This story, “Bow Hunt For Caribou,” appeared in the April 1955 issue of Outdoor Life.
The guides’ banter suddenly ceased. We had broken over the ridge on the Newfoundland barrens where half an hour before we had spotted the stag caribou skylined above us. We were standing there catching out breath against the cold, damp wind that apparently never relaxes its effort to peel the scrub spruce from these inhospitable, but somehow beautiful, rock hills when the Micmac guide in the lead grunted and waved his hand as a signal for us to get down.
“There you got ‘im,” he said and pointed to a depression in the ridge ahead. From that moment forward the joking was suspended, and if we didn’t produce we’d make a poor show of both our expedition and archery hunting in general.
We knew that our guides, Edgar and Mike, had taken a ribbing from the rest of the villagers when we set out from Deer Lake a couple of days before, but they had nevertheless given ungrudging measure for their 15 oversize Canadian dollars a day. They had packed, cooked, and put up with their own doubts. And now, thanks to them, we were standing on a barren ridge looking down on what we’d come 2,000 miles to hunt a caribou with a rack that looked like the hall tree at Granddad’s house.
At first we had thought this dark beauty was a moose. Now we found that he was not alone. Two other fawn-colored caribou were browsing through the small stand of head-high fir in the hollow. According to plan, Mike crouched down and angled into the cover in a manner that scoffed at his 67 years. Ken followed with bow ready. I had the camera unlimbered, my bow shouldered, and tagged behind with Edgar. We two archers had agreed to take turns, each of us tackling our caribou alone and in his own way.
Mike, the Micmac, was in actual command now that game was in sight, however. We followed his slight, wiry figure down through the rocks and stunted growth, using every hollow and every bush, slanting, back-tracking, always with one eye on the stag and his harem. They were moving slowly to the outer side of the thicket.
After half an hour we were about 100 feet from the beginning of the thick brush, sitting low in the tangled moss and spiny, evergreen furze. The wind was forgotten, as were the blackfly bites that had all but closed my eyes the first day. We had only one concern: where in that stand of fir was the big, dark fellow with the magnificent rack?
Then without warning all three animals were in the open in front of us. They apparently had been lying down in the deep brush.
Now they stood there, worried, searching the air. The guide’s hand closed on my arm that held the camera so that I wouldn’t foolishly work the shutter and scare them. Once started, these Newfoundland caribou travel miles before stopping.
At this short distance the big black bull was even more impressive in size and dignity. The great antlers, furred with September velvet, were balanced easily on the long, thick head. A dense ruff hung forward of his shoulders. And as we watched, crouching, not breathing, the three caribou lowered their heads and began to browse.
“Now,” said the stolid Mike, and Ken maneuvered his 50-pound-pull bow into position over the scrub. We were still 150 feet away, and he was shooting in a strained position in a varying, unnerving wind. Then the string hummed and the arrow was a streak of color grazing the tops of the scrub. A complete miss, low!
With the sound of the bow and rattle of the arrow, the caribou began angling away, trotting slowly, unfrightened. Before they’d gone 10 yards Ken had loosed another broadhead. This time he judged the wind just right. The arrow sunk out of sight in the stag’s forequarters. The pace of all three slowed now, but the male apparently didn’t even realize he’d been hit.
As they slowed, Ken’s third arrow caught the big black squarely behind the foreleg in the deep chest cavity, within an inch of the first hit. The caribou reared above the scrub, pawing the air with great splayed front hoofs. The two lighter-colored animals loped off through the bush and out of sight. The wounded stag walked heavily along the edge of the thicket and disappeared behind the low hill ahead.
Now it was our turn to restrain the guides. Mike teetered disgustedly from one foot to the other other after the first excitement abated.
“Le’s go git ‘im,” he demanded. “You hit ‘im, by gol!”
“Hit like that,” Ken protested, “an animal has to lose blood. Let him go along slow, then he won’t go so far.”
“Caribou don’t bleed like that,” insisted Edgar. You’re going to lose that one, man.”
“Can’t follow blood on moss here,” Mike said. “Ain’t enough blood to follow.”
Ken and I looked at each other and hoped fervently that our experience with Michigan deer hadn’t been misleading. It had been a long trek up here, Ken had done excellent shooting, and to lose the stag now—. We sat and smoked and hoped. Edgar fingered his .35 Remington nervously, a little hopefully, I thought.
We had arrived in this back country along the west shore of Grand Lake several days before, leaving what seemed like the whole village of Deer Lake attending our departure with good-natured gibes and many openly sincere wishes for our success. To their knowledge — or to the provincial government’s — taking one of these nonmigratory, wary peninsula caribou with bow and arrow had not been done before.
This was our first foray into Canada. We had both used bows successfully on deer for several years in our home state of Michigan. But Newfoundland was a far cry from the deer country north of my home in Otter Lake, where my company turns out custom equipment for bowmen.
Ken Welch, who runs a sporting-goods shop in Brown City, near my home, was the mainspring of the trip, having learned of Newfoundland’s special caribou and moose season. He had interested Russ VanWald and his brother Charlie, two Michigan men who wanted to make the hunt with rifles. The four of us made the initial party.
Canadian hospitality put us right at ease from the moment we hit New Brunswick and followed us as we traveled along the coast to North Sydney, Nova Scotia, where we took the steamer to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. From there we rode 165 miles by train to Deer Lake and to more of the same warm interest. In fact, once Edgar Eastman, the burly, good-natured son of the barrens who was our head guide, was convinced we meant business, the village enthusiasm for our project was overwhelming.
