Hunting Caribou
Hunting in Alaska
Yes, I was a card-carrying member of the NRA in my youth. I owned weapons and later was a member of my college’s ROTC-sponsored rifle team.
Today, I am not that person. I now live in a different world, a place where guns are not needed and definitely not safe to use outside designated ranges. I long ago sold my big-game hunting rifle which could send a slug of lead a thousand yards with accuracy and only recently discarded my 60-year-old .22 caliber and rusty bunny rifle.
WHY I owned guns is easy. For food and for safety.
My first experience with guns happened when I was 14. My aunt and uncle took me to a quarry outside Anchorage and had me shoot rounds from their .357 magnum pistol. I was instructed to hold it firmly with two hands and be sure to not have my head directly behind it. Indeed, the first shot rang my ears and almost took off my right ear as the pistol recoiled and sound reverberated through the rocky location. I was immediately impressed by the danger of such a thing… both to the receiver of the bullet and to the carrier of the weapon. I learned respect with that lesson. I also learned that a .357 was economical because you could use normal .38 ammunition in the weapon! OK.
My next real experience was at my school, Copper Valley. There, our prefect in charge of the boys’ dorm, the Scholastic, Mr. Kaniecki, had a small room on the second floor. On the wall over his bed was a rack of 6 old saddle carbines. These were .30-.30 caliber and not powerful enough to knock down a moose. But they were plenty capable of killing a caribou… called a reindeer when domesticated.
It was known that if we could supply ammunition for these rifles, they could be signed out for hunting caribou. This was a big deal… caribou were food, something necessary in a boarding school filled with hungry children!
And caribou, at certain times in the early spring, were so bountiful that our school was often filled with the carcasses of caribou that were hunted by students.
I was invited to sign out a rifle and join a hunt one day when the Nelchina herd was crossing the Richardson Highway, about 50 miles north of our school. Travelers coming south from Fairbanks reported sighting groups of caribou crossing the road, so Mr. Kaniecki asked who would like to gear up, climb onto the back of a donated Air Force 6x6 truck and go north to harvest some meat for Sister Ida’s meat locker.
I volunteered and gathered my toasty blue nylon Air Force parka and gloves, canvas mukluks, and ammunition for the short ride north. I was excited since I would have my first lesson in how to kill and field dress an animal. This was not something done in Western New York where I was raised!
The Nelchina herd consisted at that time of more than 50,000 animals that all picked up and moved in the early spring, running east to west in clumps of 15-20 animals, covering a wide area of the tundra. Seeing the herd move was an experience that was profound and exciting.
We spotted a small group of about a dozen animals crossing the highway and we pulled off to the side and jumped down from our truck to pursue the animals. We found a parallel off-road that was not plowed, but possibly passable from a north entrance, where a jeep-type vehicle was parked. No one was at the vehicle, so we bypassed it and walked along the road seeking our quarry. Soon enough we saw a line of animals, all following a leading buck like ducks in a shooting gallery. We promptly dispatched four of them, each killed cleanly to not ruin the meat. Though I had my new Buck knife sharpened and ready, my Native partners took no time to teach me to use it. They cleanly and quickly opened the animals and stripped out the entrails, bleeding them out into the snow on the tundra. Each animal had a weight of about 250 pounds, so we could not easily carry them to our truck that was a few hundred yards away on the main road.
If we could bring the truck down the parallel tracked road, we could easily heave the carcasses onto the truck to return to school. But the problem was to get by the parked vehicle at the head of the side road.
Two of my sidekicks remained at that vehicle, hoping to encounter the owner in case he could move the blocking vehicle. Meanwhile two others were busy with small hatchets hacking the animals into halves that could be dragged along if necessary to the truck.
Indeed, a large man appeared out of the brush to come to his vehicle. He was dressed in winter camouflage gear and seemed a bit unsteady. He unlocked his vehicle and retrieved a six pack of beer and a bottle of vodka to carry back into the brush, where his fellow hunters must have been enjoying a party.
