Musk Ox
2000

I scheduled the hunt with Jerome and Halina Knap of Canadian North Outfitters. My goal was to try to harvest a B&C musk ox with my bow. Jerome told me that I should hunt the Kent Peninsula with the Inuits, as they were very experienced bow hunting guides.

As I left Edmonton, Canada, and flew into Yellow Knife, the pilot told us that the temperature was -20 degrees and when I stepped off the plane and walked to the terminal I thought to myself, "this isn't so bad". After
re-boarding the plane, we flew into Cambridge Bay. The pilot now announced that it was a -35 degrees! As I stepped unto the runway, I thought to myself, "you really did it now". I was wearing a thin jacket and no long johns. The wind was blowing so hard that I believed within the first few seconds off the plane, every hair on my body was frozen. I took my luggage into the rest room and immediately put the proper clothing on.

For several months I had prepared for this hunt by locating the right type of clothing that would withstand wind chills of -90 degrees which I believe it was the day I stepped off the airplane in Cambridge Bay.

My first day of the hunt was a real learning experience. When I took my lunch out, I found that my cookies and sandwiches were frozen so hard that if I would have dropped them on the ground, they would have shattered. What we did was dunk them into a cup of hot tea so that we could eat them. Three dunks and my tea was ice cold! I accidentally stuck my index finger (covered only by my thin under glove) into a cup of tea and it froze immediately! It took hours for me to get it feeling back to normal again. I wouldn't pull that mistake again on this trip.

I was disoriented in the cold wind with my space-suit type clothing but my main concern was that my archery equipment had not been damaged on the airplane. I told my guide, Pete, I was not going hunting until I knew my bow was shooting accurately. He picked up a piece of 3/4" thick plywood and started walking cross wind from me, but with all the clothing covering my face, he couldn't hear me tell him to stop. When he got back to me I told him I wanted to shoot with the wind and not into the cross wind because it would make my arrow do all sorts of "funny" things.

There was a 55-gallon drum about 25 yards downwind from where we were standing. I asked Pete if it was ok if I stuck a hole in it. I could tell by the expression on his face that he didn't think I was "dealing with a full deck". I picked a spot on the drum and released an arrow and to Pete's surprise, it was a pass through. I had also hit the spot that I was aiming for.

I believed the toughest part of the musk ox hunt was going to be the sled ride pulled by a snow mobile. A close friend of mine who had been on a musk ox hunt the previous year told me his horror story of riding on this type of sled. Another person told me that he and his friends were on a musk ox hunt and had been urinating blood, because of the sled rides, for five days after returning from their hunt. For my first 15 minutes of riding in the sled I thought that it wasn't as bad as what they had said, but after a couple of hours, I realized it was as bad or worse than what they had told me. I didn't know if I would be able to stand up to this kind of torture for the whole hunt. I was watching the snow mobile rider and how he was able to go over the bumps and it wasn't bothering him. So I took my large duffel bag and sat on it as if I were riding a horse or a snow mobile and that immediately ended my problem and I began to enjoy the type of hunt I was on.

I had seen several musk ox on this hunt and was glassing one herd that had a huge bull in it. As I stalked within a hundred yards of the herd they began forming circles, facing outward. The bull I was pursuing left the herd with another large bull and stood his ground. I took my time and got within a comfortable shooting range of about 35 yards. As I released, my 104# PSE Gorilla performed perfectly! The 655-grain Easton arrow got a complete pass through. The bull didn't know what happened. He took a couple of steps forward and collapsed. It was a very humane harvest. The bull green scored 127 13/16. It will be interesting to see how the bull scores after the 60-day drying period.

When people ask me why I shoot PSE bows, my testimony to them is the quality and durability of my PSE bows. Whether I'm hunting in the scorching heat of Africa or in the sub-zero temperatures of the Arctic the bows perform exactly the same without having to make any changes.