AMAZING WILDLIFE SIGHTINGS
One of the special parts of any wilderness trip is the opportunity to observe wild animals in their natural environment. What an honour to float in your canoe past a herd of muskoxen grazing on the bank or quietly observe a gyrfalcon in its nest through your binoculars. From beavers to bears, deer to moose, wolves to caribou … your next adventure may provide that unique experience.
A few of our guides have come up with their favourite wildlife sightings, which you can read about below!
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Mitch McCambly – Thomsen River, NWT
The wolves on this river seemed to be quite curious of our party throughout our trip in June, 2024. Which totally makes sense as we were one of only three groups to travel the river that year. I think they were just trying to figure out what the heck we actually were the whole time.
Our very first encounter was on our second morning when I awoke just before 5 am to the sound of forceful rain on the fly of my tent. Suddenly the rain stopped abruptly and I realized that it wasn’t actually rain! I poked my head out of my tent to see the large shaggy white wolf that had just marked my tent, wander over and sniff and pee on a few other tents before traveling on. What an introduction.
This was the first of many wolf sightings on this trip. The photo below was taken on our 5th day when we had just packed up camp and loaded canoes. When we turned around this wolf had wandered down from the hills behind camp and was sniffing and rolling in our freshly packed away tent sites. I suspect this behaviour was to try and gather our scent to bring to the other two wolves that we could see high up on the hill side behind camp keeping their distance. Our whole group was able to watch for about 10 minutes taking photos and video before pushing off for the day. As we pushed off, we could hear the sound of the wolves howling in the hills calling for their scout who had checked us out to return. Out of all the several wolf encounters on this trip, never did we once feel like the wolves were being predatory or food seeking, they were just being downright curious.
Stef MacDiarmid – Wind River, Yukon
Back in 2019 I was guiding on the Wind River. It was my second time down the river that summer, and our group had already had a number of great animal sightings including lots of sheep. Near the end of the trip, my co-guide was leading the group through a braided section of the river, with me in the sweep boat position. He chose to head down one of the smaller braids instead of staying in the larger flow because he saw an eagle and wanted others to be able to get the sighting too. It made sense that the eagle was there, ready to scavenge, as not far around the corner there was a small island, and on it, two grizzly bears over a moose carcass! It appeared to be a mom and a cub. As soon as they spotted us the mom sent the cub to the larger land mass to get away from us, and then she stood up to get a better look at these large floating things with the tops of human bodies sticking out! As I was in the final boat, I was passing by just as she stood up and I managed to snap this photo. She finally proceeded to follow her cub, thankfully, also moving away from the group!
Colin Smith – Coppermine River – NWT/Nunavut
It was about 3 am on the Coppermine River when we heard the first grunting from inside our tent. Curious, I stuck my head out to discover about 10 caribou entering the river from the opposite side.
By the time we had donned coats and shoes and got out of the tent, there were now about 40 caribou in the water. Intrigued, we decided to wake up the rest of the trip participants and by the time that was done there was a never-ending stream of caribou marching through camp.
The Bathurst Blue Nose herd that year was estimated at 90,000 animals. We were treated to their presence for about nine hours as they migrated through our campsite. When it was all done all that was left were a few predators following behind, the ruts of the caribou hooves and our memories of that special morning. 
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If you’re inspired by any of these incredible wildlife sightings, join us on a trip – you never know what might be waiting just around the corner! You can see our full selection of trip offerings at www.blackfeather.com!
