Fair Chase in North America

by Boddington, Craig

  For instance, I shot a fabulous moose during the Alaskan Peninsula’s short moose season—and although this area also produces some of the finest caribou, late September was a bit early for the main herds to come out of the mountains that year. Also on the Peninsula, and at the right time of year, I got a wonderful brown bear—but although there were plenty of good caribou around, there just wasn’t time remaining to hunt them. Sometimes, even the caribou are there, the circumstances just aren’t right.

  I had both a caribou tag and a Dall’s sheep tag on a backpack hunt into the Mackenzie Mountains a couple of years ago. I was absolutely shocked at some of the beautiful mountain caribou I saw almost daily—but to shoot a caribou would have ended the sheep hunt, at least until we got the meat and horns packed out of the mountains. So I kept looking at wonderful caribou while we hunted sheep—and of course there was no time remaining when we finally got the ram!

  My Yukon hunt in ‘99 was just the opposite. I got a great ram early on, and had plenty of time to hunt caribou, my choice for my second animal on what was essentially a two-species hunt. But it was September and most of the caribou had already moved out of the mountains. We didn’t see many, but we stuck with it for several days and I took a really neat bull with exceptional top points.

  The lesson is that caribou hunting is extremely successful—but it’s at its best when you hunt caribou exclusively and seriously. If you do that, you’re unlikely to bring home unfilled tags. In fact, you have a very good chance of bringing home a monster. You always have to be at the right place at the right time, but given proper planning and a bit of luck, record-class specimens of each of our five caribou varieties remain very possible prizes.

  Among the hard parts are knowing a good caribou when you see him… and making a sound judgement as to how likely you are to see a better one. As I’ve said, I’ve made some mistakes in the latter area. If caribou are on the move you can’t put them in the bank; the chances of seeing a particular bull again are very unlikely. So you have to make your best judgement based on the situation. If this is early in the hunt it’s a tough call, because you may not yet know exactly what’s going on. As to the former, well, caribou racks are very hard to judge because there are so many features to look at.

  It’s easy to get carried away by double shovels, huge bez formations, and long top points. The trick is to take your time and evaluate the whole rack. No caribou are perfect, so you’re looking for a blend of all these characteristics, plus long beams, and, optimally, decent back points. And of course you have to keep in mind exactly which caribou you’re looking at!

  The five varieties of caribou recognized by Boone and Crockett are a reflection more of regional antler differences recognized by hunters more than actual subspecies recognized by biologists. Indeed most biologists do agree on five subspecies of caribou currently extant in North America—plus an extinct subspecies that used to live in the Queen Charlotte islands. But the biologists’ five subspecies and the hunters’ five classifications are not the same!

  Biologists, for instance, maintain that all the caribou across southern Canada, from Newfoundland through Quebec and Labrador, across northern Ontario and all the way west to northern B.C., southern Yukon, and the Mackenzies are Rangifer tarandus caribou, the woodland caribou. To this day Northwest Territories licenses the caribou in the Mackenzies as woodland caribou. Based on both size differences and regional antler configurations hunters have long separated R. t. caribou into three classifications: Mountain caribou in British Columbia, southern Yukon, and the MacKenzie District of Northwest Territories; Quebec-Labrador caribou in northern Quebec and Labrador; and woodland caribou in Newfoundland and on west to the timbered portions of the prairie provinces.

  Rangifer tarandus granti stands alone as the large barren ground caribou of Alaska and northern Yukon, while R. t. groenlandicus is now properly recognized as the slightly smaller Central Canada barren ground caribou. Those are hunters’ five classifications, leaving the small Peary caribou of Canada’s offshore islands (R. t. pearyi) currently unrecognized, likewise the ergogroenlandicus of southern Greenland. These have not been recognized by B&C because of possible hybridization with mainland caribou, and concerns over small numbers that may not support hunting pressure.

