58 minute read
PUBLIC LAND OWNER
roads in Bruce’s government-issued truck that smelled like wet dog. Rifles rode vertical and loaded in a compartment between us. Conversation was sparse. We ate grocery store buffalo wings from a plastic bag, warmed constantly over the defrost vents. I tried to breathe only through my mouth as I chewed.
Sporadically, Bruce would stop the truck at an unremarkable bend in the road or at a faint line of tracks crossing our path of travel and would bark at me, “Get out.” I never knew why we had stopped or what the task he’d assign me next would be. Sometimes he’d have me get in the driver’s seat and tell me to throw it in reverse. He’d instruct me to back down the road without turning around to look, sometimes for miles at a time. I’d wind the Silverado around blind corners, up and down hills, across creeks, through the labyrinth of Forest Service roads we’d just traveled. Other times he would put a gun in my hands – chiding me for being such a staunch leftie – set up an empty pop can as a target and then tell me how many shots to take in how many seconds. Sometimes it was a long gun, sometimes a pistol; I wasn’t allowed to complain about the kick or noise either way. He’d stand close to my right shoulder and say, “Exhale and squeeze. You better not drop or flinch.” Then I’d lay the piece aside, and we’d examine the target. Other times he’d bolt off through choked third-growth hemlock and wrist-thick stalks of American ginseng, covered in glops of wet snow, for a couple hundred yards, then he’d stop in a clearing while I panted and ask: “What animal’s tracks was I following? How far ahead are they? Did you smell any animal on our way here? Whose scat is that? What birds do you hear in the trees over there?” I knew I’d have some sort of primal pop quiz any time he threw the truck in park.
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Around the same time as guns, trucks and wild animals took the place of juvie, I began spending time with a yogi family friend, Lois. While yoga practice is commonplace today, 20-plus years ago it was fringe at best.
Her house was sunny and tidy, and the wood floors on which we practiced upstairs in the spare bedroom gleamed every time we met there. Lois was a wise teacher – she never told me what to do but, instead, demonstrated. I eagerly mimicked, observing how the practice gave her a sense of calm and composure I’d not witnessed in many adults in my life. While my wily mischief and unbridled intellect confused or intimidated most adults, she was unflappable, and I never tested or pushed her. She would put on a CD (that’s a compact disc, for those of you born in the 2000s) of our practice, and we would move in silence next to one another.
Driven by my paired boredom and antics in high school, I left at age 15. I promptly went to college full-time, then got a job. That new freedom of time and money allowed me more unstructured time, which I chose to use wandering alone in the mountains and writing tomes upon tomes in my journals perched in a crook of andesite or cramped in the front seat of the truck.
Still 15, I took my mom’s Suburban into the hills where Bruce and I had built that haybale den. The hills were north-northwest of Mount Rainier and covered in snow. I hiked for perhaps eight miles and doubled back on my path of ascent in a burn scar when I sensed dusk approaching. On the return trip, I saw the prints of a large cougar laid over mine: she had followed me. That was the first time I felt the now-familiar mix of fear, responsibility and wonder that comes standard with each of my solo ventures into the wilderness.
My time alone in close proximity with animals continued, nullifying the all-too-common and irrational fear most people hold of so-called wild animals.
Soon after teaching myself to climb, I spent my 20s in a cycle like this: work a high-paying desk job for a few years; save a few thousand dollars; quit my job; go on a climbing expedition; return from the expedition sick, broke and tired; get another job; repeat.
During my decade in and out of the slick world of global development and the parallel universe of my climbing mania, I had the obscene privilege of meeting many of the world’s great species – most of them while alone and on foot: a white-bellied musk deer in a Himalayan rhododendron forest; a Bengal tiger on the terai at sunrise; a close encounter with an Andean condor while clinging to a Patagonian spire; many prides of lions, a leopard stalking a puku, a hippo and her calf, and an unassuming black-necked spitting cobra in the Zambian bush. Until well into my 30s, I mistakenly thought everyone had as many nonchalant encounters with these mysterious friends.
Ten minutes following meeting the aforementioned musk deer, a Dzogchen Buddhist monk walked out of the brush behind me. He was my age, wearing crimson robes and flip flops, a giant smile spread across his face. We soon discovered our only language in common was Japanese and spoke it haltingly. He invited me to stay a few days at the monastery nearby where he lived and served as the artist-in-residence. In my high-altitude stupor and still questioning the state of reality given the sequence of events in the past hour, I followed him the short distance to his home monastery. Over the next couple days, he smuggled me dal bhat from the monastery kitchen, gave me instruction in meditation and began painting a mandala for me to take home. In the soil of my mind, tilled to fertile pliability by my decade-long yoga practice, his seeds of compassionate care and his curious inquiries found space to grow. Before leaving, I’d taken refuge as a Buddhist.
