The men stood at the far end of the ridge less than a mile from the remote hunting camp, scanning the valleys slashing through the 1,500-foot peaks in the foothills of the Brooks Range. They waited for the first sign of antlers, the first hint that the 500,000 Western Arctic caribou herd was on the move to its winter grounds.
“I see caribou,” said Kent Dawson, peering through his binoculars.
In the distance, three animals emerged from a stand of spruce trees. Two bulls and a cow appeared and then disappeared near the shore of the swiftly flowing clear water of the north fork of the Squirrel River.
Was this the beginning of the run, the awesome migration of caribou that compares to the migration of African wildebeest? It was mid-September, 85 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 50 miles north of Kotzebue, the 4,000-person Inupiat Eskimo community that is the hub of northwest Alaska.
The tickle of winter’s breath should have powered the herd from near the Prudhoe Bay oilfields in the north to Unalakleet, a village on the Bering Sea, but daytime temperatures hovered in the low 50s.
Each autumn, Andy Baker invites friends to his hunting camp reachable only by single-engine plane. Baker, 38, is the operator of 50-year-old Baker Aviation, a family-owned flight service based in Kotzebue. His prime hunting land is on high ground overlooking the braided river in the shadow of the rugged, bare mountains above the tree line. Dawson of Juneau, Dan Higgins of Sitka, Bob Thompson of Rochester Hills, Mich., and Tim Pine and Bruce Brunsvold of Anchorage participate in the hunting ritual every year.
In 2004, the men harvested 28 caribou. Regulations permit hunters to shoot five caribou a day in the region. Private outfitters bring hunters to the area for $2,000 or so, many of whom primarily seek trophies. Baker’s group is after meat.
“For people who have been here and who have lived a portion of the subsistence lifestyle, it’s part of the culture,” Baker said. “You share with other members of the family, neighbors, elders, people who can’t get out. It’s something you’re proud to share.”
For this group, the five-day trip is equal parts hunting, wilderness camping trip and adventure far removed from city life.
Fogged in
Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, connects by jet to Kotzebue, 400 miles away. Kotzebue connects to the Squirrel River by four-seat Cessna 206 that is not ideal for flying through fog and heavy rain.
Baker and his brother, John, a top musher in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, were the pilots, but a brief foray into the clouds turned them back to the main airport in Kotzebue, stranding the party for a day. The planes, weighted down with supplies, had to fly through mountain passes, so fog was a serious problem.
While the hunters waited, an SOS crackled across the radio at Baker Aviation. Eight hunters needed rescue. High winds, pelting rain and rising waters on the Squirrel River had swept away their tents and supplies. They were courting hypothermia and hunger. One hunter had suffered a heart attack.
A Blackhawk helicopter was dispatched from Fairbanks, and when a window appeared in the clouds, outfitter pilots swooped down too. Hunters in the worst shape were transferred to a jet and flown to Anchorage.
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Baker first hunted rabbits when he was 14. Then he joined John, older by six years, and another older brother on moose, caribou, duck and goose hunts.
“We taught him,” teased John, “mostly because we needed someone to pack.”
“And I was a good packer,” Baker retorted.
When the weather cleared the flights after a 30-hour delay in Kotzebue, Pine announced, “Time to go hunting.”
Actually, it was time to eat dinner. Pine, who works for an oil company, had a heart attack two years ago and wasn’t in tiptop shape for hunting camp that year. He discovered he enjoyed running the cook tent more than hunting caribou.
Last year, when several caribou walked into camp, he combined cooking and hunting easily. Baker jumped up yelling, “Don’t shoot the plane!” Pine stepped out of the cook tent wearing an apron and fired–boom, boom–dropping two caribou and said, “OK, now I have to go make a sauce.”
The planes landed on a gravelly, hard-packed landing strip, rolling to a stop 15 yards from three weather ports. They are permanent structures with wood frames and a thick visqueen type siding. They are divided into two rooms with cots and the kitchen. The floors are wood. Stoves heat the sleeping rooms.
“I don’t like to be cold,” Baker said. “There’s no reason to rough it. I like to be warm and dry. Or at least to get warm and dry.”
These friends pay back Baker with labor, building something new at camp each season; this year they installed a sink. The camp also featured an open-sided drying rack for dead caribou and a fire site with green and white plastic chairs surrounding it.
“One of my favorite things is having a big bonfire with the Northern Lights coming right across the sky,” Baker said.
Pine probably could hire out as a gourmet cook. Dinners included raspberry muffins, mussels, Caesar salad, shrimp, steaks, baked potatoes, garlic bread and cheese rolls. Oh, yes, and a German chocolate cake for Thompson’s impending 62nd birthday.
“No peanut butter here,” Pine boasted.
The table was covered with a white linen cloth. A bit fancy for the Alaska bush, isn’t it, Tim?
“It was cheap,” he said. “It was $1.97. It’s linen? I thought I was buying plastic.”
Dinner got a little bit goofy. Talk turned to the anti-hunting group PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Out of nowhere, Thompson, a retired auto industry executive, blurted out, “Have you ever thought of the plight of the poor carrot? Whatever did they do to anybody?”
The Carrot Reclamation Society was born on the spot. Carrot jokes dominated the rest of the time at Carrotbou Camp.
