The Caribou Are Coming They Re Only 17 Kilometers North of Here
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
“The Caribou are coming, any day now!”
In 1998 my hunting buddy BNoe and I traveled to Kuujjuaq in far northern Quebec for a week of hunting caribou. Kuujjuaq sits on Ungava Bay at latitude 58, due south of Baffin Island, and is reachable only by air. We were flown from the Kuujjuaq airport in a twin Otter bush plane to a remote camp planted on the edge of a lake in the middle of the tundra. It was the end of September and cold, but before the snows began in earnest for the winter. The scenery was stark, but beautiful. The golden of the arctic willows and larch contrasted to the red and orange ground cover, and there wasn’t a soul for hundreds of miles. At night the sky was ablaze with spectacular displays of the northern lights.
We hunted hard all week but we were too late - the herd had already migrated south. It was only pure luck and good shooting that allowed BNoe and one other hunter to kill two bulls who happened to wander by camp. These were the only animals we saw to shoot at, and the rest of us went back with rifles unfired and tags unfilled.
The battle-cry of our guide all week was “You should have been here last week – there were caribou all over the place!” The outfitter had boasted in his brochures of “thousands of animals” and a 98%+ hunter success rate. Unfortunately we were the other 2% who came home empty handed who weren’t mentioned in the brochure.
When my son Jim suggested that we go caribou hunting with his son’s father-in-law and some friends, I was skeptical. I remembered how difficult it was to get that far north in Quebec and how disappointed I had been to come home with only a few Ptarmigan to show for the cost of the hunt.
“This caribou hunt will be different,” Jim said. “We’re going to an area in northern Quebec where the animals over-winter, and there are thousands in the herd. Tom, Jack and Joe were there last year and each had their two caribou the first day of hunting.”
We would be hunting the rivière aux Feuilles herd, the same herd that BNoe and I had missed further north at Ungava Bay several years ago. The herd numbers 628,000 head and has tripled in size over the last 14 years. Pierre Corbell, Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife and Minister responsible for the Nord-du- Quebec Region
The Transtaiga Road snakes through low-growing spruces, firs and tamaracks in the heart of the Canadian taiga. The taiga, a Russian word meaning land of small evergreen trees, is one of the planet's last frontiers. And one of the best places to hunt for the majestic caribou.
Cartes des migrations du caribou, Resources naturelles et Faune Quebec
Cartes du suivi des déplacements du caribou par télémétrie satellitaire
Nord-du- Québec Transportation Plan
Site de la route de la Baie- James
Winter Caribou Hunting in Quebec, 2005-2006 Season.
Road Conditions, Transtaïga Road
Caribou hunting at Kiskimaastakin Camps Weather conditions at LG-4 from Environment Canada