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Mike W. Bryant
Staff columnist
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
I'm not an expert on caribou although I know one when I seen one, and as big game animals go, they're not all that hard to kill.
A few years ago a large number of them had gathered around Tibbitt Lake in November at the end of the Ingraham Trail. The Department of Environmental and Natural Resources cheerfully reported their presence and a killing frenzy quickly ensued.
It was a good time for anybody without a snowmobile. All one had to do was drive down to the burn zone area past Hidden Lake and wait for the caribou to cross the road. It was, after all, and still is, legal to hunt by the Ingraham Trail past Powder Point - as long as one wasn't shooting from, across, or alongside it.
Of course, I had my part in the slaughter. An acquaintance of mine had never bagged a caribou so off we went down the trail with some rifles, a couple boxes of shells and some caribou tags.
The roads were cluttered with vehicles as soon as we entered the burn zone. There was an almost carnival-like atmosphere as we approached. There were people on the side of the road butchering animals and making fires to boil tea and cook snacks. A truck-full of wildlife officers drove past every once in a while, stopping people to check tags and licences, and to perhaps warn against any rising tide of silliness.
Every once in a while, rifle shots ripped through the air as another herd drew close.
We followed the first herd we saw for a while on foot, wary of other hunters and where their guns were pointing.
Occasionally, a blood trail would appear, indicating that not everyone taking aim that day were good shots.
Or maybe it had something to do with the numerous spent .22 shells lying about on the side of the road - not very effective for killing a caribou but certainly capable enough of injuring one. In any event, it's illegal to hunt caribou with them.
Eventually, my friend got his caribou - two of them.
Someone stopped us to say a herd was coming down the hill.
We pulled over and walked into a frozen marsh to set up. Sure enough, a string of caribou marched down across the road and into my friend's line of fire. And that was that. We were happy for the meat but it hardly seemed fair.
The caribou hunt has been under intense scrutiny for a couple years now. Government biologists say their numbers are in sharp decline, which doesn't surprise me considering some of the carnage I've seen over the years. The Ingraham Trail and winter roads are often littered with corpses.
Here's a couple things that seem obvious to me:
Hunting caribou is an integral part of Dene culture and diet, and thus it's crucial that everything possible should be done to ensure the caribou are there to enjoy for future generations; further limiting the already small number of caribou taken in the commercial big game hunt will really do nothing to guarantee that. It will, instead, take away income and jobs, and further create an impression that the NWT is unfriendly to visitors both hunter and non-hunter alike.
Hunting from the side of a road? Well, just how many places in the world allow that kind of thing?
- Mike W. Bryant is Assignment editor for Northern News Services