The manager of the Northwest Territories' only reindeer herd hopes to cash in on the caribou decline by giving hunters the right to shoot his animals for $375 a head.

For that price, Lloyd Binder says, hunters are guaranteed to kill a reindeer and keep its meat.

He charges more if the hunter needs a guide and snowmobile transportation to the free-ranging herd, which is wintering 100 kilometres north of Inuvik.

The 3,000 reindeer, owned by Kunnek Resources Development, are descendants of a herd brought to the Beaufort Delta by the Canadian government during the Great Depression to help feed the Inuvialuit people when caribou were scarce.

Binder said it has been a struggle to make money selling packaged reindeer meat, so he decided to open the herd to hunting.

With the region's caribou herds in serious decline, he said his timing is right.

Fully guaranteed

"I think this is the kind of thing for a guy who likes to do it himself when he can't go out for caribou, or may have to go a long way and risk not getting any caribou," Binder said.

"It's fully guaranteed. If, per chance, they got an animal that wasn't healthy — and there's the odd one in any herd — well, they can take another one."

Hunter Ryan Drummond, who couldn't go caribou hunting because he's not a permanent resident, took up Binder's offer to bag a reindeer.

"The experience of going out and harvesting an animal and field-dressing it — although it is a lot of work — is very rewarding," Drummond said.

Caribou and reindeer are from the same biological group, but reindeer are slightly smaller and have been domesticated in the circumpolar world.