Thompson, alias “Chainsaw Bob,” drove a four-wheeler into the woods and the loud buzz of an active power saw ripping through wood echoed in the distance. Baker got his fire, one so gigantic it probably could be seen from the International Space Station.
`Weekend warriors’
Higgins, 58, a hardy long-distance walker and a former Marine sharpshooter, set a brisk pace up one of the nearby Baird Mountains in the morning. The high ground allowed him to see caribou approaching from several directions. Dawson claimed a position on the edge of the bluff overlooking the river and scanned the horizon with binoculars. Brunsvold sat down behind some rocks above the river. Baker and Thompson took up lookout spots at the far end of the runway.
“Pretty quiet,” Dawson said after a while.
The only sound was the rush of the river. The wind blew at a mild 10 m.p.h. Some blue showed in the sky for the first time in two days.
Dawson, a political lobbyist, expressed admiration for Higgins’ woodsmanship.
“He’s a heck of a marksman,” Dawson said. “He can shoot at 300 yards with no scope. We’re weekend warriors.”
The pleasant setting was relaxing, the surroundings so beautiful Brunsvold called it a “big, beautiful picture.” The only thing missing was caribou. The herd hadn’t received the memo.
“I thought Andy would have taken care of that,” Dawson joked.
Usually, the animals arrive in bunches, 17 here, 25 there, and then a stream of them crossing the river for hours at a time.
“All of a sudden they’ll appear,” Brunsvold said. “That’s the way it was last year. We had no guards out. We had no listening posts.”
Sometimes the men put down a moose as large as 1,200 pounds. A bull caribou is more in the 300-pound range. Thompson grew up in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, eating moose meat, and said these trips with Baker bring back his childhood.
“I have never taken more than one shot at a caribou,” Thompson said. “You shoot right behind the shoulder, or right in the chest. By the time I walk up the animal is dead.”
A moose in camp is a bonus, but a bear is a menace.
When the hunters arrived in camp last year, a grizzly had trashed the kitchen, tossing plates, cans and supplies all over the tundra, and had chewed on cans of beer and fire starter fluid. Worse, at dusk the bear returned. Nothing deterred the growling grizzly. It approached to within a dozen feet of the fire.
Adrenaline-fueled by the danger, Baker strapped on a headlamp, ventured into the fading light and, with a single shot from his 30.06, put a deadly hole in the bear.
“He wasn’t scared of us at all,” Baker said. “He was way too brave.”
Higgins, slender, bearded, wearing full camouflage, frequently took solo spotting sojourns into the hills. He strapped his 30-30 Winchester over his back. The gun was his grandfather’s and has been in the family since it was new in 1894.
Higgins was on alert if caribou slithered through the valleys. Instead he witnessed a bizarre scene. Camped just two miles away was a party of hunters who first sighted caribou. As Higgins shook his head, the sound of gunfire reverberated back to Baker’s camp. One shot, two, five, 10. A few minutes later there was another volley.
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Then Higgins returned with the scoop. Three hunters took 13 shots at one cow and eight shots at one calf. And they lost the calf and were going to abandon it. Still another hunter pointed it out to them. Twenty-one shots at two caribou. It was unbelievable. The gang that couldn’t shoot straight was camped just around the bend. It was not hard to imagine the neighbors coming to borrow a cup of sugar and, oh, yeah, some ammo.
“I will not shoot a cow with a calf,” a disgusted Thompson said. “Those are the things that will keep you awake at night.”
A solo calf emerged from a valley on the other side of the river from camp. It was not the lead scout for the herd. The caribou were not running because the weather stayed mild. It must be global warming, everyone agreed.
“There are 500,000 caribou out there and we can’t find one,” Baker moaned.
Just too far away
After the two bulls and cow left the trees behind, they crossed the Squirrel River and disappeared. Dawson edged to the end of the bluff. Brunsvold split off to the left to block their path if they emerged from other spruce trees.
Brunsvold, 61, a retired accountant, grew up in Rock Island, Ill. His brother is Joel Brunsvold, the director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and they hunted together for many years. Bruce Brunsvold didn’t ask for much out of this hunt.
“One or two caribou, that’s enough for me,” he said.
This was his chance. Long minutes passed, a half-hour. It was as if the caribou had transformed into ghosts. Then they showed themselves, the white blaze on the males’ chests visible through binoculars. But they were too far away for a shot. Dawson’s eyes followed as the animals climbed a valley in the wrong direction and swung wide around a peak out of sight. After an hour the stalk ended.
“That was fun, huh?” Brunsvold said. “A little strategizing.”
Back at camp, Pine, who was aching to cook up a caribou dinner, said, “Caribou 500,000, hunters 0.”
On the last day, departure seemed iffy because of rain and fog, but eventually the low hum of John Baker’s plane was heard. Because there was no meat to carry, Brunsvold decided to bring home a souvenir–antlers that had been resting by some bushes.
“I recognize that from last year,” John Baker joked.
On the hour-long flight back to town, the plane passed over a dozen caribou grazing on the tundra. Two weeks later, Baker was back at hunting camp and saw 30 caribou. But they were still too far away to shoot. However, a chill was in the air and soon enough a half-million animals would be on the move.
The elders will get their meat yet.
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