Before taking us on, Edgar showed good northland practicality by turning us over to Mike Stevenson, the elderly, leathered Native who proved to know enough about caribou and woodcraft to justify every story we had heard or read about his race. We demonstrated our bows and arrows for him at an abandoned sawmill near by. Every lad in the village trooped out there with us, whooping and shouting encouragement and flattering us with questions. Having passed this test, we moved north by truck for a dozen miles. Then, when the road petered out, we took a boat.
About 20 miles up Grand Lake, we set up our base camp. Then we walked in to the edge of the last big timber at the foot of a cliff and made the first hunting camp. There were eight of us — two gun hunters, two archers, and the four guides which Newfoundland law requires.
On the first day in the bush the gun hunters scored with long shots. Then Ken and I moved farther inland with Mike and Edgar, packing our sleeping bags and grub, turning our caps backward so the blackflies wouldn’t find haven from the wind under the brims.
The first day had been cold, with a steady September rain falling, but after the gun hunters had done their work the wind blew a way the worst of the clouds and the days fallowing had been fairly clear with periodic scud. In the morning the fog lay thickly in the ravines, and we could see why the guides had warned against trying to fly into the country.
The fog didn’t bother the hunting, however, since caribou do not move here in early morning. Mike assured us that it was folly to stir from the fire before 10 a.m., and we hadn’t. Instead, we sat and digested the exotic moose-and-partridge mulligan the guides brewed in the kettles the night before.
It had been a fine trip — until now.
“Let’s go see the blood,” Mike demanded after half an hour. He wouldn’t be put off this time. It was about 1:30, and we had foregone lunch when we spotted the big black.
We moved down to where the caribou had been hit. The “blood was clotted black on the moss carpet, a regular pathway of it, leading toward the low brush on the lee of the hill. We followed it only a few hundred feet.
Mike, leading again, stopped and waved. “He’s in there,” he said. “Go git ‘im.”
At that moment the stag rose out of the brush ahead and came trotting purposefully toward us, shaking that big rack as he came. Ken was in front of me, facing the stag and holding his arrow for a good shot at a vital spot.
“Shoot, Cliff!” Ken urged me, without thinking. I had only the little camera in my hand, which I might have thrown, but that was the extent of my ready armament. My 64-pound bow was looped over my shoulder.
Edgar, standing behind me, was starting to unlimber his rifle when the stag, now barely half a dozen steps away, veered to the left of us, looking big as a tank as he loped past. Ken’s bow twanged, and the arrow ranged forward through the animal’s rear flank and protruded from behind its opposite shoulder. The stag went another 20 paces and sank forward on its nose.
We all hollered simultaneously, probably with the first breath we had taken in some time. Mike came galloping past me, chortling, “By gol. By gol.”
That afternoon, after dressing the 18-point stag and turning him up to cool, we went out again. It was my turn to carry the weapon, while Ken followed with camera and wide grin.
Plainly it was our day. We hadn’t been out an hour when we saw sunlight flash on a rack across the small valley we were skirting. We glassed the place, found the solitary stag caribou, and I immediately put this one down as being almost hopeless.
The terrain between us was too open — moss, knee-high scrub, a few rocks, and not much else. However, Ken and Edgar squatted, giving Mike and me a better chance by being alone, and we started out. That was at 3 p.m. Three hours later, with the sun tipping toward the rolling horizon, we were within 100 yards of the stag. But what a three hours. I’ll never want more for my 67th birthday than to be as agile as Mike. That silent, lusty guide submerged like a prairie dog when the feeding stag’s head came up, and scuttled ahead swifter than I could follow when the animal bent again.
The bull trotted to the middle of the hollow, looked around, thought it over while we cussed in the bush and lay down.
We advanced a few steps at a time, bending to the scrub. Then the caribou would take this gain away from us by feeding forward along the side of the valley. At one time, despite our precautions, the stag spotted us, it seemed. He trotted to the middle of the hollow, looked around, thought it over while we cussed in the bush and lay down.
We moved in. Half an hour later we were nearing the range.
“Listen,” Mike whispered. “Last time it was too far. We get down closer this time.”
And we did. As we approached the crucial spot the caribou got up, walked diagonally away from us, and went to feeding again. As he moved behind some tall growth we quickly maneuvered so that I’d have a clear 60-yard shot when he emerged.
We didn’t have long to wait. The caribou suddenly stood there, head up, peering ahead, striking a profile beautifully. When Mike gave the signal I took a deep breath, rose from the scrub, and released my arrow. Then I stood and watched bitterly as the wind whipped the arrow beneath him. The old boy started a trot, but the silent action of the bow and our bare emergence from the scrub hadn’t disclosed our position. He actually came closer.
I nocked another 495-grain broadhead into the sticky, waxed bowstring, came to full draw, and released when he was about 90 feet away, quartering toward us. The arrow — thanks in some measure to the wind — knifed into him precisely where it should have, back of the shoulder. He labored another 50 he died on his feet and rolled.
Mike was thunderstruck. His grin spread from sideburn to sideburn. “By gol,” he kept saying. “Jes as good’s a bullet.”
Just as good as a bullet, indeed! A lot better, as Mike must have known when We trucked back into Deer Lake in triumph. We hadn’t been back in the village of brown-and-white frame houses more than a few minutes before the word got around. The same excited crowd of men and boys-even girls that had watched us practice stopped by again, this time to heft the racks knowingly and offer congratulations. If possible, Mike seemed prouder than we did of this “first” in Newfoundland hunting.
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We examined the heart of the 27-pointer. It was a chunk of gristle as large as a melon and the broadhead had sliced squarely through it.
I hated to leave that rack behind, just as I hated to leave that wonderful, raw country. But I did, and in due time the mounted head was delivered to my little Michigan archery shop. Any time you like you can stop by and see what the keepsake of a good archery hunt looks like, leering down at you with 27 points and a bearded grin.