Tackling the Tundra

As we've gotten older, wiser (arguably) and yes, grayer, my father, brother and I try to do a hunting or fishing trip every year together. One of the To-Do's has been a self-guided caribou hunt in the Canadian Arctic. With Quebec just an hour away and over million caribou migrating across its northern regions, it was pretty easy to line up and we pulled the trigger this September.

I've only been up there on whitewater expeditions, and the terrain is amazing. You can see forever, and water seems to defy gravity -- standing water on mountain slopes is just plain weird, but the lichen makes it happen, trust me. We had good weather on the flight in, and I even managed about 15 minutes on the controls for my first flying lesson. Camp was to be located here, right in the middle of nowhere:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=56.34223,-71.87065&ll=56.34223,-71.87065&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1.

We experienced every type of weather imaginable during the week from snow to hot and buggy, and logged a lot of miles following the maze of caribou trails across the lichen filled tundra. In the end, the caribou herd we were looking for had other travel plans, and the mass migration we were hoping for didn't happen. With some really hard work, long hours behind the binoculars, glassing from mountain ridge to mountain ridge, we made the most of it and managed some smaller bulls and cows to fill the freezer for the winter. We learned a lot, laughed a lot, argued a lot, sweated a lot and shivered a lot -- and are already ready for the next chance to repeat it all!