As the years passed, my inner voice of wisdom persistently urged me to live closer to the land, and I realized that my cycle of grinding away at the desk job then spinning off into the outer
space of expedition land every couple of years was unsustainable; I had arrived at the point of decision. Once I knew I couldn’t continue spanning the gap by not sleeping enough and having no social life, the choice was easy.
In a few short weeks I’d broken the lease on my house in the rainforest, quit my desk job, packed my Ranger to the gills with climbing gear and my cat and moved to the banks of the Chewuch River. There, from the banks of the river – a mile from where I now share a cabin with my 6-year-old daughter – I tethered my laptop to the one bar of 4G and completed my online hunter’s education between stints of shaking off triple-digit heat wetwading and bringing to hand trout after trout on my fly rod.
As my intimacy with my new home increased, so, too, did my interest in hunting. A common Western misconception is that Buddhists are prohibited from eating meat; this is incorrect. Even the Dalai Lama eats meat occasionally. In years-long discussions with my Buddhist nun, I shared how and why I believe that harvesting my own fish, birds and big game is the most compassionate way for me to eat. We discussed why killing my own sustenance, in shrewd alignment with my values, gave meaning to saying grace before dinner. She reminded me of the four elements of karma and their relationship to both killing and reincarceration. She made an excellent point: To mire myself in the suffering I inflict on the animals I take is to do them a disservice. I am called to cultivate deep gratitude for the gifts they give me and my family.
So, focused on providing a swift kill and taking my first animals with both my animal and human kin in mind, I shot my first grouse with my 4-month-old daughter tagging along in the BabyBjörn. I took the grouse on an arid whitebark pine forest a half-mile above where I’d first plucked a trout from a turquoise lake years prior when I lived in the back of my Ranger.
As I was preparing for my first season of big game hunting, a self-proclaimed wilderness shaman invited me to accompany him as he tracked elk on his favorite hunting grounds. When it turned out I could see tracks he couldn’t at full speed while driving, he
decided to stalk me instead – I obtained a stout restraining order and continued my hunts in the safety of solitude. Then, after a seasoned local hunter (who claimed he could teach me to hunt but then saw me in a dress and all he could say was “I wish I was 20 years younger”) told me you can’t predator call a bear, I knew my success – and, perhaps, my safety – resided in the shadowy counterfactual. I’d already run more than 30 solo, unsupported mountain runs (many while pregnant with my daughter), speed climbed glaciated peaks alone and taught myself to hunt and fish. Why would I chance the leering presence of a man on my hunt clouding my perceptive abilities? I didn’t need them any more than I needed a camo outfit.
Having learned from past wanders in the mountains that a distressed fawn sounds like a sobbing infant, I took my calling to the woods at the beginning of bear season, 2020. I camped alone and woke to temperatures still in the 70s in the dawn dark. I walked with my rifle – both of us sweating – to the edge of an unkempt creek bank bearing berries and grouse to do my work. I bawled until I was breathless, recovered, then bawled again.
Hearing a crack and settling of wings in a larch to the left, I ceased my cries and turned to regard the being who took interest in my racket. There, perched on the branch, was a magnificent bird with a piercing stare and a long, razor-sharp tail – a goshawk. Despite that my uncomfortable work had yielded yet again no bear sighting, let alone a shot, I knew I’d done it right if I’d called in such a handsome predator. Encouraged by the morning’s failure, I ambled back to my truck. There in the moon-dust, right next to my driver’s side door as if he’d stepped out of the cab, was the print of a massive boar. That summer and autumn I hunted four days a week, morning and evening, alone on the burned land surrounding my remote cabin. At the beginning of each hunt, I plucked a fallen raven feather from the ground – how is it possible? On each hunt, I saw fresh bear sign, and even once spotting the roan flank of a boar sauntering through a thicket of rose without a good shot. Not a single shot was fired that fall, and yet I exited the season feeling a sense of deepened intimacy – something ineffable from my DNA-deep history with the species had begun to lock into place. I knew the next season would be different. Following a weeklong heat dome that locked my valley into temperatures upwards of 116 degrees, I reveled in the comparatively-mild temperatures of mid-July 2021 by ascending a peak I call Flirts-With-Bluebird, a hunk of granite jutting out of the Chewuch headwaters. That morning the non-sense inside me had told me to hike up there alone to meet a bear. I had a feeling this was a divinely designed rendezvous with the bear I was going to take in a few weeks’ time to show me where we may encounter one another and for me to get a good assessment of the size and demeanor of the animal. I toiled in the still-hot afternoon sun until reaching the point where the scribble of a trail diverges from the creek and points toward the ridgeline and heard a telltale scuffling in the creek. Looking up from my feet, my eyes met those of a medium-sized boar perched on a burned stump across the creek’s gorge, perhaps 50 yards away. He cocked his head to the side, seeming to ask what I had to say. I chatted with him and then, when he didn’t run off, sang a couple blues songs to him. Then, without changing posture or tone, I said: “OK, I’ll be back in a couple weeks to shoot you.” Hearing this, he was on his back feet, gnashing his teeth and swiping his paws at the air. Departing this encounter, I took it as a sign that this was my year, and I would finally
