When Canada first opened many musk ox herds hadn’t been hunted for decades. Wolves were their only enemy, and it was common for a herd to circle instantly when hunters approached. Today, with more permits and more pressure, getting a shot is a bit more difficult; a musk ox herd is more likely to flee than stand when they become aware of the hunters. This has made bowhunting much more difficult, but approaching within range of a centerfire rifle is still not a huge problem in most cases.
The real challenge with musk oxen hunting is the country and the weather—and that’s part of the charm of this hunt. The first musk ox hunt I did was clear back in ’81, when Canada’s Northwest Territories had just started to issue nonresident permits. That hunt was in November, and the cold was absolutely incredible.
The hunting day was short, too. As I recall we had sort of half-light from nine in the morning ‘til noon, then perhaps two or three hours of genuine daylight, then half-light again from before three until full dark before five. It was just as well; I honestly couldn’t have withstood the cold for a longer hunting day!
The second hunt was in the spring, in April before breakup. The days were quite long, and on a couple of clear days the weather was absolutely glorious—perhaps as high as 15 degrees, with a pale sun and little wind. But we caught a storm on that trip, a serious one. We had the equipment for it; our tent camp could have withstood the gales just fine. But we were luckier than that. We saw it coming as we headed along the coastline out of Coppermine, headed to a crossing across the pack ice to Victoria Island. We made for a little cluster of summer fishing shacks our Inuit guides knew of, and weathered the storm quite snugly.
We had quite a crew on that hunt—myself; Canadian photographer Sherman Hines; gunmaker Col. Art Alphin of the A-Square company; and Col. Charles Askins, last of the old-time gunwriters. Askins entertained through two days of storm with tales of the old Border Patrol and such, and I only wish I’d had a tape recorder! When it cleared we proceeded across the Queen Maude Strait, set up a very comfortable tent camp, and proceeded to take our musk oxen!
The history of musk ox hunting is very old and very new—with darn little in between. At one time the animals were probably incredibly plentiful both in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, but during the latter years of the last century and the early years of this one musk oxen were badly depleted by trappers, whalers, natives with their newly-acquired firearms, and market hunters. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the worst slaughter occurred right after the great bison herds were finished! Musk ox were probably never close to extinction, but there was very little sport hunting between about World War I and the opening of Nunivak Island’s transplanted herd about 35 years ago.
A cruise through Records of North American Big Game’s musk oxen listings is fascinating stuff. Even today you’ll find a few entries of trophies taken as much as a century ago, and until the minimums were recently raised there were two trophies taken by Admiral Peary, one in 1906 and one in 1909. There are also several entries taken in Greenland in the 1930s. And then you won’t find anything until you get to Bert Klineburger’s 1959 Nunivak Island trophy.
There have been quite a few transplants of musk ox, to places as far-flung as Norway and Siberia, but the Nunivak herd is the best-known and most successful. In 1935 and 1936, 31 musk oxen from Greenland were released on Nunivak. They thrived, with the herd once reaching a high of 750 but generally stable at about 600. On a limited permit basis this was musk ox hunting for quite some years, but in 1980 Canada’s Northwest Territories began issuing permits.
There was good reason for opening the hunting, justification that remains valid today. After decades of protection, and with little fanfare, Canada’s musk oxen herds have literally exploded. From scattered remnants throughout the Far North the herds reached 25,000 in the late ‘70s, then 50,000 in the ‘80s. Today they are plentiful enough that permits aren’t a problem. Lack of hunters to purchase those permits is today’s musk ox management dilemma!
For the first few years of Canada’s musk ox hunting virtually all the hunting was done on Victoria, Banks, and a couple of other offshore islands. The record books began to be rewritten, and that short list of pre-1940 trophies was quickly overpowered by entries from the 1980s. More recently hunts were authorized on the mainland. By 1983 it was obvious that Canada’s islands produced bigger musk ox, at least in the horns, than Nunivak. By the 1990s it was equally obvious that the Canadian mainland produced the biggest musk ox of all.
