Why the George River and Leaf River Hunts Stayed Closed

Quebec has issued no sport hunting licence for the George River or Leaf River caribou herds since 2012 and 2018. Both closures are still in force. Both were forced by the same thing: a population crash that government surveys tracked in detail, herd by herd, census by census.

What closed, and when?

The George River herd, which crosses the Quebec and Labrador border, lost its sport hunting licence first. Quebec suspended the hunt in 2012, for an indefinite period, and Newfoundland and Labrador followed with its own moratorium in 2013, since part of the herd's range falls on that side of the border. Neither government has reopened it since.

The Leaf River herd, which ranges further north and west across Nunavik, kept a licensed hunt for longer. Quebec closed it starting February 1, 2018, after biologists recorded a sharp, sustained decline. At closure, the most recent survey, from the summer of 2016, put the herd at roughly 199,000 animals, down from around 430,000 in 2011, a drop of more than half in five years.

Both closures apply to sport hunters. Neither herd currently carries a non-resident or resident tag for sale anywhere in Quebec.

How far did the George River herd fall?

A long way. Government biologists have described a decline of close to 98 percent since the early 2000s, from a herd that once numbered in the hundreds of thousands down to a low point that a joint Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador survey in July 2018 placed at about 5,500 animals, the lowest abundance ever recorded for that population.

That 2018 count is the number that usually gets quoted, because it marked the bottom. It is not the number that explains the closure on its own. The decision to suspend hunting came six years earlier, in 2012, well before the herd reached its lowest point, which is the order most wildlife closures follow: the trend triggers the decision, not the final low number.

Is the George River herd recovering?

Partly, and unevenly. A survey in 2020 counted about 8,100 animals, which biologists described as the first real increase in close to three decades. The adult segment of the herd grew by roughly 7 percent a year on average between 2018 and 2022. A further census in July 2022 counted about 7,200 animals, 11 percent fewer than in 2020, with calves making up roughly 22 percent of that count, a share similar to the 2016 and 2018 surveys.

Read those two surveys side by side and the picture is a herd that stopped collapsing without yet rebuilding in a straight line. A population recovering from under 6,000 animals does not move back toward six figures in a decade, and nothing published by Quebec's wildlife ministry suggests a hunt reopening date.

What happened to the Leaf River herd?

The Leaf River herd is by far the larger of the two, with about 430,000 animals as recently as 2011. The summer 2016 survey put it near 199,000, and the 2018 closure followed. The decline has not stopped: the 2025 estimate stands at about 136,000 animals, 12 percent fewer than in 2024, with a low calf ratio of roughly 25 calves per 100 females.

Unlike the George River closure, the Leaf River situation drew explicit criticism from Makivik Corporation, which said it was outraged that Quebec kept the sport hunt open through the 2017 season and did not want delays to repeat the George River collapse. That part of the story is a policy argument between governments and Indigenous communities, not a biological fact a visiting hunter needs to weigh, but it explains why the closure has stayed firm rather than lapsing.

Does the closure cover every caribou in Quebec?

No, and the distinction matters. The George River and Leaf River herds are migratory caribou, a different ecotype from the forest-dwelling, or woodland, caribou found further south in Quebec's boreal forest. Forest caribou hunting has been prohibited in Quebec since 2001, for a different reason: not a crash in a migratory herd's numbers, but a long, slow habitat-driven decline. Forest caribou have been designated vulnerable in Quebec since 2005.

So a hunter asking "is caribou hunting closed in Quebec" is really asking about two separate closures, migratory and forest, that happen to overlap in the answer: both are closed, for different reasons, under different files.

What happens to a hunter who takes one anyway?

Quebec treats poaching a protected caribou as a serious wildlife offence. A first conviction for killing a forest caribou can carry a fine up to 60,000 dollars, and a repeat offence up to 120,000 dollars. Those are the figures Quebec publishes for forest caribou; for the migratory herds, the simple rule is that no sport licence is issued, so any caribou taken by a sport hunter in those zones is taken without one.

What this means for a northern trip

A fly-in trip built around the George River herd in 2026 is a trip built around watching, photographing or simply understanding a herd under active recovery, not a trip built around a tag. Any camp still advertising a sport caribou hunt on these two herds is advertising something the province is not currently licensing. A hunter planning a season should check the current zone map and licence list directly with Quebec's wildlife ministry before booking anything built around caribou, since the two herds this entry covers are not the only caribou populations in the province, and rules differ by herd, by zone and by year.