  If you put an average to very good caribou mount of each of the five on a wall, very few hunters could readily identify its classification. There are significant regional antler trends, but they’re trends only. One of the neat things about caribou—and one of the frustrations in judging them—is that few caribou short of the current world records have everything all in one place! Here’s my spin on our five caribou, and some of the best places to hunt them.

  Woodland Caribou: Although fairly large in the body, woodland caribou are our smallest-racked caribou. Oddly, double shovels are very common, as are strong bez formations. Numerous points are also common. But main beams tend to be quite short, and I’ve found it very difficult to find woodland caribou with good (sometimes any) top points. Newfoundland is just about the only place nonresidents can hunt woodland caribou, and certainly is the best place. Newfoundland has lots of woodland caribou, and plenty of good ones. This island province also has plenty of very fine, well-organized outfitters, and prices are very reasonable. However, few Newfoundland outfitters are really geared for trophy hunting. The best course is to book a caribou hunt, not the typical moose-caribou combination, and make sure your outfitter understands you want to look for the best caribou possible in the time available to hunt.

  Mountain Caribou: Mountain caribou at their best have tall racks with fabulous top formations, often palmated—but shovels and bez are usually not strong. In years gone by northern B.C. was the place, but this caribou herd has dropped significantly in recent years for reasons that seem unclear to local biologists. The Spatsizi Plateau and adjacent areas are the best opportunity in B.C. Southern Yukon remains pretty good, but these days the best mountain caribou hunting is found in Northwest Territories’ Mackenzie Mountains. In the past most caribou were taken as an addition to sheep hunting, which is a poor way to hunt caribou. These days a few of the MacKenzie outfitters are now offering later caribou or moose/caribou hunts, after the caribou come down into the valleys. That’s a good opportunity for very fine bulls.

  Quebec-Labrador Caribou: These caribou, at their best, tend to be very wide, relatively thin-beamed, but with broad, palmated bez and shovel formations. Labrador, where the World’s Record was taken, is still relatively unhunted. Most camps are out of Kujuuaq or Schefferville in northern Quebec. The Schefferville camps are mostly hunting the George River herd, which, although still large, has been in decline for several years. Out of Kujuuaq the hunting is for the Leaf River herd, currently growing by leaps and bounds and, by some estimates, now approaching a million animals. These days I think the larger Leaf River herd offers the best odds, but the problem with northern Quebec is that the hunting is from established camps, comfortable but based on historic herd movement. That can change, and in some years even the best camps can be left high and dry.

  Central Canada Barren Ground Caribou: At their best, Central Canada caribou have it all—good shovels, reasonable bez, back points, long beams, multi-tined tops. They just don’t quite have what Alaskan caribou have! These are the caribou of Northwest Territories’ barrens and the herd is still expanding. Most of the better caribou have come from Mackay Lake and Courageous Lake regions, but this country is still being opened up. This is our newest caribou classification, and I suspect we’ll see the current minimum of 345 revised upward as we learn how big these caribou can really become. Right now Central Canada barren ground caribou is one of the easier animals to obtain a record-class specimen of.

  Barren Ground Caribou: These are our largest-racked caribou, characterized by long main beams in a “C” configuration, with, at their best, a little bit of everything: broad shovels; long, strong bez formations; back points; and tall top points. Alaska is the place, but Alaska is a
very big place. A good bet remains the rapidly-expanding Mulchatna herd in west-central Alaska. The Peninsula herd remains a very fine trophy producer, and some of the caribou coming from the western approaches to the Brooks Range are surprisingly outstanding.

  Relatively few of us will want to hunt all five of our caribou. Of those of us who have, fewer still can say that we’ve found specimens of each that really exemplify the classification. I certainly haven’t! The wonderful thing is that, wherever you hunt them, caribou hunting is quite similar and a whole lot of fun. Lots of glassing, lots of walking, lots of stalking—and, if conditions are even close to right, lots of game to be seen. As a game animal I don’t put caribou on a par with many other North American species—but they sure are fun to hunt!

