A World-Travelled Sportsman Choses Newfoundland to Fulfill his Caribou Wish List
Glenn Sapir ~ Outdoor Writer The Journal News, Member of New York State, Outdoorsmen’s Hall of Fame
The germ of my caribou and moose hunt to Newfoundland began on my 60th birthday, when I made up a wish list of dreams I hadn’t fulfilled yet, and hunting those two giant members of the deer family were at the top of my list.
A chance meeting with an outdoorsman from my region of New York State led to typical sportsmen’s chatter, and before I knew it, he’d identified the place for my dream hunt to take place: Newfoundland and Labrador. He travelled there every year to hunt, and his tales of success had my mouth watering and my head spinning.
Two years later, my dream played out. I found myself in that magical land, a place like no other I had been. Bogs like sponges, mountains like Norwegian fjords, and animals out of the sporting magazines I’d read since I was a young boy were all part of the experience.
Caribou can be in one place one day and gone the next, so for my guide and me, the challenge became being in the same place as them. We glassed from logging roads, looking over boggy fields as vast as the eye could see. We set out on foot, knowing that around every stand of woodlands we might encounter the prized woodland caribou unique to Newfoundland.
Finally, we saw a band several hundred yards away. At 150 yards, we studied the six magnificent animals. One was a mature bull. I placed my .30-06 on a shooting stick rest I had brought with me. I put the big male in my scope’s reticules. My caribou hunt had come to a close in Newfoundland, but my adventures there had only begun.
A chance meeting with an outdoorsman from my region of New York State led to typical sportsmen’s chatter, and before I knew it, he’d identified the place for my dream hunt to take place: Newfoundland and Labrador. He travelled there every year to hunt, and his tales of success had my mouth watering and my head spinning.
Two years later, my dream played out. I found myself in that magical land, a place like no other I had been. Bogs like sponges, mountains like Norwegian fjords, and animals out of the sporting magazines I’d read since I was a young boy were all part of the experience.
Caribou can be in one place one day and gone the next, so for my guide and me, the challenge became being in the same place as them. We glassed from logging roads, looking over boggy fields as vast as the eye could see. We set out on foot, knowing that around every stand of woodlands we might encounter the prized woodland caribou unique to Newfoundland.
Finally, we saw a band several hundred yards away. At 150 yards, we studied the six magnificent animals. One was a mature bull. I placed my .30-06 on a shooting stick rest I had brought with me. I put the big male in my scope’s reticules. My caribou hunt had come to a close in Newfoundland, but my adventures there had only begun.