Despite forecasts, Nunavik enjoys bumper caribou sports hunt

Bill Doyle and his two sons Bob and Rocky, seen here waiting for a flight north at Trudeau airport in Montreal, recently traveled from their home in Utah to Kuujjuaq to hunt caribou in Nunavik — for the second year in a row.

Wildlife biologists have said the numbers of caribou in Nunavik are in drastic decline and that their overall condition is suffering. (FILE PHOTO)

A male caribou crosses a river in Nunavik, where this year outfitters say the caribou are healthy, the males have large, good-looking antlers and the females have given birth to calves. (FILE PHOTO)

Bill Doyle and his two sons Bob and Rocky recently traveled from their home in Utah to Kuujjuaq for the second year in a row to hunt caribou through a Nunavik outfitter, Ungava Adventures.

They were just one group among many. These included camouflaged hunters from Indiana and Illinois, who waited in the First Air departure area at the Montreal airport earlier this month.

Doyle and his two sons first heard about the region from a friend who came to Kuujjuaq to hunt years ago.

“I liked it. It’s different, but neat. But I thought there’d be more trees,” his son Bob said.

Last year, the Doyles say they filled up with caribou — at home, the men hunt geese, deer and elk, but they say caribou meat is a special treat.

This year, the Doyles could look forward to another freezer stocked with Nunavik caribou.

That’s because, despite reports from Quebec government and wildlife biologists earlier this year, outfitters say the caribou numbers and the hunt have never been better.

“We’re having an even better season than last year,” Nicholas Laurin the president of Safari Nordik, Nunavik’s largest caribou outfitting company, said in a Sept. 23 interview from Kuujjuaq.

All his company’s 750-plus hunters but one — who used a crossbow in his hunt — have left Nunavik with their allotment of caribou.

Caribou have recovered from a parasite, which afflicted many animals a few years ago.

“But for three years now we haven’t seen a single sick animal, not one. The antlers are good, the males and in good shape, the females have calves,” Laurin said — and there are lots of caribou around.

But media reports that said Quebec might stop the caribou sports hunt in Nunavik due to dwindling numbers of caribou, which were widely circulated in the U.S., nearly killed local outfitters in 2011, Laurin said.

The $20-million caribou outfitting business has been a mainstay of Nunavik’s economy for more than 20 years, pouring money into local stores and airlines from August to October.

In a good year, about 3,000 to 5,000 hunters would come mainly from the United States to Nunavik for one-week hunting packages and a chance to bag two caribou.

But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the New York’s World Trade Centre made many U.S. residents wary of travelling, then a slumping U.S. economy and a lower dollar started to keep many hunters at home.

Yet the bad news from Quebec and wildlife biologists was a kiss of death, Laurin said.

“What hurt the most was Quebec’s waffling on whether or not they were going to have a season at all. In January and February we didn’t sell a thing although we spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on marketing. These are our best months, but we didn’t sell a thing,” Laurin said. “That’s a business killer.”

Earlier this year Quebec’s natural resources department finally announced cuts to the Nunavik caribou hunt, which accounts for some the 40,000 caribou hunted every year from the Leaf and George River herds.

Quebec announced a 25 per cent cut to the number of permits handed out for the Leaf Bay herd in Nunavik, shortened the hunt there, and limited the number of caribou that can be bagged to two caribou of either sex per hunter.

For the George River Herd, the number of sports permits were reduced by half, some areas were closed to all hunting, and the season was shortened.

At the same time, biologists sounded an alarm over drastic declines in the numbers and overall condition of caribou in Nunavik.

As recently as 2001, they had said caribou numbered more than one million in Nunavik.

Now, it looked like there were fewer than 300,000 caribou in the region, they said.

But Laurin said that earlier estimate was off by a half a million — it was ”very very high.”

Laurin admits the numbers of the George River are down — but he’s hearing that many from that herd have also moved over to the Leaf herd, confirming what Inuit have said for years about caribou movements.

“What hurts me the most is that biologists don’t listen to Inuit,” Laurin said.

The caribou have changed their movements over the past years, he said — arriving later in the area around Kuujjuaq — the hopping off point for most caribou sports hunters.

This year’s hunting season was shorted, starting Aug. 15 instead on Aug. 1 and ending Oct. 2 instead of Oct. 15.

What Quebec should have done is to change the dates of the caribou hunt, starting later in August and lasting longer into October, Laurin suggested.

As it stands now, the hunt now ends Oct. 2 when Laurin said there will still be many caribou around.

with files from Sarah Rogers in Kuujjuaq