Archaeology of 17^th-century Inuit habitat on the Québec Lower North Shore shows a combination of Inuit and Basque material culture at coastal locations suited for hunting seal. Previous work has theorised Basque-Inuit relations as “joint ventures” within a context of enhanced Inuit seaborne mobility, afforded by access to Basque sailboats. Inuit sites show winter occupation and a high reliance on caribou – not seal – for subsistence. DNA study of caribou bones asked whether Inuit hunted these animals on the Québec-Labrador mainland, or if their hunt extended to Newfoundland as part of their seaborne mobility. It was enabled by previously defined distinctive mtDNA haplogroups for Newfoundland caribou (Wilkerson et al. 2018). We used a short D-loop fragment of about 400bp to assign haplogroups to ancient DNA samples. Successful analysis of 45 of 47 bone samples found an MNI of 15 animals, of which 12 likely came from the Québec-Labrador mainland (40 samples) and 3 from Newfoundland (3 samples), while 2 samples remain unassigned. Only 2 samples failed to generate DNA. These results show the potential of using ancient caribou DNA to illuminate 17^th-century Inuit hunting practices, seaborne mobility, and the historical ecology of Rangifer tarandus.