2016 Hunt

Our 2016 season is all wrapped up, the crew are all home and the old ponies are out to pasture for the winter. All in all we had another great season at Gana River with many happy cliets heading home with good trophies and wonderful memories. The season started, as always, with our winter wolf hunts. We had some very warm weather with lots of melting and open water in the rivers on the first hunt, which made getting around a bit tricky. Despite that, our first wolf hunter of the season had a great trip and wound up going home with a pair of nice grey wolves. We saw tons of country, put lots of miles on the snow machines and also managed to skid in a set of building logs for a new cabin at the Ramshead. By the way, we did managed to get the new cabin finished during the summer so we will be able to spend more time hunting the Ram River area on next year’s hunts. The second pair of hunters came all the way from Latvia to hunt wolves in the NWT. They thoroughly enjoyed their time with us and we did manage to send them home with one large grey female. We saw lots of fresh sign and came very close on several other occasions during the hunt but could not manage to get a shot at another wolf. We have always had pretty good luck on our spring wolf hunts but everyone that has been there has just left in awe of the whole winter experience.

We were once again blessed to be able to host a youth camp for Northern Youth Leadership Society at our Palmer Lake Base Camp. My wife Larura, sister in law Melodie, our kids and I all flew up to Norman Wells and then on into camp the last week of June to open up for the camp. This year we hosted 13 young teenage boys along with 2 elders and 3 youth camp leaders. The boys came from communties all over the NWT and Nunavut–most had never been to the mountains, some had never even seen a mountain, all were impressed with the whole experience. The boys helped with camp chores and had a blast hiking, fishing, canoeing, swimming, camping and just having fun being boys. We also were able to teach them some basic wilderness survival skills, tradional skills of making dry fish and dry meat, as well as teaching them a bit about the outfitting industry. Some of the boys were so impressed that I am sure we are going to have some of them back working in the mountains in a few years. The youth camp has been a great outreach for us and I would like to thank all of those who help to make it possible: First Air, North Wright Airways, the Association of Mackenzie Mountains Outfitters and of course the Northern Youth Leadership Society. We are already in the planning stages for next year’s youth camp.

The weather was beautiful in early July with a few nice showers and lots of sun. I am not sure I have ever seen the mountains as lush and green as they were this year. About the time our first hunt started, things changed and it cooled off and we started to get more rain and cloudy weather with lots of high water in the rivers–a pattern that lasted till near the end of August. We saw some really great old rams while pre season scouting and also lots of ewes with a good crop of big healthy lambs. The caribou seemed to be lost this year and most of them spent the entire summer out on the front ranges so we just did not have the numbers of bulls around that we normally do. The first hunt went exceptionally well despite some bad weather. We took 5 great rams for 6 hunters. One of the rams was 39.5, one was 38.5 and 2 of the rams were heavily broomed. The horseback crew at the ram river also took a pair of wolves on the first hunt. On the second hunt neither of our archery sheep hunters was able to take a ram with his bow even though both had chances. One of them did decide to go ahead and take a nice 38 inch ram with a rifle. Our archery caribou hunter also used a rife to take a bull that grossed 390. The other sheep hunter on the second backpack hunt arrived with no luggage–thankfully he was wearing his hunting boots and had his optics in his carry on. Despite the shaky start he went on to take a great 11.5 year old ram and a good vevet caribou using a borrowed rifle and gear. On the second horseback hunt we had a father and son team hunting up at the Ram River. The father took a great 11.5 year old ram that was still 38 inches despite being brooomed, and the son was pleased with his 380 velvet caribou. The Fritz River crew also took a great 11.5 year old broomed ram and a pair of velvet caribou. On the third backpack hunt both sheep hunters took nice rams while all 3 caribou hunters took nice bulls–the best one grossed 410 B&C. Two of the caribou hunters were also able to harvest wolves. We had a father and son from Europe hunting with traditional archery equipment on the third horseback hunt. They were both able to take nice caribou with their bows but the father just could not close the distance for a shot at a classy 11.5 year old ram and so chose to take him with a rifle. The other horseback sheep hunter worked hard and covered lots of tough country before taking his last day ram.