Not a single shot was fired that fall, and yet I exited the season take a bear. Uncanny as it may have seemed, my Sámi ancestors have an explanation for the sort feeling a sense of deepened intimacy of interaction that bear and I – something ineffable from my DNA- had, said John Weinstock at the deep history with the species had University of Texas: begun to lock into place. “It was commonly thought that the bear could understand human language, at least on a fundamental level. Therefore, one could not use the real word for bear or parts of the bear’s body; otherwise the bear would become aware of the hunters’ intentions,” said Weinstock. In order to circumvent the ire of their intended quarry, my ancestors would have only referred to the bear in kinship terms or euphemisms. According to Weinstock, included among them are “(1) circumlocutions based on the bear’s characteristics such as muottat ‘the fur-clad one’; (2) metaphorical expressions such as meahcehas ‘the one living in the forests’; and (3) kinship terms such as luođuid eadni ‘mother of the wilderness.’ … using a kinship term would help give the bear a kind disposition toward people.”
Two weeks prior to bear season opener, a guy living down the road from me lit the forest on fire. The fire moved so quickly on that hot, windy July day that I only had time to grab the cat and a couple changes of clothes for myself and my child before we skedaddled. As we drove out of the valley, a clutch of firefighting planes dipped in and out of the mile-high wall of black smoke crowning my home drainage. The air had erupted in sirens. Pragmatically, I bid my home farewell. My daughter and I stopped on the Columbia to wash the ash and sweat off our bodies. A beguiling cast of sepia waved over our skin, and I tried not to let her see me cry.
Despite the ominous scene that chased us out of our valley and the firefighters’ grim tones the days following the fire’s hungry tear through our bend of the river, the cabin survived. Somehow, rather than trammeling over our four walls, the fire had traced a protective circle around our home. Our home, positioned where humanity becomes an inconsistent fringe twining itself with the Pasayten Wilderness, at the base of glacial ramps, which point to outposts of tundra, surrounded by the forests who feed us, remained.
Returning home was jarring. Not only had I reinhabited a ghostly shell, but the garden – which had not been watered through nearly a month of 90-degree days, dense blankets of fetid smoke and the heat of the fire hugging the garden fence – bore a vibrant crop of heirloom beans, lilies and a celebration of zinnias, which I put in a glass, filling it with water and stunned tears before setting on my bedside table.
All my hunt spots had burned, and the bear I met the month prior was now inaccessible through the closures. I busied myself with cleaning thick coats of ash off everything we owned, grateful my daughter didn’t have to watch me do it. I ushered armies of ants and a rotten refrigerator out of the kitchen. I greeted all the belongings that I thought were reduced to ash with the stupid joy of a child opening her birthday gifts.
I’d been home for 48 hours from our 25-day wildfire evacuation. I had moped in my writing chair all morning when the voice said: “Get up. You’re going hunting.” Not only did it tell me to go that instant, but it told me where. As my inner voice of wisdom is wont to do, it met me with insistence in repose.
That damn voice pointed me to a burned slope less than a mile from where I taught my daughter to ski three years prior, and where for two years running I’d tailed elk fruitlessly for two weeks on end in snowy mud. It’s where in the heat of the summer I take dusty refuge beside my Tundra to consume a half rack of La Croix and loose my hand on the page.
I hesitated but complied, wearing my bikini under my hemp
canvas because I couldn’t imagine that this random hunt on this random day would yield a bear.
As soon as I stepped out of my truck and into the forest, though, my many thoughts stopped altogether, and I knew the day would be different than the many hunts of the season prior. A forest I’d walked a hundred times before glimmered, though I knew everything green had turned late-August tawny and precisely nothing sparkled in the dry heat. The trees called my name and told me which way to walk.
I ate four kinds of berries with my right hand while my left kept a solid grip on my rifle and the feet beneath me moved without thought. Following a series of micro-events so strange and holy I dare not share, I found myself staring down the scope on my rifle, exhaling as my bear turned broadside and took a step forward into the copse of aspens that would serve as her grave. Mother Wilderness lay at my feet, blonde and still warm – I ululated, screamed, threw my rifle to the ground, waited, and then I got to work.
