Caribou hunt cost
Caribou
I was clearing out some old paperwork and ran across a file that had info about my 2001Quebec caribou hunt that was outfitted by Greg Bonecutter.
Hunt price, semi guided, was $1,395 U.S. ! ! We had to furnish our own food and do our own skinning, butchering, and trophy care. 9 of us hunted with a total of 16 bulls taken. Two were solid B&C Bulls, with the rest but two being P&Y.
And as a side note, we came out of camp on 9/11 and spent 36 hours getting back across the border into the U.S.
Ahh, the good ol' days. I spent $3495 for the same hunt in 2006. Even that seems like a bargain now.
In 1992 I went on a October moose/ grizzly combo hunt in northern B,C. For a little over 6000.00. Killed a moose that missed B&C by 2 points. We were having trouble finding a grizzly and outfitter had a left over quota tag for a stone sheep cause one of his earlier hunters didn't get a ram. He flew the license in for me and I got to go kill a stone sheep because he felt bad we weren't seeing any grizzly for no additional fee.
Pretty cheap stone sheep and I doubt that would happen today with stone sheep hunts going for 40,000.00
I was cleaning out droors this weekend too and came across my old caribou documents. In 2008 I paid 5300$ for caribou w/bone cutter and tuttulik. They went bankrupt and shutdown 8 days before I was supposed to leave. Sorry to be a buzzkill, but I still get raw....
I remember when the Sportsmans license was $200.00 dollars for a non resident in Montana and you got one almost every year. Fuel costs are what have driven the price up on caribou hunts. A guided hunt may sound expensive but if you you start figuring in all of the outfitters cost, they aren't making a whole lot of money. A caribou hunt is still one of the best deals around and a great time and experience. See you on the tundra. Rory
I hunted caribou with Ungava Adventures in 96. Semi guided but with all meals for $1495 after getting a $1000 credit from cancelled hunts.
When we arrived they said no bou anywhere near our camp so they would fly us to a different one. When we got there the hunters hadn't seen a single animal and were sitting in camp doing nothing but bitch. But the ones who stuck it out came flying into camp saying "They're here!!!"
They had killed bulls and saw hundreds of others moving through. We saw animals every day and everyone in camp killed two bulls. I fell in love with the tundra on that hunt.
My future bou hunts will be DIY in Alaska.
I know a number of guys who went after caribou in those days and came home with big blisters and empty hands. I almost went to Q/L a couple times but my chicken bone acted up and probably saved me from myself. I avoided Bonecutter after talking with several local guys who knew him...he lived a bit over an hour away from me at that time. Arthur Taillon who I think came from Delay River and started his own ponz- I mean caribou camp comes to mind. He burned a friend of mine x 2 who lost money and never got to hunt with Taillon. All this said, Canadian caribou are outrageously fun to hunt, and there still remain a number of solid outfitters chasing them.
My Canadian bou hunting began and ended with central BG caribou in the NWT. I made 4 trips up there and none of them were a bust, though animals were hard to find a couple times. Plenty of adventure and good times in my memory.
These days I'm with Mule. My caribou will come from AK and only via diy hunts. I'll be up there in a bit over 4 weeks and spending some considerable time in the backcountry...alone. I never really cared for lodges and group hunting situations anyway.
I forked over 5300 also 2 Greg Bonecutter in that tuttulik scam and got screwed on that deal . I recall then bleeding us with a fuel charge also .
AK for me !
Todays Woodland Caribou in Newfoundland are running $7,500 to $13,000 very costly to hunt these great animals.
I am not sure it it just caribou, but they are certainly a species that has gone way up over the past decade. I paid 3900, 4400, and 4900 with tuttulik in 2006,7,and 8. three great hunts, but the prices have gone way up to get to those level and since.
think about hunts going from 2000 to 8000 in 14 years which is basically what we have seen in QL bou hunts.
that's why i said on the 30K grizzly hunt post a few days ago that 5 years from now that 30K hunt will be a bargain and a decade from now it would be nothing but a dream cost from the good old days of 2015.
prices rise and if you don't figure out a way to increase your personal financial capacity at a similar rate you will not be participating, becasue the realities of the world are not going to change because some guys can't keep up.
Roughly $5k will get you to most (not all) Alaska herds via a bush flight, and back home. Total diy hunt. You can stay as long as you want instead of the typical 5-7 day get-it-done deals. No crowds, and all the wilderness you can tolerate.
I paid $2250 for a muskox hunt in 2004 and paid an additional $750 to kill a second bull,on Banks island of all places. I have older friends that show me hand written correspondences from the late 1970's for 20+ day hunts in BC for around $2000 for multispecies some of which included sheep.
Kevin Dill - "Roughly $5k will get you to most (not all) Alaska herds via a bush flight, and back home. Total diy hunt. You can stay as long as you want instead of the typical 5-7 day get-it-done deals. No crowds, and all the wilderness you can tolerate."
THIS!
Hunted the North Slope in 2012 for just under 5K. Planning a return trip in 2016...a bit closer to civilization...and figuring a total trip cost of 4K.
coyote (Noel), This brings up good memories, as I was on that hunt with you. Do you remember my friend Morgan who broke his leg the second morning of the hunt? Would love to do that hunt again but do not think I will ever go back to Quebec with the way things are up there these days.
So eat your heart out....
In a month or so I will put $50 worth of gas in my truck, drive 100 miles NE and shoot a meat bull!
Pete
Used to be that caribou was one of the more affordable animals to hunt and quite popular after guys had tried deer, elk, and bear. No longer. Price of caribou hunts (other than DIY in Alaska) are no longer affordable to most. Virtually all guided hunts are north of $5K these days and most start at closer to $10K. A good example of why you should try to get in hunts when you are able and not sit around and wait and add it to a bucket list.
No doubt caribou prices have risen faster than most if not any other hunts. I think a big reason is that success is so high, you can, or could kill two bulls, and it was a great hunt for bow and or gun. Plus for the masses of eastern guys it is cost effective travel wise.
I always wanted to go back after my first Quebec hunt but prices went up so fast it wasn't long before I said huh.... for that much I can do lots of other things. But anymore I see no reason to pay anyone other than a pilot to put me where I need to be where I'm not required to use an outfitter. Plus unlike in the early 90s there are so many people to help us put solid DIY plans together that it is as user friendly as it can possibly be.
Good luck Kevin!!!
I realize that several of you got burned badly by THOSE people in Quebec, but I have nothing but good to say about Boney.
I booked a hunt through him in early 2007. Just wanting to fill the camp, he gave us a cut rate for three people.
The last day of June, our house got wiped out in a flood and one of the first folks to call was Boney. He asked if we needed a refund or at least postpone the hunt a year or two.
I decided that by Sept. we would probably be in need of some vacation time, so we kept the original booking. Had a great time, everyone killed animals. Made a deal on a new place, went hunting, come home and moved in.
Glad wwe went that year, as you all know, they closed shop the next season.
MDW, I agree with you never had a problem with Boney. He took a lot of the blame for everything that went bad up there but in reality he was just the middleman and I can guarantee that had he still had everyone's deposits they would have been refunded. He along with everyone else lost a lot of money (actually more than anyone else) when they closed up.