The real shocker is that, with musk oxen, the entire Top Ten were taken or found within the last 15 years. This is unprecedented turnover that is found in no other category. The oldest Top Ten head was picked up on the mainland in 1979. Second oldest is another mainland head picked up in 1983. Of the other eight, one was taken in 1986; two in ’88; one in ’89; two in 1990; and two in 1991. The current edition of the book closed in 1991. I won’t be a bit surprised if the next records book shows similar turnover!
My geography could be off just a bit, but I believe only two of that current Top Ten came from offshore islands; the rest come from the mainland. The primary reason mainland animals are larger is almost certainly because they eat better. However, a secondary reason might be found in the fact that the mainland musk ox are a slightly larger subspecies.
In years gone by hunters often differentiated between Greenland musk ox and barren ground musk ox. This was probably a ridiculous and futile effort, since the separation occurred when there was literally no musk ox hunting anyway! However, biologists do recognize at least two subspecies of musk ox: Ovibos moschatus moschatus, the barren ground musk ox of the mainland and southern Victoria Island; and O. m. wardi, the Greenland musk ox the High Arctic islands and Greenland. On many individuals the Greenland musk ox can be differentiated by a white face, while faces are generally dark on barren ground musk ox. A more clear difference, however, is almost certainly body size—which is reflected ultimately in potential horn growth. Earlier biologists also identified a third subspecies, O. m. niphoecus, the Hudson Bay musk ox supposedly found northwest of Hudson Bay and on the Melville and Boothia peninsulas. This subspecies is generally discounted today.
However, it is generally agreed that there are two subspecies, at least in a pure world. The problem is that numerous transplants, plus a broad intergrade area on Victoria Island, have muddied the waters so badly that today most record-keeping organizations just have one musk ox category. Probably as it should be. But they just get bigger and bigger—and as the populations continue to grow, probably will for some time.
The traditional minimum score for many years has been 90. When there was almost no musk ox hunting—and almost no musk ox—that was a formidable goal. On Nunivak it wasn’t all that hard to hit 90. When Victoria Island first opened, and today with the mainland being hunted, reaching 90 isn’t much of a trick. In fact, the majority of musk oxen taken in the Northwest Territories probably reached the Boone and Crockett minimum had they been officially measured. For those who wanted their name in the book, a musk ox hunt was a sure ticket.
In the future it won’t be so easy. From 1992 forward the minimum score for inclusion in the all-time book will be 105, possibly the largest minimum increase in B&C’s history. That, friends, won’t be all that easy a mark to hit—and that’s as it should be! I suspect there are plenty of musk ox out there scoring well over 105, and I stand in my prediction that the Top Ten can turn over once again. Some herds have yet to be hunted at all, and I suspect we don’t yet know how big musk oxen can get. But it won’t be a sure-thing record book hunt with the new minimum, and there are several good reasons.
First, musk oxen are very hard to judge. It’s easy to see the drop of the horn and the length of the turned-up tips, but the boss is very important in total score and the full extent of the boss is hidden by that long hair. Since few hunters hunt musk oxen more than once, trophy judgement rests with the guides. With increasing experience many of the Inuit hunters are getting better—but few are
really adept at judging, and perhaps it’s asking too much.
When I took my first musk ox in 1981 I darned near passed it. It looked good to me, but nobody could tell me whether it was a great one or just a normal mature bull. Finally, realizing I might not shoot, my guide suggested a storm might come. So I shot. That bull was the world record for several years by another scoring system. In 1993, after it had dried for a decade, I finally had it scored for B&C, and it was 110 and something. But I sure didn’t know that when I pulled the trigger.
The other problem is that musk ox hunts are generally scheduled to be fairly short—rarely more than a week. Given the bad weather that’s likely, hunters generally have the opportunity to see, judge, and pass just a few musk oxen in the course of a normal hunt. And, quite honestly, due to the extreme cold and arduous nature of travel by sled (whether pulled by dog or snow machine doesn’t matter—the teeth-jarring bouncing is the same!) few hunters are going to pass a whole bunch of bulls looking for a monster!
