Has anyone had any experience with Pine Ridge Lodge in Newfoundland? We are considering them for a moose hunt and Id like to get some feedback other than their supplied reference list.

Thanks

Three of us were up there last fall. We stayed at Pine Ridge's Kepenkeck Lake lodge.

I'm still trying to decide what I think of the experience.

The lodge was very nice; the guides were generally pleasant people and very knowledgable(one seemed to take life a bit too easy, but still knew his stuff) and we couldn't complain about the food--there was plenty, and it was good.

The animals that we killed were competently dressed, and flown out as soon as weather allowed. We opted to have them butchered in Newfoundland (bring cash for this--they don't take credit cards). They were then packaged very nicely (in packages very much like a grocery store would use) and kept in Newfoundland until the end of the season, at which point they were trucked down to freezer depots in the US for pickup (we used one in Allentown PA and one in southern New Hampshire; there was also one in upstate New York, and others in places as far-flung as Texas). The guide who did the trophy caping was very competent (a sealer in other seasons, and so a very skilled skinner) and the trophies, shipped with the meat, came down in good shape.

That was the good part.

The rest is where I'm still trying to figure things out.

When we flew in, we met the party going out; they saw, and took, some game (and, from what we understand, should have done better if they and their equipment were up to the job), but the caribou weren't anything that I'd hang on my wall and they didn't take any moose. The cause was supposedly the weather--they had what they described as "hurricane conditions" and didn't hunt for some of the time.

The day we came in was nice (Sunday is a transit day--hunting is illegal), but the weather was supposed to turn again during the week. Our hunting days went as follows:

Monday: Heavy clouds when we left the lodge, turning to rain early in the morning. The wind came up later. One of my companions shot a nice representative caribou (which was accompanied by two cows) before 9 am, and before the rain really got going or the wind began. I saw a coyote. My third companion saw nothing.

Tuesday: Rain and wind. One of the guys saw three cow caribou. Another had a brief glance at a cow moose. I saw nothing.

Wednesday: Rain. One of the guys saw two cow caribou. The rest of us saw nothing.

Thursday: Wind, but clear. I saw a cow caribou. We also saw a stag about 1 1/2 miles away, feeding in a bog, but my guide said that it was too far away to go after, even though it was still well before noon (this is one of the things that led me to have some doubts; there was some bad tangles of "tuckamore" as well as some bogs between us and the animal, and maybe it was feeding too fast for us to catch up--caribou are very deceiving that way--they look like they're feeding slowly but they're really covering ground--but it didn't look that way to me). Around noon, I heard more coyotes. One of the guys saw a decent bull moose, across the river and heading in the opposite direction too fast and too far away to follow. The other guy went to call moose at a spot we had not hunted before; the animals were heard moving around in the brush, but would not come out.

Friday: We went out, but the wind and rain were so bad that we were driven in within a couple of hours.

Saturday: The only nice hunting day of the trip. One guy, going to the spot where the moose were heard on Thursday, shot a cow first thing in the morning. My other companion shot a young bull moose just before dark in the afternoon. I heard coyotes again, but saw nothing.

The big question is, Why didn't we see much game?

The guides blamed it on the weather, and it is true that on the nicer days, some member of our party either saw or shot an animal. The guides told us flatly that if they were hunting on their own, rather than guiding paying clients, they wouldn't leave the lodge on most of the days that we had. This was my first time in Newfoundland, so I have nothing to compare it to,and that claim may well be true.

The guides were visibly upset by the lack of game; my guide said that you could usually depend on seeing six or seven caribou--not necessarily stags, or shootable stags, but at least caribou--every day in previous years; another guide said that sometimes you could see a dozen or more on a single bog, and that you should see something every day. I saw one cow all week. Our third guide felt so bad about not seeing game, and wanted his hunter to score so badly, that he was throwing up from nerves before the week was out--he certainly was trying hard, but was frustrated over the absence of game.

Having said that, one of the things that I noticed was that we didn't travel very far. The lodge had boats. It also had an Argo (ATV) that it used to retreive game. From what I had heard of hunting Newfoundland bogs, it can involve a lot of walking. However, when I checked the GPS that I carried, we never hunted more than 2 or 3 miles from the lodge, and kept returning to previously unproductive places, except at the very end. Different people were rotated through the same spots. HOWEVER, except for the caribou shot of the first day, the only places that animals were actually killed were in places OTHER than the places we repeatedly returned to. Every time the guides broke out of the same repetitive pattern, animals were seen, heard and/or killed.

