In 1978 I was invited by some friends to go along with them on a Caribou hunt in Quebec. This was at a time when Caribou hunting was just starting to get popular there. Any way, I couldn't afford to pay the prices the outfitter was asking to stay in his luxury camp with hot showers, gourmet meals, French wine, etc., so I opted to stay in a tent camp some 30 miles away, do my own cooking, and heat my bath water over a wood fire. When my experienced friends and I split up at the float plane base, their last words to me were "don't shoot anything the first day, because all the Caribou will look big to a person who has only hunted deer in Pennsylvania". Well, the first day out, my guide and I spotted a herd of Caribou bedded down on a steep hillside. We beached the freighter canoe about a mile away, and stalked up the backside of the hill they were bedded on. We got to within 150 yards or so, and my guide told me that one of the bulls was a real trophy, and I should take him. I told him that my friends said not to shoot anything the first day out, because they all look big. The guide got somewhat pissed at me and said if I didn't take the bull he would. Well, I shot it, and yes, it looked real big to me. After all, the biggest animal I'd taken up til then was a forked horn whitetail deer. We loaded him in the freighter canoe, and headed back to camp. About 15 minutes later, a vicious storm came up on the lake, with winds over 40 mph, and rain, snow and sleet. My guide had me lay down on the deck of the canoe to lower the center of gravity, while he made for shore as quickly as he could. All the while, I'm looking up at waves that were easily 7 - 10 feet high. We finally made it to shore, and made a shelter out of the freighter canoe. We ended up spending all day and night under our little shelter. The next morning it was still blowing and we were quite hungry so we cut a tenderloin out of my Caribou and grilled it on a willow branch over a small fire we were able to maintain. No meal ever tasted so good. The wind died down shortly after 11 am, and we made it back to camp. Of course, everyone was worried about us, and search teams were out all over the place. From the base camp radio, we called the luxury camp to let them know we were ok, and that I shot my bull the first day. My friends were happy I was fine, but scolded me for shooting so early in the hunt. I didn't care though, I was happy. When we met up back at the airport for the flight home, my friends got their first look at my bull. It turned out that it scored (at the time) #12 in SCI, and was much larger than the bull either of my friends took. My bull would have been well into B&C but I had to split the horns for transport home.