When Iceland did not pan out, I first attempted to line up a hunt in Norway, but that didn't work out either, mainly because it was difficult to contact an outfitter there. Apparently, the fishing season was in full swing when I wanted to hunt. After trying other avenues, I called Bob Kern of The Hunting Consortium. I should have started there; he immediately suggested an operator named Magnus Lindstrom in Sweden. Lindstrom does a dozen or so moose hunts each year and also offers a limited number of reindeer hunts. Additionally, he is heavily into bird hunting and fishing.
Very few reindeer hunts are available to sport hunters, due to the paucity of cooperative Sami people. You see, in order to hunt reindeer in Sweden, you must have a connection to the Sami people, who own rights to all reindeer there. The Sami people have inhabited the northern portions of Scandinavia, Finland and eastward over the Russian Kola Peninsula since ancient times and long ago began breeding and herding reindeer. I had feared Lindstrom's hunt would be for reindeer in a tended herd, but that was not the case. These hunts are for genuinely free-ranging, wild reindeer, and the animals here are the biggest found anywhere west of the Urals.
Lindstrom's partner in the business is Roger Sandberg, whose link to the Sami people makes it possible for Lindstrom to offer reindeer hunts. Sandberg, though ethnically a southern Swede, grew........(continued)
