One Heck Of A Ride

66 Muskox “camp” in the high arctic Greenland muskox author took in minus 35ºF weather on Victoria Island, Canada 1989 Other North American Game a defensive circle with their heads pointing out. Neither of the bulls was large enough to shoot, Jimmy said, so we continued on. We spent that night in a windowless “cabin” that was little more than a big plywood box that we slept, cooked and ate in. When a Coleman stove and our bodies heated it up, condensation formed. I got smacked in the eye when a huge drop of ice- cold water fell in it soon after I crawled into my sleeping bag. Our “camp” apparently had been dragged a long way out on the bay after it froze. I had heard the ice creaking and squealing while we were hunting on it earlier that day, but Jimmy said it was nothing to worry about. “You’re okay when the ice is pushing against itself and it squeaks and groans,” he said. “You can start worrying about falling through when it’s quiet.” My eyes must have gotten as large as saucers the first time I heard the ice squeal. I was wearing thermal and down long johns, wool pants and a wool shirt under the hair-outside caribou skin mittens, pants and jackets that Jimmy loaned me. They had been frozen and they stunk when they thawed, but they were comfortable and kept me alive in that extremely cold environment. If anything, there were times I was too warm. (Jimmy said some hunters wanted to buy caribou-skin outfits to take home with them, but he advised against it because the hair would fall off in warmer weather.) I again spent the day bouncing around in my box when Jimmy and I went out the next morning, but we saw nothing I wanted to shoot. The third morning, Bud and his guide were with us when we came upon a herd of twenty to thirty muskoxen with several good bulls in it. We parked the machines, I picked up my .300 Weatherby with 180-grain Nosler Partitions I had handloaded and we set off on foot after it. There was nothing to hide our stalk, only snow and ice, but Jimmy knew that approaching the animals obliquely would cause them to circle so we could get a closer look. There was no problem deciding which one to shoot -- the body on the best bull was considerably larger and taller than the others in the herd, and its horns had deep curls and mass. My problem was there was so much hair I had trouble seeing the foreleg to judge where I should shoot it. I finally got things together, though, and killed the bull at a hundred yards with my first shot. I found it interesting that I could see the bullet leave the barrel and strike the animal. (I later learned that if I had kept my ammo in a pocket next to my body to keep it warm it would have performed at normal velocity.) There are two types of muskoxen the one I hunted on Victoria Island is the Greenland variety. My bull was smaller than I had expected it would be. I knewmuskox were among the smallest of the