Sachs Harbour (Apr 21/03) - Mother Nature was to blame for a scaled-down commercial muskox harvest this year.

The Sachs Harbour Muskox Company had been hoping to harvest 300 muskox on Banks Island in March, but had to settle for 101.

The animals harvested are used for their meat, wool and leather products.

"It was the weather. They had two big blizzards while they were out," said Mayor Andy Carpenter Sr. His son, Andy Jr., was part of the harvesting crew.

"They gathered 400 muskox and ran into a blizzard two days out from here and they lost most of the herd," said Carpenter.

After the first storm they gathered a few more animals once again, but then ran into more bad weather.

"And they had to let them go," said Carpenter.

But the mayor said the lower numbers didn't really affect the community that much.

"The people really didn't expect there was going to be a harvest because it was so late," he said.

The best time for the muskox harvest is in November, he said, but the hunt was behind schedule this year because of a delay in funding.

Murray Arsenault, manager of the Muskox Company, said "it did take a little longer than normal to put the financial package together," but the harvest didn't happen in the fall, once again, because of the weather.

"There were a couple of things that happened to us last November and that's why we didn't go then.

The largest reason was that it really wasn't cold enough on Banks Island in November.

"We want to be in the minus 20 zone or colder and it wasn't," he said.

Although the number of animals harvested in March was lower than expected, Arsenault said he is satisfied with the results of the harvest because research goals were "met and exceeded".

In the past, he explained, muskox meat has been deemed inconsistent for a number of reasons.

Therefore, management's main goal right now is to conduct research on how to "make eight-year-old bulls taste like two-year-old cows. And that's predominantly what the research is all about -- product development."

Muskox steaks found in grocery stores have been aged and harvested at an ideal time. Arsenault said the harvesters don't have that option on Banks Island.

"So we need to figure out a way to make our products consistent throughout the board," he said.