Muskox shot in N.W.T. could break world record

An upcoming big game event in the United States will determine whether a massive muskox harvested in the N.W.T. breaks a world record. 

Bush pilot Alex Therrien has been hunting and fishing since he was two years old — mostly small game, like rabbits. But his recent trophy was a little bigger than that. According to the Boone and Crockett Club, an organization that maintains records of native North American large game trophies, Therrien's muskox could be a record breaker. 

In September 2020, Therrien and his fellow bush pilots Trevor Murdoch and Caleb Kirby went hunting for muskox near Artillery Lake in the N.W.T. 

"I ended up shooting a bull that I didn't really think was going to be that big, but it ended up being quite large," he said. "The closer I got to it, the more I realized how big it was. And … when it actually got measured, it ended up being the next potential record. That felt surreal."

Therrien learned to hunt from his grandfather on the east coast, who he says is "super excited" about his grandson's hunting success.

"It's kind of an unreal moment, really," said Therrien. "Everyone's been sending me messages." 

Therrien hadn't expected to harvest such a big animal — but he says he only had a limited frame of reference for how big a muskox might be to begin with. 

"Really, I just didn't know," he said. "I'd seen a couple of skulls, like the one mounted in the Cambridge Bay airport, so I knew this one was quite big compared to what I'd seen before. But then again, I figured I'd only seen cows before."

This muskox, which Therrien estimates was part of a herd of about 50 or 60 animals, weighed well over 181 kilograms — which the three men had to carry over rocks and muskeg back to their planes. 

"We packed out as much as we could, probably each having 100 or 120 pounds [45 to 54 kilograms] on our backs, back to camp," said Therrien. "We left the head and the hide all attached together."

The head and the hide alone weighed approximately 80 kilograms.

The pilots had to get creative to get the muskox back to Yellowknife — Aylmer Lake Lodge, where they had flown in before the hunt, didn't have a long enough runway for their planes to take off with that much extra weight on board. 

"We had to go down to an esker just about ten miles away, hike the meat back up to the esker and fly back over to Yellowknife," said Therrien.

Since that September, Therrien and his friends have enjoyed the results of their hunt — Therrien has had the skull mounted and the hide made into a rug, and three of them have been eating all the muskox burgers, meatballs, meatloaf and lasagna they can cook.