Caribou

Thursday 5:31pm, I got a satellite message from my beloved: "Got a little one. Right near camp."

I knew what it meant. It meant that he would be spending the evening skinning, gutting and quartering a caribou. It also meant that I would be spending the evening getting ready for an overnight camping trip, with a lot of hiking, and helping ferry the load back to the vehicle, parked roadside.

I got in touch with his hunting partner, Lyle, who was also going to head out with me on the same mission.

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Friday:

By 12:30pm, Lyle and I had driven 2.5 hours and hiked in 4+ miles on a trail with minimal camping gear. Caleb was waiting there for us. He'd spent the morning boning out the meat, placed it in game bags, and had already ferried over half of the 130 pounds of meat a mile from where he had shot the animal.

We walked that mile with him to get the rest of the meat, and then rendez-voused with the original meeting spot to collect more meat. Then hiked towards the road. When we got tired (packs were heavy!) about 1.3 miles later, we looked for our campsite for the night and then stashed everything under low-hanging boughs of black spruce, to keep gear dry and to keep the meat out of with watchful eyes of aerial scavengers.

We relished in the empty-pack hike back to original meeting spot, where we then loaded up with the rest of the meat and camping gear, and then ferried that to our campsite. It was a 10 mile day.

We set up camp for the night. This was all in the rain and, luckily, no wind. Temps: 38 to 48F / 3 to 9C. Multiple creek crossings and swampy / tussocky area on the trail. It rained through most of the night.

Saturday:

We woke up to overcast skies but no rain. A slow morning of coffee and breakfast before putting on our wet boots and packing down camp. We left our tents up, in the hope that the sun might come out to dry the tents some more. Packing out wet tents adds to pack weight.

For our first trip out, with fresh legs, we decided to go heavy and pack all the meat out. 2.8 miles to the vehicles where we had a very large cooler (or eskie, for my Aussie friends), and then hiked back with empty packs to get our camping gear. The tents were dry.

Nearly 9 miles today, with no rain. Even though there was only one creek crossing, the uphills and downhills were more brutal than yesterday. That said, I’d take these not-so-well-thought-out older trails over bush-whacking through willow, or struggling over soggy tussocky tundra and causing damage to the land.

Elevation gain from the parking lot to the caribou: 1500 feet.

Trail miles from the parking lot to the caribou: 6.5 miles

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During all that back-and-forth carrying of heavy packs / empty packs amidst incredible black spruce forest and tundra-covered mountains, I got thinking about a recent podcast with Vanessa Andreotti, author of Hospicing Modernity, where she offers a discourse on modernity and the path forward in a world profoundly out of balance, driven by colonialism, resource extraction, rabid consumption, and the myth of infinite economic growth on a finite planet.

She talks about expanding the conversation beyond individualism vs collectivism (for these are both anthropocentric perspectives that center humans) towards a culture of metabolism. By this, she means a culture that recognizes and lives by this recognition that we are a part of the metabolic processes of larger living cycles.

I reflected upon the happenstance by which I stumbled upon Alaska and her culture of metabolism.

The best thing that has ever happened to me was the opportunity to step outside of modernity's relentless grind and indoctrination into convenience, comfort, control and certitude.

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For those who are interested: This particular hunt in the Yanert Controlled Use Area is a highly sought after draw hunt (lottery). 1% of entrants get lucky. Only 150 bulls (bulls of any age) are allowed to be taken. Taking males out of a healthy population does not reduce the reproductive capacity of the entire population for one dominant bull will breed with multiple females: somewhere between 5-20, which varies by location and population density of the herd.

The whole area is non-motorized access only during certain portions of the year (including this fall hunting season portion) which means that you must be willing to hunt either on foot or on horseback. Most folks fly in on chartered small planes because, let's face it, hiking out with 120-160lbs of meat is not for the faint-hearted.

The last time that we were in this area, it was 14 years ago, for a horseback moose hunting trip with our friend John Hoegberg who is now on the other side of the veil.