Anyone going to Manitoba this year?
Caribou
I see lots of folks are headed to Quebec and Alaska this year to chase caribou, but haven't seen any posts from people going to Manitoba. Anyone headed up that was this year? I sure had a wonderful hunt when I went two years ago.... Gorgeous country and caribou were everywhere.
Here are some young bulls I photographed...
Went there last year for caribou. Will be returning to Manitoba next year for moose.
Went there last year for caribou. Will be returning to Manitoba next year for moose.
I went last year. Ned Greer (loes hillsarcher) is up there right now.
The wife and I are going next year with Munroe Lake Lodge.
coyote hunter - Great choice! I went with Munroe 2 years ago and had a blast. Good luck!
I just got back from Nunavut. We were in Caribou every day, but as I understand it the numbers were way down from normal. I think Manitoba has been even worse depending on where you are. (I heard stories about 9 days without seeing one.) I didn't punch a tag but I got to experience a life lesson that will make me a stronger person, made some new friends, and learned a lot about bow hunting.
It will be interesting to see how the hunts go as the season progresses... It's big country (Manitoba and Nunavut) and even though you can cover a lot of ground by boat, that's just a small fraction of where the caribou might be. When I was there in 2013 there were a lot of animals around...more than enough good bulls and everyone went 100% on 2 bulls each, but even though we were all very pleased with the number and quality of the animals we saw and took, a pilot came in and said just across the lake to the northeast (were we really hadn't hunted) there were at least 2,000 critters scattered over the tundra..
9 says without seeing a caribou? What outfitter offers a 9 day hunt? All the ones I know of offer 5 and 6 day hunts.
Tatonka - This was from a guide who said they hadn't seen a Caribou in 9 days. (This is a well known outfitter.) i will say this is 4th hand information, so I might have it wrong. My guide told me so far it was the worst season he had seen in 5 years of guiding as far as the numbers seen.
Got it.....that makes more sense. :) With caribou hunting (any hunting, actually) anything can happen for sure.
If the outfitter saw none in nine days maybe he should start offering 14 day hunts.
Where I was hunting there were definitely caribou. My partner shot a nice P&Y bull the first day. More caribou would have definitely helped me out though, just more opportunities for everyone.
A pic taken from the boat, I think on the first day.
I think I was in the group rattling junkie mentioned. I shot the only caribou i saw in six days of hunting. Covered over 100km's on foot by GPS. In the end I felt fortunate as some other places had groups ranging from 12-19 hunters with 0 bou spotted. To say it was an unusual year is an understatement.
Here is my Caribou. Lucky to get him I had to wade through 30 yards of water to get onto an island he was on just to get a crack at him. Carried my bow all week and shot the smallest bull. Other bulls were shot with rifle. But hey, I guess 1 for 1 isn't that bad lol.
Caribou aren't the only reason to experience the North.
Nice job Adam, way to get it done with a bow.
Congrats Adam! I gotta do this hunt one day!
I was in Nunavut. 8 hunters in camp with few caribou. It sounds like we had it good compared to other camps. We averaged 12-20 caribou spotted per day. With the few caribou around and the hunters divided into pairs, we crossed each others toes too often. Spotting caribou from different vantage points, we would often converge on the animals with hunters coming from different directions which wasn't much fun. The camp was good but more caribou would have made it great and most likely less chaotic with the hunters not stepping on each other. Would love to return for them some day.
I've stayed in touch with the guide I had in 2013 when I hunted there. I'll talk to him after the season to see how things went with him (Lodge at Little Duck). I'd really like to go back with my son in a year or two as when I went it was a great hunt. I can't imagine with the size of the herd there (estimated at over 400,000) that the numbers are down... I'm guessing it's more about the weather, possibly changing their migration routes, etc......and of course we can always blame it on Global warming. :)
Anyone hear how Munroe Lake Lodge is doing this year?
I got back from MLL Friday.
The previous group had 11 tags, took 7 bulls.
We had 12 tags between us.Three of the six hunters brought bows with a backup firearm (father & son shared backup).
It was very very hard to find caribou. After the first day, each group always carried a rifle, as it was pretty unlikely we were going to have enough caribou to find some in a place conducive to a stalk or ambush for a bowhunter.
