Return to Newfoundland

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Roy Goodwin
Return to Newfoundland - Pt 5
By Roy Goodwin
Nov 16, 2005, 04:40

After another early morning wake up call we all had a hearty breakfast and packed lunches for the long day ahead. Andy and I drew the long straw this morning and would be hiking up through a system of bogs they affectionately call “The Bad Lands”. We did this trip once before…. It is a lot of exercise! This time we’d start down behind the guide’s cabin, following a moose trail around a small bog to the edge of a “steady”. They call any good brook or stream a “steady” as long as it flows year round. This one qualifies!

Once we hit the steady we headed east following the southern bank up through a system of bottoms, bogs, and small hills. There was moose sign everywhere, but the winds were high and we never heard a call. We also never got a reply to any of the calls we made, at least not any we could hear. It took the better part of the morning to work our way gradually up in elevation where we started getting away from the constant bogs and reached some barren ground mixed with patches of timber. We kept an eye out for moose, which was our principle quarry, but also started glassing for caribou.

Just after lunch we spotted the first caribou of the day. It sure was good to get out of “bog country” to where we could run into some caribou. There were two of them. The closest was a large doe traveling in our general direction all alone. She was followed about 200 yards back by a medium sized stag. Nothing I’d be interested in shooting, but a fun one to play with! Andy wanted to see how close we could get, which is not only good fun, but great practice. We watched the doe for a bit and figured a line she would most likely take across a few small hills that ran between three small bogs. We worked our way closer and angled over to a probable interception point. Once there we tucked in behind a bush and waited.

It didn’t take more than fifteen minutes before we could hear the tell tale clicking of caribou hooves letting us know the doe was close. Minutes later she approached our bush and leaned over the top looking right down into Andy’s face at about three feet. I don’t honestly know which had the more surprises look on their face at that instant, Andy or the doe! In any case, the doe bailed out of there pretty quick, and we had a good laugh.

After the doe left we started serious glassing on the stag which was still coming our way. He was taking the same general path as the doe and was real easy to figure out. I’m certain that if we wanted to we could have taken that stag with a hand spear, but I digress. We mover forward to a closer vantage point and tucked in behind a small group of three larch trees about four feet high. They were right beside the trail the stag was traveling and he never saw us slide into position. As he worked his way closer Andy pulled out his new range finder and started tracking his progress in our direction. When the stag got to five yards, and came around the trees, he was looking right at us, but didn’t have a clue what we were. Just then Andy was having a hard time getting range readings and lowered the range finder to see what was wrong. He was so attentive on the range finding that he didn’t realize how close the stag was. The range finder wouldn’t give him a reading under ten yards and he thought there was a problem. With the hand movement at only five yards the game was up! The stag bolted about 15 yards before stopping to look back to see what it was that startled him. A couple snorts and he was at ease feeding slowly away like nothing had happened. We had another laugh and proceeded further up the valley. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We saw a few more caribou but nothing worth playing with. Ran into plenty of moose sign, but no moose. We made a large circle around a big hill then looped back around toward camp. I was really “dragging” by the time we trudged into camp just as the 7:00PM diner was being served.

We found at dinner that some of the boys had much better luck than we had! Larry had spent the day recovering his two stags taken the day prior and had them down at the meat shed. Mark had a close encounter with a bull moose which caused quite a stir. Seems a couple of the guys saw him stalk the bull from the distance, and when they saw him get with-in twenty yards they were sure he killed it. It seems Mark has a reputation with his friends as a meat hunter! They were so sure the moose was shot that they bailed off the ridge they were on, crossed a large bog, and worked their way up the next ridge to Mark and Billy. Their plan was to help haul the moose meat back to camp! The surprise was on them, as Mark just took photos of the bull (some at only 15 yards).

Larry spent almost an hour working close enough to a bedded herd to get a shot at this stag

Larry took this larger stag with his second tag

After diner we went down to the meat shed to see Larry’s trophies. The first one he shot was a good one, but the second was a real “monster”. There is no question that it will rank in the top five ever taken by a bowhunter! To say Larry was excited would be an understatement, and overall everyone is really “pumped” for tomorrow’s hunt!