BHA member Raven Aäe is the founder of Magnetic North (magneticnorth.us). She shares a cabin with her daughter on the edge of the Pasayten Wilderness.
NEW FRAMES
MADE FROM OLD NETS.
GEMS
Among the AUFEIS
BY KEVIN FRALEY
Snowdrifts piled up and buried my cabin in interior Alaska in the winter of 2019. Outside, temperatures hovered as low as minus 40 degrees. When the cold, dark months trapped me inside, I used the time to dream about Alaska’s short summer and fall seasons. Inside, I pored over online maps, planning an early fall trip. I’d stumbled onto a scientific report from the 1970s that described fish presence in rivers of Alaska’s Arctic Slope, the area of mountains, tundra and coastal plain stretching from the Brooks Range north to the edge of the Beaufort Sea.
The report discussed several rivers in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the U.S.’s northernmost and largest refuge, which held adult, sea-run Dolly Varden char, prized for their sport and subsistence value throughout the Arctic. I’d explored one of these rivers on a previous hunt and hadn’t realized that “Dollies” were swimming below me. As my eyes traced the lines of the rivers on the map, I envisioned a packraft beached along sparkling whitewater and a large Dolly – with scarlet belly and constellation of white and red spots, ivory-edged fins and a toothy orange kype – nosing toward my fly. The mere thought of these fish got my heart pounding.
On the Arctic Slope, juvenile Dollies grow one to two years in upriver tributaries, finding refuge in the few stretches that don’t freeze to the streambed during the brutal winters. Later, they descend to the Beaufort Sea during open-water seasons to feed and grow. In late summer, mature adults, the biggest more than 14 years old and approaching 30 inches in length, muscle their way up Arctic rivers to spawn in headwater tributaries. After spawning, these fish drift downriver to a few deep or spring-fed pools, where they overwinter in large groups. When river ice breaks up in the spring, they return to the ocean to feed, ranging up to 40 miles offshore. This cycle repeats annually until they die.
I had never caught a Dolly on the Arctic Slope, despite a few previous half-hearted fishing attempts while caribou hunting. I hadn’t tried hard enough, and the Arctic Slope is notorious for bad weather. Rain and snow plummet, rivers blow out and fishable water disappears in the blink of an eye. Sunny days are a rare blessing, but I hoped to find a few fishable days this coming August.
I called up my friend John and asked if he’d be interested in an Arctic Refuge fishing trip for Dollies.
The plan as I outlined it was to hike about 20 miles upstream along a river holding Dollies, cross a drainage divide to another river, and float 16 miles back to near where we started. As Alaskan residents, John and I could pursue several species of big game animals on this trip, and we decided we’d chase caribou on the float out. Caribou herds migrate seasonally throughout the area, and hunting is allowed in the Arctic Refuge.
Wilderness originals like Olaus and Margaret Murie and Wildlife Conservation Society’s George Schaller fiercely advocated for establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a way to preserve the unique landscapes and abundant wildlife. Today, conservation and Indigenous groups continue to fight for its protection.
The refuge is in the news frequently, as opening the Section 1002 Area along the coastal plain for oil exploration has been a decades-long national controversy. The U.S. Department of Interior conducted a drilling lease sale during the Trump era, but it garnered no interest from major oil companies. And in 2021 the Biden administration subsequently suspended the few leases that were issued and ordered a moratorium on development in the refuge. However, debates at the local, state and national levels continue about whether drilling should occur, with Alaska Natives, politicians, economic development proponents, conservationists and outdoor recreationists all weighing in.
While oil exploration and extraction in the refuge may result in economic benefits and jobs, it may also result in irreparable harm to the landscape, wildlife and fish. The neighboring Prudhoe Bay oilfields have shown that myriad roads, pipelines, gravel pad and drill rigs can disrupt caribou movements and occupy migratory bird breeding areas.
Most animals on the Arctic Slope move long distances and would encounter oil exploration infrastructure during their annual migrations. For caribou, the sights and sounds caused by gravel roads, heavy machinery and the sounds of seismic “thumper” vehicles could be enough to change behaviors during the critical calving period along the Arctic coast.
Dolly Varden and other sea-run fish species undertake spawning runs through the Section 1002 Area while ascending rivers within the refuge and move along the coastline of the area during summer movements. If the area were developed, it would potentially expose fish to any negative disturbances occurring there (e.g., gravel extraction and chemical spills).
In addition to a classic Alaskan adventure, I was hoping to gain some personal clarity on the oil extraction issue while immersed in the refuge. While we would not be within the Section 1002 Area, the Dollies that we hoped to catch transit those coastal waters during the summer feeding period.
