Keith Rogan
New member
H&H Hunter,
The flying service you name is one of the outfits I was thinking of when I said "beware". I'm a little leery of getting nasty letters from attorneys, so I won't name any more of the bad apples in the barrel there. Suffice it to say that (in MY opinion), any of the large charter outfits in Anchorage probably suck. A hunter would do better to look at some of the small outfits after checking references.
I'm sure you know all this, but for those who haven't dealt with air charters: Planes are chartered by the hour, and that hour counts both ways - if you fly one hour out into the bush, you have to pay the additional hour the plane takes to get back to its base - you pay for two hours. The best bang for the buck is three guys chartering a Beaver. A Beaver holds 1200-1500 pounds of people, gear and meat, which is what you'll need to get out in one trip figuring two caribou for each member of the party. If you go with more people, you have to take less game. If you take a smaller plane, you'll have to take fewer people (less to split the cost) or pay for additional trips to get your gear and meat out.
With all things considered, the best buy is three guys, a Beaver and two Boo each. You just pick a locale maybe 45 minutes out (after asking around and finding out where the bulk of the herd is) and just fly into the area with a little time left on the clock for scouting. When you spot the caribou, you just get put down on the nearest lake. You hunt and your guy comes back in a week and takes you out.
OR, you can take advantage of one of these package deals and just put your trust in the outfitter. This is risky because some (not most) of these guys are *******s who will dump you anywhere if it saves fuel and flying time.
One outfit that I can recommend personally is Talon Air down in Kenai/Soldotna. It might be a hassle getting down there for an out-of-stater - 100 miles (?) from Anchorage - but, they are an excellent outfit with a good reputation, and the price for their package hunts is right. They have a web site somewhere if someone wants to look for it.
Keith
The flying service you name is one of the outfits I was thinking of when I said "beware". I'm a little leery of getting nasty letters from attorneys, so I won't name any more of the bad apples in the barrel there. Suffice it to say that (in MY opinion), any of the large charter outfits in Anchorage probably suck. A hunter would do better to look at some of the small outfits after checking references.
I'm sure you know all this, but for those who haven't dealt with air charters: Planes are chartered by the hour, and that hour counts both ways - if you fly one hour out into the bush, you have to pay the additional hour the plane takes to get back to its base - you pay for two hours. The best bang for the buck is three guys chartering a Beaver. A Beaver holds 1200-1500 pounds of people, gear and meat, which is what you'll need to get out in one trip figuring two caribou for each member of the party. If you go with more people, you have to take less game. If you take a smaller plane, you'll have to take fewer people (less to split the cost) or pay for additional trips to get your gear and meat out.
With all things considered, the best buy is three guys, a Beaver and two Boo each. You just pick a locale maybe 45 minutes out (after asking around and finding out where the bulk of the herd is) and just fly into the area with a little time left on the clock for scouting. When you spot the caribou, you just get put down on the nearest lake. You hunt and your guy comes back in a week and takes you out.
OR, you can take advantage of one of these package deals and just put your trust in the outfitter. This is risky because some (not most) of these guys are *******s who will dump you anywhere if it saves fuel and flying time.
One outfit that I can recommend personally is Talon Air down in Kenai/Soldotna. It might be a hassle getting down there for an out-of-stater - 100 miles (?) from Anchorage - but, they are an excellent outfit with a good reputation, and the price for their package hunts is right. They have a web site somewhere if someone wants to look for it.
Keith