When Fred Schweder, Jr., was endeavoring to intercept a Wolf on September 6, a fullgrown buck came feeding around a tree within 10 feet of him. The animal winded Fred without apparently seeing him, and went back and forth uncertainly for about a minute; finally it moved off very slowly.
Stefánsson’s account (1913b) of his various adventures with Caribou near the Arctic coast of Mackenzie indicates a far wilder animal in that region than the one in Keewatin. It appeared a great deal easier for me, with no particular effort at caution, to get within photographic range (say a dozen feet to 50 yards) than for him to approach within rifle range (several hundred yards).
Even after being fired upon, a single animal or a band in the Nueltin Lake region will rarely put distance between themselves and a hunter with all possible dispatch, as an alert White-tailed Deer would, but will run hither and thither in confusion, with frequent pauses to display their befuddlement. On October 8 I was a distant and saddened spectator of a scene of slaughter. A hundred or more Caribou were resting or feeding quietly on a bare ridge south of Lake Charles. They were distributed in a narrow formation, 75-100 yards long and from one to several animals deep. A hunter, approaching close to the south end of the herd, began firing. With one accord they made toward the north, but very shortly executed a sharp turn and came back rapidly in the opposite direction, passing in a narrow, compact column within 30 feet of the hunter, who continued shooting. In 200 or 300 yards they paused and allowed the hunter to come up with them and resume shooting. The process was repeated over a distance of three miles; but the pursuer now and then circled ahead of the herd instead of following in its tracks. The final toll: 29 Caribou hit and 22 or 23 secured—virtually a quarter of the herd destroyed and most of it to be used for dog feed.
It is said that the attachment between a doe and its fawn is such that when one of them is killed, the hunter can approach within 50 feet of the surviving doe or within 20 feet of the surviving fawn. A fawn is apt to linger for days in the vicinity where its dam has been killed.
Charles Schweder has never seen fawns playing with each other or with their mothers; two or three times he has seen one frisking by itself—such as jumping about or running in a circle—but never for more than half a minute at a time. Seriousness of life for a Caribou seems confirmed from its infancy.
In the hard winter of 1944-45, when the Caribou were tired and hungry, Charles had the rare experience of driving his dogteam right through herds on Nueltin Lake; the animals merely moved aside enough to let him pass. In like vein Joe Chambers spoke of encountering such numbers of migrating Caribou on or near the “Little Barrens” south of Churchill in the spring of 1947 that his dogs “went wild” and he had to halt for a time; the animals came within about 100 yards of his team.
A Caribou bold enough to attack a man is very rarely heard of. Yet that was the experience of 15-year-old Anoteelik on September 8. Having run out of ammunition, he undertook to kill a 2-year-old buck with a rock in a patch of timber. (Possibly the animal had already been wounded with Anoteelik’s .22 rifle.) When the missile failed of its mark, the buck made for the boy, who escaped by climbing a tree. Perhaps this is the first case on record of a man or a boy (especially an Eskimo!) being treed by a Barren Ground Caribou. Jenness mentions (1922: 150) a case of an Eskimo being fatally gored by a Caribou on Victoria Island. Otherwise, under all general circumstances, and in contradistinction to the Bison, the Muskox, the Moose, and even the White-tailed Deer, the Caribou may be regarded as quite innocuous to man.
The restlessness so frequently exhibited by Caribou during the summer, in trotting rapidly over the Barrens or in feeding hurriedly here and there while constantly forging ahead (in contrast to the placidity of grazing sheep and cattle), may be attributed in large part to the relentless scourge of fly pests.
(See also [Relations to man].)
References.—Lyon, 1824: 336-337; J. McLean, 1932 (1849): 359; Simpson, 1843: 207; Armstrong, 1857: 478-479, 481-482; Gilder, 1881: 78; Schwatka, 1885: 85; Pike, 1917 (1892): 51-52, 90; Whitney, 1896: 242; Hanbury, 1904: 85; Amundsen, 1908, 1: 103; Stefánsson, 1913b: 278, and 1921: 251; Hornaday, 1914, 2: 104; Jenness, 1922: 150; Blanchet, 1925: 34; Birket-Smith, 1929 (1): 106; Seton, 1929, 3: 105-107; Jacobi, 1931: 219, 220; Ingstad, 1933: 88, 293, 297; Downes, 1943: 236-237; Porsild, 1943: 389; Harper, 1949: 229-230; Banfield, 1951a: 22.