I've enjoyed reading the different threads here and appreciate the experience of all of you. My wife and I are wanting to hunt moose for me and black bear for her. We are looking at different areas to do a drop camp and was hoping for some advice on where we might go and who we might hire to get us there.

Thank you,
Eddie

Eddie,

Have you looked through the Alaska Outdoors forums? Lots of local advice. I would contact the website's owner, Michael Strahan - he provides advice for exactly what you want.

http://www.alaskaoutdoorssupersite.com

Thank you. I have joined Alaska Outdoors and found some good advice on what areas off what. Because of them, I've changed the area's I'm looking at in order to be in an area with both moose and black bear. My current favorite area is out of Bethel with Renfro's.

I've looked at Alaska West's website and saw that they hunt in the Mulchatna area. I hunted caribou and moose along the Mulchatna back in the 90's and had good success on caribou, but not so much on moose. It was a drop camp with 4 W Air who did what they said they would, but the area was pretty crowded and mature moose where very scarce. They said they scouted the area beforehand, but my pilot told me that they put us on a pond where they did not see any mature bull moose because they didn't have time to scout due to weather. After a week there, and him flying over regularly and not seeing a bull from the air, he said he had to fight with the outfitter to get us relocated to an area with moose in it. He did with just a full day to hunt after the moving camp day. We did see some big bulls, but didn't have time to get to them. If we had more time there, I'm sure we could have had a chance. The area and that outfitter just sort of made it hard to want to go back there again. We never saw a bear of any kind there. From the ridge closest to our camp, we could see a dozen other tents out in the distance. To me, the Mulchatna area is just too close to Anchorage and Lake Clark.

Thank you,
Eddie

Having done a caribou then switch to black bear drop with Alaska west air out of nikiski, I would strongly advise against hunting with them. Strongly.

Thank you. They where on my list of people to contact from some positive comments I've received about them, but now I think I'll remove them. There are a few more on my list that I'm leaning towards in the Bethel area.

Eddie