The soccer teams did well in Kugluktuk with the boys placing first and the girl’s teams placing second. The basketball team is now of to Edmonton for a tournament. We just completed mid-term and did a report card, which was an interesting exercise in database logistics to print and deliver to parents. A brown out / power failure crashed the server so I spent the whole day fixing the server / system.

Was out skiing west of town last weekend and came across a large herd of Caribou – about 400 or so. After a while I noticed that there was a dead one lying just over the hill so I thought I’d get the antlers. When I walked over to it I was surprised to find the animal still alive. He knew he was dying – you could see it in the eyes.

From the marks in the snow it appears to have been dragging itself in the snow for several hours. It was a large older male so it looks like it lost a duel and likely broke its back in the conflict – no gunshot wounds. I did have a knife with me so I put the poor guy out of his misery so at least he wouldn’t be alive when wolves or foxes came around and started chewing on him.

Death makes interesting patterns – the drag of the antlers looked like snow angels and the path of the body made a sinusoidal-esque curve that matched the contouring of the hill - interesting what one considers to be a hill after being here for a while. I left his antlers.