What a difference a day makes.
With our unbelievable day (yesterday) we were pretty stoked to hunt today. Ardin was the first up the hill (as usual). He's a cool old guy and we get a kick out of his early morning sprint up the hill. The rest of the guys spread out a little more than normal. Steve and I took Kevin to our spot we nicknamed as simply “The hole” where everything happened for us yesterday.
The morning was extremely slow. We had one group of cows, along with one tiny bull, pass by Kevin within 15 yards. The two Brians’ from Wisconsin were ½ mile above us on the ridge, and we could see them plainly. They had more action from their boulder on the top of that ridge, but were unable to get a shot. At one point, after a very long wait, they had walked away from their boulder to stretch their legs and glass some other areas. As they were a few hundred yards off, a small herd with one awesome bull walked by their rock. We felt bad for them. Terrible timing but who could have known.
As the day progressed, I knew what was happening. We were looking at the end of this particular herd. I call them waves. Caribou do not move in one enormous herd, but rather they break up into several herds that can number from the hundreds to the thousands. They build in what I consider a bell curve, and we were likely at the end of that curve. This is my own observation, nothing scientific.
The good news is everyone in our camp has had at least one shot each. We have five guys tagged out including Steve and I, and only two of our group has yet to tag a caribou; Brian from Wisconsin and Fred from Michigan. The other five guys are working on their second tag including Kevin who is hunting with us.
Spirits are still high. Nine bowhunters with caribou down, and with a possible 6 out of 12 bulls likely to qualify for the book is nothing to sneeze at. If the hunt ended today I think everyone would still be satisfied. But we have two hunting days left and the weather has broke enough for us to hit the lake. Tomorrow we are planning to go find a bigger herd of caribou, just like last year on our hunt.
Caribou Taken Today |
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