One of the kids asked him if he could move his vehicle so we could easily retrieve our bounty. The man, most likely an off-duty soldier from Fairbanks, looked at the Native boys and ignored them, giving a look of disgust and disdain, a judgmental face that told them he was not a friend to Native people. He walked away.
Which left us dragging halves of caribou hundreds of yards along the road to meet up with our truck. Covered in caribou blood, I helped heave the halves into the truck and prepared to leave.
But the story didn’t end with delivery of our food. One of my classmates spent a few minutes removing the valve stems from two of the tires on the offending vehicle before we departed.
While I didn’t condone the event, I understood the action as retribution and knew that the victims would have a bit of a problem returning to base.
My third hunting experience took place a decade later, encountering the same Nelchina herd in a different location.
I returned to Alaska to teach in Anchorage in 1970. Soon, I was the proud owner of a new rifle. It was a 7 MM Magnum Remington rifle with enough power to knock down a moose at a great distance. I tested it outside of Anchorage, shooting across a quarry at a heavy tire rim set against a rock wall. When the slug hit the rim, it turned it inside out and blasted it into the air about 10 feet. This was not a weapon to use on rabbits!
My fellow teacher friends, around the lunch table at school, discussed the Nelchina herd, which in the early spring of that year, was passing by the Eureka Lodge 125 miles north of Anchorage. They planned to take snowmobiles to Eureka and follow a 20-mile packed trail back into the high tundra where they could encounter caribou running in small groups. I was invited to join the group and did so, knowing my new rifle would be useful and the meat could be brought back to town for our freezer.
The group finally consisted of 4 adults and an older child, with three snowmobiles. Two of the snowmobiles had trailers so we could all travel into the wilds along a good trail. Any harvested animals could be dragged along the trail back to the Eureka Lodge, so we could make do with that equipment.
Our trip to Eureka was uneventful, and we arrived at mid-afternoon. By the time we had motored into the area of the herd, we knew we had to be quick as dusk came early in springtime. No sooner had we traveled about 20 miles in, than we encountered a line of caribou to our left.
We disembarked and fanned out to shoot our game. We had three snowmobiles, loaded, so we planned to harvest only three caribou, which we did.
We field dressed the animals about 30 yards off the trail and dragged them to the machines, preparing to rope them behind each and then ride back to the lot at the lodge.
But one of the machines would not start. We worked with it for about an hour and darkness set in. The machine would not cooperate. The decision was made to leave the machine, one animal, and one of us behind as the others returned to the main road. Then two would return to pick up the broken-down machine, the animal carcass, and the volunteer who remained behind.
It was a crisp night with a full moon. The temperature was about 15 degrees below zero, but not cold with the right gear on. Being excited with the experience, I volunteered to remain behind. The offer was gratefully accepted, and I was left with the machine, the dead animal, and, not sure how, someone else’s rifle. This was an issue since I did not have the correct ammunition for that rifle.
I listened as my fellow hunters moved into the distance, hearing the machines droning even all the miles away. The extreme cold made sound travel, and I waited patiently for them as I could see, in the moonlight, the movement of animals passing by, ghostlike grey, using the visual purple (night vision) which had set in my eyes after a time. It was awesome until….
Until I heard the wolves.
Stupid Stupid Stupid
Here I stood, middle of the wilderness, a dead animal at my feet, no ammunition, in the midst of a wolf pack. I was not at the top of the food chain and suddenly realized my mistakes.
I listened to the whirring of the machines that were making their way back. I listened to the wolves.
I prayed.
And I was relieved to be retrieved.
Once we returned to Anchorage, we took our animals to the high school auto shop. There we tied the legs of two caribou together with a rope, threw the rope over the shop lift and raised the animals up. My colleagues removed the skin and divided the animals into quarters. I was given one half a caribou as my share.
This I took downtown to the Alaska Sausage Company, where butchers larded the meat (which had almost no natural fat), added spices, and for $.45 a pound produced a variety of sausages for my family.
We to this day remember the string of hot dogs that lasted all winter. Frozen and linked, we could cut them apart, thaw what was needed, and enjoy the best hot dogs we ever tasted.
