate No thank you very much chasing [Music] [Music] [Music] and I kept going and kept going then we kept going so it's gonna be all blonde dark by the time we get into caribou camp oh and from our right out through these spruce trees comes a herd of caribou and there's two bulls with it and one of them is just you can look with your naked eye and see that he is this remarkable James and I are looking at these caribou he looks at me and he's got this really big look he said he's legal yes I'd shoot that one [Music] we hadn't even seem real forty years and it happened so fast thank you James thanks for having all the person when I walked up to him I just I could not believe that that early in the hunt I would encounter a specimen like that [Music] when you said you should shoot that one that was good advice [Music] it was a great we went sitting up for a prone wrist with a stock I don't know my thought it was just looking through his things he had just checking on something in them just about were the blade out from punching tags even though this is a guided hunt I want to pitch in and do all I can I warned James that when that caribou or moose hits the ground you just sit back and have a have a break because I'm in charge of the we call it gutting and Gillen field dressing so many things could have went wrong thankfully the years of experience of James knowing what a large caribou looks like Blythe being able to handle all of these horses all by herself this is everything I hoped it would be and I'm thankful that the shop was true [Music] [Music] they're going to retrieve the meat the rest of the meat from my caribou [Music] and we spent all day the next day taking care of that caribou the meat week ate everything else James and Blythe are brother and sister and they're quality people they'll have 90 days in here non-stop in this remote country with no cell phone no computer none of the modern conveniences takes a a rugged and determined person to be able to do that they have interesting stories and they have a maturity beyond their years [Music] we now are not even halfway through the hunt and we're searching for mountain caribou and moose [Music] well and is the morning of unbelieving September 29 but every day of this operation that would be so now we're gonna load up the horses and we got about an eight hour nine-hour horse ride back to the big camp they can fly their little plane in and pick up the meat and then the goal is to focus on a moose I've got six days to try find the most [Music] and so we took ten hours between ride and and walk and ID and then walk and then it's a few more caribou on the way back [Music] just as we got back to the main camp we saw a moose and James is like enough only about 45 inches and I'm thinking only about 45 inches whoo that's a pretty nice-looking bull but James assured me that he said they have five days we can do better and the next morning the idea was all right Jim the other owner and Braden are going one way and me and Marcus will follow James a different direction moose day one here we go bad day to be a moves [Music] it would rain a little bit then clear off raining a little bit clear off and James looks in the spotting scope and he says I believe that's the biggest Moose I've ever seen oh and he's coming our way I'm getting it was that just to get me excited or was that reality we watched the bowl turn any starts heading straight lap and we know that Jim and Braden are somewhere on one of those big knobs way out to the west of us and then all of a sudden straight to our West [Music] and a little while later Jimmy gets a message on his inReach device that says one very happy moose hunter guess we'll just have to look for another one I'm just writing from the glassing take a lot of second he's in the marshes to cover this crazy amount of terrain and it was raining quite hard and lookalike thought I saw a bull calf back towards camp re7 [Music] or that one boat last night sir [Music] same bolas last night for some reason in the rain I thought it was bigger and breaking a vow made a vow to myself after hunting that I don't hunt in the rain but Marcus gives me no choice called me a whole bunch of names because those are mighty big rain pants you have there Marcus my what big rain pants you have so Marcus forgot rain pants on this trip and by some miracle good fortune the fellow hunter in camp our buddy Jim we shot the big Moose yesterday happen to have a pair of [ __ ] Cup open country optic aid rain pants in a size XL Marcus is the size small Marcus looks like he ran away from home and just grabbed whatever he could but we better go do this before I change my mind and say I'm not going to violate my oath of not filming and hunting in the rain it just kept helping right all night long and forecast was for rain in the next two or three days you know it's 38 40 degrees Fahrenheit and it's raining and the humidity level is super high they took this trail way up kind of the direction towards weird image shot that Bowl the day before finally the the cloud covers high enough but it's still mist and raining and wind right away jim says there's a fine bowl over there where Oh way over there James turns to me and says are you ready for a hike and I said yeah so what I came here for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and it's exactly the same Ridge where we'd lost sight of the big bowl the day before that Jim ended up shooting and I'm thinking what are the odds are two really big bowls there James keeps calling and I'm laying there in the prone position thinking well this could be a while I better get comfortable and about a half hour later all sudden I see an