Anyone been with an outfit they'd recommend? What kind of prices has anyone seen?

Feel free to give me a call. Been on 7 different caribou hunts so have a lot of experience on them. Hunted all of the different species of caribou......Alaska, NWT, Nunavut (x2), Quebec (x2) and Newfoundland.

As far as cost, it all depends upon what you are looking for and what species of caribou. And, the costs will keep going up. Quebec just announced that 2017 will be the last year that Caribou hunting will be allowed. The NWT closed the majority of theirs about 8 years ago and Alaska went from a 2 caribou limit in some ares, to only 1. They also closed a huge area last year that most non-residents hunted (self guided). There is a big push by the locals (natives) in a lot of areas to close caribou hunting completely to non-residents.

If your thinking about going, I'd do it now..........will never be any cheaper.


Brett

Good advice Brett. 'Bou hunting is something I've wanted to do for a while. Following this thread...

Well, just got back from the SCI convention in Vegas.......great show. Visited with a lot of our outfitters and every single one of them felt the same way about the caribou hunts.........prices are going to be going up and the natives will be pushing hard to close Caribou hunting to all non-natives.

Also, with the migration not happening like it usually has in Manitoba/Nunavut the last couple/few years, some of the outfitters may be out of business unless they change the way they are running their hunts. One of our outfitters has done just that........new for 2017, if the caribou are not around their main/established camps, the hunters will be moved to where the caribou are. Going to be a little less comfortable (smaller tents, canned/freeze dried food, etc.) but they felt it was necessary based on the results the last few years.

As far as prices, MOST will be around that 10-12k range when all said and done.

Brett

Thank you Brett I appreciate the information. Do the native people not benefit from non native hunting? I've never been so Im not familiar with how any of the operations work just seems they would be losing jobs and income by ending non native hunting.

As far as the natives benefiting, it depends upon where you are hunting. They don't benefit as much as one thinks. Nunavut is the only province that I know of that requires outfitters use native guides on their hunts....the other states/provinces do not. Some outfitters also donate the meat from their caribou hunts to the local natives while again, other outfitters do not. All depends upon where you're hunting.

I believe Manitoba only allots 500 non resident/alien caribou tags a year.....total. With a herd of somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 caribou, depending on who you talk to, taking 500 caribou is minuscule. But yet, a native can go out and shoot 25-30 caribou every day for a week, let half of them lay/go to waste, and nothing will be done as it is their right! Broken system just like a lot of other things.......