Winter Caribou Hunting

Have any of you people tried this, hunting caribou in the winter time at -30* It's a lot of fun and you hunters, you should try this. It was in 2004 I was out hunting caribou with my buddy Guy. We left that morning around 7 AM. and it was pretty cold it was -30* no wind. Guy had his little Tundra and I had my Artic Cat 580 Pantera 1995. I had the big sled hooked up and away we went. We were heading for Lake Wachuach, this is 65 miles north of Schefferville. It's an outfitter camp and belongs to Wedge Hills Lodge, the owner Mr. Albert.

As we travelled along, crossed a couple of rivers and following the marked trail, things were going just great. After 2 hours of driving we stopped and had a good cup of coffee. The sun seemed to have warmed up the day and let me tell you it was beautiful, all those mountains and steep cliffs and lakes, for awhile I thought that I was on another planet, it's hard to explain how nice it is. As we were going through a portage we saw fresh caribou tracks and a lot of tracks.

We had stopped and I was saying to guy, they are very close maybe just ahead of us, I unhitch the sleigh. I think that we might have to run after them. Got on our snowmobiles, I was in front and away we went, as we got out of the portage and on to Lake Wachuwach. The herd was about half a mile ahead of us, they had stopped and were looking at us. I say that their must have been a couple of thousand heads. We stopped again and took the rifles out of our cases, loaded up, Guy had a 308 Browning with scope and I had a 32 special Winchester model 94 and no scope. It was easy and lite to carry along and I liked it. The caribous were still standing there and looking are way. I told Guy did you know that caribou run at 65 km. per hour. He said I know that they run pretty fast.

I told my buddy I don't want to chase them, do you see the point that comes out on the right side. He said yes, well I will go up on the mountain and come out just on the other side of that point. You wait here until you see me going down on the other side. Them you can head straight for the herd with your snowmobile. Guy said OK. I head back slowly on my trail and then went left to the mountain and followed it on the other side right up to the point. Stopped the snowmobile and walked to the point, I could hear the snowmobile and I saw the herd coming for the point. When the herd was close enough, about 1000 feet I aimed the big bull in front the leader, pulled the trigger and he stopped, I shot the next big one beside him and he stopped also. The whole herd had stopped, why because the leader was not moving. Guy shot his two big bulls also. It took about 10 minutes before my bulls fell to the ground. Out with the knife and did the job as fast as we could while those caribous were still warm. Went back and picked up the sled, got those 4 wonderful caribous abord and on our way back to Schefferville.

Do you know what? We did not even make to the hunting camp. What a wonderful day and if any of you want to experience a trip like this inbetween the 15th, Feb and the 15th, April 2008 just e-mail me. God bless you all.