Update: The missing hunters contacted family via satellite phone on Thursday and are OK, according to Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters. They were advised to stay put so rescuers could find them, she said.
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Two hunters are missing and believed to be stranded in northeast Alaska after an unknown problem with the boat in which they were traveling, according to the Alaska Air National Guard, which searched for the men Thursday.
Both men are from Wasilla, said Tina Boren, the wife of Chris Boren, one of the two missing hunters. They'd been in a group of four hunting for caribou on a river trip that started on the Yukon River in Circle on Sept. 9 and took them up the Porcupine River, she said.
Boren said her husband called every two days by satellite phone. "He was having the time of his life," she said. On Sept. 15, he told her everyone had shot their limit and they were heading home, she said. Four days later, she still hadn't heard from him, Boren said.
"I just got that wife feeling-- something is wrong," she said.
The four hunters were traveling in two boats when one of the boats was damaged, sunk or somehow became otherwise inoperable, said Guard spokesman Maj. Guy Hayes. The problem occurred Saturday on the Sheenjek River, said Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters.
The Sheenjek flows into the Porcupine, a tributary of the Yukon, about 15 miles northeast of Fort Yukon.
After noting their location with a GPS device -- about 80 miles northeast of Fort Yukon -- two of the men took the remaining boat to Fort Yukon while their hunting companions stayed behind, Hayes said.
The two men reached Fort Yukon and called home Wednesday, Peters said. Their family members contacted Alaska State Troopers later the same day while U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel searched by air and water for the two hunters still in the field, Peters said. That search turned up no sign of the missing men, but troopers think they might be farther upriver than initial reports indicated, Peters said.
Troopers asked for help Thursday from the Guard's Rescue Coordination Center, Hayes said. The Guard sent an HH-60 Pavehawk helicopter from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks and an HC-130 King fixed-wing plane from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage to look for the missing men, Hayes said.
"Our guys went up there to specific coordinates where we thought they were going to be, and they weren't in that location," Hayes said. "The Guardsmen are doing a search of the area to see if we can locate them."
The search will continue by boat and by plane Friday, Hayes and Peters said. "We suspect the two hunters in the field are running out of supplies, which is why we are going up after them," she said.
Boren, the missing man's wife, said she heard they had minimal supplies. "They left my husband with a sleeping bag, a gun and a piece of meat on the side of the river," she said.
Reach Casey Grove at casey.grove@adn.com or 257-4589.
By CASEY GROVE
Anchorage Daily News