Now, we went fairly early in the season. Perhaps, in order to preserve enough game in the area for everyone, the lodge limits the areas each party hunts in, so that later-arriving parties have the same chance of seeing something shootable as the early parties do. However, I can't help but note that we never hunted across the lake from the lodge, spent relatively little time east of the lodge and NEVER used the Argo to try to get a little further inland from the lake and seek out areas where the animals might be--it was used for game retrieval only.

Although woodland caribou don't migrate like other subspecies, they do move, so maybe the thought is that if the animals weren't present today, they might appear tomorrow. Maybe the coyotes (which are new to Newfoundland, only arriving about 20 years ago) are changing the way the animals act, and the fact that they were in the area moved the caribou out, or kept them close to the very tangled cover.

I don't know, and I'm trying to give the lodge the benefit of the doubt, because in many ways it seemed to be a very professional operation, with good people. Despite the weather and the lack of game, I enjoyed myself.

But...

I had a bear license, and actually would have preferred to do spot-and-stalk rather than baiting, but the lodge told me that I would have the option to do either. Yet the bear baits were not well maintained. One was just the lodge dump. The other was a pail of rancid "something" that was not renewed or freshened at any regular interval. Again, the heavy rain is not condusive to bear baiting, but the neglect of the baits raised a question in my mind.

The bottom line is that Pine Ridge lodge is still a contradiction in my mind. In most ways, it felt like a first-class operation, but there were enough little things, mentioned above, that I can't help wondering whether we made the right choice by going there.

I can tell you that the claim of 95% success on caribou, which they advertise, is a multi-year average, and I would be surprised if the 2005 number came anywhere close.

On the other hand, you're interested in moose, and I think that the 80% claim might be true, at least to the extent that hunters are willing to settle for a "meat" animal if necessary, as my companions were (and given how good moose meat is, I'm glad that they made that choice).

The bottom line is that if I wanted a moose, and wasn't planning to hold out for something to go on the wall, I would seriously consider going to Pine Ridge again. For caribou, however, I would probably go elsewhere, unless I could be assured by someone whom I trusted that they were again seeing animals in the area.

whiteeagle,
thanks for the detail of your experience. You raised some interesting points, Im going to call my buddy tonight (he's the point person for the trip)and read him the post. Looks like we will call wayne to confirm some things.
Thanks again for your info. What part of NY are you in?

Stalker

Our group, four hunters, went there this last fall. We had a total of six tags, four Moose, and two Carabou. Only one Carabou was taken. No other game was taled by anyone, period. As it is on a lake away from anywhere, accessable only by air you are really in a fix if there is bad weather, like we had.
Like was posted above. Day 1 no hunting as it is a travel day. Day 2 hunted after taking a boat across the lake to a well used field, nothing was seen and we did not go anywhere else. The guide diappeared for several hours, and then we walked down the creek bottom, the only solid ground, back to the boat to get back to the cabin. Day 3 and 4, rain and high winds. Could not get out of the cabin, and could not take a boat out in the lake due to the white caps. They said that there were no Moose behind the cabin side of the lake. Day 5 tried another spot, no luck. Due to the rain there was about 6 to 8 inches of water that you had to walk through. That is after getting through the grass, muck and rock that is under the standing water, very hard walking. Day 6 tried the first place again, nothing. We were trapped again in the cabin by the weather. The next group could not get in and we could not get out because of the high winds and rain. They had to charter a chopper to get us out and the next group in two days after we and they were to be rotated. I guess they were just out of luck and their hunt was cut short. The cabin, food, people were all good. The guides did try to get game, but none was to be had. As far as the bear hunting, they have three different tags. If you get the "stumble on" tag you had better watch what you do. There were two other hunters in camp besides us. They had "stumble on" tag for Bear along with Carabou tags. They took a Carabou the first day. Then they were surprised that they could not go hunting any longer as the only way you could "stumble on" a Bear was to be hunting something else while in the field. So they were stuck in the cabin for the entire time after the first day and could not do anything at all. They would not or could not bring in the plane to get them out. The few times the plane came in they said it ws on a mission to do something else and so they were just stuck there for the week, very pissed off. They claimed that they were not informed about the rules about the stumble on hunt. They also have a baited hunt like the other guy reported, and a third one, I forget what they called that one though.
At the border, getting on to the ferry, they asked if we had any game to declare. We said no. They asked where we hunted. We told them and then they said that there are five different hunt areas on the island and that the one we were in was the only one that was not getting any game, go figure. As to any claim about % of game taken I can't comment any more on that. I do know that it was 0% when we were there. Would we go to the same spot again, no. The people at the border said that the other four areas were "knocking them dead, and filling all tags". At a gas station the people in there said the same thing after asking us how we did.