Time seemed to run away, and late August 2020 arrived. John and I embarked on our adventure from our jumping-off point a few hundred miles north of Fairbanks, just outside of the refuge boundary. We trudged across tundra tussocks with the sun beating down. Sweat poured off us under the weight of packs laden with our camping gear, packrafts, food, fishing rods, rifles, revolvers and other necessary items. A few biting flies buzzed around us, but the whining of the notorious mosquito hordes of the tundra were absent thanks to recent frosts.
Inflating our packrafts, we crossed a large river, then deflated and stowed the boats back in our packs and hiked upstream along a smaller, wadeable river where we hoped to find Dollies. We clambered across wide gravel bars and sedge tussock benches. There are no spruce trees on the Arctic Slope of Alaska, but stubby willows poked up in clumps in and around the river bottom.
The river started out swift and strewn with boulders. We continued up a couple miles through a small canyon, rounding a right-hand bend to find the wide plain of the upper river spreading out before us. As we walked along the gravel bar, we spotted a small grizzly bear along the far bank, fur rippling as it dug after roots or small mammals. With the wind hitting us in the face and the river roaring, the bear didn’t startle as it walked downstream, ambling by us at 200 yards.
Soon we came to a tributary entering the river. We snuck up to see the outlines of fish hovering in the icy, diamond-clear water, congregating in a large group before traveling further upriver to spawn. This was it. John rigged up a spinning rod, while I had my 7-weight fly rod and an articulated purple conehead leech. Soon, John yelled. I looked up to see him land a small female Dolly, recently arrived from the Beaufort Sea more than 120 river miles away. She lacked the harlequin coloration of the males but exuded a steely beauty. Releasing this fish, John continued casting.
Casting out into the pool, I felt my line lurch forward. A strong male Dolly stood out in the clear water with his brilliant red belly and white-edged fins. He bulldogged in the current, straining my rod arm, brilliant colors glittering like a collection of gems against the grey river stones. He was a nice six-pounder, among the bigger fish that we caught. A gritty survivor, he sported a finger-length gash on his side, perhaps from a seal lying in wait as he entered freshwater. Despite the wound, he torpedoed out of the shallows after I removed the hook. Both John and I caught more Dollies, as well as some large, dark purple Arctic grayling, resplendent with their iridescent sailfins.
Hoisting our packs we continued upstream until we saw a small group of gulls circling. This usually screams fish, and sure enough, we found a large group of around 50 Dollies holding in a choppy-water pool. The gravel banks in the area exhibited odd hummocks, sculpted by aufeis, some of which still remained unmelted just upstream.
Aufeis is the word for the 3- to 10-feet-thick icefields left over from the previous winter when water overflowed the river channel and froze repeatedly. These flat-topped mesas of white ice, created and then carved by river channels, sometimes extend for miles and may remain unmelted all summer. The fish downstream of the aufeis aggressively struck my streamer. My fly line zipped out when the big males made runs. I scrambled after them downriver, tripping and sliding on gravel.
When we began walking along a miles-long icefield to find a campsite for the night, a small group of caribou, including several bulls, raced along the top of the aufeis to within 100 yards of us in curiosity and then retreated, repeatedly. Anything we harvested here would need to be packed up and over a drainage divide to the river we would float out on, so we kept the rifle slung. We walked on top of the ice for a half mile – the flat, hard surface preferable to wandering through the gravel bars and busting through willow thickets. Traversing the frozen plain in the hot sun felt like a different planet.
Eventually, we stopped at a sandy beach along the river just inside the ANWR boundary. We pitched the tent and sat in light clothing, enjoying the late-season warmth. I noticed a large male Dolly swimming up the river below camp and broke out the fly rod, casting into the current. Without hesitation, he surged towards the fly and bit angrily, turning downstream. Hauling on the rod, I chased him down through a riffle, clear water spraying as I crossed the channel to a gravel bar to land him. After a short fight, he slid into my hands, kype gaping – a truly stunning fish bedecked in spawning finery.
The next morning, we continued upstream, further into the refuge. We still saw Dollies but squandered the few opportunities we had, expectations of more fish upstream making us careless.
Arriving at another canyon section with large boulders, looking at our map, we realized we needed to start ascending the drainage divide so we could cross to the river we planned to raft down. A large bull moose grazed along the tundra nearby. His half-graceful, half-gangly bulk seemed out of place in this land without trees.
We laboriously worked our way up towards a pass in the low, gray-shale mountains of the Brooks Range foothills, passing a porcupine high in the pass, shuffling along a dry streambed. I had never seen a porcupine this far north, much less miles from the smallest willow and was amazed by the adventurous spirit of the little animal.
