Scared of Reindeer in the Wild

It was just before dinner when our camp counselor Melia pointed out a herd of reindeer across the stream. Although reindeer have poor vision, they have a keen sense of smelling and hearing.The reindeer were eating not too far from where the old reindeer corral was, and decided we wanted to see how close we could get. We quickly changed into waterproof shoes, crossed the stream, walked along the little hills, went behind the fence, and started crawling towards the herd. We were less than a quarter mile away and they were already looking our way because of the dried grass that was breaking while we crawled.

As we slowly approached the reindeer , they started running away, so Mary and I stopped for a while. Mary thought situationally and her plan was for us to crawl towards the end of the bluffs, walk on the beach, and then sneak up on them. I took pictures and recorded movies; I then looked over and noticed the herd was at the end of the bluff. There were approximately 60-70 reindeer, there also seemed to be more males than females. They must have been curious and they were not even scared because they did not run when they saw us, they were walking towards us instead of running. The reindeer were only approximately 20 feet away from us. I started freaking out because I thought they were going to attack us. I told Mary “Look, they’re right there!” We observed them, at the end of the bluff smelling towards the ocean, like they were smelling us.

I was about to run off, but Mary pulled me down to stay hiding in a ditch on the side of the bluff. Many things were running through my head; I thought we were going to get attacked by the bulls because their antlers are so huge. I wasn’t going to just stay there and hide like Mary, because I thought we were dead meat. I was holding the camera, and when they started coming towards us I ran, then Mary ran after me. We ran about a quarter mile, stopped, and looked back. They were not even running after us, they were only watching. We both were shaken up. My hands were shaking, my heart was pounding, and I was out of breath. That was when I noticed I had dropped the camera, so we had to go all the way back and look for it. When we started back, and the reindeer ran away. We tried to get as many close photos as possible without dropping the camera. We did not want to be around the herd anymore, so we went back to camp and ate dinner.

After dinner we asked our camp cook Elena if reindeer attack, and she said they did not. Mary and I looked at each other as if we were crazy. Later that night, we asked one of the boat drivers Jonathan if they attacked, and he said they do if they are being hunted with a bow and arrow. The following day is when we left Nash Harbor and got to Mekoryuk then headed out to the airport. While we were waiting for our plane, Mary and I also asked NIMA Corp. member Dale if reindeer attacked, he also said no. Eva and Nicola said when they were hiking reindeer ran up to them, looked at them and ran away; which is what Mary and I could have done, but we were too scared.

Florence

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Summer Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.