We could not hunt the first day, as we arrived in caribou camp too late after being held up by low clouds/fog up north on Saturday morning. We were scheduled to leave at 7:00 AM, but got off the runway at 1:40 PM.
I killed a nice bull on Sunday morning, but we did not get another shot until Wednesday (last day). We killed six Wednesday, nothing with any size. One group saw zero on those 2 days.
The guides worked hard, and I could not find any fault with their effort..........there were just not enough animals around. I think we killed everything we saw within 2-3 miles of us, except for a cow/calf we saw on Tuesday.
Anecdotally, when we filled with diesel at Thompson prior to the drive home, a truck driver there told us the caribou have not migrated normally for two years, not coming far out of Nunavut all winter.
I forgot to mention, one of the best parts of the trip was waiting in the Thompson airport for five hours with Ned (loesshillsarcher) and Ed DeYoung.
I could have visited and listened to them discuss their hunts for five more hours!
They are amazing bowhunters and very fine men!
That sounds like my hunt in 2005. Out of 11 hunters I was the only one to get a bull(small), 1 hunter got a cow and 1 a calf and 1 got a small bear. We saw 0(zero) caribou from our camp. We went out every day and hiked up to the high spots to glass. Starting Sun. afternoon. By Tues. afternoon the outfitter started making plans to move us all. 3 Got moved to another of his camp and the other 8 of us got flown to another outfitters camp whose hunters were almost tagged out. We got flown out in 3 shifts because he only had one plane.
I drew the high card, so I got to go first with my buddy. We got to camp just before noon on Wed. and saw 27 racks when we got there(13 hunters had tagged out and 1 bowhunter was still trying to fill his last tag). Of course the guys in camp said you should have been here yesterday! Thousands of caribou reportedly were seen streaming thru and around camp. By wed. afternoon there were just small groups of caribou widely scattered.
We did spot 3 groups of caribou and after 2 unsuccessful stalks, we were able to sneak in on a small bull feeding towards s small depression. What we didn't know was the next group of 3 from our camp was already up on a high ridge glassing and had spotted the bull and were watching to see where it would go before making a move to intercept it. They could not see us way down below sneaking along in a draw getting in position for a shot. They were watching the bull when one of them said "what happened? Where did the bull go?!" Then the other one said "it's lying on the ground!" The third gentleman was about to say WTH? when the 3 of them finally heard my shot! (they were several miles away ;-) Once we came up out of the draw, they could see us. We had no idea they were watching the same caribou.
After a few pictures and hi-fives we were told to get back to the camp ASAP so they could fly us out and bring in the last 3 guys from our camp.(the guide remained with my kill to process it while we high-tailed it back to the plane)
Later back at camp when the group that was watching my bull came in, I asked them what they saw. I'll never forget what the older gentleman from Missouri said with a disgusted expression on his face: "well young man, I'll tell ya...................I spent thousands of dollars and flew thousands of miles..................and the first gall-dang caribou I see..........................falls over dead!" It took me a few seconds to digest what he had just said- then I put 2 and 2 together and said "NO!" He looked at me with half a grin and said "Yes! We watched the whole thing from a couple miles away!"
I was on a Manitoba website and it sounds like a lot of hunters are going home empty and/or taking smaller animals or not seeing a lot. It must be extremely frustrating for the outfitters and guides to know that thousands and thousands of caribou are on the other side of the border in Nunavut and for whatever reason have decided to stay put for now. When I hunted there in 2013, there were a lot of resident animals, according to the guides.....caribou that didn't go north into Nunavut..
I checked the Lodge at Little Duck where I hunted and they now have a camp across the border in Nunavut (first year they've done this) and so far they have gone g 100% on big bulls there...
Just got back from up there. Best info is that caribou still up north, no migration into Manitoba as of yet, no caribou seen or taken by anyone.
Congrats to those who scored. Sounds like tough conditions. Why didn't you move to a different area? Was that not an option?
The caribou were north in Nunavut. We had a Manitoba license. Generally, these hunts are on Lake networks where the caribou migrate through, you generally do not move to a differenct area.
Moving is not really an option at Munroe. Huge lake system with one camp and that is it. In 12 years I don't think they've had problems finding caribou until this year.