When we dropped down to the next river, vast stretches of aufeis gleamed in the distance amongst a backdrop of bare, gray mountains. We descended a steep talus slope, the rocks clinking together. At the bottom, we made camp, inflated our packrafts and enjoyed dinner in the bright sun.
On our final day out, we floated our way down to the main river against a light breeze, carrying our packrafts and packs about a mile along a severely braided section of the river before it became deep enough to float again.
Once on the main channel, we zipped down the large river. The water sparkled in the sun as we scanned for wildlife and more Dollies. The way the water flew by, I knew we would easily cover the 16-mile distance to the takeout by the end of the day. A couple miles downriver, a grizzly bear burst out of willows on river left and splashed across the creek just downstream of us after catching our wind. In its haste, the bear plunged into a deep hole, nearly sinking over its head. We watched it scamper up the side of a distant hill, seemingly mortified by its undignified escape.
Continuing our descent, we were unable to locate any more Dollies, but eager grayling grabbed our flies. Later in the day,
we came around a bend and nearly floated past a bull caribou standing in a trance-like state on a gravel bar. We quickly pulled ashore. The caribou noticed us and jolted into action. John took the rifle as the caribou trotted along the river across from us. He sat down and aimed carefully, steadying his elbow on his knee.
Thwack. The bullet hit home, and the animal spun around in a circle before coming to rest in the tundra alongside the river. We waded across, pulling out our knives and game bags. The bull had a respectable double-shovel rack shrouded in velvet and would make fine eating.
It was quick work between the two of us to quarter the animal and gather the lean steaks, rib meat, neck meat and other scraps. Then came the challenging part – fitting all that meat and the head in our small packrafts, already loaded down with our multi-day packs. We piled everything on board. Miraculously, everything stayed attached through the half-dozen class III rapids on the way to our takeout point.
Coming around a bend, I caught a whiff of barnyard scent, and we soon floated past a herd of 20 or more shaggy-haired muskoxen, grazing and ambling around the gravel bars and willow patches just 50 yards from our rafts. Once extirpated, muskoxen were reintroduced to the Arctic Refuge around 1970, and it was a treat to see these charismatic animals.
It wasn’t long before we floated out of the Refuge and back to reality. Just a couple hours after harvesting the caribou, we’d reached the end of our journey and headed homeward. Already reliving the trip in my head, I again pondered the effects that oil development could have here.
Don Thomas called Arctic National Wildlife Refuge the “last best wild” it in the spring 2022 issue of Backcountry Journal. Abounding with fish and game, and revealing cryptic and beautiful secrets to the few outdoorspeople who venture far enough in the backcountry, it is imperative that this special, wild place remains protected and unspoiled for the enjoyment of future generations of Americans.
While oil exploration and extraction practices have improved in recent years, seismic surveys used for exploration have been proven by peer-reviewed science to leave lingering effects along the tundra and waterways they intersect, and the possibility of a catastrophic spill is also a concern. The 2006 and 2009 oil spills (267,000 and 45,800 gallons, respectively) in the Prudhoe Bay oilfields nearby are a troubling reminder of the impacts that could occur in the Arctic Refuge if the Section 1002 Area is developed. And the physical mark of the Prudhoe industrial complex will remain upon the landscape long after the oil ceases to flow through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
The story remains to be written about whether oil extraction will occur in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and we, backcountry hunters and anglers, must stand strong in defense of this “last best wild.”
Kevin Fraley lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, is a volunteer board member for BHA’s Alaska chapter and works as a fisheries ecologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society. When not dodging mosquitos and bears while conducting remote fieldwork, he is usually found chasing after Chinook salmon or sheefish with a fly rod.
FLATLANDERS’ ELK
Flatlander (noun): someone from lower elevations, typically those residing somewhere west of Appalachia and east of the Rockies
BY DREW KAZENSKI
BHA member Bobby Baker and I reside in Illinois, at 618 feet above sea level – just below the corn tassels.
In September 2021, we embarked on a Northern Colorado DIY public land elk hunt – a much different experience than our usual Illinois whitetail hunts. The combination of a damn good friend and a lot of research resulted in us coming home with a wealth of knowledge, meat in the freezer, a hell of a story and an even greater appreciation for our public lands.
I like to think of preparation as a circle, with the hunter in the middle, surrounded by the tasks that will make or break the hunt before it even starts. While standing in that circle, the hunter holds a block of anticipation, its weight increasing daily until the day you return home – always looking for what’s next, what to do now, where to go and how to get there.
Our preparation began long before the truck was loaded. Researching Colorado units was a yearlong endeavor. When we were notified of our successful draw, the summer was spent scouring maps, preparing gear and training. The plan and a backup plan were in place. Plain and simple: hike in with preparations to not return to the truck for seven days. Day 1
The truck made it as far as I felt comfortable: 1,107 miles from the comforts of home, parked on top of a ridge, just off a rough access road. As the sun crept over the mountain, reality set in, and I hoped I was ready, hoped I had everything I needed and hoped to see an elk.
