I got introduced to Caribou hunting back in 1980. Several of my friends had planned a DIY Caribou hunt on the Alaska Peninsula out of King Salmon. A week before their hunt, one of them had to cancel, and I got invited. It was a fly-in drop camp, and we each got a good bull.
I've also been a Sheep nut for many years, and in 1999 a friend of mine told me of a Dall sheep cancellation in the Mackenzie Mountains in Canada's Northwest Territories. I booked that hunt with Gana River Outfitters. Along with the sheep tag, we had the option to also buy tags for a Mountain Caribou, a Wolf, and a Wolverine. The extra tags were relatively cheap, so I bought one of each. My hunt was a backpack hunt where they flew my guide and I out of base camp in a Super Cub to a landing spot, and we backpacked from there. I got a great ram the first day of hunting, and the next day as we hiked back to the drop point, we came across a Wolverine, and I filled that tag. The next day we flew out to another area where the week before my guide had seen quite a few caribou and several wolves. When we got there most of the caribou and the wolves had moved on. We saw one good bull that I passed on then one great bull that outsmarted us, then a couple of days of nothing. About the fourth morning we were having breakfast, and the bull that I had passed on earlier walked by camp and I didn't pass again and got my Mountain Caribou. He hadn't started rubbing the velvet off his antlers, and my taxidermist was able to preserve it on the mount.
In 2004 I booked a combination Caribou and Muskox hunt in the northern part of the Northwest Territories, east of Inuvik, where the Mackenzie river flows into the Arctic Ocean. That hunt was with Bekere Lake Outfitters, and we were allowed two Caribou each. There were four hunters in camp, and we each got two bulls. These are the Central Canadian Barren Ground Caribou, and one of my Caribou bulls and my Muskox bull both qualified for the Boone & Crockett record book.
Several of my friends had hunted the Quebec-Labrador Caribou in Quebec back when they could each shoot two bulls, and I had wanted to hunt there for many years. Then in January of 2017 I was at the Sportsman's Expo show in Denver and Louis Tardif of Leaf River Outfitters had a booth there. I had heard that Quebec was going to close Caribou hunting to non-residents, and Louis verified that but said they had a couple of openings for that fall, so I booked one. Leaf River Outfitters had two camps, one on Leaf River and the other at Lac Desbergeres. They sent me to their Lac Desbergeres camp which was great with electricity and heated cabins for the hunters, staff, laundry and bathroom, and cooking and eating. The camp was located between two lakes where they had aluminum boats and freighter canoes with outboard motors. The camp was short one guide, so they paired 3 hunters with each guide.
As we crossed the lake the first morning, we were deciding who would get first shot, and one on the other hunters suggested that we go oldest hunter first. That was fine with me as I was the oldest person in camp. We started seeing Caribou soon after we left the canoe, and I passed on several bulls. We were almost constantly seeing Caribou, and early in the afternoon we spotted several bulls including one that I liked. I shot my bull out of that bunch as did one of the other hunters in our threesome. My bull turned out to be the largest of all of the Caribou that I have shot. He has double shovels and 38 score able points. He not only qualified for the B&C record book, but he was one of the largest Quebec-Labrador submitted in the last three years and he was invited to the 30th B&C Awards ceremony that will be held in Springfield, MO in August. He, along with all of the other top B&C Trophies for this period will be on display at the Bass Pro World Wildlife Museum from May to August. Yes, I'm very proud of him. Oh, and the day after I shot my Caribou, the third hunter of our threesome shot his Caribou, which also qualified for the B&C record book.
So this past January at the Sportsman's Expo in Denver, I found a Newfoundland Outfitter that offers Woodland Caribou hunts, so I booked a hunt with him, and in September I will be in Newfoundland hunting Woodland Caribou and Eastern Canadian Moose.
