Luke and I had not discussed my desire for him to take a bull before me. To be honest, I
really could not have cared less if I had gone home empty handed. This hunt was all
about him. As the group came towards us my heart pounded when 6-8 bulls
approached Luke to within 10 yards. I was in a tiny clump of grass which allowed me to
sit up and see all sixty bulls approach. The biggest of the bulls split off and walked to
within 10 yards of me and began to drink from a stream. I looked back at Luke to see
the bulls advancing to within feet of him with one of them chewing grass less than two
FEET of his leafy head net. My brain was screaming for him to shoot but he just lay
there. This lasted about one minute and when the caribou tried to nibble on his head
net, the game was over.
To be honest I was frustrated as to why he didn't take a shot on such a sure thing.
There had been several good bulls at less than ten yards. I crawled over to him and
asked him in frustration why had he just laid there. Boy, did I feel like a jerk when he
answered. He said, “the big bull was right on top of you and I didn't want to mess up
your chance". This was classic Luke. He has always been an unselfish person. I was
certainly proud of him at this moment, but I made it clear to him that his getting a bull
was priority one. We let the bulls settle and begin to feed away before heading back to
the river crossing in fading light. Luke pointed out that the six caribou bulls were still
high on the mountain above us. We would get our chance to meet them the next day.
Day four began with a terrible change in weather. We crossed the river to our glassing
point and were met with a completely empty tundra. We could see for many miles and
there was not a single caribou in sight. I knew where they had gone but following them
would require a 10-mile round trip and the risk of bumping them ever further from reach.
I hated to burn up a day, but I knew that they would return.
We decided to skirt the mountain and glass another valley. We reached a glassing
point and were met with another empty landscape. The cold rains had intensified, and
winds were making it difficult to stay in the open areas. We were pretty bummed at this
point when suddenly we looked up to find the mountain bulls directly above us. Although
they were 2,000 yards away, they had us pinned down. They were within yards of a
jagged rocky peak and our hope was for them to drop over, so our climb would be
possible. This did not happen. We hunkered down in the freezing rain for three hours
and the caribou stayed on the sheltered side of the rocky peak. When we reached our
limit of endurance, we made the decision to walk away from them and begin a long hike
around another mountain so that we could approach them from the back side. The
steep climb would take us almost two hours.
Topic: A Caribou for Luke (Read 4772 times)
