Hunting for perfect prey results in winning big awards

HUMBOLDT — For Chris Dufault, the hunt where he bagged his award-winning pronghorn antelope was special.

“It was the first time I've ever been drawn for antelope and it’s a very rare tag to to get nowadays.”

He spent countless hours during archery season and muzzleloader season, chasing antelope looking for the right one. He found what he was looking for, a 79 6/8 point antelope, on the first day of rifle season.

“I was looking for a big one. I was looking for a wall mounter. I was straight up trophy hunting,” he said. “You have to be selective, especially when you're probably never going to get another tag again.”

Dufault won the Humboldt Wildlife Federation’s Faye Folden memorial big game award, presented at the federation’s fish fry and awards night March 15. The award was one of four major awards to be given out that night.

Colin Pratt won the federation’s archery award for his 144 6/8 point whitetail deer.

“I love winning the archery award because it's a passion that I have, to always archery hunt, so it's a good honour to win something like this from the club,” he said. “I spend probably every second weekend throughout the fall archery hunting and just happened to be in the right place the right time.”

Kaitlyn Wickenhauser won the Rod Earis master angler award. She said she was excited to win the award.

“Now that I have a child I'm not going to get to fish as much, but that's something me and my spouse like to do is to go out in the winter and do lots of ice fishing,” she said. “We just enjoy getting out into the outdoors and definitely going to be passing it on to our children to enjoy fishing as well.”

A highlight of her season was catching a 13-pound, two ounce burbot

“That's pretty impressive, and they're not the nicest looking fish.”

The federation’s notes said that particular burbot should win an ugliest fish award.

The three Atamanchuk youth, Dawson, Morgan and Nolan, won the Bobby Kopp memorial award. Dawson and Morgan knew Kopp and remember him as an avid hunter and friend.

“He was awesome and really meant a lot to the community as a whole, so it's a really big honour to be able to receive this award,” Dawson said.

“Just for us to get this as a family is huge,” Morgan added.

Morgan said the best hunt of the season was when her and Dawson were down south hunting mule deer together

“We're able to do spot and stock on hers and she was able to close it,” Dawson said. “I was able to get a mule deer on that down there as well.”

Other award winners