I’d personally like to see musk ox hunting become a lot more popular. It must necessarily be fully guided, but as ultra-exotic expeditions go, the costs are quite reasonable. As a trophy the musk ox is much under-rated. The horns are fascinating, but the long hair and mixture of white, tan, and black are just as beautiful as the horns. But the hunt itself is much under-rated as well.
In this case it isn’t the shot. The shot will probably be quite easy, and will probably be anticlimactic, provided you don’t get confused by all that hair and shoot low. (In this case, forget the old adage “shoot at hair, not at air.” With musk ox, the bottom third of what looks like chest is hair. Aim dead center right behind or on the shoulder, not low on the chest!) The stalk will probably be easy, and the glassing easier still.
Ah, but the hunt. Few of us will ever afford a polar bear hunt—and fewer still would really enjoy being out on the ice for two weeks. But a week or so of musk ox hunting is a fabulous glimpse of the High Arctic, still North America’s least known ecosystem. It’s a strangely beautiful place, ferocious when the wind blows and eerily silent when it’s still. The Northern Lights alone are worth the trip—and seeing how the Inuit guides deal with their environment is equally worth it.
The Inuits I’ve hunted with are competent and fearless—and for a hunter from down south, there is much to fear in the High Arctic. Especially the High Arctic itself! But those guys know how to deal with their habitat, and they know how to keep their hunters safe and comfortable. A musk ox hunt with them is a short slice of an entirely different existence—and the musk ox himself is a wonderful memento of a great hunting experience.
Sunsets on the High Arctic are fabulous—but the nights that follow are long and cold!
Me and Colonel Charles Askins at camp. At 80, Askins was a bit older than your average musk ox hunter, but he survived the cold in fine shape!
I took this fine bull on Victoria Island with the help of my Inuit guide. This was a springtime hunt with relatively mild temperatures, and the very best modern clothing was adequate. In genuine cold, nothing works like the Inuit’s caribou-skin clothing!
COUES’ WHITETAIL — Hunting Jack O’Connor’s Deer
Known for his Sheep Hunting, O’Connor put the Coues’ Deer on the Map… And Hunting this Desert Whitetail Remains one of North America’s Most Enchanting Hunts!
Nearly three-quarters of a century have passed since a bespectacled English professor from Arizona emerged as the greatest American hunting writer of all time. There were hunting writers before Jack O’Connor, and there will be hunting writers as long as there are hunters, but few could dispute the title O’Connor wore as dean of us all. He “made his bones” in a pre-television era, when the big outdoor magazines were on top of the heap . . . and he lived in a time and place when he could gather field experience that simply cannot be matched today. He was also, in the technical and literary sense, a damned good writer. Remember, he was an English professor first!
My long-time boss at Petersen’s HUNTING, Ken Elliott, had the privilege to edit dozens of O’Connor manuscripts. He tells me the raw copy was perfect . . . except that O’Connor, always the perfectionist, would call him and ask him to exchange words here and there to make it more perfect.
This was in the sunset of a long career. By the 1970s O’Connor had hunted the world, and undoubtedly had become best-known as “Mr. Sheep Hunter.” He loved to hunt mountain sheep, and he did more of it than any writer before or since, mostly in a time when America’s big game was at its nadir and all big game hunting was armchair adventure for most of his readers. O’Connor only saw the beginning of, and probably never envisioned, the explosion of the whitetail opportunity we have today. But his reputation as a sheep hunter and his international hunting came later, many years after he was already the premier American hunting writer.
Like most of us in the business, he started out writing about things close to home that he knew about. Prominent in his early writings, and always one of his favorites, was the Coues’ whitetail. In fact, he hunted—and sold stories about—Coues’ whitetails long before he hunted desert sheep. Most of us non-Arizonans who have hunted the Coues’ whitetail have done so because of Jack O’Connor. And most of us who have hunted this pretty little desert deer have become enchanted by them.
