Nunavik caribou draw thousands of southern hunters

From mid-August to the end of September, camouflage-clad men with American accents flood airline flights from Montreal to Kuujjuaq before fanning out across Nunavik in bush planes for week-long caribou hunting trips.

That’s what brought John Guilmette of Vermont and 10 of his buddies to Kuujjuaq last weekend.

Guilmette is typical of clients on the caribou hunting packages, which every year attract about 3,500 hunters, mainly middle-aged men from the United States, eager to bag two caribou bulls, and ship home the meat and antlers.

Guilmette, an experienced outdoorsman, hunter and former outfitter, has traveled all over the Western U.S. and Canada hunting elk, deer and caribou.

He’s on his sixth trip to Nunavik and was hoping this time to catch sight of some muskox. He keeps getting lured back, he says, as much by the splendour of the tundra and the promise of caribou meat in his freezer as by the excitement of hunting.

Hunters like Guilmette pay about $4,500 to $5,500 U.S. for a one-week stay in fly-in camps around the region, with or without guides.

But Nunavik’s caribou outfitting industry, worth about $20 million a year, suffered recently, especially from the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Then, in 2003, a second blow to the industry was dealt by a U.S. Department of Agriculture ban on all Canadian beef imports. A cow from Alberta had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy or “mad cow disease,” but the ban also affected the import of meat from all ruminant or cud-chewing, hoofed animals, including moose, deer, elk, muskox and caribou.

The chaos at Kuujjuaq’s airport also discourages clients, some say. Because beefed-up security, check-in and baggage claim services are now crammed into two small spaces while the airport’s new terminal is under construction.

On the positive side, outfitters say business for the caribou hunt is now back up to pre-2001-levels, although profit is down due to rising fuel costs and because the the Canadian dollar is now nearly equal in value to the U.S. dollar.

The cost for a week-long package has doubled since the 1990s, although the caribou hunting season is still short. It lasts from mid-August, when the mosquito and black fly swarms decline a bit, to late September, when lakes used by float planes start to freeze.

“There’s only five weeks to kick the can,” said Steve Ashton of Arctic Adventures, the outfitting company run by the Fédération des cooperatives du Nouveau-Québec.

Ashton said the caribou hunt is worth the effort for the FCNQ because nearly all of what the hunters spend on packages with Arctic Adventures stays in Nunavik: airfare, guide services, fuel, and food purchases at local coop stores.

“What the federation loves is its overall economic impact,” Ashton said. “Except for the hotel rooms in Montreal, the rest of the money stays in Nunavik.”

But some critics in Nunavik question the economic impact of the hunt. They say it brings “some money” and “some employment” to the region and helps give it some exposure, but they doubt that hunters leave much cash in the region.

That’s because hunters receive a highly discounted ticket from First Air through their package and the large majority of the outfitting companies have only “silent” Inuit partners, employ mainly non-residents, and funnel most of their profits out of Nunavik.

And they criticize the hunters’ lack of knowledge about the region and their tendency not to buy local arts and crafts, or, out of ignorance, their purchase of stolen carvings.

But the FCNQ has been outfitting for 36 years, and its core of Inuit workers and guides, who include Bobby Snowball and Willie Etok, have many years of experience.

Safari Nordik, the largest of the region’s 35 active outfitters, with about 700 clients, uses guides and staff mainly from the Lower North Shore and other southern regions of Quebec.

Even if there’s money to be made by outfitting, the risks are more than financial.

There’s the weather, which can ground planes and hunters in the camps, and there’s then the caribou. Nunavik has about one million caribou, but the animals’ migration patterns and numbers aren’t always consistent or predictable.

And outfitters don’t like to be reminded about James Rambone, their worst case scenario.

Rambone, an experienced hunter who suffered from epilepsy, was last seen on Sept. 3, 2003 when he sprinted off in pursuit of a caribou over the rugged tundra near the Caniapscau River, south of Kuujjuaq and east of Kuujjuaraapik.

Most hunters coming from the South choose guided hunts, but Rambone chose an eight-day non-guided hunt at Camp Sardine.

Despite repeated searches, no clue to Rambone’s fate has ever been found.

Competition for business remains tough among Nunavik’s outfitters, who rely on word of mouth, web sites and marketing in the U.S. market to draw their clients.

Avid hunter Guilmette questions whether hunting will remain as popular in the future.

“You hope hunting doesn’t become just a rich man’s sport,” he said.

The quick gratification of video games, which provide the excitement of hunting without offering the real experience or requiring any skills, along with the powerful anti-rifle and animal rights movements are eroding popular support for hunting in the U.S..

Guilmette, an engineer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said he is certain that most residents of his home state of Vermont would vote to ban hunting altogether if offered the choice.