We pushed into the dark timber with the goals of getting beyond the hunters camping near their trucks and saving time and precious energy by not having to return to a base camp.
At mile two, through the willows and blowdowns, I began questioning the weight of my pack. Calculating and celebrating each snack and meal quickly became a ritual. Each meal eaten from my seven-day stash rids my back of about four ounces. The next day, I’d be lighter. Truth is I just wasn’t used to the pack weight. By day two, the weight was less of a burden and became normal. I downed a snack, and we watched a bear pluck some berries on the south facing hillside. Our goals were different – he was searching for a few pounds.
At mile three in the 87-degree sun, we ran into a local bowhunter heading to his truck. Knowing that I drove across the country, picked a spot and managed to see a local there boosts my
confidence. We were more excited than he was, but he couldn’t have been nicer. Before we continued, he parted with, “You’ll find ’em, I just hope you can pack ’em out.”
My 160-pound frame boasted, “Challenge accepted.” But, to myself, under my breath, “Shit, I hope so, too.”
Little did I know he was the last person I’d see other than Bob for several days.
Day 2
We camped on a rock outcropping above a small waterfall, too amped to notice the serenade of flowing water the previous night. But at 5 a.m. it’s a damn good concert – even with no beer.
I heard Bob’s tent unzip; it was time to go. Breakfast was light – a meal bar and a packet of flavored caffeine in filtered, cold mountain stream water. I was probably eight ounces lighter at this point and a brand-new man.
We continued up the ravine. Tall peaks rose above the pines surrounding us. The morning was silent until the sound of a bugle breaks through like a 2 a.m. car alarm heard in my rural Illinois farm town. Holy shit! The bugles continue, but I knew enough to recognize he wasn’t around the next bend. We pushed on, over dead timber and through spring-induced muck that reminded me of March in the Illinois soil – the kind of muck that has no bottom.
In a serious whisper, one I couldn’t ignore, Bob said “I see a bighorn.” Our binoculars slipped from our chest harnesses.
“That’s no sheep; that’s an elk. Oh shit, there’s a bunch.” I checked my map; they were on a ridge at 10,000 feet, still some 2,000 feet above us. We then knew where to head.
By this point, the sun had reached a point high above, and it was too much to climb before dark. We glassed, soaked our feet in the stream, filtered water, set up camp and devised a plan. The next day, we planned to climb that mountain. We had a direction. And any direction was better than none, but a direction where elk were spotted was better than any.
Day 3
A nighttime shower ended hours ago, but the water dripping from pine needles above my tent gave the illusion it was still coming down. It was 5 a.m. – time to climb. We settled on a drainage to work our way up to a bench, then over the ridge by afternoon. Easier said than done.
Every step up, the incline increased – from below, it hadn’t looked this steep. I looked behind me – down – turned back around and decided to keep looking forward. A fire had been lit inside my leg muscles, ignited by an incline unlike any hill in Illinois.
I panted like a golden retriever on a 100-degree day, attempting to suck more air than was possible. “That was rough, Bob. That tested me. … The rest shouldn’t be bad,” I said, as if my first assessment hadn’t been way off. We stood on the bench just a couple hundred yards from the ridge the elk were standing on yesterday.
It was rough terrain. (Rough is a shit way to describe it, as that variable that can change depending on the person.) It was steep, burnt and rocky. I never saw another bootprint – it is the kind of place your mom would advise you not to fool with. Tracks left behind from some crazy bull gave some footing and mounds of occasional grass supplied flat spots to stand on. Just shy of the ridge, I squeezed out enough words to tell Bob, “When we get over, I’m just going to lay out, man.”
As I looked out across miles, I struggled to find the words to describe the beauty. That land, that public land, was worth every ounce of my energy – to see and to protect.
My panting had subsided for the first time since 5 a.m. (It was then 4 p.m.) I retrieved my binoculars and started scanning. The valley below us was lush. A stream was surrounded by areas of green grass, likely fueled by spring water at the surface. If I were an elk, surviving on water and vegetation, away from people, this was a very decent area to call home.
“Bob! I … think … I see an elk” I chimed in my slow Southern accent. On the next mountain slope, a bull grazed, naturally, with no major concerns – alert but relaxed. We were closer than we were yesterday, but timing was everything, and patience was key.
With no nearby trees, and wind that reminded me of Kansas, we headed down to new-growth pines. I would have gone any way except the way we’d come up. At 9 p.m. we set camp. I devoured a meal and slipped into a mountain coma.
