First Caribou

            Laughter and happy conversation could be heard through the door making Jen completely unprepared for what she saw on the other side when her curiosity got the better of her and she opened it.  She instantly turned a dark green.

            On the other side of the door was the home economics room with what looked to be three full caribou in various stages of disassembly on the floor. 

            “Hey Jen, wanna help,” Myra asked.

            “Ah… no thank you,” Jen responded as she slowly backed out of the door, never making eye contact and completely unable to draw her gaze away from the carcass laying closest to the door.

            Jen was a brand-new teacher to Koyuk having moved up from Wisconsin where they did shoot and eat whitetail deer, but there were people who processed them, places to drop off the full animal, and it was for sure not something that people did inside of a school.  She was so new to life in the village that she even still had that “new teacher smell.”

            David (Myra’s brother), Myra, and I went back to cutting up meat and our happy conversation.  Three caribou just after our first snow meant that our freezers would be happy for a while, and our wallets would not feel the hit of village store high priced meat.

            And, so was Jen’s first introduction to meat without a middle man.  We did our own killing, butchering, and packaging.  We ended up with a superior product than what we could buy, had a more intimate relationship with the food we were eating, and saved a ton of money.

            All new teachers are placed on a steep learning curve, and Jen spent her first year staying alive in a kindergarten classroom, managing 30 mph winds on her way to school, and trying to learn about and from the Inupiaq culture of her new home.  Near the first snow of her second year, Jen approached Myra and me about the possibility of taking her out for caribou.  She had no gun, very little experience with one (shot a little as a kid with her dad), and had never been out on the tundra.

            First snow came and we began making plans to get her, another teacher named Joe, and his son Will out for a caribou hunt.  We loaded up a borrowed sled with gear attached behind Joe’s snow machine, and I attached my brand new built-from-scrap-I-found-around-the-school- building sled behind our machine.  Three adults and one 16-year-old boy loaded onto two machines and two sleds was more than a little cramped, but we were all smiles as we pointed our machines south toward Iglutelek and where we had heard small bands of caribou were located.  Quite honestly, we looked more like a bunch of gypsies headed for a new town than hunters going out to find caribou.

            Will just relocated from Louisiana where he had been living with his mother.  This meant two things: one, his blood was thin, and two, he didn’t have any of the proper gear yet.  Northern Michigan ice fishermen dress warmer than this poor boy did and he found himself in a sleeping bag not five miles from town in order to stay warm.  Again, this only added to the band of Gypsies image, or as Joe began referring to us, “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

            “Will, you awl right in there?” came the drawled Louisiana accent of a concerned father.

            “Yumph, Um alwright,” would come the muffled but warm reply.

            We continued on our southward heading making decent time until a new wrinkle began appearing in our plan.  Myra was the lone passenger in the sled behind me, and she began to notice it began to give a little more than it should as we bounced over the unseasonably bare tussocks.  The old sheet metal roofing I had used for a sled bottom and the treated 2x8s I had scrounged and used for supports began separating.  The sled was no longer something any of us would consider suitable for hauling human cargo safely, and so Myra piled into the other sled with Will, who I believe appreciated the extra insulation of another human body.

            A short time later, we ran into a small batch of caribou.  Myra, Joe, Jen, and Will pulled in behind a line of willows and got into position in a small draw below our quarry.  It was then my job to go up the hill, behind the caribou, park, and then begin to cowboy them over.  Evidently these caribou had never seen a John Wayne movie and were far from cooperative concerning my cattle driving techniques.  They skirted out away from me and in the opposite direction of the awaiting hunters.  They ran close enough to me that I could have hit them with a snow ball, but the goal was to get a first caribou for Myra, Will, and Jen.  New plan.

            According to Alaska hunting regulations, snow machines can be used to position a hunter while caribou hunting, but the machine is not supposed to be under power while attempting to harvest the animal.  Joe, Will, and Myra headed in one direction after a small band of caribou, and Jen and I headed in another after a herd not far in the opposite direction.

            Insert dueling banjo music here.  Jen was riding on the machine with me, but every time we would get into position and caribou were in range, she would get off of the machine, get her mittens off, take the gun off safety, get a shell jammed, get the shell unjammed, aim, and we would watch the caribou crest the hill and out of range.

            This awkward dance happened more times than worth recounting here, and we soon gave up and headed back to where we thought we saw the other group of hunters… but what we saw ended up being another group of caribou that laughed at us as they ran away.

            During our strange dances with caribou scene, Myra, Will, and Joe each managed to shoot a caribou a piece.  Myra made an amazing shot to the spine of a caribou standing about 70 yards away putting it down with one humane shot from the 30-06 she was using.  Will put one well-placed 30-30 round into a caribou’s heart, and to this day, Joe swears that the only reason he shot his caribou right in the rear was because it was the only shot that presented itself.

            Jen was a great sport, and even though she had not gotten a good shot at her first caribou, was happy for the three smiling hunters as we all set to butchering.  As we rolled the caribou onto their backs to begin skinning, Jen was amazed by the anatomy of the bull she was helping with.

            “They’re that big!?” she yelled in absolute amazement.

            The rest of us just kind of laughed and thought nothing more of it.  This was her first time up close to an animal like this and it was understandable that she had that reaction.  It was not until later that her comment showed its true relevance.

            On the way home, all loaded onto sleds and machines, butchering all done. We ran into one lone caribou bull perfectly silhouetted on a hilltop.  We all stopped, and after a short debate, we came to the conclusion that this was Jen’s chance.  Out came a 30-30, out came six shots from the gun in Jen’s hands, and yet the caribou remained standing and looked around rather unconcerned.

            Jen traded up in firepower to our 30-06 with its more aerodynamic bullet characteristics and fired off three thunderous shots still with no effect.  At this point, the caribou had moved out to around 100 yards and Jen’s frustration had become evident.  She racked another shell into the chamber and fired again, and then again, and then a third time, but along with the blast of the rifle, we heard the resounding thwack of the bullet connecting with the target.  A short stagger and the bull collapsed to the tundra.

            Following a round of cheers and back slaps, we went up to see Jen’s bull.  Upon inspection, it was discovered that Jen had not just hit the caribou with the last shot that went directly to the heart, but had also skimmed the back removing a tuft of hair as well as shot that entered the lower hind quarter, skimmed the groin area, and the poor guy’s anatomy.

            It was our unanimous conclusion that Jen had actually hit the caribou there with her first shot, and he had stayed around hoping she would just put him out of his misery as he no longer had anything to live for.

            We gutted the caribou and threw it on my homebuilt, poorly engineered sled and started for home, stopping 100 yards later when the sled finally just decided to completely disintegrate.  A passerby stopped and volunteered to haul Jen’s caribou home for us, and we were on our way again… Jen and Will both going somewhat hypothermic as the sun dipped and snow started falling.

            This problem was solved by putting Jen in the sleeping bag with Will.  Only in bush Alaska is it possible to put the kindergarten teacher in a sleeping bag with a 16-year-old student without attracting world-wide-news.

            Spotting the airport beacon made it possible for us to finally limp back into Koyuk with Will and Jen tied into the sled atop a pile of caribou.  Before making the final turn up the hill and back to the housing complex, Joe hit the brakes on what turned out to be glare ice.  His machine stopped, but the top heavy sled kept going in the only direction it could beginning to jack knife.  It miraculously caught, tipped up on one runner and settled back to the ground, Jen and will both wide-eyed.

            There were a lot of firsts that day: Myra, will and Jen all got their first caribou, and we all witnessed the first long-distance castration of a bull caribou.