Subsistence Hunting in the Arctic of Alaska

Two caribou fed along the shore of the Kokolik River, 230 miles north of the Arctic Circle. They were bulls. Hidden by a rise, my Inupiat Eskimo hunting partner, Perry Pikok, nosed his 14-foot Lund into the tundra.

I grabbed the anchor and hopped out. Perry followed. I stepped back to let him take the lead but he pointed me ahead. The spongelike soil was so soft, so quiet. The only sounds were the rubbing together of my hip boots and the gentle waves of the Chukchi Sea lapping on to the beach in the distance.

The ocean breeze was gentle, blowing in our face. I looked to Perry for direction. He pointed at me and gestured with a signal to shoot. Easing over a rise in the tundra, the bulls were feeding where we’d last seen them. “You shoot the one on the right, I’ll take the other one,” Perry whispered. There was no counting. No more communication.

I laid prone on the spongy ground. It felt like a waterbed cushioned by thick, soggy moss. Gaining a steady rest wasn’t easy. I searched for a taller, dry tussock of grass and nestled the .30-06 into it. The shot was surprisingly quiet on the moonscape tundra. The bull dropped. The other bull lifted its head. Perry instantly hit it in the lungs with a .243. His bull ran over 200 yards and finally collapsed, 50 yards out in the middle of a chest-deep pond.

Point Lay

It was August 1990. My wife, Tiffany, and I had just moved to the village of Point Lay, Alaska two weeks prior. This is where we began our teaching careers.

“You better go to Alaska now, while you’re single, because no woman will follow you up there,” Tiffany told me eight months prior, on our first date. I knew that night she was the woman I’d marry. Four months after our date we were engaged. Three months later, married. That was 34 years ago and we’re still happily married.

Point Lay is one of the most remote villages in Alaska. When we arrived, less than 100 indigenous Inupiat people lived there. We were two of four school teachers in the village. I taught the high school, every subject. Tiffany taught every subject, 3rd through 8th grade.

My first caribou was one I’ll never forget. It was the first animal I hunted in Alaska. It was the first time I set foot on the tundra. The forgiving ground was so easy going, 
I thought. I had a lot to discover. Though I still had a year until gaining residency which would qualify me for subsistence hunting, filling tags on my sport hunting license got us through. Already, it felt different than sport hunting. It was about the meat, not the headgear.

"Grocery Shopping"

There was no store in Point Lay during our three years of living there. Each summer we did nine months worth of grocery shopping in Anchorage and had it flown into the village on bush planes, a process that wasn’t easy or quick back then. All the meat we ate was what I hunted and fished for. Little did I know the impact this lifestyle would have on my life and future career.

Before skinning my caribou, Perry pulled out a kidney and handed it to me. “You must eat it, it’s tradition with animals we kill,” he said. He took a bite first. Juices oozed from the corners of his mouth. My bite wasn’t as deep. Having a biology background, I was aware of the kidney’s function. I consumed the outer meat. It was warm and sweet. It tasted the same in moose and Dall sheep.

Caribou was the only big game we had access to in Point Lay. We were too far north for moose. Grizzly bears were rare visitors. The Inupiat people of Point Lay largely depended on beluga whale meat and blubber, which they hunted in the summer. They also hunted seals and occasionally, walrus. They stored their meat in communal, underground ice cellars, thanks to the permafrost that began forming a foot or two below the tundra’s surface. Being non-native, I didn’t qualify to hunt sea mammals, only the usual big game. That was plenty.

Tiffany and I ate three or four caribou a year in Point Lay. Ptarmigan, ducks and fish rounded out our diet. One of my most memorable caribou hunts, I came across a herd of over 200 bulls. They were crossing a stream. I worked ahead of them, the wind in my favor.

Herd Dynamics

The whole herd swam across the narrow river, their backs riding surprisingly high due to the hollow hairs that make up their coats. The amount of water on the Arctic tundra is mind-boggling, and makes for less than easy navigation. Caribou spend much time in the water, out of necessity. The herd hauled out on a gravel bar. Shaking like dogs, silver water dissipated from every bull. They continued coming right at me. But when they hit the alders, they stopped. It was then I witnessed one of the most amazing encounters I’ve had with these animals.

The bulls started stripping their velvet racks in the green leafed thickets. It was intense and loud. They grappled for footing on the gravel, their hooves making sharp sounds as they dug in for leverage. The power they spent ridding their racks of the itchy tissue was awesome. It’s not a passive act.

