Geese, Caribou, and Bison – Stalking the Yukon’s Wildlife

I have been hunting too much in the Yukon Valley Reserve lately. Despite that, I have not gone towards the campaign. I am just hunting as I please and not following any missions or objectives. That is not the strong suit of the game either. It is more of an open world realistic hunting simulator, and missions like go to that place, hunt a male bear, find that injured animal, etc, aren't too captivating. Not to mention all the things you will find on your way to that place that are going to distract you lol.

It was a sunny morning over the Crimson plains and no signs of snow so far. It was covered with crimson grass, where it gets tough to hide if you are a big animal like a moose or a Bison.

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A lonely female moose was my first victim. It is quite common to find them not in groups, and this one was alone. Even the trees couldn't hide her from me. It wasn't the best shot but a good warm up.

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One of the common strategies to have when finding animals is to go close to the water bodies, you will find some animals drinking there. Not always, but most, especially if it is a big enough lake and there are not many lakes in the area. There was one such place near me.

It was Caribou's drinking time. These reindeer can run quite fast and I would just get one shot so I chosee the biggest male I could find from the group. Interestingly, both male and female caribou have antlers, but males have much larger antlers than females.

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But sadly, even the biggest one in this group of 7 just gave me a mere silver trophy. What a terrible group. But the shot was quite easy... a side angle shot from 150ish meters onto the lungs. How much more do you want from it?

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I tried to take some more shots but those were more like wishful thinking. They all fled from the scene as soon as the first shot landed.

Just after a few minutes of this, I saw a herd of plains bison approaching towards me. They were likely coming to the lake to get some water. I backed off to let them come near and had to hide under a tree.

These are much easier targets than caribou and taking down more than one from the same group is not always a problem. They have huge lungs and don't run away that fast. Sometimes, one of them will be aggressive and come towards you.

I took out my powerful bow (a DLC weapon) and shot down two of those beasts right on the edge of the lake.

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The highest class arrows have some insane penetration (but low range). Look at how much the arrow travelled inside the Bison. It went through the right lung, came out and hit the neck, and the skull. Wow!

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It was no time to anlayse my shots as I was hearing a warning call from a wolf. It seemed near me but I couldn't find this wolf even after searching for 10 minutes. It was just a female not in a pack. Usually, I find them in packs (or rather they find me first lol).

On another lake there were two big groups of Bisons enjoying their drinking session. I took out the biggest of them. Its trophy was somewhere between 166-183 and the diamond trophy Bison is 183.5 rated. So, even if it gave me the highest rating from that estimate, it would still be just 0.5 points short of a diamond. So close, yet so far.

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And it started snowing again! Just a couple of hours ago it was all sunny and clear sky but now the clouds have covered this place and it was snowing.

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Look at this white snow cover, isn't it hard to believe that this was looking completely different just a few minutes ago, and now it is all covered with snow. This snow made it super easy to distinguish those Bisons though. Now they had even tougher time hiding from me.

Some of them don't go down without fighting and I respect that spirit. These poor animals have been some of the easiest animals to hunt in the game. They need to be buffed big time. Their running speed seems too slow to me.

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There was a lot of geese activity near the big watch tower. But these become hard to spot when they are on the ground. Snow hides them well, and when the snow melts, the high grasses in these plains give them good shelter. But if I could climb that tower sneakily and wait for them to land near the tower, this way I can take out at least one of them...right?

The plan worked perfectly in my brain. It was time to execute. These Canada geese had good senses and were quite alert. I had to show a lot of patience and got a couple of them after some 10 minutes.

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I had no class 1 weapon at that time so I didn't get the full potential trophy. They were not high enough trophy to start with anyways.

I went to the Layton Lakes Trophy Lodge to build a new multi-mount trophy. I had enough money and taxidermized animals to spend on some trophies.

One of the best one I like is this with two lions, one male and female. There are multiple poses you can set up with them. I like this one the best.

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