A High-Arctic Adventure

Thank God it was a strong check cord—and that I was able to hold fast to it while my wirehair, Gunnar, strained at the other end. For had the cord snapped or my grip given out, the results would not have been pretty. Not with Gunnar bristling for a chase and the object of his desire being in plain view and running already. Besides, the caribou he had his sights on had a helluva head start.
    As it turned out I was able to restrain my anxious dog, but the threat of playing tundra tag was the least of this caribou’s problems. The young bull was the first that had been spotted near camp that season, and the sighting set off a Chinese fire drill as guides scrambled to alert the lodge’s big-game hunters and maneuver for a shot. But it was not to be. The caribou ended up foiling a pincers movement by swimming a lake, and he was last seen trotting down the opposite shoreline, heading south.
    Had I been holding a caribou tag that day, we might have enjoyed tenderloin that night. As it was, however, I wasn’t even carrying a gun. I had come to northern Quebec’s Diana Lake Lodge primarily for ptarmigan—or primarily to get my dog into ptarmigan—and having learned long ago that it’s difficult to train and shoot at the same time, I had left the gunning to my guides that morning. The Merkel Drilling I had packed for a chance encounter with a caribou was back in my cabin.
    Missed opportunities are common at Diana Lake. And that’s a good thing. With such a wealth of sporting possibilities, there’s always something you could have been doing differently. It was this chance for variety that initially attracted me to the lodge. Friends had returned with stories of trophy caribou, big black bears, and trout and char the stuff of legends. And the birds! The place was covered up with ptarmigan. It was a simple matter to walk out from camp and take a 10-bird limit in just a few hours.
    I was not interested in stacking up ptarmigan, but I saw here a great opportunity for training—to expose my three-year-old wirehair to more birds than he had ever seen. And an August opener would allow an early hunt to double as a primer for New England’s fall seasons.

So in early September I crated up Gunnar, drove from Maine to Montreal, and boarded a 727 for the two-hour flight north to Kuujjuaq, the largest Inuit village in Quebec’s Nunavik region. There we transferred to a Twin Otter for the 15-minute flight to Diana Lake Lodge, 33 miles northwest of the village.
    I knew I had made a good decision as soon as I stepped off of the plane onto the lodge’s gravel landing strip. There to greet us was lodge owner Joe Stefanski, several guides and a flock of about 20 ptarmigan lining the runway, craning their necks to check out the new arrivals. Stefanski caught me staring in disbelief. “We don’t shoot those birds,” he said. “That’s the house covey.”
    Stefanski explained that he had set up about a half-mile-square “safe zone” around the lodge—and the ptarmigan seemed to know it. During my week in camp I watched as the house covey grew, from a couple of dozen birds to maybe 100. Each day there were more ptarmigan on the runway, wandering between the cabins, on the walkway leading to the main lodge. Eventually, I couldn’t walk Gunnar without him going into a stealth creep, knowing there had to be birds nearby.
    And it’s not as if they were hard to see. The species at Diana Lake is the willow ptarmigan, and early in the season the birds suffer from sore-thumb syndrome: They stick out. Caught in that mottled brown-and-white phase, they are plainly visible as they scurry across the tundra or hop onto rocks for better vantage points. Often I would catch movement out of the corner of my eye and turn to see a flock flying across a flat or a lake—their white wings obvious, beating against the darker background.
    As for their reputation of not being wary, I can’t attest to that. The birds around camp were quite brazen, but once we got out on the open tundra there were few that let us approach dangerously close. They seemed to have a built-in sense for what was a safe distance, and they would hasten along at a pace that would maintain a consistent buffer. The advantage was having pointing dogs, which were able to get in on the birds quickly and panic them into crouching in the willows or holding in spruce thickets. Then it was a simple matter to make a few hurried steps and send them scattering to the wind like an early snow.
    Once the birds were aloft, they covered ground with the intermittent flap-and-glide flight of prairie grouse—putting Arctic air between themselves and their pursuers in a hurry. On the occasions a flock would approach low from a distance, it was easy to imagine oneself on the heathered moors of Scotland awaiting a covey of driven red grouse—as willow ptarmigan are known in the UK.

