There is only one thing I can say about hunting the Winter caribou migration in Quebec, Canada, eh? It should be on every man's "to do" list! What an adventure! The drive will test you. The hordes of animals will amaze you! And, the amount of work involve will boggle your mind! I would do this hunt again in a second! It was that much fun!
Six of us met in Val D'or, Quebec and made the 895 kilometer drive (a 16 hour ordeal) to Nouchimi Tourism (our outfitter). We arriveatfour o'clock am-a goodthree hours before Nouchimi opened for business. We made good use of the down time by cat napping in the truck. But, I'm telling you, everyone was eager to purchase their caribou tags and take to the field.
Although this was a self guided hunt, the folks at Nouchimi were very helpful. After purchasing our tags, they directed us to hunt between kilometer marker 476 and 512 on the Transtiaga Road. They said the main body of the migration was somewhere there (Nouchimi is located at marker 284). Off we went! We arrived at 476 some three hours later (six hours round trip from our base campwas typical for the drive to and from the hunt).
Around 1:00 pm, I made an incredible 40 yard center punch shot on my first caribou bull. He wasn't the biggest nor was he the small, but he certainly wasa good ice breaker. I spent the rest of the day packing him back to the truck. One of our rifle hunters made short work of his two allotedbulls. He had two bulls down in less than 45 minutes. Both were decent representations of the species.
With one bull under my belt, I began looking for my "good representation of the species" bull. He had to have double shovels, nice bez points, back scratchers, and good top points. From the 476 location, my sister and I hiked in about two hundred yards from the road (I know, you are thinking "is that all". Let me tell you, 200 yards in three feet of snow without snow shoe is not an easy feat. Pulling a 350 pound animal through said snow is nothing shy of a major chore).We set up an ambush point behind two different rocks. It was absolutely one of the coolest experiences I have ever witnessed. Can you imagine being right smack dab in the middle of the caribou migration? That's what it felt like to us. Bous were filtering past us everywhere!They came from the left andfrom the right.They were anywhere from 5 feet to 65 yards away. Yep, honest to God, they were everywhere! Little did we know, we weren't even in the main body. The bous going by us were fringe animals (the real main body was at marker 500). And yet, we still looked over thousands of animals. Sadly, most of the big bull had already shed their horns. There were exceptions...
Late in the afternoon, I gotthe bull I was looking for. He camewithin 27 yards and I drilled a hole through his boiler room. Perseveringthe negitive 16 to 29 degrees (fahrenheit) paid off. I'll get up more pictures and tell more of the story ASAP. ENJOY!
