Out past Noel lake to visit the reindeer herd

Sunday morning was overcast and I was tired from getting back from Tuktoyaktuk at 12:30 AM the night before, left Tuk near 10 PM. by the afternoon it had cleared up and I thought I'd take the snowmobile out to Noel Lake. At the one hill / viewpoint before you get to the lake a solitary lounge sat almost waiting for somebody.

there was one party fishing on the lake but I stayed on the main trail and headed across - flat but good sledding. I stopped and took some more pics on the hills on the east side of Noel. I hadn't intended to go this far but the trail was great and the weather was fine. I continued along and eventually got over to the Canadian Reindeer hut where the processed meat is sorted and then transferred to town. As I pulled up these two were had just loaded up and after chatting, and telling me where exactly the herd was, they headed off down the trail. I followed the mentioned ski trail over some more hills and through some heavier brush and located them sheltering is a shallow gulley system.

I parked the machine by a recent butcher site - several heads and hides and one fox carcass that had come right up when one of the herders was processing some meat - I met him later on when he was making his way back to the cabin for the night. the herd was a bit skittish and hard to get near. they started to move of when I walked down to them. They ran up and over the crest of the hill and reappeared. So I tried a different tactic and used a frozen hide to disguise my shape and was able to skulk over much closer to them. I wasn't expecting to go out this far from town and I had only brought a wide to medium range lens so I needed to get reasonably close to capture any detail at all. At one point I was 20m from them, it was about this time something startled them from below and they actually started to move enmass towards my location before halting again. I thought for a moment that I'd have to reveal my position to avoid being trampled, ha ha. when they moved they kicked up a pile of dust and snow producing a moving cloud a debris that flowed with them - visible in some of the shots. Interesting experience watched them for over an hour and a half. Neat listening to their antlers clicking together.