For some reason I have been measuring a lot of muskox lately. It has really given me the itch to go north and give it a try. I would love to hear the stories and the feedback from those who have hunted them.
I have not hunted one, but have dreamed about killing one with my longbow!!!!
Bucket list hunt for sure!
Bisch
Also on my list, but man have those prices gone up. Not to mention travel costs!
Would have to be a real sharp broadheads to go through those shaggy /caked hair on those tanks.
What setup are you running?
Cool looking critters. I imagine they taste good.
They taste a lot like arctic hare! ;)
Wished I'd taken the time and money to hunt them when tags were more available.
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I think Steve H killed one.
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The meat I've had is some of the best.
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I've bumped into them in the Brooks, the Seward Peninsula, and in the uplands of the lower/middle Yukon River area.
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An interesting thing; every once in a great while a rifle hunter shoots one thinking it's a brown bear.
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What do you think ?
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(http://i.imgur.com/zAv2Hdz.jpg)
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Same animal, a youngish bull I think.
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(http://i.imgur.com/YSEfDTQ.jpg)
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OK, I'll ask. How can you "think" its a brown bear and actually know where to aim ? Are you not looking ? ( to the rifle hunter you speak of)..
To be clear, I absolutely did not mean it in a derogatory way towards guys hunting with rifles.
I only added that detail to infer that they are seeing and shooting at some distance..
I hunted them in 2016 and 2017. Really cool animal.
It would be a unique hunt. One I'd like to do for sure. I see there are hunts available in Greenland too.
Always wanted to hunt one since my cousins from Alaska sent me some pictures that they took. They are such a prehistoric looking animal!
I hunted muskox in 2007 and put a thread on here about my hunt - search "great white north" and my name. Unfortunately photobucket stole the picks from the thread. Wasn't "white"....I did the August hunt. It was an adventure for sure, I hunted Victoria Island, out of Uluhoktok (Holman) booked thru BSC. I'd book thru a consultant on this hunt that has a travel side too to help with air travel arrangement. They are a really neat animal, budget for a full mount, mounting the head and throwing away the body hide is like mounting a deer head, but cutting off all the tines!
Try to arrange to be with at least one older guide that will talk with you about traditional Inuit (they call each other Eskimos, but I was told that's an insult) lifestyle.
Tell them you don't want to chase the animals on a machine to bay them before shooting.... this is illegal for non-subsistence hunters but the vast majority are killed this way. You don't need to chase.... there are areas with rocks or cut up little creeks to stalk in. My guides had never seen a traditional bow before and were skeptical... it took two days instead of the normal one with a rifle, but we found a stalkable herd.
Killing a bull is pretty much a given and is secondary to being in a place few non-natives get to visit. Enjoy the whole trip for the adventure. The highlight of mine was when the older guide... I think he was 65 which us really old for folks up there... helped me working on fleshing my hide and told me polar bear, seal, and whale hunting stories.
They are a large, stout animal. I used a 65 lb recurve and arrows around 650-670 gr if I remember right. Big Snuffer of course. Arrow sounded like it hit a sheet of plywood, penetration to the cresting. The meat tasted like beef to me, though very lean and tough. My guides called it "Old people food" and said they boil it till it falls to nothing like soup and people without teeth can eat it. They salvaged the meat, you'd pay thru the nose twice at airfare rates to get any home.
There is a book titled "Muskoxen and Their Hunters" that I picked up somewhere that is worth trying to find and read before you go. It is pretty heavy reading: part biology, cultural anthropology, and part history. Tells all about these little understood animals, the people of the North, and the population trends of muskox. In many areas that they were introduced or reintroduced they are outcompeting caribou and causing issues with native flora, they are real survivors and a very interesting case study in the ecology of the Arctic.
R
Acedoc, A 65 year old woman form our archery club shot completely through 2 of them with a 38# matthews using Bear Razorheads. Her husband shot 2 also on that trip.
Nice shooting, goes to prove that flesh and foam differ greatly in behaviour.
I am limited to foam or slaughtered goats/ hogs when I can arrange them (dicey as butchers don't want cuts in the meat they sell).
Ryan thank you for the input here. It is a dream hunt for me for certain
Sure thing! It was a trip. We had just completed building on my trophy room - 2 buddies and myself spent every weekend all summer doing it - and I asked my wife what I should go hunt to christen it...I don't know where she came up with it but she said "Muskox, they are so good looking!...but it needs to be a full mount!"...OK!
Neat story - the day after I killed my bull the guides asked if I wanted to go back to town but I told them I'd like to go back out on the tundra and take pictures. We ended up stalking into a herd with a monster bull, but I wasn't interested in a 2nd muskox. Then we found an old lone bull and chased him to bay in the rocks. He was a really big old guy with huge boss, but had one horn broken off, so was not a trophy and was thus pretty much safe for life. I walked up to him, about 15/20 yards, to take pictures, and he started throwing his head and scratching the ground. The guide came forward and grabbed me and pulled me back to the quads - showing lots of white around his eyes. He was worried I'd get stomped...looked like a big ol' barn cow to me :) . I kind of made a joke of it and said "well you've got a rifle, so I wasn't worried" He grinned and said "yep, GOOD rifle!", and patted it...then I looked at it for the first time..there wasn't a spot of blueing on the rifle, or a lick of finish on the stock, and no front sight. The hole in the barrel looked pretty small too. I asked him what it was, and he said "good gun! .222" :o . I asked if that wasn't a bit small for a charging muskox and his answer was "no problem! solid bullet! go right through him!" ;)
I saw a few on the north slope of the Brooks range while hunting Caribou. Real interesting animals.
Hope you go after them.
Joe
I've got a Muskox hunt booked for this August. One of the hunts I've always wanted to go on. Thanks Ryan for telling us about your hunt. I may be going to the same area that you went, from the sounds of your description of your hunt. How difficult was it to get with in recurve range? I've read that they can charge a hunter at times.