Night
Hawk Stories...
Entry 33
The Caribou Mystique
by John E.
Phillips
Page 2
THE WORK BEGINS
Caribou,
big animals weighing well over 200-pounds each, usually would require
several men to carry out the head and cape, two hindquarters, two front
shoulders and the backstraps off one animal. But we had to transport two
heads and the meat from two animals. However, when Napartuk rolled Zappia's
caribou over, he found that wolves apparently had attacked the caribou
and made a big, slashing gash in its shoulder. Because some of the meat
had yellowed, Napartuk didn't think we should eat it.
"We'll put this meat in a cache here by the lake," Napartuk
decided. "I'll check with the other guides to see if they think we should
come back for it. But I'm afraid to eat this animal."
We
loaded up the head and cape of Zappia's caribou and began to cape and
quarter the other bull. We had left the canoe in such a hurry to catch
up to the large caribou Zappia took that we forgot our packs. We only
had two slings from our guns to carry the animals out. We hooked each
sling through the hindquarters, head and cape of the caribou. Two of us
each had a hindquarter, a head and a cape, while Napartuk carried two
front shoulders and the two backstraps out on his shoulders.
After 50 yards, we had to rest. Going another 100 yards,
we knew we couldn't carry 80 pounds apiece with only gun slings as carrying
straps.
"We'll
cache the meat here by the lake and come and pick it up with the float
plane," Napartuk instructed. "But we'll have to carry the heads out."
We put the meat under rocks at the edge of the shore,
built a rock fortress around the meat and covered it completely with rocks
so no predators could reach it. Then we started the 4-mile hike back to
the boat. We all had on hip waders. Each time we crossed small streams
and shallow lakes the water nearly came over the tops of our hip waders.
The weight of the two heads on our backs caused the gun
slings to cut into our necks and shoulders. Our long, exhausting and painful
hike seemed to last for an eternity. As night began to fall, I wondered
whether or not we'd have to sleep on the rocky terrain and possibly find
our canoe in the morning. But with an internal compass bred into his navigation
system from hundreds of generations of ancestors living in this treeless
land, Napartuk navigated straight to our boat where we arrived exhausted
before dark.
Our
friends, Steve and Bruce Anderson, also had had success. Both men had
filled their tags with two caribou each. As night fell, we piled the big,
wooden canoe high with caribou, meat, heads and weary hunters. However,
I'd failed to take a black-powder caribou.
THE NEW CAMP
The Lake Ballantyne area only had opened in 1990 to
outsiders for caribou hunting and fishing the multitude of fertile lakes.
We had hit the peak of the caribou migration with the timing of our hunt.
On the third morning of our hunt, we could even see caribou from our hut.
The
Silak Adventure Camp on Lake Ballantyne, one of the most well-organized
and comfortable spike camps I'd ever seen, had plenty of expert help.
Johnny Adams, an Inuit native, and Jacques Derry, the Silak Adventure
outfitter, had gone in immediately after the snow had left the area, brought
in building supplies by float plane and snowmobile and set up toasty-warm
plywood huts for living quarters. They also had built cook tents and brought
in generators and hot showers.
The Silak Adventure Camp not only featured outstanding
caribou hunting but also some of the finest fishing for lake trout and
arctic char in northern Quebec. Although we intended to sample the fishing,
I still had as my goal to take a caribou with my black-powder rifle.
Derry
told me another black-powder hunter had visited the camp the year before
but had not connected with a caribou. No other muzzleloading hunter had
bagged an animal from this camp with a black-powder rifle.
Continued
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