2023 Hunting Update

December 18, 2023 by Steve White

2023 was a year of new beginnings for Alaska Guide and Outfitting Service. We sold the self-guided portion of the business Willow Air in 2021 so in 2022 I was helping the new owner run the operation so he could get off to a great start. For this reason, we only do 3 guided moose hunters and had a great year we had a 100% success rate and were done 5 days early and were home before moose season ended.

2023 was a tough year for everyone in Western Alaska, it seemed like the entire season was about 2 weeks behind normal. For that reason, most outfitters were at about a 25% success rate. We only did 6 hunters out of our North Fork guide camp and had 100% opportunity on Trophy Bulls. Out of 6 hunters, we harvested 4 trophy bulls and had one hunter wound a bull that we never were able to find after searching for two days. We later found out it was shot in the hump and would have been fine but was harvested later by one of our other hunters. The final hunter had a malfunction on his gun and was not able to get a shot on his trophy bull. Most season hunters have multiple opportunities at different trophy bulls but like I said this was the toughest year I have seen in a long time. The only reason we had 100% opportunity is we have a vast knowledge of this country and some of the best moose guides in Alaska. 

   We have not done our spring Brown Bear hunts since 2020 when we were shut down due to Covid. Since we are no longer so busy with self-guided hunts we have more time to concentrate on the guided hunts and we will be doing more guided moose hunts as well as guided spring Brown Bear hunts in 2024.

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