Trip report – Reindeer and Geese, September 2023, Iceland

Outfitter: Ian Farrington, Farrington Deer Services http://farringtonds.com
Original ad on AR

Guides: Gretar and Andri. (No, I never got their last names!)

Dates: September 3-5, 2023

Location: East coast of Iceland, based in Egilsstaðir.

Species hunted: Reindeer (caribou) and pink-footed geese. Yes, in Scandinavia, they refer to all caribou as reindeer, whether or not they are semi-domesticated. These are all free range and wild. They are not native to Iceland, but were imported in the 1700s to four areas of Iceland. The reindeer in this area have thrived, but not in the other areas.

Management objectives and tag allocation: Reindeer in Iceland have no natural predators (except occasional bad winters!) and the population has been increasing in recent years. Therefore, the Icelandic government does a population assessment each year and decides how many reindeer should be culled by hunting. A quota is set for each hunting area (we hunted in Area 7) and a drawing is held in the spring of the year. I applied for the 2022 season and was unsuccessful; I applied again this year and was unsuccessful in the initial draw. But apparently all winning hunters do not carry through with obtaining their tag, so there is a secondary drawing (as I understand it) and I received news on May 2nd of this year that I had been allocated a tag.

There’s more information here on the population and hunting statistics.


Rifle: For the reindeer, I used the guide’s rifle, a Sako in 243(!). For the goose hunting, I used a Beretta auto.

Travel arrangements: We flew Tulsa-Chicago-Reykjavik, then drove from Reykjavik to Egilsstaðir (about 8 hours), where we stayed. It would have been possible to transfer from the international airport (Keflavik) to the domestic airport, then fly on to Egilsstaðir, but as we wanted to tour Iceland, we rented a car. Where we hunted reindeer was about an hour and 45 minutes south from Egilsstaðir. The goose hunting was much closer, but it took about the same amount of time by ATV.

Accommodations: We stayed in a 1-bedroom AirBnB apartment in Egilsstaðir.

Hunting arrangements:
The arrangements were somewhat different than, say, an African safari. The main aim was to obtain a mature bull reindeer, if possible, during a one-day hunt. The three-day time slot scheduled is to allow for the possibility of failure on the first day and/or heavy fog precluding hunting in the highlands. In our case, the weather was sunny on all three days scheduled for hunting, and very windy when we were hunting for reindeer, but it became rainy and misty on the days my wife and I were sightseeing.

We had two guides, and I was paired with another hunter from Denmark, Jesper. Jesper was both pleasant to chat with and was a huge help in the recovery – he carried out my reindeer head and cape while the guides were carrying the other head and cape, rifles, and hindquarters from one of the reindeer. I carried out two livers and a heart, while the rest of the carcasses had to be recovered the next day. Thank you again Jesper!

Ian offered to arrange goose hunting and trout/salmon fishing, both at quite reasonable prices. I quite enjoyed spending an afternoon and early evening fishing, though I caught only one brown trout. The goose hunting was quite a bit of fun also. Regulations are somewhat different in Iceland – we hunted past sunset, used lead shot and took 18 geese.

Hunting situation: I just finished a trip report for the Eastern Cape of South Africa; this was quite a bit different, though I was hill climbing in both places, and the elevation differences – 1400-1500 feet were similar in both places. There is not much vegetation in Iceland, so we used the lay of the land and lots of rocks to stalk close to the reindeer.

Reindeer hunting: After driving down to the area we’d be hunting, we unloaded the ATVs at a farm about 8:30, then drove through a river-bottom about a mile not too far from this beautiful waterfall:


Which, if you look closely, or look at the zoomed-in image at the top of the report, you can see some reindeer grazing. We parked the ATVs and started climbing.

Getting ready to climb; the black tube is one of the sleds mentioned below.





A few views from the initial climb


After about 500’ of elevation gain and a zig-zag approach, we found a place where we could see the reindeer at around 300 yards.


We watched for a little while, then the wind shifted and they were gone… uphill, of course. So, we kept hiking and finally after another 700’ of elevation gain caught up to them; we had to crawl the last 50 yards or so, but we got to a low ridge where we could see the reindeer spread out before us, about 200 yards away. Gretar assigned us each a bull to shoot, and as he had explained earlier, he would make sure we were both ready, then he would tell us to shoot. We shot at nearly the same time and put both reindeer down. Hard to believe, I know, but it worked.


My reindeer


Jesper's reindeer

We gutted and caped the reindeer and used “sleds” (rolled up sheets of high density polyethylene with grommet holes around the outside) that Gretar and Andri brought and tied the reindeer carcasses to the sleds. We dragged these down to the stream at the bottom of the valley and put them in the stream to keep the meet cool and keep the ravens off the meat. And then we started the hike back, getting back to the trucks at 6:15 pm Andri recovered the carcasses the next day. There was no way to get an ATV up to the spot!




Fishing: I’ve managed to not catch Atlantic Salmon on the fly in Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, and Norway! So, I decided to try Iceland, too. The peak salmon runs were already over, but there were still salmon in the river. Two days earlier, an 11-year old young woman caught her first salmon there. I decided not to bring equipment with me, as the fishing lodge could loan me equipment. Ian’s clients had been fishing with spinning gear, and I decided to do the same, using a black Toby. (A spoon sold by Abu in Sweden.) I fished the River Fögruhlíðará and caught one brown trout, had several other fish on, and several follows. It was a very pleasant afternoon and evening. Coincidentally, I fished in Iceland in 2005 on the River Varmá, where I caught… one brown trout.


Goose hunting: I’ve known for years that waterfowl shooting in the UK operated by quite different rules than in the US. Iceland is more like the UK; you can hunt past sunset however long you can see. You can also use lead shot and the geese are sold. (Does that make me a market hunter?) The geese were all pink-footed geese; I think the regulations on graylag geese may have been tightened. Andri was expecting that the big flights in Greenland would come in a week or two after we hunted and there would be 10x the geese!

In any case, we took a long ATV ride up into the highlands, somewhere around 2300 feet above sea level. There are a lot of lakes up there, but Andri took me to one where he was confident that the geese would fly in. About 20 minutes after sunset the action became fast and furious, resulting in 18 geese taken!


Conclusions: I had a great time, met my primary objective ( the reindeer) and was able to do some fishing and goose hunting. This was followed by three days of sightseeing along the south coast as my wife and I worked our way back to Reykjavik.

thank you very much for the report and the different hunting and fishing ways.

Hannay,

You definitely had to work for your bull, congratulations on making memories of a great hunt, in a unique environment!

Nice report!

Thank you for the report!

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Another great report! Well done Jeff - super looking bull and geese and brown trout! Anja and I must look into this one too!

Cheers and thanks for posting!

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quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
Anja and I must look into this one too!

Do that - Iceland is a great place to visit. And compared to hunting ibex in Kyrgyzstan, this will be a "walk in the park"!

Well done!

great report, thanks for sharing!

Great report on an interesting hunt. I've always wanted to fish Iceland for salmon...

Seems like a quality, affordable hunt! Congrats on a great bull!

Iceland is a fantastic place to visit . My wife says it was one of our more memorable trips.

Congrats!

Well done!

Reminds me of the Macnab challenge, but more relaxed and enjoyable.

Thank you for this fine report.

I felt like I was there.

Iceland is in my future, to be sure.

Mike - I will hold you to that statement!

Regards

Ian

Outstanding! Congratulations and thanks for sharing!

Ski+3
Whitefish, MT 59937