Ladies' Caribou Hunt - Quebec
The Girls
Great bull, Kandi!
Vicki get's it done.
Hunter: Vicki Cianciarulo
August 24 (Sunday) – I flew out of Chicago O’Hare to Montreal, Quebec and met up with Brenda Potts, Mandi Webb, and Deb Blackwelder. We picked up our entire luggage and headed to the hotel where we met up with Kelly Santoro and Kelly Allred. Safari Nordik’s representative, Armando Vendittozzi, had us all meet with him that evening to go over the game plan and give us our caribou tags. Kandi Kisky & Cari Wagstaff flew in later that evening.
August 25 (Monday) – We had to be at the airport at 5:30 am to check all of our gear on the plane to Kuujjuaq. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:00 a.m., but due to a delay we didn’t take off until 8:44 a.m.
We arrived at Kuujjuaq around 11:00 a.m. We were scheduled to fly out on a float plane to Camp Victoria. (Nice name!) We were told that due to the weather not being so good, we weren’t going to be able to fly out right away, so they took the 8 of us girls to a coffee shop for lunch. The weather did not get any better, in fact, it got worse. There were other flights stuck in Kuujjuaq besides ours, and lots of fog & rain!! We waited at the coffee shop until 7pm that evening, when someone from Safari Nordik came back and took us all to an old women’s shelter, I am not lying!! Because of the weather and some convention going on in town, all of the hotel rooms (all 66 of them) were full, so they found somewhere else for us to stay. We laughed so hard that first day in Kuujjuaq that I think we all cried!
August 26 (Tuesday) – We were picked up and taken to Johnny May’s float plane base. We loaded up and took off. From the air we saw musk ox and a bear! We flew for about 30 minutes and had to turn around because the ceiling was dropping and the pilot couldn’t see!! We went back to the coffee shop and had breakfast, and then we waited for the clouds to lift. We didn’t have to wait too long, and we were back on the plane to Camp Victoria!! (Nice name!) We made it all the way to camp this time!
Four of the ladies went out hunting that afternoon, and Mandi was the first one with the first caribou of the trip!!
August 27 (Wednesday) – Kandi & I were hunting & filming with each other for THE CHOICE TV Show. Brenda was up there being filmed for SHE Outdoors, Beyond the Lodge TV show. This was a big trip for Brenda, the day she left for this trip was exactly one year to the date that she was told she had breast cancer. She is doing great, and Kandi & I were in charge of making sure that she was ok on this trip, per her husband Stan!!
Kandi and I hiked up behind camp. We saw about 50 caribou, but no ‘shooter’ bulls. We did get within about 15 yards of a herd of 13 caribou. We hiked about 6 miles today.
Brenda shot her first caribou!! We were all so happy for her!!
Kelly, Kelly & Deb also shot bulls today!!
August 28 (Thursday) – It is another beautiful day! We took the boat up the river to where they put a canoe past the rapids. We then took the canoe up the river and hiked about a mile further in and up a ridge. We did see some caribou and a good bull, but they were ahead of us and we couldn’t catch up. We hiked about 7 miles today!!
Mandi shot her second bull today!!
August 29 (Friday) – We walked a lot today!! Kandi shot her first caribou ever today!! I shot a bull too!! We both shot the bulls with Kandi’s TC Icon 308, with a Nikon BDC scope! We had set up in a valley and we were able to glass the ridge in front of us. We had a few small bulls and cows with calves come by us close! Then up on the ridge we spotted a good bull. We got up and ran to where Kandi could get a shot at him, but he was just over the ridge to where we could only see his antlers & spine, so we had to do some fast moving across the tundra to try to get up on him. Her shot was about 170 yards. We were about 2.5 miles from camp, as the crow flies. We were on our way back towards camp, stopping once in while to take a break, when a good bull came over the ridge coming right at us! Kandi and I went into high speed mode, trying to get ready! It all happened so fast! I shot him at about 110 yards. He was a nice bull, and it was already 4:30 p.m. and we were supposed to be back at camp by 5:00 p.m.!! We still had 1.5 miles to go and we needed to take care of the bull!! Needless to say we got back to camp late, like 6:30 p.m.!! Brenda was worried about us, waiting for us outside in the rain!!
Brenda shot a huge bull today!! We were all so happy for her!!
Kelly, Kelly, and Deb all shot their second bulls and Cari shot her first bull today too!! Busy day!!
August 30 (Saturday) – All of the girls except Cari, Kandi & I are all tagged out!! We were the only ones left!! We said we weren’t going to try to kill ourselves running all over the tundra today, but we did anyways!! Kandi was able to shoot her second bull at about 190 yards and 1.5 miles, as the crow flies, away from camp again!! On the way back to camp we did spot some more cows with calves, but no bulls.
All in all, 8 ladies tagged 14 caribou. That is one heck of a week of hunting! Kandi and I felt like we were on some sort of training program. According to our guides GPS, we hiked close to 30 miles in 4 days of hunting!! I also have to say that I haven’t laughed so much as I did on this hunt! What a great group of ladies in camp!!
We would like to thank Safari Nordik, Kelly & Kurt Santoro, and Tourism Quebec for the opportunities provided to us!! Thank You!! Maybe we will have a second annual hunt next year……