Tales from the outdoors: Hunting the famous Anticosti Island

By Bob Chapin
Special to The Windham Eagle

For many of you a guided hunt on Anticosti Island, Canada, in the middle of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, is a dream come true. It is truly a remarkable place managed exclusively for whitetail hunters by SEPAQ, a Canadian government entity, motivated to have you be successful. It can be as “authentic” a hunt as you want it to be, meaning you can arrange to hunt by yourself in an approximately 3 square km area or you can drive the many roads that connect hunting areas by truck or ATV.
Deer populations can vary greatly from 40,000 to 120,000 due to harsh winter weather but you can be assured of seeing many deer and can hunt either does or bucks. You are permitted to take two deer per trip and most do. You will get your deer at the plane for the return flight to Mount Joli, boxed up and ready for further processing.

 

For most Mainers it is a six- to seven-hour drive up through Quëbec to Mount Joli which is the jumping off place for the short flight to the island—take your passport! The hunting trips run all fall but the trip I took was right after Thanksgiving. By that time the snow had already begun to fall. You are met at the airport by Sepaq personnel, taken by the equivalent Fish and Game office for licensing, and a small variety store for last minute items.

The island was once owned entirely by one man, a Frenchman by the name of Henri Menier. He envisioned it as his own hunting and fishing paradise and he came close to realizing it. He imported a lot of different animals including White-tailed deer, grouse, black bears, salmon, foxes, and rabbits. Over the years it became clear that the climate and the collection of animals were not always compatible. Some did very well and prospered and others had a more Darwinian fate. Oddly, one of the non-survivors were the black bears. They competed with the deer for the same food sources and there were just too many deer and they were more prolific.
With the top predator gone, the deer multiplied to match the excellent habitat they had. The island suffers from great crashes in deer populations due to the weather. In the winter when the snows come the deer “migrate” so to speak from the higher elevations to the shorelines, but it is a short trip. It is not a true migration in the normal sense of the word, but they are driven down by snowfalls which tend to cover a lot of their preferred browse. Once down at the shoreline they walk out on the flats that are revealed at low tide and feed on the kelp and grass beds that are exposed. Should there be a freezing rain at low tide and they can’t paw through the ice, they starve. The year I hunted there they had a die off of over 60,000 deer due to a prolonged ice storm. Within two years, they were back up to a population of 120,000, nature’s way of compensating. The foxes eat well and look to be as big as German Shepherds.

The hunting styles vary from sitting deer stands, to still hunting, spot and stalk, or simply driving the island roads until a deer is spotted. One style that is not done, are drive hunts. Be clear with your guide what style you prefer, understanding you can change your mind after some experience. Most guides’ first language is French and their skills in English vary from conversant to none. Make sure you have a good understanding of pick-up times and places if you are dropped off and what the ‘lost hunter’ procedures are. It is not a huge place and there are roads and ATV trails throughout the island but you don’t want to be wandering around after dark in a snowstorm.

This is a great hunt for a small group of hunters who know each other. You will mostly hunt as individuals, but it can be comforting to know your buddy is hunting next door and it is always a fun time to compare experiences around dinner or a fireplace after. Like a lot of hunts, if you get a shot opportunity early in the hunt, take it. In other words, don’t pass up a deer on day one that you would shoot on day four, you may not get a second chance. Pack goggles that you might use snowmobiling because you will get to use an ATV and if you have precipitation, they will be lifesavers. Practice shooting offhand with and without gloves. Take shooting sticks. Take a good cell phone camera for the hero shots! <