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Caribou Ambush

By Tim Herald

Caribou are the great wanderers of the north, the tundra nomads, the relentless migrators. Whatever they may be called, the Quebec-Labrador caribou are almost always on the move, and this can be used to the advantage of, or can cause a huge disadvantage for, bowhunters. One thing is for certain, if you are in caribou, you are having fun.

 Caribou can be one of the most affordable big game adventures in the world. With most outfitters, you have the option of being guided on everything from a six-on-one to a two-on-one basis. The former is generally unguided. You just have a guide to help get animals back to camp and you get a place to stay and services of the camp cook. 

Most caribou camps will be situated along a river or near a lake, so boats may be utilized to cover the area. The best way to start a hunt is to find a good high spot to use as a vantage point. From that elevated position you can glass for animals and see eventual ambush spots. You will not catch up with caribou on the move. They look slow, but they are covering some serious ground when they are traveling. 

Once you find caribou, watch their movements because they often follow each other, even if they are widely scattered. I have seen a certain path, seemingly in the random middle of the tundra, be used by every caribou that came through that area on a certain day, even though there were 50 other paths within eyesight. Many people say that they follow each other’s scent on the trails. I don’t know if that is indeed fact, but they definitely follow each other.

If you can find a certain trail that the animals all seem to be following, you then need an ambush point along that path. Much of the tundra areas are wide open, and it can be hard to find any cover. A big boulder, a small patch of brush or some evergreen trees will work fine. You just have to pick a spot to be able to wait and draw within bow range of your active trail.

My favorite method of ambushing caribou is to find a place where they are crossing a river or lake. This is the same as finding a well-used trail, except you are really narrowing it down to an exact spot. If you see small bands of caribou swimming across a lake and getting out on the bank at a given place, you should get there as quickly as possible and find a spot to hide. 

Often lake or river shores have a fairly steep bank where you can get above the caribou, or there will be vegetation growing or large rocks close by.  Simply get hidden, glass the caribou as they swim across until you find a bull that you want to take and wait for him to get out. Usually caribou will take a few steps out of the water, shake off like a dog, mill around for a few seconds and then start off again on their migratory journey. 

It is the timeframe when they emerge, shake and mill around when you must draw and take your shot. The best thing about these setups is that you can usually practice or at least watch other caribou do what your chosen bull will do before you have to make it all happen for real. Take the time to watch another animal do what you expect, and then go through the motions you would on a real target animal, all the way up to drawing. This way you will have a pretty good idea of what you can get away with and how things will go when it is game time on a big bull. 

For bowhunters, I think that one of the most important factors in being successful is to ask the outfitter to put you in an area that has cover if at all possible. I have been in some places where it was almost impossible to find any cover at all for an ambush or to draw behind, but there are places where evergreen trees, huge boulders and brushy areas are plentiful. These are the most bowhunter-friendly areas.

On my last caribou hunt, I tried something that will certainly work and make a caribou hunt even more exciting. You will generally be hunting with someone else on a caribou trip. If one hunter gets a bull down, drag it somewhat close to where you expect the other animals to travel. When a good bull is spotted, have one hunter grab the rack of the downed bull and wave it around to get the oncoming caribou’s attention. I have had many bulls trot up to 15 yards, look at the moving antlers quizzically, stand around for a minute or so, and then go on. They seem to pay no attention to the two humans behind the fallen bull, even when one of them draws a bow. I haven’t tried it personally, but I imagine you could do this with just a pair of antlers as well, although you would need something to hide behind. This is a very fun and exciting way to “decoy” caribou into bow range.

A caribou hunt in the far north is certainly a large-scale bowhunting adventure, and thankfully it is still one that is affordable. If you are into at least a trickle of the migration, you will have multiple opportunities to move on and ambush bulls. If you are in the migration proper, you will be covered up in animals and have the luxury of being very selective and only targeting serious trophy bulls. Wherever you find yourself, use the tactics above, and you should have a very enjoyable and successful hunt. 

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