After a muskox hunt in Greenland, Pedro Ampuero traded the big rifle for something much smaller and spent a week hunting the way the locals do. The plan was simple. Find rock ptarmigan and Arctic hare, and see if he could talk an Arctic fox into coming in to a call.
Dog Sleds and a Small Rifle
Before any of that, Pedro ticked off something he'd wanted to do for a long time and rode a dog sled. His guide, Nuka, is a champion from Sisimiut, and Pedro says he was surprised by how fast and how powerful the dogs are once they get going. He'd spent days on ATVs, which means constant noise, so gliding across a frozen lake in complete silence felt like a different trip altogether. He even wished there had been enough snow to use the sleds for the hunt itself.
For the hunting, he carried a Bergara BMR in .17 HMR with Hornady ammo, and he's a big fan. It has almost no recoil, it works well out to about 110 yards, and he thinks it's a great way to get new shooters started.
Hares, Ptarmigan and One Missed Shot
The first Arctic hare turned up early. Nuka spotted it from the vehicle, sitting about 220 yards away, bright white against the snow. They put a stalk on it, Pedro got settled and felt steady, and the shot felt great. He still missed. The hare ran, and Pedro is the first to admit he has no idea what went wrong.
The ptarmigan turned out to be easier, though it took most of a day of driving to find them. Once a flock showed up in the bushes, the crew crept in to about 55 yards, and the .17 HMR did what it's good at. Ptarmigan matter a lot as food in Greenland, so the crew needed enough birds to take back to town, and Pedro kept working through the flock. He also spent some time admiring the bird itself. It lives farther north than almost any other, it has feathers all the way down its feet to cope with the cold, and its winter white coat had one stray brown feather left over from summer.
The hares came back into the story on the last afternoon. In the final hour of the day, two of them walked along a small creek, and Pedro nearly got a double. One dropped at about 110 yards. They were also enormous. The tracks looked like fox prints at first, and Pedro says he has never seen a hare that big. He ran the Javelin Pro Hunt Tac Bipod on it too. At 7.6oz with spring assisted legs and MagnaSwitch™ attachment, it doesn't add much to a rifle you're carrying around the tundra all day.
The Fox Who Wasn't Fooled
The Arctic fox was always going to be the hardest one. They're difficult to spot and extremely wary. Pedro's theory was that nobody really hunts them by calling in Greenland, so a hungry winter fox might not have heard it all before. He spent a couple of days moving from stand to stand and trying every sound he could think of. Nothing came in, or if it did, they never saw it. One fox finally showed up, then stopped about 380 yards away, looked at the decoy, and clearly wasn't buying it.
Pedro also admits he was a little relieved when nothing came in on one of the stands, because he'd forgotten to load his rifle.
He still enjoyed the week. As a bird dog hunter, he came away thinking how good it would be to hunt these species with pointers, so he reckons he's found himself an excuse to go back.
