A Simple Caribou Hunt Becomes A Journey Into A Proud Past
David said the cairn probably marked a fishing spot, where winter travelers could stop and expect to catch fish to feed their dogs. Farther up the bay he pointed to the ridge top where a series of rock structures stood guard. What do they look like? he asked me. People, I replied. That is what they are supposed to look like, he told me. The vertical stones, with their eerie coldness, were set to look like humans, upright and stolid. When the caribou followed the curve of the bay in their travels, they could be herded toward the human-like cairns and funneled to waiting hunters with bows and spears.
Before we could inspect the rock figures, a small band of caribou appeared on a nearby ridge, all cows and calves, headed our way. David offered that I might shoot a cow on his tag for meat to send home to his family. It would be good practice for a bull, he insisted. One of the cows noticed our movement and came our way to investigate (a strange, often annoying habit that cows frequently engage in).
Crouched behind a rock, I nocked an arrow. When I peeked over the top, the cow was already within range. I rose to clear the boulder, drew and released in one motion, sending an arrow over the top of the animals back. David was right; it was good practice.
We stopped around noon to catch several lake trout for a shore lunch and shared them over a small fire with Davids Inuit friend and fellow guide, Jimmy, and his two rifle-hunting clients. The trio had a decent bull caped and loaded into their boat and was looking for another. David and I hunted the remainder of the day with little success, seeing only more cows and calves and a few young bulls.
CAMP COMFORTS There are many joys to a caribou camp, but the most obvious may be that here in one of the most forsaken places on the planet one always has a warm, dry shelter and hot food to return to. Another delight, particularly for a whitetail hunter from the 4 a.m. school of up-and-at-em, is that caribou do not require rising early. As a matter of fact, there is no real advantage to hunting caribou at the crack of dawn.
Following morning helpings of sausages, buttered toast and eggs, David and I set out on a long boat trip to try to locate the caribou bulls that had eluded us. Along the way we shot upstream through several boulder-strewn rapids, with David generously allowing me to slow our travels by stopping to fish. In the pools, hungry lake trout grabbed my flashing spoons, and in one stretch of fast water I used streamers and my fly rod to fool sea-run Arctic char, so brilliantly colored they looked like flames under the torrent.
We stopped on one otherwise unremarkable shoreline to view the site of an ancient encampment. How David knew this might be here still remains a mystery, but as the trip progressed I became accustomed to his eye for signs of his own people.
What we found were the stones that marked the walls of skin tents, 10- to 30-pound rocks laid out in a rectangular pattern where they had held the edges of the tent against the wind and weather. Two tents had been located here, the largest some 20 feet across, the smaller about half that size. David moved a stone to look at the depth of the moss that surrounded it, his method of dating the peoples passing. Moss takes decades, even centuries to grow in this harsh land, so a rock imbedded in even a small amount of moss cannot have been placed recently.
While Davids sharp eye studied the ground, I surveyed the landscape. Did the inhabitants of this camp meditate on the beauty of this lake, of this tundra, as I was doing now? What were their lives like? Were they well fed and clothed, as we were? Or were they struggling to survive? Did their children play here? Were they called to dinner? No doubt all the emotions of life were played out in a semipermanent camp like this. Love, sadness, happiness, fear. Now, of all those seemingly important events, all that remain are rocks.
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David said the cairn probably marked a fishing spot, where winter travelers could stop and expect to catch fish to feed their dogs. Farther up the bay he pointed to the ridge top where a series of rock structures stood guard. What do they look like? he asked me. People, I replied. That is what they are supposed to look like, he told me. The vertical stones, with their eerie coldness, were set to look like humans, upright and stolid. When the caribou followed the curve of the bay in their travels, they could be herded toward the human-like cairns and funneled to waiting hunters with bows and spears.
BOWHUNTER