Mike sent you a pm

Whiteeagle and mike 338

What weeks did you guys go up?

Thanks

Stalker--

I'm down in Suffolk Co., on Long Island.

We were the second group into Pine Ridge--last week of September, first couple days of October.

We wanted to be sure that any caribou we got weren't yet into the rut, and that the meat was edible. Perhaps if we went later more animals would have been moving.

Being a first-timer in Newfoundland, I feel a little bad criticizing the operation for what might have been a fluke of the weather (and it sounds like Mike338 had an even worse time--I wonder if he was on the group that went in right after mine, given the weather that hit New England the weekend after we left; my wife and I went to Maine grouse/woodcock hunting, and had 7 1/2 inches of rain in one day). However, I have also read (unfortunately, too late to change my booking) that the Middle Ridge caribou herd is declining rapidly. Since it is the herd that Pine Ridge hunts, I can only suspect that it may have contributed to the problem.

Our hunt dates were October 9 to 16th, 2005.

Maybe you guys should look into hunting in British Columbia? It is a lot farther for you to go and sometimes the prices are higher but with research and local advice(www.huntingbc.ca) you may be much more successful. derf

I think i am one of the 2 people Mike was talking about in camp in Oct. I was there with my brother. We did wind up taking 2 nice caribou (mine barely missed the all time B&C book). Doc (urologist from Detroit) also took a decent bull the last morning.

As far as the game? Not great. The weather was terrible though. Ony 1 nice day i think the whole trip. Saw a total of about 30 caribou.

As far as the bear tag..........damn right i was pissed. Wayne never said a word about how the tag worked before we got there. Also......said it shouldn't be a problem to get a bear. How it works is........you buy the tag, there is no trophy fee, but you can only take the bear if you STUMBLE UPON IT while you are hunting something else(caribou, moose). So yeah, we sat in the camp pretty much the rest of the week. We did sneak out on our own (big no-no) from the way it sounded. Accrding to law (provincal or Wayne's) no one was to leave camp without a guide and/or gun. Well......the guides don't carry guns!!! And........our guide had to go to another camp because they were short on guides. When we flew in, Dave (Wayne's brother). Informed us that Wayne wouldn't be guiding us (like promised). Sounded like they had an older guide at one of the camps that had told them (Wayne and Dave) that he would guide for a set period of time. That time was up and he was going home. So....Wayne had to cover for him. We got Maurice for a guide instead(great guy)which wasn't that big of a deal. If i remember right, i think Mike and those guys were also shorted on guides. I think if you booked a moose/caribou combo it is supposed to be 1 on 1 and they had to do a 2x2 because they were short on guides.

Weather is a key factor..no doubt about it. Would i go back with them again? Have me reservations.

Ask what their success is (was last year) and see what he says. Wasn't very good.

Wayne is a great guy (knows his stuff) and we were treated good, food was great but thing could have been better. Things should have been made right. Dave........different than Wayne. My brother had shot his caribou right away the 1st morning. I shot mine later that day. When we found out that we couldn't hunt black bear, my brother asked if he could buy another tag. Dave told him he would look into it. Never heard a word back. If it wasn't an option, he should have been up front about it.

Flying out.......they use someone else to do most of the flying (cheaper...insurance). We asked to fly out early. We could, but would have to pay for the flight both ways, since Sunday was the scheduled day. We did wind up getting out on Saturday becuase the brought groceries and someone in early because the weather was supposed to get nasty.

Shipping of the meat/horns. Meat is shipped to specified coolers across the country. This is done at the end of the season when there is enough meat to ship cheaper. You have to pick it up at the nearest cooler or arrange to have it transferred to someone else for shipping. Horns were the same way. According to Dave, they had 1 or 2 sets of horns disappear from the airlines, so now they do it the same way as the meat.

quote:

If i remember right, i think Mike and those guys were also shorted on guides. I think if you booked a moose/caribou combo it is supposed to be 1 on 1 and they had to do a 2x2 because they were short on guides.

We almost had this problem as well. They were supposed to have 2 other hunters in camp with us, but the booking agent the other hunters used got the dates fouled up, so the other two never showed. If they had, we were told, my companions with moose and caribou permits would have had a 1x2 hunt, even though the understanding--and what they paid for--was a 1x1. For some reason, I was still to have a 1x1--something that I wouldn't have wanted to explain to my friends, who paid more for their moose/caribou than I did for my caribou/bear.