When a bloody-racked bull stepped out, four paces from me, I held out the rifle and pulled the trigger. There was no need to look through the scope. The rest of the herd wasn’t phased. I shot another bull. It dropped on the gravel bar, 20 yards from the first bull.

I gutted and strapped them to the three-wheeler, one on the front rack, one on the back, and headed home.

The Essence of Subsistence Hunting

It was a miserable, long, frustrating ride across the hard, bumpy, tundra. Balancing two bulls on a three-wheeler while negotiating some of the most uneven terrain I’ve ever seen is far from easy. This was one of my first tastes of how challenging the tundra can be. By the end of my time in the Arctic–and 25 more years of hunting throughout Alaska, I came to despise many parts of the tundra. It can be simple in places. But largely, I rank it among some of the most challenging habitat to navigate on the planet.

When subsistence hunting, antler size isn’t a thought. Many times, racks were left on the tundra. Subsistence hunts are about the meat.

Three years later we moved to Anaktuvuk Pass. Situated on the North Slope of the Brooks Range, in Gates of The Arctic National Park, this was reportedly the last Native village in the United States to be settled. Traditionally, the people of Anaktuvuk pass were nomadic, following caribou through the Brooks Range all winter long. In the Inupiat language, Anak means droppings and Tuvuk means caribou. It was a fitting place to call home for the next four years. The region is regarded as one of the most game-rich places in the Last Frontier. This was what I moved to the Arctic for. To experience subsistence hunting on the highest level and learn from the Inupiat men and women how it’s done amid one of the harshest climates on earth.

One year in Point Lay we went 199 consecutive days below zero. Not freezing. Zero. We charted it in school. Hunting and trapping in these conditions is unmatched.

A Thanksgiving to Remember

One Thanksgiving Day in Anaktuvuk Pass, I went caribou hunting. I was alone. It was 23º below zero when I left home. I had to travel farther than planned to find caribou. This far north, there are only a few hours of twilight in late fall. Right before dark I shot a bull. Quickly, I began skinning it. The wind was fierce. It was brutally cold, and the bull was freezing faster than I could get the hide off. I gutted it, rolled it onto the sled of my snow machine and sped back to the village. I put the bull in the school shop to keep it from freezing. I went home to warm up. It was 43º below zero and the high winds took the windchill to more than 70º below.

It was a luxury having the school to work in. Many locals used a machine shop, even their homes, to process game. I can’t imagine what it was like hundreds of years ago, without the modern conveniences we now have. I once skinned seven wolves in the shop, ones I caught on a 200-mile trapline. They were frozen solid in the snares. It took a few days for them to thaw. They stunk, but no one complained, not in a subsistence and trapping culture.

Twenty below zero temperatures are fairly comfortable to hunt in. But when the wind picks up, things change fast. In the Arctic a cold day can quickly escalate into a life threatening one when high winds hit. Proper clothing and survival gear are of utmost importance. Back then, navigation was done with a map and compass. I always told Tiffany where I was going, my planned route, and a timeline of when I planned on being home. There was no way to communicate from the field. Many unplanned nights were spent on the tundra and in the mountains. There were sunken boats, a plane crash, broken down snow machines and ATVs, and more. But we always came out on the good end.

I hunted with Ben Hopson. Hopson was an Inupiat man, born and raised on the North Slope. He’d spent most of his life in Anaktuvuk Pass. He was a renowned wolf trapper and hunter. We shared many outings together. I learned so much from Ben—I entrusted him with my life more than once.

Close Calls

One hunt found Hopson killing a caribou late in the afternoon. It was high on a mountain and necessitated a long, arduous pack. We spent the night as planned. The next morning, we spotted a band of Dall sheep in the mountains above camp. Three hours later we were in shooting position. Hopson shot first and missed. The band of six rams ran. I dropped one that toppled over the edge of a cliff. Hopson emptied his rifle. Nothing.

The five rams dove into a massive ravine. We lost sight of them for several minutes. Then they emerged on the opposite side, over 300 yards away amid some of the most rugged, rocky terrain in the central Brooks Range. “You shoot, it’s too far for me,” Hopson encouraged. Taking a steady rest on a rock, the shot toppled a big ram. It free fell more than 300 feet, bounced off rocks, tumbled end over end, then slid down a shale chute. It came to rest 10 paces from the first ram. Both were bloodied from the fall. But we each had a fat sheep for our families.

