If you didn"t guess from the title of the thread, the caribou migration was anything but in full swing when my father, best friend, a friend from work, two buddies of my dad"s, and I headed up to the Ungava to chase caribou around the tundra with our bows. The outfitter showed us a map of what was happening, or more like what was not happening with the caribou herds and what our options were. They ended up sending us to the same camp that was hosting John Arman (jarman) and his fellow members of Team UOA (Ultimate Outdoor Adventures). It was nice to meet them as I got off the floatplane and they helped us unload our gear. They had had a frustrating first caribou trip facing slim pickings in tough terrain. They were just the nicest group of guys as I apologized for their luck (I had recommended this hunt to them). When they left my father looked at me and said, "This doesn"t sound good. You could tell those guys really knew what they were doing." John"s group had taken 4 nice bulls and had passed on a number of smaller bulls and cows. Not exactly the results everyone dreams of when traveling up north for the caribou migration. Our week was not to be any better, at least not as far as the hunting went. All said and done I took the nicest bull of the week, which isn"t necessarily good news since it will cost me dinner for everyone and their wives at a very expensive restaurant, but I certainly wasn"t going to pass him up either. That was the highlight of the hunting for the week, but the trip as a whole was fantastic. The fishing was phenomenal and we were able to catch a number of large lake trout, one monster pike, and even a brook trout or two. The weather was near perfect and the company could not have been better. We were lucky enough to meet and get to know Maynard, who over the course of the week became more like one of our group rather than the camp keeper. Maynard has always lived in the north country, is a fur trapper and guide for a living, and he celebrated his 64th birthday while we were in camp. His humor and distaste for Europeans helped him fit right in with us and I really enjoyed getting to know one of the absolute toughest men I have ever seen. At 64 he packed out an entire caribou, one my best friend had shot, through the thick undergrowth and numerous hidden boulders of the tundra so that my friend would not have to stop hunting during this tough week. To put that into perspective, I am 27, in good to great cardio physical condition and I struggled to pack out my bull by myself and I was actually sore for 2 days afterwards due to all the uneven ground and brush that seems to grip your ankles in an attempt to take you to the ground. When the week was all said and done I was exhausted, covered with black fly and mosquito bites, hungry, richer by one friend, and anxious for my next trip to the strange and beautiful northern land full of tundra and boreal forests to chase caribou with my bow.
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"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism" - Nikita Krushchev 1959
Congratulations on the velvet bull... I want a velvet rack of something so bad I could taste it! (Well, I guess I could have had the velvet spike elk that was at 3 1/2 yards last week... [8D])
Maynard sounds like a neat guy too. That's one of the great joys of hunting camps: getting to know other people in our community! Some of my favorite times during my elk trip was visiting other campsalong the roadside and shooting the breeze with them during mid-day.
Absolutely Greg. Hunting is definitely a sport where the journey isfar more important than the destination.
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"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism" - Nikita Krushchev 1959
Absolutely Greg. Hunting is definitely a sport where the journey isfar more important than the destination.
Amen Jim, what a wonderful hunt regardless the outcome. Great story and outlook on the whole experience as well. Caribou is one hunt that is in my near future and a mount I want on my walls. To be honest, that looks like a really good bull to me, I wouldn't have passed on him. I take it from your avatar and reading that you caribou hunt often? Sounds great. Congratulations and welcome home. Now is it time to switch gears and prepare for buckeye whitetails?
Absolutely Greg. Hunting is definitely a sport where the journey isfar more important than the destination.
Amen Jim, what a wonderful hunt regardless the outcome. Great story and outlook on the whole experience as well. Caribou is one hunt that is in my near future and a mount I want on my walls. To be honest, that looks like a really good bull to me, I wouldn't have passed on him. I take it from your avatar and reading that you caribou hunt often? Sounds great. Congratulations and welcome home. Now is it time to switch gears and prepare for buckeye whitetails?
I would recommend a caribou hunt to anyone, but after this year I would recommend going the first or second week of September. The weather is more risky, but the migration is less risky. That bull is about the equivalent of a good 5X5 elk. A really nice animal but not a monster for sure. I was completely happy with him, especially with the week we were having, but I would have been anyway.
No need to really switch gears to whitetails as I am always doing something to prepare for the season. Although I must admit that I am looking forward to this year's opener more than I have in a long, long time.
Thank you all for the kind words. I really appreciate it.
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"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism" - Nikita Krushchev 1959
No migration still equals a lot of fun
and I really enjoyed getting to know one of the absolute toughest men I have ever seen. At 64 he packed out an entire caribou, one my best friend had shot, through the thick undergrowth and numerous hidden boulders of the tundra so that my friend would not have to stop hunting during this tough week. To put that into perspective, I am 27, in good to great cardio physical condition and I struggled to pack out my bull by myself and I was actually sore for 2 days afterwards due to all the uneven ground and brush that seems to grip your ankles in an attempt to take you to the ground. When the week was all said and done I was exhausted, covered with black fly and mosquito bites, hungry, richer by one friend, and anxious for my next trip to the strange and beautiful northern land full of tundra and boreal forests to chase caribou with my bow.