Hunting in Alaska
Yes, I was a card-carrying member of the NRA in my youth. I owned weapons and later was a member of my college’s ROTC-sponsored rifle team.
Today, I am not that person. I now live in a different world, a place where guns are not needed and definitely not safe to use outside designated ranges. I long ago sold my big-game hunting rifle which could send a slug of lead a thousand yards with accuracy and only recently discarded my 60-year-old .22 caliber and rusty bunny rifle.
WHY I owned guns is easy. For food and for safety.
My first experience with guns happened when I was 14. My aunt and uncle took me to a quarry outside Anchorage and had me shoot rounds from their .357 magnum pistol. I was instructed to hold it firmly with two hands and be sure to not have my head directly behind it. Indeed, the first shot rang my ears and almost took off my right ear as the pistol recoiled and sound reverberated through the rocky location. I was immediately impressed by the danger of such a thing… both to the receiver of the bullet and to the carrier of the weapon. I learned respect with that lesson. I also learned that a .357 was economical because you could use normal .38 ammunition in the weapon! OK.
My next real experience was at my school, Copper Valley. There, our prefect in charge of the boys’ dorm, the Scholastic, Mr. Kaniecki, had a small room on the second floor. On the wall over his bed was a rack of 6 old saddle carbines. These were .30-.30 caliber and not powerful enough to knock down a moose. But they were plenty capable of killing a caribou… called a reindeer when domesticated.
It was known that if we could supply ammunition for these rifles, they could be signed out for hunting caribou. This was a big deal… caribou were food, something necessary in a boarding school filled with hungry children!
And caribou, at certain times in the early spring, were so bountiful that our school was often filled with the carcasses of caribou that were hunted by students.
I was invited to sign out a rifle and join a hunt one day when the Nelchina herd was crossing the Richardson Highway, about 50 miles north of our school. Travelers coming south from Fairbanks reported sighting groups of caribou crossing the road, so Mr. Kaniecki asked who would like to gear up, climb onto the back of a donated Air Force 6x6 truck and go north to harvest some meat for Sister Ida’s meat locker.
I volunteered and gathered my toasty blue nylon Air Force parka and gloves, canvas mukluks, and ammunition for the short ride north. I was excited since I would have my first lesson in how to kill and field dress an animal. This was not something done in Western New York where I was raised!
The Nelchina herd consisted at that time of more than 50,000 animals that all picked up and moved in the early spring, running east to west in clumps of 15-20 animals, covering a wide area of the tundra. Seeing the herd move was an experience that was profound and exciting.
We spotted a small group of about a dozen animals crossing the highway and we pulled off to the side and jumped down from our truck to pursue the animals. We found a parallel off-road that was not plowed, but possibly passable from a north entrance, where a jeep-type vehicle was parked. No one was at the vehicle, so we bypassed it and walked along the road seeking our quarry. Soon enough we saw a line of animals, all following a leading buck like ducks in a shooting gallery. We promptly dispatched four of them, each killed cleanly to not ruin the meat. Though I had my new Buck knife sharpened and ready, my Native partners took no time to teach me to use it. They cleanly and quickly opened the animals and stripped out the entrails, bleeding them out into the snow on the tundra. Each animal had a weight of about 250 pounds, so we could not easily carry them to our truck that was a few hundred yards away on the main road.
If we could bring the truck down the parallel tracked road, we could easily heave the carcasses onto the truck to return to school. But the problem was to get by the parked vehicle at the head of the side road.
Two of my sidekicks remained at that vehicle, hoping to encounter the owner in case he could move the blocking vehicle. Meanwhile two others were busy with small hatchets hacking the animals into halves that could be dragged along if necessary to the truck.
Indeed, a large man appeared out of the brush to come to his vehicle. He was dressed in winter camouflage gear and seemed a bit unsteady. He unlocked his vehicle and retrieved a six pack of beer and a bottle of vodka to carry back into the brush, where his fellow hunters must have been enjoying a party.
