Where are all the Caribou???

July 15th, 2008 Paul Posted in Canada, Hunting | No Comments »

So, a caribou may be a pretty good sized animal but Canada is enormous, especially the frozen wasteland that is Northern Canada. This thought got me wondering; when we go on the trip, how are we going to find anything? I mean, these are wild migratory creatures that are in an area that is pretty baron and there are very few roads, towns or farms to contain their locations. When we get there, they could be hundreds of miles away. Big herds or not, there is a lot of space for them to be hiding in.

I started looking around to see if I could find some information about how you find these animals and this is what I found out…the government(?) of Quebec track them and post maps of where they are and where they have been during the week. Don’t believe me? Well look here. Every week, on a Tuesday, they publish the locations of where the Caribou started and where they ended up that week. According to the site, the maps are not overly accurate as they have “only 70 satellite collars are used to track a population of about one million caribou.” That and they can travel 200km between signal reception and publication. So, it doesn’t tell you exactly where they are but you at least get a fighting chance. Combine that with a guide who knows what they are doing and chances of at least seeing some are pretty good.

There is a lot of good information to be found on that site regarding general information about Caribou etc and also the hunting rules. I will have a read of it and summarise the more interesting and useful parts. One thing to note, if you see a Caribou with a satellite collar on, don’t shoot it or at least give the collar back.