Anticosti Hunts: New Options

By Mark Cote

In last month’s edition of Northwoods Journal I announced the acquisition of the Safari Anticosti territory. Since then, the level of excitement is off the charts at Sepaq Anticosti! The new lodges, cabins, another airport, and most importantly, Safari employees joining the Sepaq organization brings many more opportunities to clients of both outfitters.

It will be exciting to see what happens in 2023 when the hunting packages are announced. New seasons will be created in the Safari sectors to match what Sepaq has. The pricing has always been comparable, but for example, there were some differences in the length of stays, September and October hunters with Sepaq have a seven day stay with six days of hunting, Safari closed their camps for October and re-opened in November.

More Hunt Territory

Before the acquisition, Sepaq managed 1560 square miles of hunting, fishing and summer vacationing. Now, it has increased another 30% to a little over 2100 square miles. The number of hunters that spend their hunting vacation on Anticosti is in excess of 3,400.

I am frequently asked how big Anticosti Island is. It is 139 miles long and 36 miles wide. To put that into perspective, the state of New Hampshire is 190 miles long and 68 miles wide. Some think hunting on an island is like shooting fish in a barrel but as you can see, it would be a pretty big barrel! It takes over four hours to travel by truck from one end of the island to the other.

To continue the comparison, in 2019 New Hampshire Fish and Game department estimated a pre hunting season population of 120,000 deer. Anticosti also boasts a deer herd of 120,000, but it’s about a third the size. I don’t know about you, but when I go fishing or hunting, I like going where there are a lot of fish and deer!

Excellent Season

So far, the 2021 hunting season has been nothing short of excellent. The light hunt last year, due to the effects of covid, along with a relatively mild winter allowed the deer numbers to reach higher than typical levels. Hunters’ reports from all over the island were favorable. Plenty of deer sightings per day and lots of them were mature bucks.

A definite highlight of the season so far was Mr. Jonathan Pelland, from Quebec. He harvested a magnificent twenty-eight inch wide, sixteen point buck while hunting Lac Huard, an unguided camp on September 21^st at 5:30 pm. It is a buck of a lifetime by anyone’s standards and will be tough to top.

For information about a stay on Anticosti, call my friends at the reservation desk at 1-800-463-0863. Tell them Mark sent you.

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