When O’Connor was a boy the Coues’ deer was still considered a different species of deer from the “Virginia deer.” This mistake dates back to the 1880s, when this desert adaptation of Odocoileus virginianus was identified a separate species. This tiny deer was studied and named after U.S. Army Quartermaster Elliott Coues (Yes, it’s properly pronounced “cows,” as Lt. Coues pronounced his name, although “cooz” has become the most common pronunciation.) Later biologists would downgrade Coues’ “species” to a subspecies, but the founders of the Boone and Crockett record system separated it into its own category, and so it remains.
With fully 38 subspecies of whitetail deer ranging from the Amazon basin in South America to Canada’s treeline, it seems a gross oversimplification for Elliott Coues’ deer to have its own category and all other North American subspecies be lumped together. Simple tradition aside, however, there is good reason to continue this practice. First, the Coues’ whitetail is geographically isolated from larger whitetail subspecies, whereas broad intergrade areas exist between most other U.S. and Canadian races. The Coues’ deer has no whitetail at all to its west and north. To its east, in western Coahuila and Texas’ Big Bend region, lies the Carmen Mountains subspecies—which may be slightly smaller than even the Coues’ deer (and may well be one and the same). To the south it eventually intergrades with still-smaller tropical subspecies.
Unlike the differences between, say, the northern (O.v. borealis) and the Kansas (O.v. machrorus) subspecies, the differences between the Coues’ whitetail and the other U.S. and Canadian subspecies are dramatic: smaller body size, iron-gray color, muted throat patch, enlarged ears and tail, distinctive and diminutive antlers. The differences are striking enough that early biologists can be forgiven for jumping to conclusions about finding a new species of deer.
The small size of the Coues’ whitetail is not a valid reason to perpetuate the mistake. After all, the Florida whitetails—also a bonafide subspecies—can’t compete with Alberta whitetails any more than Coues’ whitetails can, but they don’t have their own category. But the fact that Coues’ deer hunting is strikingly different from hunting the other North American whitetails is a compelling reason for continuing the tradition, especially for those of us who love to hunt them.
My uncle, longtime Boone and Crockett Club Member, Art Popham, had a mounted Coues’ deer head in a corner of his den in Kansas City. He attended the University of Arizona in the 1930s, and that whitetail head, two decades old when I first noticed it, was a memento of whitetail hunts with his English instructor, Jack O’Connor, and a Border Patrolman named George Parker.
I don’t know if it was that pretty, petite mount; my uncle’s stories of hunting w
ith O’Connor and Parker; or O’Connor’s wonderful writing about his favorite little deer—but I always wanted to hunt Coues’ deer. Oddly, it was the year after O’Connor’s death before I finally did. And like everyone who has hunted them, I became enthralled by these pretty little deer and the desert mountains they call home—and after nearly 25 years, I still am.
The arid mountains the Coues’ whitetails call home are always beautiful, but in the summer heat they’re hardly inviting. The opposite is true in the winter, when cold mornings and evenings and sunny, cloudless days are the norm. December and January, the prime time for Coues’ deer, is a glorious time to be in the Southwest’s mountains . . . and not a bad time to be far away from much of the Virginia whitetail’s territory!
The deer, too, are strikingly beautiful. If you need sheer antler mass to be impressed, the Coues’ whitetail probably isn’t for you. However, the charm of the Coues’ whitetail is its very petiteness, its attractive color, and the wonderful way it fits into those desert mountains. It is also tremendously challenging and interesting to hunt. Coues’ deer, like all whitetails, are somewhat habitual—but they’re thinly distributed over vast country, so “habitual” is a relative term. You can’t exactly sit in a treestand on an established trail and expect to see the same buck again and again . . . but you could expect to see the same buck in the same canyon, or on the same mountain.
Over the years I have had the good fortune to know some of the truly great Coues’ deer hunters. I wish I’d had the chance to talk to O’Connor about them, but I didn’t. I did, however, spend a good deal of time with the late George Parker, one of America’s greatest hunters—who should be better known than he is.
Fair Chase in North America Page 6