  Very few caribou “have it all.” This barren ground caribou, taken in the Yukon, has exceptional tops and I like him, but I knew all along he had fairly weak shovels and bez formations.

  This bull was one of the first caribou taken by a non-resident on the barrens of Northwest Territories. We now call them Central Canada barren ground caribou.

  A caribou can usually be packed out in two loads—if you’re in good shape. Unlike moose, they aren’t so large that you need to think carefully about where you are before you take the shot.

  Packing out the cape and horns of a really good Quebec-Labrador caribou. This bull was taken at the tail end of the migration.

  Although not a record-class bull, this is a very typical Quebec-Labrador caribou with a very wide spread, broad shovel, and big, palmated bez formations.

  BIGHORN SHEEP — America’s Magnificent Bighorn

  Thanks to Some of the Most Intensive and Most Effective Conservation Efforts this Planet has Seen, our Bighorns are Coming Back — And a Great Ram is Today a Possible Prize.

  It was nearly dark when we spotted the ram. We had made a cold November camp beside long-frozen Spirit Lake, and he was miles away, all the way up on top of a charming place known as Froze To Death Plateau—one of the most apt place names I’ve ever seen. Although Montana is a mountainous state, there are no really high peaks there. Froze To Death is as high as it gets at 11,000 feet and a bunch of change. In November in a year that brought an early winter that’s very high indeed.

  The ram was alone, and he was on a slide of jumbled shale right on the edge of the plateau where it dropped off into our valley. Had he not been skylined we would never have seen him at so great a distance. But see him we did, and we watched him bed right there in the shale.

  We moved on him at three o’clock in the morning, following a steep and snow-drifted trail that led to the top of the plateau. It was cold in the valley, but it was brutal as we topped out in the pre-dawn chill. A freezing wind ripped at us, and although our timing was close we had to huddle in the lee of a boulder and shiver until it grew light enough to proceed.

  I was with Jack Atcheson Jr., one of the great sheep hunters of our time and one of few people to achieve consistent success in Montana’s “Unlimited Permit” areas, one of which we were hunting. Jack never breathed hard on the climb, nor did he shiver in the wind. I did lots of both.

  From below, with spotting scope turned up all the way, the ram had appeared exceptionally legal—not a “book” ram, but a very fine mature specimen, especially from the rugged unlimited zones where sheep rarely grow the best horns. He also appeared to be alone. Later we would conclude that he was the only sheep on top of Froze To Death—and what in the heck he was doing, all the way up there in the rocks that late in the year, I have no idea. He hadn’t moved in the 12 hours since we last saw him, and therefore he surprised us as much as we surprised him.

  He jumped up and I dropped down across a rock and got the crosshairs on him. He was 250 yards away, and the crosswind was a good 30 miles per hour. It was a difficult shot at best—but it was a very possible shot, and it wasn’t really a great surprise. We’d thought we might find him somewhere on that shale slope, and I’d been thinking about the wind and what to do about it ever since I’d first felt its force. The problem was that I didn’t shoot.

  My explanation—to Jack then, to you now, and to myself over the last few years—was that I first looked at the horns to make sure he was legal. And in that split second he turned and was gone over an unseen lip. When he reappeared he was well past 400 yards and running like the hounds of hell were after him. We watched him cross a boulder-strewn valley, climb the far ridge, and vanish over Froze To Death the best part of a mile away. He was still running like I never knew a wild sheep could run.

  We tracked him, but he gave us the slip in some boulders. We never saw him again that day. We did see him again two days later, when we were at the bottom of the valley once again and we spotted him slipping through a high saddle. So we climbed Froze To Death once more. But that brief glimpse was the last we saw of him. Soon it was time to pack out and make sure the area’s quota hadn’t been filled. And, to be perfectly honest, I’d had my fill of Froze To Death Plateau.

