Young hunter nabs first grizzly measuring six-feet, three-inches
Baker Lake residents will enjoy meat from 350-pound bear
Derek Neary
Northern News Services
Monday, May 29, 2017
QAMANITTUAQ/BAKER LAKE
Erik Ikoe went out on the land to retrieve his boat on May 20 and he returned to Baker Lake 350 pounds heavier.
Erik Ikoe poses with the first grizzly bear he ever shot – a six-foot-three-inch long, 350-pound specimen - about 90 kilometres southwest of Baker Lake on May 20. - photo courtesy of Erik Ikoe |
The added weight wasn't due to his boat - it was from a grizzly bear.
Ikoe and his parents headed southwest by snowmobile on that Saturday afternoon. At about 5:30 p.m., after travelling close to 90 kilometres, they came upon the bear close to where the boat was located.
"I didn't want it to come back while we were busy trying to get the boat," Ikoe said of the decision to kill the predator. "My father asked if I wanted to shoot it and I said yes. He gave me his hunting rifle to go catch up with it and put it down."
Ikoe, 22, closed the distance to approximately 35 metres and then put two shots into the beast, with the second shot dropping it to the ground.
He used his snowmobile to pull the grizzly, measuring 6-foot-3-inches from nose to tail, onto his sled. The heft of the animal gave his 20-year-old snowmobile a workout all the way back to town.
"(I) brought it home and skinned and butchered it up," he said, adding that some residents in the community will eat the meat, as will the family's guard dog.
Ikoe said he plans to send the skin to a Manitoba taxidermist to have it cleaned, tanned and transformed into a rug.
Spotting a grizzly in the Kivalliq region is no longer a rarity, Ikoe said.
"They're getting very common now," he said. "There's more and more each year."
While the grizzly was the first that Ikoe has ever bagged, it's far from his first kill overall. He said he started going out on hunting expeditions at age three or four. His first successful catch was a fish and that was followed by bringing down a caribou at age four.
"My parents taught me all the hunting stuff I know," he said, "and also my aunties and uncles taught me my traditional lifestyle."
Ikoe goes out on the land regularly, about three or four times a month. He mainly hunts caribou, he said.
He is eagerly anticipating the annual caribou migration near Baker Lake, which normally occurs in late June to early July, he added.
While the grizzly bear population in the Kivalliq region isn't well understood by researchers, studies are underway to address the knowledge gap, according to Hayward Harris, manager of communications with the Department of Environment. He said observations by local hunters appear to indicate slight growth in the bears' presence.
He added that the Department of Environment has established public safety campaigns relating to encounters with bears as well as wildlife damage prevention and compensation programs.
