Stikalidak Island Bison Hunt

What an excellent time with a great team! I included some pack out pics & some of Wesley & Bjorn loaded up in the raft to go across the lake. Grateful for their strong backs & work ethic and of course the coldcollaborative guys shannonvandivier & bowenparrish did a great job capturing the hunt & skinning!
It was pretty cool being able to get it done with my bow, of which was the first successful archery hunter they had taken. Hopefully it will inspire some of the guides and locals to get out there with their bow!
There was a substantial amount of wind & gusts & I couldn’t have been more happy how my archery setup preformed in the conditions on the Bison.
I used my bear hunting setup mathewsinc set at 74#.
A GrizzlyStik Momentum TDT tapered carbon hunting arrow / broadhead combo total of 650 gr. The head was Maasai 200 Single Bevel.
My first shot at 61 yards quartering away, arrow entered just behind last rib and was sitting in front of the offside front shoulder. My second shot to expedite the process was at 41 yard double lung pass through.
Skinning & butchering a Buffalo, Bison, Totonka what ever you’d like to call them requires some heavy duty skinning. I put together a kill kit in a bag with more knives than I normally carried but wanted to test and also make sure everyone was prepared.
The front cape is extremely thick in the neck/ head region with really long matted hair. I used my montanaknifecompany Blackfoot Magnacut 2.0 to do the initial cuts. It worked well but I also used the Stonewall skinner as well. Bison hides like a bear, have a lot of sand/ ash and debris, so always good to bring a sharpener of some sort.
And before someone asks why not a crappy replacement blade knife..? Well I used to carry one & on heavy thick hide / hair and debris the blades break, dull and come off.. & they cheaply made..
Only thing I forgot to bring, that would have been nice was my meat tarp.. always nice to set out a tarp and let the meat cool a bit before putting several cuts of meat together in a game bag.
All in all everything and everyone worked out flawlessly!