Gary Reeder
The Caribou hunt is a great hunt. It is a do it yourself
Wednesday, June 28, 2023, 15:08

hunt. We were living in Sarasota Florida so it was a 3 day trip to get to the camp. We flew to an airport up on the Canadian border, then the second morning we flew in an old DC-3 or an older plane similar to that. We flew to Schefferville, which was a nice if abandoned town. There was a sign in the small restaurant that said you could buy any of the nice abandoned houses for $1. The catch was you had to move up there and live there. In the restaurant a small pizza was $40, a Coke $15 and so on. We overnighted there and the next day They fly you in on one of the Otter or Beaver or Possum planes, and land on the water near a spit of land. You bring your own freeze dried food and the first one to kill a Caribou becomes the camp cook. The plane ferries in 6 hunters and they are allowed a max of 300 lbs per person, gun, gear and all, so fat guys stay home. The caribou are migrating from one of these little islands to the next one and so on. The herd is in the hundreds of thousands and all night outside the tent we could hear the Caribou going by. There is a "guide" there in his own tent and he is there in case someone gets hurt, he can call in one of the planes.

In the morning he tells us to go that way, pointing in a certain direction. I thought boy he is a helluva guide. But we walked over the hill behind the camp and there in front of us were hundreds of Caribou all heading to a place only they know where it is. There were 6 of us and each went in a different direction as we could see Caribou in every direction. I went from large rock to large rock thinking they might see me. But that was not the case. They never even looked my way.
The problem hunting Caribou in the Quebec/Labrador area is picking out a big one, preferably one with a big set of horns, double shovel and all. I got antsy and within 30 minutes of getting behind a big rock I shot one I thought was huge and really nice and within 5 minutes 30 or 40 much larger Caribou walked by. I was sort pissed at myself as we still had 5 more days and half of my hunt was over. I gutted my Caribou, skinned it, rolled the skin up and laid it behind a big rock. I quartered the animal up and started carrying it back to the camp. It took me 5 trips back to camp to get the meat, the hide and horns back. There was another tent that all the meat and hide was placed. The temps were in the mid 20s so it wasn't going to spoil.
Having plenty of time on my hands, besides automatically becoming the camp cook, I sliced off several back straps to go along with our freeze dried food. Caribou is very good eating, and we had plenty of it to go around. Each of us were allowed 4 waterproof wax covered boxes, each weighing I think, 50 lbs, to put the meat in to bring home.
I waited until the 3rd day (which about drove me nuts having to wait) but late on the 3rd day just before a snow storm moved in I shot the large Caribou shown in the pics below with a custom Ruger #1.

I used my Ruger #1 in 45-70 on the first hunt. A few years later I went back and used a Drilling (3 barrel rifle/shotgun combo) that was a 16 gauge shotgun in the upper left barrel, a 22 magnum Krieghoff insert in the upper right barrel and 9.3 X 74 in the lower barrel. I took both my Caribou with the 9.3 barrel, took an Arctic fox with the 22 Magnum barrel and several Ptarmigan with the shotgun barrel.

A self guided Caribou hunt is a great hunt and not too expensive. I think I spent around $6000 total on the hunt, maybe just a bit more. If memory serves the hunt was $3500 and the rest was the airfare and incidentals. And if I am real lucky maybe I can go back again.
Some of the pics below.
The 6 of us in the hunt

our ride leaving us on the little island.

Our deluxe accommodations

Our cooking tent

The 3 tents we used. One to sleep in, one to cook and a half tent in which to store our meat, hide and horns. Our bathroom was a white bucket on a small hill behind camp.

We each did all the skinning of the hide for taxidermy and that was a new experience.

Late on the 3rd day it snowed which made it sorta neat hunting Caribou in several inches of new snow and the slippery tundra under the snow.

The last morning we packed all our gear up and sat back to wait on our ride. In an hour or so the larger plane came in and the guys started loading our gear and meat.

All 6 of us got our Caribou and plenty of meat to bring home. All in all it was a great experience and I hope to do it again one day.