I love Newfoundland.
It's a wild and wonderful place inhabited by the most hospitable people you can imagine. I would strongly suggest you build in a couple extra days to see some of Newfoundland and spend some time with the locals. Grab the show at the hotel in Rocky Harbour, a play in Cow head. Check out Gros Morne and do the boat trip in the fjord on West Brook Pond. Have some cod cheeks for dinner one night. I know, it's a hunting trip, but take in the sights and chat up the locals.
The Newfies will do their best to send you home with a set on antlers and full coolers. No decent guide, however, will promise you a moose, or a moose and a caribou, or worse, a moose, caribou and a bear on the same trip. Those animals are all there, sometimes in abundance. It is certainly possible to fill all those tags in a week's trip.Just not likely. I have been to sportsmen's shows and heard it all. Be cautious.
I have hunted twice now with Arluk Outfitters. First trip in 2010, all three of us got moose. The week before, three hunters got OK moose and an OK caribou. We flew in to camp on Sunday and they flew out...and then the hurricane hit. Knowing it was coming and that it would probably last for a few days, two of us opted to take moose the first day. Then it got windy and the camp shook and shuddered for two nights. It was , as they say, the 100 year storm and it devastated the southern part of the island. Things finally calmed down and the other hunter in camp got a fairly nice moose later in the week. His moose had a 42" spread. By Newfoundland standards, that's a good moose. I have seen larger.
This last year, 2016, we hunted out of a different camp, again under tough weather conditions...basically gale force winds for the first two days. The moose stayed in the timber all week. I took the only moose in camp that week and that was a dry cow that I took for the freezer on Friday morning. My hunting buddy never saw a moose all week. The other two hunters passed on a small bull earlier in the week and as it turned out, that was their only chance. In Newfoundland, the weather is your constant companion....and it can make or break you.
Depending on how you want to hunt, you can go with an outfitter that will match you up with one of the local guys and you can drive the logging roads all week. You will most likely get a moose. You will rest your rifle over the pickup hood and lay that sucker flat. Perhaps it's just me, but that's not really my idea of fun.
I am not disparaging anyone's idea of s moose trip, but I prefer a fly in trip to a more remote area where you are not competing with other hunters, where internal combustion engines run the generator and power the boat across the lake. There are no pickup trucks. You won't see as much territory perhaps, but the territory you do see you will have pretty much all to yourselves. And those bogs, bare ridges and thick woods will be your home for a week. Your guide will become your best friend.
I have hunted and fished Atlantic Canada for more years than I would like to admit. I have had terrible guides and I have had good guides. We provided one salmon guide a pint after breakfast so that he would fall asleep on the river bank and leave us alone. This past year, I hunted with the Grand Master himself, the real deal Boiling up a kettle for tea, eating Vienna sausages at lunch and listening to his stories..and the oft practiced jokes... was truly a great pleasure. He worked hard for me and skillfully field butchered my moose and, I realized later, spent a few hours meticulously cleaning my moose quarters as they hung in the meat shed. He took his job seriously and was the consummate professional. How I would love to spend a week on a salmon river with him. If we were both only 20 years younger......... I tipped him extravagantly and wrote him a thank note.
You have to be careful in picking an outfitter. Some are really good and some look at it as a way to pocket some easy cash. Check references. Be careful of the ones who promise you a moose and a caribou on the same trip. It can be done. Caribou numbers are down everywhere from what I gather. If i wanted both a moose and a caribou, I would focus on the caribou.Try to find an outfitter that has had good success on that species and take the moose as the opportunity arose.
Two weeks from tonight, I will be back in Newfoundland. We are going to try for a moose that eluded my hunting buddy last year. I hope he gets one. Maybe I'll get a moose too, maybe not. But I will damn well be there and that is enough. Did I mention that I love Newfoundland? You will too.
PM me if you want to know more.
