A tourist tells of hiking in a remote part of the Arctic in the summertime, when he spotted a small group of caribou watching him. Then he was startled to see a huge number coming his way and realized he was in the path of a migration. Soon the caribou were all around him, but they ignored him completely and soon passed by. How would you like an experience like that?
Every spring about half-a-million of these deer-like animals migrate northward from the northern part of western Canada, parts of Alaska and the Yukon territory, traveling hundreds of miles to the meadow-covered shores of the Arctic Sea. There the Creator has provided great meadows of nourishing grass and big fields of a tasty plant called lichen (pronounced "liken"), or reindeer grass, which is part of the tundra growing over marshy areas.
The females, which have made the trip ahead of the males, give birth to little ones there. Baby caribou are such tough little creatures they can stand as soon as they are born and in less than a month can outrun a threatening grizzly bear. The males arrive some time later and stay with their families for several weeks. These large herds often share the grazing grounds with other caribou groups without quarreling, except for the big males that sometimes fight each other. But when it is time to leave, the groups never get confused with one another.
How about wild animals living along the routes they travel? Bears, cougars and wolves all eat caribou meat. They stalk the little ones particularly, and do capture quite a few on the outside edges of the herd. But these vicious animals don't dare chase very deeply into the herds or they'd be trampled by the big hoofs or meet up with the sharp horns of the males. In any event, so few caribou are caught by these enemies that it doesn't noticeably affect the size of the huge herds.
There are half-a-dozen or so species of caribou involved in both the northbound and southbound migrations, but they don't try to move together. If one group happens to overtake another along the way, they are almost always quite friendly. Then somewhere along the route each group knows instinctively when to turn off, and the others continue straight on.
As our opening verse says, our Lord, the Creator of all things, has "done wonderful things." As we consider these vast numbers of beasts, large and small, traveling such great distances each year with never a mistake as to their destination, we cannot help but be impressed with His ways with all He has created.
In the next article we will look more closely at some of the individual groups that make up these tremendous herds of caribou.