  In the few years that have passed since then I’ve relived those seconds over and over again. I had wanted a bighorn most of my life, and at that time I’d been rejected in the permit drawings for about 15 years. It’s an easy one to second guess. I had the shot, I knew what to do about the wind—but I didn’t shoot. Did I really check the horns to make sure he was the right ram? And if I did, was that the right thing to do? Or, as I’m sure Jack suspects but was too much a gentleman to voice, did I freeze up? I wish I knew.

  Time passed and I kept applying. Nothing happened, of course. I’d been unsuccessful for so long that the ritual of permit applications simply gave me a reverse savings account for fall hunting! Secretly I figured I deserved the rejection, for I’d had a chance but had blown it, whether for the right reasons or not. Jack and I talked about trying the unlimited areas again, but somehow didn’t quite get it put together. And by then you had to make your decision at application time between a permit area and an unlimited area—so I stuck with the permit draws with no real anticipation of it happening. Not only Montana, of course. I’ve been pretty consistent in Wyoming, and in some years I’ve put it for New Mexico, Idaho, and of course I started in Colorado as soon as nonresident permits were authorized. On the desert side I don’t think I’ve missed many years in Arizona and Nevada, and I’ve applied in Utah when I could scrape up the money.

  I could have booked a bighorn hunt in Alberta or British Columbia. My excuse has been that I can’t afford it, but that’s really just an excuse. I manage to get to Africa frequently enough that I suppose I could have booked a bighorn hunt if I wanted to badly enough. But time passed and I stuck with the permit draws almost as a ritual—not because I really believed it might someday work.

  In 1993 U.S. Outfitters’ George Taulman started his computerized tag application service, and I signed up. I seriously doubted George knew more about the application process than I did after 20 years—but it sure made life simpler.

  It wasn’t George who called in the spring of ‘94 to tell me I’d drawn the Montana tag. It was Jack Atcheson Jr., who’d just gotten the printout from the game department. Quite honestly, and I hate to admit this, I didn’t even remember George had put me in for Montana. But he did and I drew. Not in just any area, but in the portion of area 340 west of I-15, the Pioneer Mountains. This is one of those golden areas that has been producing some of the finest rams in North America recently. It depends on who you talk to as to whether Rock Creek, the Butte Highlands, or the Pioneers are the best—they’re all good.

  Truth is this hunt was a stark contrast to my experiences in the unlimited permit zones. You might even say it was anticlimactic. It was in all ways a grand experience. Atcheson went with me to help out, and we saw rams, and lots of them, every morning and every afternoon. In fact, we saw about 90 rams. We climbed no mountains, although we climbed a few hills. My father, who at 72 had never seen a wild sheep, also came along to help. He saw a good 50 rams, and he climbed no hills at all. In other words, it
was not a sheep hunt as legend has sheep hunts to be. It was not a sheep hunt as my hunts for Stone’s and Dall’s sheep have been. But it was truly fabulous—and it was quite possibly akin to the sheep hunting our forefathers might have known.

  After that hunt I figured I’d had my bighorn luck. Not quite. In ’98 I drew a Wyoming permit in the high country south of Cody and east Yellowstone. This was an altogether different experience. I hunted with old friend and veteran outfitter Ron Dube, who has outfitted in the Cody area for many years. In other words, the hunt would be on his home turf. I told him from the start that I had no expectation of taking a bigger ram than I’d gotten in Montana four years earlier. I wanted a mature, grown-up bighorn—but that was as picky as I’d be. With this in mind Ron figured we’d have a ram in five or six days. I figured a week, and planned for ten days to be sure.

  We had a wonderful hunt, on horseback in some of North America’s prettiest country. We started from a comfortable cabin Ron uses for late deer hunts, later spiking out into some really spectacular country. We saw sheep every day, and over time I think we saw something like 14 legal rams—but by the evening of the ninth day we had yet to see a genuinely mature ram. Figuring a change was needed, we packed up and spent that night at Ron’s house, trailering horses to a trailhead west of Cody the next morning.