antler on the horizon I'm like hey guys he's just to the right of that meadow and let this crazy wind and everything I'm like I'm not chancing that shot neither Bowl turned and he had this kind of a pill and away from us and Jim is like come on let's catch him oh man how you gonna catch up to a moose running through this country take a couple breaths and James is like just take your time but don't shoot unless you're comfortable get there and I put another shell in [Music] well hijack another round and now it disappears behind another depression and he's way way out there I can't see him when I say and I stand up on this little tussock and take my time and spying it again I'm getting fired I I wish I could tell you that you know the first shot he just fell but he did it the first shot hit him right on the point in the shoulder and went in and the autopsy showed it got one long any of the view who hunt know that once you hit an animal you're doing everything you can to finish the job you want to finish it as quickly as possible well this moose we've been chasing all day he made an appearance at four hundred and seventy yards and then he started coming this way and he comes out and here it was where Jim shot his bull yesterday you can see they've got it all carved up and the horses here in that ball that I ended up shooting it comes and stands right up here well good where's your ball okay where oh wow let's see some show-and-tell [Applause] hey that's a heap big canada moose bear fault [Music] [Applause] unfortunately I'm sure everyone's gonna see the pictures of the ball I enter be like oh you got excited and shot him in the antler huh the longest time on the driver's side is busted off of the Hopf are so I'm standing there admiring this bowl this in awe thank you buddy thank you and I look over then about 15 feet away not even it's this far off the ground in the alders you got hung up and some alders I'm like that looks like a broken tine they say when you start if you can find the missing piece it counts now I don't know how you go about that obviously I got a good ribbing over it I mean you know I should have made a better first shot or we should have just stayed over the ball and waited for him to expire because I'm sure he wasn't gonna make it too much longer but I just I don't want to see an animal lay there and I want to finish the job as quickly as possible regardless of how difficult the shooting conditions are and weather and everything else if you shoot off time I guess you shoot off time Blythe had heard the shooting and here she comes trailing our four horses down the trail it was right here now everybody's got harsha's and we got pack horses and we're were sat down it was a very exciting moment for everybody it was a lot of laughs and smiles and everyone's pitching in while we're cutting and carving on this bowl and we got it taken care of and record time [Music] and the guys they're like well here's how we're gonna have to we're gonna be fully loaded with Jim's bull plus some of your meat and your antlers and his antlers and his cape and all of us it's gonna be a rough ride out of here [Music] [Music] [Music] we got back to camp that night and everybody is soaked everybody is just still smiling I'm thoroughly exhausted but I can't even imagine how exhausted this crew is they're up at daylight way past hour big pair of [ __ ] this hit is so remarkable to see that human action you just gotta come here and experience it really understand that but really you get halfway into the law like we did today and it's just worse it gets I can't explain it no I'm one of them you cannot beat good luck and I had a Tony good luck I I could tell by the chatter among James and Braden and the two Wranglers Blythe and Marty that this was an unusual five days that it does not usually fall together this good and we've all had those other hunts where it seems like we've done everything we've planned we've worked hard we've done every possible preparation and we we end up with nothing not even an encounter [Music] there's the the Tenderloin cooker right there my mind rolls back through probably I don't know 1977 or 78 when I first read an article in an outdoor magazine about Mount caribou hunting in the cassio region hard to believe a 14 year old snotty-nosed kid the big falls Minnesota could spend days thinking about that and Here I am breathing that air standing on that wet spiny ground looking at these snow-covered Peaks and I'm just grateful for everyone who made it possible this crew here and Dustin oh the outfitter for my wife who just encouraged me to go follow this dream I'm so lucky to have so many people that help help that happen [Music] and hopefully I'll have learner friends that I can run into at trade shows or whatever and we tell big story is about September and October of 2019 and the caviar mountain [Music] we all have dreams you have a dream go do that because you're not gonna regret it you're gonna ask yourself why did I wait this long I'm not sure about this [Music] [Music] everything nobody you think that was an Okeechobee bigmouth bass Oh hold on I'm no worse out he's gay he's not played out okay they throw them up in the bank they hit the pretty nice pounds heavy duty [Music] yes welcome Peter come on [Music] right there look at that great big thing

Channel: Fresh Tracks

Views: 418,331

Keywords: Randy, Newberg, Fresh Tracks, Western, Hunting, hunter, Big, Game, DIY, public, land, hunt, talk, conservation, gear, equipment, hunting videos, hunting shows, sitka gear, sitka hunting, leupold, howa

Id: 0B0rIAww7hA

Length: 36min 18sec (2178 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2020