| The Hunt: Monday October 8th was the first day of the hunt. We were up at 5:00AM in anticipation of our first day in the field. After a large �Bernie breakfast�, we headed out. One guide was assigned two hunters. Because we were the only hunters in camp, we really didn�t care how we would be paired up. Jim was the only moose hunter, so Boyce was his guide. Richard and Larry were paired up as Richard wanted to use his bow and Larry was going to use his 300 Savage. Steve was their guide. I wanted to use my muzzleloader, so Ron was my partner with his Browning .280. Wilson was our guide. Caribou hunting is basically all spot and stalk type hunting. Ron, Wilson, and myself hiked for about an hour from camp to a high point called �The Look Out�. From this vantagepoint we could see for miles. We were overlooking many lakes, bogs, and wooded hillsides. As daylight broke, we could begin to see caribou move through the trees. They where beginning to feed into the open areas around the lakes. We glassed for a while and then decided to make our move. We always walked into the wind, as the sense of smell is a caribou�s primary defense. As we made our way to the edge of a distant lake, we noticed a good stag about 300 yards to our left feeding. We quickly decided to double back on him and get into position for a possible shot. We worked our way around a small hill, which should have put us right in front of the stag. As we crested the hill, the stag was no were to be found. Guess they call them the �gray ghost of the north� for a reason, as he seemed to just disappear. We continued with our original plan and headed towards the lake. Once at the lake, there was a small stag with one antler and several doe feeding along the edge of the water. The stag kept working his way closer to us until he was a mere 22 yards away. I video taped him for a few minutes before he started to get nervous and began grunting at us. It was very comical and we all had a good laugh. We continued to still-hunt our way to the next �Look Out�. I was on the left side of the hill glassing, when I noticed two stags and a doe about 150 yards below us. I called Ron over to take a look. The stag on the left appeared to have a heavy rack with a lot of mass, but he was in the brush and we couldn�t get a real good look at his antlers. The stag on the right had a wide, tall rack. He was looking directly at us, so it was hard to judge if he had a lot of palmation or not. Ron liked the looks of the stag on the right, so he decided to try and take him. At a distance of 147 yards, Ron�s .280 found it�s mark and the stag fell where he stood. Ron and Wilson headed down the hill to find the stag. I picked up all the packs and began to make my way down to them. Ron suddenly motioned to me that the other two caribou were about 80 yards to his left. I dropped the packs and put a primer in my Thompson/Center Encore. As I stalked in the direction Ron had pointed, I could begin to see the outline of three caribou. At about 60 yards, the two doe started to get nervous and bolted. At 50 yards, the stag decided it was time to follow his ladies. I could see him walking through the spruce trees and had one opening for an off-hand shot. I squeezed the trigger and a cloud of smoke materialized from my barrel. The stag took off in a hurry and didn�t look like he had been hit. After searching the area for awhile and not finding a single drop of blood, I came to the conclusion that my 250-grain sabot didn�t touch the animal. It was time to get back over to Ron and take a few photos. We field dressed Ron�s 9-point stag and prepared it to be taken back to camp. Wilson took out his VHF radio and called camp. John would come up with the 8 wheel Argo to take the stag out. These vehicles are like tanks and will go anywhere, even across water. They save countless hours of backbreaking work by loading the animals into the bed and driving them back to camp. The remainder of the day had Wilson and myself glassing from the second look out. We watched two doe feeding at the edge of the woods for almost three hours. Finally around 4:00PM, I spotted movement coming through the woods towards the doe. It was a stag and he began to chase the two doe. The peak of the rut was almost upon us and the stags were beginning to show it. He looked like he a decent set of antlers, but he was just too far away to tell with my 10x42 binoculars. We decided to get closer for a better look. With Wilson leading the way, we got to within 115 yards of the stag. He looked pretty good and I wanted to try and take him. Unfortunately, he moved off into the brush chasing one of the doe. We tried to stay down wind of him, but he suddenly began to run directly away from us. We thought we were busted, but then I noticed another doe feeding 30 yards to our left. The stag didn�t wind us, he was simply chasing a doe. Wilson said to sit tight, as he would be back for the other doe. He no sooner got the words out of his mouth when the stag appeared 95 yards away. With my elbow resting on my knee to steady the shot, I placed the cross hairs behind the shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The shot hit low behind the shoulder. It was a solid hit, but he was still standing. I quickly reloaded and crawled twenty yards closer to use a large boulder as a rest. The second shot did the job as the 300 pound stag traveled less than 50 yards before going down. The stag sported 18 points on a bronze colored rack. He had a nicely palmated shovel on the left side and his long reaching bez points were also palmated on either side. We were about 2 � miles from camp and it was beginning to get dark. We quickly field dressed the stag and called John to bring the Argo up. Upon returning to camp, we were told that Larry had connected earlier that day on a nice 13 point stag. Larry also said he and Richard had seen a large black bear, which hung around them the entire day. The bruin was in the 400-pound range and at one point was less than 100 yards from them. They had to leave Larry�s stag there overnight, and hoped the bear wouldn�t find the fresh kill before they were able to return in the morning to retrieve it. The next day they returned with the Argo to get the stag. The bear didn�t find the caribou carcass, but a fox did carry the caribou�s heart away during the night. Later that morning, Richard was able to connect on a nice double shovel 18-point stag with his 300 win-mag. He took the stag at 133 yards with one shot. It was the largest of the four caribou taken. At the end of day two, all of the caribou hunters were tagged out. This would leave Jim with his moose tag left to fill. Day three had Steve, Richard, and myself going bird hunting in the morning. As we were driving to a spot to bird hunt, Jim and John were headed back to camp. We stopped to see what was going on. Jim had just connected with an 8-point bull at a distance of about 75 yards with his Browning 7mm. The 650-pound bull traveled less than 100 yards before going down. Jim and John went back to camp to get the Argo while we continued to the bog where the moose was. It was about a � mile walk to the bog. Again, the Argo was worth its weight in gold as it �packed� the four-year-old bull out for us. The final two days had us preparing the animals for the trip home. The guides skinned the animals so they could be quartered and prepared for the butcher. They would go over each quarter with a torch to burn off any hair on the meat. The quarters were then placed in game bags to keep them clean and hung in cold storage. On Thursday Ron Hicks took the quarters to the butcher to be processed. The butcher cleaned, de-boned, cut, wrapped, labeled, and froze the meat for us. We left with the equivalent of six 150-quart coolers full of packaged meat! Caping of the animals would have been done as well, but we wanted to do this ourselves. |