As I was retiring to my tent on the Camp Ridge in the twilight about 11:30 p.m. on June 29, I noticed a Caribou in the opposite edge of the river, about 125 yards away. For the most part it stood in about a foot of water and kept watching upstream. After some minutes I moved closer, right along the skyline; I waved a white pillow at it and shouted several times, but still it would not leave. Eventually it did move a few feet back from the water's edge and there appeared to browse on some dwarf birches.
The next day, watching from Pile o' Rocks northwest of camp, I noticed three Caribou passing on a northeasterly course. They walked for the most part, but now and again trotted. They were two well-antlered bucks and a smaller individual with shorter horns. One of the former paused to graze in a green-sprouting sedge bog. It was perhaps such fresh summer vegetation that had helped to produce fat an inch thick on the haunches of an animal secured about this date.
The area near the western border of Keewatin, lying at some distance south of Dubawnt Lake and west of the upper Kazan River, does not appear to attract large numbers of Caribou. Just once, in May, Charles Schweder has found them crossing a lake which he considered Dubawnt, but may have been Kamiluk. In his trapping excursions in that area he has found trails and other signs all along the way, indicating that the animals at least pass through on their migrations.
After July 1 no more Caribou were seen about the Windy River for five weeks. From information supplied by Charles Schweder, it appears that virtually all of the animals desert the southern portion of the Barren Grounds at this season. Before dropping their fawns, the does pass on for an undetermined distance to the northward of that portion of the upper Kazan River lying immediately below Ennadai Lake. The rear guard of the northward migration seems to be composed mainly of bucks and a few barren does.
A general veil of mystery seems so far to have enshrouded most of the natal places (except the islands along the Arctic mainland coast) and the first few weeks in the life of the Caribou fawns.
_Fall migration in the Nueltin Lake region_
In former times the southward migration reached the Nueltin Lake region in July (_cf._ Downes, 1943: 203-237), sometimes as early as the middle of the month. Suddenly the time of arrival shifted to (early) August, and has so remained. In Charles Schweder's experience, the bucks nearly every year precede the does on the southward migration; this suggests that at least the majority of the bucks may not go so far north as the does. In a certain year the does actually appeared first in coming south. In normal years, according to Fred Schweder, Jr., the migration continues till October or November, by which time the animals have passed into the wooded country for the winter.