SOMBA K’E/YELLOWKNIFE
It won't be until July before Chad Peterson will be able to fly into Peterson's Point Lake Lodge, about 350 km north of Yellowknife. Regardless, Chad and Margaret have been busy promoting their remote lodge.

Chad and Margaret Peterson at the 2014 Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce annual spring trade show. - Walter Strong/NNSL photo

Accessible only by float plane, Peterson’s Point Lake Lodge is on the edge of the Barrenlands and the Arctic Circle, making it one of the most northerly lodges in the NWT.

The Petersons were at an Edmonton outdoor trade show early this month and at the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce trade show this past weekend. It’s one way they keep awareness of their operation at the forefront of people’s minds.

What would most help the Petersons would be to be able to give a better answer to questions about the commercial ban on the NWT caribou hunt.

“The Edmonton trade show was alright,” Chad said. “But we got more questions about hunting than anything else. There’s not near as much interest in fishing.”

And the fishing at Peterson Point Lake Lodge is good, says George Kimmel, a retired locomotive engineer from El Paso, Texas. Kimmel has been making his way north to the Peterson lodge almost every year since 1989.

“I love being up there in the wild,” Kimmel said. “It’s so pristine, the terrain is beautiful, and the water is clean and clear.”

Kimmel’s record catch at the lodge is a 41-pound lake trout. “The one’s we’d consider a trophy in my part of the country are the one’s we’d say aren’t so big up there.”

But it wasn’t the fishing that brought Kimmel up the lodge initially. He came up for the caribou hunt, and only started fishing at the lodge after the ban on caribou hunting came into effect in 2010. The ban prohibited any commercial or resident hunting of the Bathurst caribou herd, which migrate through the Peterson’s backyard.

Other would-be hunters have not been so quick to take up fishing as a replacement pursuit.

Hunting was the main draw at the lodge, attracting people from across the country and the U.S.

“It’s a long way for people to come,” Chad said. “But if we still had hunting, we’d be a full lodge.”

Fishing continues to bring in clients, but Chad sees a disconcerting demographic trend.

“The younger crowd is more into hunting,” Chad said. “Fishing seems to be more a part of the older crowd.”

While the Petersons wait for the ban to be lifted, there is no definite end date in sight. According to a ministry of environment representative, the next survey of the Bathurst caribou herd is planned for the summer of 2015, after which a new heard-health assessment will be made.

Unlike many hunting outfitters in the North, the Peterson’s haven’t let the hunting ban put an end to In their thirty years at the lodge, they have been doing their best to promote wildlife and aurora viewing adventures.

“It’s more of a photography crowd that comes up in September to take pictures of the Northern lights,” Chad said. “During the day, they go out on the land for landscape and caribou photography.”

“We get maybe half-a-dozen to a dozen a year,” he said. “It’s not like for hunting. If we had hunting we’d have 50 people coming up.”

Fifty visitors, staying on average a week each, represents five weeks of near-capacity booking at the lodge. The loss due to the hunting ban represents almost half the season for the Petersons.

Hunting ban or not, Kimmel will soon make his way North for another stay at the lodge. For the past few years Kimmel said he’s spent entire seasons at Peterson’s Point Lake Lodge.

Chad, who knew Kimmel’s phone number in El Paso without having to look it up, will be storing his Texan visitor’s car once Kimmel arrives.

Kimmel said he has never stayed at another lodge in the NWT since first visiting the Peterson outfit some 25 years ago.

“They’re very good to me,” Kimmel said. “They’re like extended family now.”