I was supposed to go up to infamous Colt Lake at the beginning of Sept but my work schedule changed and I had to either go at the beginning of August or late September. I was going to go by myself but my friend George said he would come along as well and we would go to a place he had hunted before.

July 27 I flew up to Ft. St. John where George picked me up. The following day we loaded the horses and headed north on the Alaska Hwy. B.C was going through a heat wave at the time and I hoped it would cool off a little for the hunt. Up by Pink Mountain it started to rain; not really what I had in mind. When we get to our turn off, the road is slick and we have to put the truck in 4WD. At the trailhead we unloaded and highlined the horses and set up camp in the horse trailer. The weather is overcast with periods of rain.

Overcast with low cloud and rain

July 29 Woke up to a red sky but at least it was not raining. We headed out with wet weather gear on because we knew it was going to hit us eventually and we were right. We rode up a drainage, followed a ridge where we spooked some caribou, and dropped down to the other side. We missed our target by about 1/2 km and had to head through a little bit of muskeg to make our mark. We followed the "trail" which had not been used in a while, clearing deadfall and hitting the occasional spot of muskeg. We had planned to make camp at the south end of a lake as George knew of a spring there, but we could not find it and the little creek draining to the lake was dry. It was decided to travel to the north end of the lake as there was better pasture there for the horses. The going was good until we had to cross a stream that had muskeg on both sides. We took the horses across one at a time and they sunk to their kness in a couple of spots, lunging to get out. We did not loose a load though.

Up on the ridge

The next day we let the horses rest, but we still took the saddle horses for a scouting trip of the trail to the sheep camp. There was only two small spots of muskeg to cross and one could be avoided if we circled up and around. We found an old tattered fly camp hidden in the trees not far from where we were going to set up. There was a nice spring for water 50 yards from camp. We returned to the lake and spent another night there.

North end of the lake looking south

July 31 we slept in and headed out at 10:00, leaving a small cache of gear and food. The trip was uneventful and we had nice weather to travel and set camp. That evening we spot 2 caribou on the skyline. They look huge backlit like that. Tomorrow is opening day. I can pull the trigger on either a full curl (horn tip breaks the bridge of the nose) or a mature ram (over eight years old found by counting annuli or age rings on the horn).