One of the kids asked him if he could move his vehicle so we could easily retrieve our bounty. The man, most likely an off-duty soldier from Fairbanks, looked at the Native boys and ignored them, giving a look of disgust and disdain, a judgmental face that told them he was not a friend to Native people. He walked away.
Which left us dragging halves of caribou hundreds of yards along the road to meet up with our truck. Covered in caribou blood, I helped heave the halves into the truck and prepared to leave.
But the story didn’t end with delivery of our food. One of my classmates spent a few minutes removing the valve stems from two of the tires on the offending vehicle before we departed.
While I didn’t condone the event, I understood the action as retribution and knew that the victims would have a bit of a problem returning to base.
My third hunting experience took place a decade later, encountering the same Nelchina herd in a different location.
I returned to Alaska to teach in Anchorage in 1970. Soon, I was the proud owner of a new rifle. It was a 7 MM Magnum Remington rifle with enough power to knock down a moose at a great distance. I tested it outside of Anchorage, shooting across a quarry at a heavy tire rim set against a rock wall. When the slug hit the rim, it turned it inside out and blasted it into the air about 10 feet. This was not a weapon to use on rabbits!
My fellow teacher friends, around the lunch table at school, discussed the Nelchina herd, which in the early spring of that year, was passing by the Eureka Lodge 125 miles north of Anchorage. They planned to take snowmobiles to Eureka and follow a 20-mile packed trail back into the high tundra where they could encounter caribou running in small groups. I was invited to join the group and did so, knowing my new rifle would be useful and the meat could be brought back to town for our freezer.
The group finally consisted of 4 adults and an older child, with three snowmobiles. Two of the snowmobiles had trailers so we could all travel into the wilds along a good trail. Any harvested animals could be dragged along the trail back to the Eureka Lodge, so we could make do with that equipment.
Our trip to Eureka was uneventful, and we arrived at mid-afternoon. By the time we had motored into the area of the herd, we knew we had to be quick as dusk came early in springtime. No sooner had we traveled about 20 miles in, than we encountered a line of caribou to our left.
We disembarked and fanned out to shoot our game. We had three snowmobiles, loaded, so we planned to harvest only three caribou, which we did.
We field dressed the animals about 30 yards off the trail and dragged them to the machines, preparing to rope them behind each and then ride back to the lot at the lodge.
But one of the machines would not start. We worked with it for about an hour and darkness set in. The machine would not cooperate. The decision was made to leave the machine, one animal, and one of us behind as the others returned to the main road. Then two would return to pick up the broken-down machine, the animal carcass, and the volunteer who remained behind.
It was a crisp night with a full moon. The temperature was about 15 degrees below zero, but not cold with the right gear on. Being excited with the experience, I volunteered to remain behind. The offer was gratefully accepted, and I was left with the machine, the dead animal, and, not sure how, someone else’s rifle. This was an issue since I did not have the correct ammunition for that rifle.
I listened as my fellow hunters moved into the distance, hearing the machines droning even all the miles away. The extreme cold made sound travel, and I waited patiently for them as I could see, in the moonlight, the movement of animals passing by, ghostlike grey, using the visual purple (night vision) which had set in my eyes after a time. It was awesome until….
Until I heard the wolves.
Stupid Stupid Stupid
Here I stood, middle of the wilderness, a dead animal at my feet, no ammunition, in the midst of a wolf pack. I was not at the top of the food chain and suddenly realized my mistakes.
I listened to the whirring of the machines that were making their way back. I listened to the wolves.
I prayed.
And I was relieved to be retrieved.
Once we returned to Anchorage, we took our animals to the high school auto shop. There we tied the legs of two caribou together with a rope, threw the rope over the shop lift and raised the animals up. My colleagues removed the skin and divided the animals into quarters. I was given one half a caribou as my share.
This I took downtown to the Alaska Sausage Company, where butchers larded the meat (which had almost no natural fat), added spices, and for $.45 a pound produced a variety of sausages for my family.
We to this day remember the string of hot dogs that lasted all winter. Frozen and linked, we could cut them apart, thaw what was needed, and enjoy the best hot dogs we ever tasted.
