Northern ingenuity: Teenage hunters transport caribou by bike, homemade trailer

A couple of teenagers in Whale Cove, Nunavut, used some northern ingenuity to transport their hunt last weekend.

Bryan Ulurksit, 17, and his buddy Roger Nakoolak, 18, went out on the land on Saturday morning to hunt caribou witha trailer fashioned from old ATV parts, plywood and some two-by-fours. The trailer wasn't hooked to an all-terrain vehicle or pickup truck, though it was on a bicycle.

"It was good. It was tiring," Ulurksit said in an interview this week.

The pair hunted a "good size" grown male caribou with "lots of fat," the teenager said, and hoisted it onto the makeshift trailer.

"The trailer broke so we had to tie it up with the rope cause it started wiggling. And then I took my belt off, put it around the tire to the rack and then we started biking," Ulurksit said.

With all the stopping and starting, he estimates it took them one to two hours to make the trip.

But Ulurksit says it was all worth it in the end.

"It's good, a good exercise," he said.

"Me and Roger, we had some kidneys, we took the ribs, the bum, the legs and the liver."

Feeding his family

Ulurksit says he also does some commercial fishing, setting nets and selling his catch to the local fish plant.

"I just put fish nets out and I'm waiting," he said.

Ulurksit also hunted a seal last month.

"Every spring I wait near the shore and then get seal and then go get it with a kayak," he said.

"I'm just waiting for beluga whale."

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