SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The cancellation of the fall caribou season will put a strain on Dene families, but advocating a hunt would not have been safe, according to Dettah hunter Bobby Drygeese.

Jeff Mercer retrieves a caribou shot on the Ingraham Trail on Oct. 24, 2004, which was the last year in the past decade the Bathurst herd ventured so close to Yellowknife. - Mike Bryant/NNSL photo

Chief Edward Sangris and the Yellowknives Dene First Nation band council called off the hunt on Oct. 16 because caribou are currently nowhere near Yellowknife and the mild weather makes long-distance travel by land and water too risky.

"We were all ready to go but they just weren't coming down to where it was feasible to harvest," said Sangris.

"Due to the unavailability of the caribou and the distance and the weather, it's too late in the season - and of course you've got to use float planes and it's already freezing up there in the bay, so we decided we had to cancel it."

The Tlicho Government had already cancelled its fall hunt, which usually involves between 50 and 60 hunters. That decision was made after several failed attempts last month by scouts to find enough caribou from the Bluenose-East caribou herd.

Bathurst caribou, whose traditional winter range covers the region surrounding Yellowknife, was seen last week approximately 300 kilometres northeast of the city as they passed near Ekati Diamond Mine, according to Drygeese. This is close to 100 kilometres further away than usual.

In recent years, caribou could be found by mid-September in the area around Mackay Lake and Lockhart Lake, a little more than 200 kilometres northeast of the city, he said.

Drygeese, who operates the B. Dene Adventures tour company and culture camp, has led European tourists on excursions to view caribou in years past. In fall 2011, he brought a group of Swedish tourists to photograph the caribou a little more than 60 kilometres north of Yellowknife, just past Gordon Lake.

"Because of climate change, I think, it's getting warmer and they're just staying a little bit further North later and later," he said. "Last year, they were around Mackay Lake in the first week of October and even then it was still warm in October and then we got that cold snap right away later in October. The weather is getting kind of crazier nowadays for people to go hunting."

The average temperature around Yellowknife in October 2013 was above 4 C, according to Environment Canada. This month, the average has been above 2 C.

Frozen caribou will be missed in many households this winter, said Drygeese. Meat from one animal can provide protein for a family of four for a month or more.

"It's hard on people. A lot of people are subsistence hunters. They rely on food from the land," he said.

"Once it's not there it gets pretty lean. You have to find some way to find money to buy food and the food costs lots."

The Yellowknives Dene hope to hold a winter hunt in late December, said Sangris.

The GNWT suspended resident, commercial and outfitted harvesting of the Bathurst herd in 2010 and established a limited bull-focused aboriginal harvest of 300 caribou in December of that year, with tags evenly split between Tlicho and Yellowknives hunters.

The restrictions remain in place, but caribou population numbers remain in decline.

The Bathurst Caribou Herd numbered around 350,000 animals in the mid-1990s, but recent population surveys indicate a rapid decline throughout the past decade, from 186,000 animals in 2003 to 32,000 in 2009. The population seemed to have stabilized at 35,000 in 2012, but overviews of the herd's calving grounds conducted in June indicate their numbers are declining again and could be as low as 15,000 by 2015.

The next population survey for the Bathurst and Bluenose-East herds is

scheduled for next year.

The Yellowknives Dene will meet with the environment minister and other aboriginal governments on Nov. 7 to discuss the health of the herds.

- with files from Elaine Anselmi

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