Back then, I could take four Dall sheep a year; one on a sport hunting license, three on a subsistence permit. We could get five caribou a day, each, all year under subsistence rules. This was in place for a good reason. Some years the caribou were sparse, their migrations shifting or being delayed for whatever reason. They’re an odd animal. If caribou were hard to find, people struggled to get meat. If a local and I were out and ran into a herd of caribou, we could shoot five each. This meat was shared with multiple families. The sight of seeing 10,000 caribou in a herd was common, something I wish every hunter could experience.

Late one fall I went sheep hunting in the mountains east of the village. I counted over 150 rams by noon. I shot one and headed home. On the way I spotted a bull moose in a river valley.

Common Bond

The next morning I found the bull. It was over 800 yards away on the open tundra. It was too open to sneak up on, so I called. It thrashed the tundra with its rack and big hooves. Piles of sod flew through the air. Some of it landed in its antlers. The bull’s white breath mingled around its flared nostrils as it lip-curled. Then it came, looking for a fight. I hunkered on the edge of a stream, amid sparse willows, occasionally calling. At 12 yards I shot it in the neck. I drove the Argo to it, quartered and loaded it up. You appreciate the easy packing jobs.

One afternoon Hopson and I were headed home with an Argo full of caribou meat and camping gear. Four of the eight tires eventually popped, stranding us in a valley just before sundown. Snowcapped mountains surrounded us. We built a fire and ate fresh caribou. We pitched a tent, figuring someone would come looking for us in the morning.

Just after midnight we heard an Argo approaching. When we got out of the tent, a faint line of Northern Lights danced above the snow-covered peaks. Three Inupiat men who’d come looking for us were glad we were okay, and thankful we broke down on a trail. Over the next four hours we all sat, drank coffee, and watched the most brilliant light show we’d ever seen. The men had lived their whole lives on the Slope, and said it was the most spectacular, colorful display of the Northern Lights they’d ever seen. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. When the Northern Lights dissipated, we fixed the tires and hobbled home.

When I was two years old, the last picture of me and my grandfather was taken, in 1966. He carried me on his shoulders through a Douglas fir forest. The family was hunting Columbia black-tailed deer, near our Oregon home. After a lunch break at the truck, I stayed with Mom. Grandpa, Grandma, and my dad went hunting. Grandpa hiked down his favorite ridge, sat on his favorite stump, and waited for a buck to show up. Grandpa died of a massive heart attack, his pre-1964 Model 70 Winchester .30-06 in his hands.

Heirloom

When I turned 12, grandma gave me the rifle. It’s the one I used to do all my subsistence hunting with in Alaska. It carried the same 4x scope and military issued sling. I hand loaded 180-grain Nosler Partitions for it. Due to the scopes limitations, my max shooting range wasn’t far; nothing like it is today. I had to get close before pulling the trigger. I took a tundra grizzly and a man-eating polar bear with that rifle. The experiences honed my hunting and shooting skills.

Hunting for meat to live on is quite different from how I grew up hunting. Back home, if you didn’t fill a tag, someone had extra venison or a cow to share. Or, God forbid, there was always the supermarket. No one was going to starve. To this day, Tiffany and I eat only wild game. We still do all our own butchering and processing. We’ve never taken a piece of meat to a butcher.

Subsistence hunting initiates a sense of pressure I never before knew. There’s an urgency to be successful because someone was always in need of meat. Miss a shot and two months worth of meat could be negated. That’s just the start. In the Arctic, coming home alive was always the priority. Survival is rarely a thought in other parts of the world. One mistake in the Arctic, in harsh conditions, can result in death.

Little did I know at the time, but the experience gained during seven years of subsistence hunting in the Arctic would provide me with the necessary skills to live a dream career. Following four years of teaching overseas—after our time in the Arctic—I was offered a job as a TV host.

Dreams to Reality

For the next 14 years I made my living hosting hunting TV shows around the world. Two of those years I hosted two shows, where going on upwards of 60 big game hunts a year was the norm.

Today, my dream job which I’ve been living for 25 years, is organizing and re-arranging words that have already been invented, with the hopes of bringing joy and knowledge to fellow hunters. Writing is my true passion. Would I go back to TV? Never. Would I go back to Arctic Alaska, take up a life of seclusion and subsistence hunting with the Inupiat people I’ve known? Yes. Tomorrow.

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