My guides on this trip were Loyd and Pat Carney, a husband-and-wife team from Massachusetts who breeds, trains and trials Brittanys. Loyd has been hunting at Diana Lake for several years, and I called him for advice prior to my hunt. “I’ve hunted all over,” he said, “but I’ve never seen anything like the hunting in Quebec. You’re not going to believe it.” He warned me that a young dog can be intimidated by flocks of 150 to 200 birds, but he also mentioned a hunter who had brought up an English pointer that had been overwhelmed at the beginning of the week but steady to wing & shot by the end. If I could be so lucky . . . .
    The tone for our hunt was set the first morning, when after breakfast we changed into hunting clothes and walked north of camp to a large flat carpeted with low willows and lichen-covered rocks. I Whoa’d Gunnar, turned on his e-collar, unclipped his check cord and made sure my partners were ready. They said they were, so I released him. Gunnar sprinted left and made a wide sweeping cast; then he swung across out front less than 100 yards away . . . and slammed into a point. Just like that.
    We hurried over and reattached the check cord. Loyd was the designated gun, and it took him only three steps to get a dozen ptarmigan into the air, their white wings pounding for the horizon. Naturally Gunnar came unglued, but I was able to stop his charge before Loyd dropped one of the birds into the willows. I held Gunnar steady as Loyd walked out, fetched the big grouse, and brought it back for the dog to smell. It had been a perfect training exercise.
    A hundred yards farther Gunnar pointed a pair of birds. Then another pair. Then a flock of 10. Each time he improved, taking fewer steps at the flush and shot. Occasionally he would get overexcited upon spying walking birds and start stalking them. He also was a quick study in learning to recognize the rolling chuckle the birds make and, upon hearing it, would hunt in that direction.
    A half-hour later Gunnar had had enough—with I don’t know how many contacts and Loyd having shot five birds over him—so I attached the check cord and we began walking back to the lodge. That was when we spied the caribou.
In the afternoon we ran Evita, one of the two Brittanys the Carneys had in camp, and it was obvious she knew the game. This time I was carrying the Merkel Drilling—and, yes, I had a .30-06 shell in my pocket in case of another caribou encounter. I was glad to bag my first willow ptarmigan—a beautiful mature male with fully feathered feet and a bright-red comb over each eye. In the evening he would taste delicious bathed in a teriyaki marinade and roasted on skewers.
    The next day while some of the lodge’s other sports were flown to spike camps for caribou or ferried up-lake to fish, Loyd, Pat and I crated Gunnar and their second Brittany, Genie, and took a boat seven miles down-lake for some cast & blast fun. (Diana Lake, on which the lodge is located, is part of a 65-mile-long lake-and-river system that wends its way north to Ungava Bay, so traveling “down-lake” actually means heading north.)
    We put ashore on a peninsula near an outlet river, and as we were securing the boat we could see ptarmigan watching from a nearby knoll. Genie did a great job handling these birds and others, and within a half-hour we’d shot a half-dozen. We returned to the boat for lunch and our fishing gear and hiked downriver to a set of boulder-strewn rapids. It was there that I honestly can say I enjoyed the best trout fishing of my life. I didn’t land a trophy on every cast as Loyd seemed to, but the brookies I caught were the largest I’ve ever encountered—beautifully speckled fish with deep-orange bellies, white-tipped fins, and hooked jaws.
    The icing was returning to the boat and learning that Pat, who’d remained behind with the dogs, had landed a big male char—and had the pictures to prove it. It was quite an accomplishment for someone who seldom wets a line, and it turned out to be the only char caught in camp that week.
    We switched gears back to hunting for the final half-hour—all the time it took for Loyd to shoot six ptarmigan over Gunnar while I played trainer. I was proud to see the young dog searching more methodically and remaining in control around walking birds and at the flush.

The third morning we decided to share the wealth and invited fellow camp members Jeff and Jessica Kimbell, a young couple from Washington, DC, and their guide, Brian Clayton, to hunt behind Genie. I enjoyed tagging along with my camera and documenting some excellent dogwork, challenging flushes and impressive shooting. We returned with 26 ptarmigan—more than enough for hors d’oeuvres and to freeze for the trip home.
    This also was the day that Steve Ziegler, from Bozeman, Montana, and his guide Jeff Lewis scored on two beautiful caribou bulls. The pair had flown out with Joe in a Cessna floatplane and, after traversing countless miles of empty tundra, spied a band of five bulls loafing near a lake. A quick landing and hurried stalk (it’s legal to fly and hunt the same day in Quebec) netted Steve two of the largest trophies in the group.
    That night there was plenty to celebrate, as we relived the hunts and enjoyed the Arctic’s bounty, including several plump lake trout that Loyd and I had trolled up and camp cook Mike Greelish had prepared as ceviche.

Time is fleeting in the North Country, with so much to do and such a short window in which to do it. Before long I was facing the last afternoon’s hunt and Gunnar’s final exam. Pat and I took Gunnar north of camp and set him loose on the flat that had been productive throughout the trip. It was obvious he had learned the game, as his first cast was wide with confidence. Halfway through his second pass a flock of a dozen birds volunteered downwind. Gunnar froze. Steady to flush, check. Walking over to release him, we noticed another flock watching from 75 yards away—exactly why you don’t want a dog chasing flying birds. “Clip on his lead and let’s get out of here,” Pat said.
    When we were safely away, I set Gunnar loose, and within five minutes he had pinned a pair of birds near a large boulder. I walked in for the flush and scored on a long crossing shot. Gunnar remained staunch throughout.
We hadn’t been letting Gunnar retrieve, preferring that he focus on finding birds and holding them, but I couldn’t locate the downed ptarmigan so called him in to help. Unbelievably, he locked up again. This time when a pair of birds blew out I scored my first and only double of the trip.
    Pat and I agreed it was a great note to end on, and after recovering all three birds I put Gunnar at Heel. The biggest challenge now was navigating the virtual minefield of ptarmigan between us and camp. I doubt I’ll ever have the problem of facing too many birds again.

The next morning before the plane arrived, I climbed the mountain behind the lodge one last time. At the highest point a stone inuksuk, or cairn, stood resolute in the wind, and I sat beside it to look out across the tundra. The vast landscape appeared deceivingly lifeless, yet I knew of the bounty it held. I had enjoyed a week filled with ptarmigan and trout, and though I had never gotten a shot at a caribou or black bear, I had been able to stalk within 100 yards of a herd of musk ox (for which there is a spring hunt).
    Even better, the education Gunnar had received had been invaluable. A season’s worth of exposure distilled into several days. We had come to Diana Lake for a primer course but were leaving with a degree.
    I couldn’t wait to return for a refresher.

Author’s Note: For more information on ptarmigan hunting, contact High Arctic Adventures, 800-662-6404 or 802-525-6266; www.higharcticadv.com.

Ralph P. Stuart is Shooting Sportsman’s Editor in Chief.