Fig. 27. Pile o’ Rocks, an ancient enclosure erected as a game lookout on the summit of a hill 1.5 miles NW. of the mouth of Windy River. June 30, 1947.
Anderson (1913b: 505) and Stefánsson (1913a: 106, and 1913b: 241, 276-277) have called attention to certain rather well-defined differences between the Caribou on both sides of Coronation Gulf and those elsewhere in northern Mackenzie. It may be assumed that the summer home of the former type is on Victoria Island. Many of these animals in former years crossed over to the mainland in the autumn after the freezing of Dolphin and Union Strait, Coronation Gulf, and Dease Strait made such a migration possible; and they recrossed to the island in the spring. During recent years this migration has greatly dwindled (Blanchet, 1930: 50; Birket-Smith, 1933: 93; Clarke, 1940: 98; Gavin, 1945: 227; Godsell, 1937: 288; Banfield, 1949: 481); consequently the Victoria Island population now seems to be largely confined to that island throughout the year. In the American Museum of Natural History I have examined several of Anderson’s specimens of 1911-1912 that are obviously of this form, and I should scarcely hesitate to give them nomenclatural recognition except for the fact that there has obviously been some confusion in the labeling of the specimens (after they reached the museum). Needless to say, a specimen selected as a type should bear unquestionable data.
During the winter there is some interchange of populations between Banks and Victoria islands across the frozen Prince of Wales Strait (Armstrong, 1857: 297, 336). The description that Armstrong gives (1857: 478), based ostensibly on Banks Island specimens, indicates that the animals of that island are very close to, if not identical with, Rangifer pearyi of the more northerly Arctic islands. Yet there is no known interchange of populations across the frozen McClure Strait or other wide sea channels in approximately latitude 74° N.
The Caribou of Boothia Peninsula and Somerset and Prince of Wales islands are said to be a small form (Wright, 1944: 195).
The Caribou of the Dubawnt River region, as far as may be judged from J. B. Tyrrell’s photographs (1897: pl. 1; Seton, 1929, 3: pl. 22), are indistinguishable from those of the Nueltin Lake region.
The Southampton Island antlers figured by Sutton and Hamilton (1932: pl. 8) are so strikingly different from all but one (No. 1132) of those that I noticed in southwestern Keewatin that I should be much inclined to regard them as representing a separate subspecies, provided they are typical of that island. In most of the bucks of the Windy River area the beams are deeply and fairly uniformly bowed, although there is a strong tendency for approximately the basal third to be nearly straight, with a pronounced forward bend just above it (cf. [figs. 3], [4], [9], [10], [12], [22], [25]). The bend at this point in the Southampton antlers is extremely slight by comparison. In mainland specimens the beam in cross-section is generally more or less round, with rarely any tendency toward flattening, such as may be seen in the Southampton set and in my No. 1132. Furthermore, I cannot recall in the mainland animals a single such pronounced zigzag effect as may be seen in the Southampton antlers. In extremely few of them does the bez tine originate at such a distance (apparently 8 inches or so) above the base, as in Sutton and Hamilton’s figure. The lack of palmation in the bez tines of their specimen is noteworthy.
There is a distinct likelihood that the isolated herd of Coats Island (Wright, 1944: 188; Banfield, 1949: 481), and also that of Salisbury Island in Hudson Strait (Grant, 1903: 189; Tweedsmuir, 1951: 37), may be distinct from the populations on the nearest large land bodies.
I have briefly examined a dozen or more heads (skulls with antlers) of the Labrador Barren Ground Caribou (R. a. caboti G. M. Allen) in the United States National Museum; they were collected by L. M. Turner in the 1880’s. Some of these antlers appear longer than any I saw in Keewatin. Furthermore, the tips of the bez tines in these specimens seem, on the average, more strongly incurved than in R. a. arcticus.