Day 4
The temperature plummeted. It rained most of the night. I dragged myself from the tent, remembering the beating I was blessed with yesterday.
We headed to the stream for our daily water pump. Oh, how quickly we forget what really matters in our busy lives. My primary concerns over the last few days were finding a semi-flat area to camp, avoiding falling and obtaining clean water – the basics.
We headed to our glassing rock for a few hours: a perch above the 9,500-foot valley. The rock was large enough. If it was a garage, you could park your car in it – a gift from a glacier long before. Bob liked to combat the rain by wrapping up in an old gray rain fly, not moving, and telling me he was a rock.
The bull appeared again but had moved slightly further away. The timing was not right to pursue; he was high, we were low, and the thermals would push our scent right to him. Patience. We moved a little closer in the evening. I dreamed of elk coming down to feed in the green grass. Instead, we got a show of black bears. They crept over the ridge, never stopping more than a couple seconds. I’d compare their movements to that of a pinball machine in a 1980s bowling alley. One was within 120 yards but became aware of us; I’m pretty sure it is still running to Wyoming.
The bull never showed. Just before dark he let out a bugle and continued until a thunderstorm hit at 10 p.m. My faith was restored; there was still a chance. He was still here, and so were the Flatlanders.
My eyes snapped open as if they were a saloon door meeting the boot of a cowboy in an old Western. It’s a bugle, not just any bugle. It was close enough that we realized we needed to evacuate the tent. There was still time. It was dark, but the sun raced from the east.
I heard Bob’s groggy voice, “Let’s get him!” We decided to head to Glassing Rock to get an idea on where he was.
I told Bob, “It was really damp last night; when we get there I’m going to reload this muzzleloader.”
We never made it to Glassing Rock.
The sun was creeping over the mountain.
“There’s elk!” Bob whispered. There they were, 300 yards in the bottom. Bob scanned through his binoculars. “It’s a legal bull; let’s go.” We spaced out about 30 yards – more opportunities for shots, less movement in one spot. Bob started “speaking cow” through a mouth call. The bull let out a bugle, turned toward us and was on a mission. I signalled to Bob that the white rock ahead was 120 yards. The bull didn’t stop moving until he was standing at 100 yards, just in front of the white rock.
I was positioned on a log, perfect bench height, focused on the front sight. The world around me drifted away. It was me and the bull – my finger on the trigger. POOF – the gun fires. It was a smoke show, but it sounded like only half the powder went. My stomach turned into what felt like a thousand twists and crawled up into my throat.
The bull stared at me. A small part of me said to cuss, reload and try again. My mind also said Bob may have a shot. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Imagine you are a rock behind some smoke. BOOM, Bob’s muzzleloader yells. A 338-grain slug made contact, piercing both lungs and stopping just inside the hide on the far side. The bull made a couple steps and crashed down.
I can’t imagine the pressure Bob must have felt, yet he still made the shot after hearing my light load.
My legs were shaking so badly I could hardly stand. I looked for Bob and saw his grin. I threw my hands in the air with excitement. “WE DID IT!”
An hour before I’d sent my wife a satellite message – it was our anniversary. My next message home read: “BULL DOWN BULL DOWN BULL DOWN.”
Only 10% of those who are lucky enough to get a tag here are successful. From beginning to end, we researched, studied and trained for that moment. However, with a bull on the ground, the real work had just begun.
There was nothing but appreciation for what this bull would provide our families. I was humbled. My stomach was no longer twisted. I felt nothing but thankfulness.
We were on public land, 9,500 feet and six miles from the truck. Camp was our back. The plan was to relay meat and camp and keep it all moving. We made quick work of the breakdown and were ready to pack two hind quarters, two front quarters, two backstraps the size of my legs and three bags of trim.
We loaded the first relay, each taking a hind quarter. We’d move down the mountain a quarter mile, place those loads in the shade and then head back empty for more. The second load is two front quarters and a bag of trim. Backstraps, trim and skull is the other.
The third load was camp; it was the lightest.
“BULL DOWN BULL DOWN BULL DOWN” was sent at 8 a.m. We worked through the day – pack, rest, water, repeat. At 11 p.m., all of the meat and camp was down the mountain. It was no easy feat, and surprisingly, after watching bears all week, no one had greeted the moving meat pile.
I felt like an ant moving a giant piece of food down a hill. I also felt like the strongest person in the world – with a really sore back. Too tired to pitch my tent, I used my trekking poles to support a rain fly. We slept on the ground under a pine, the meat stacked in a different tree – far enough but not too far. We were still three miles from the truck.
Day 6
I woke up in the same position I’d fallen asleep in. Sleep was not a struggle. We moved our packs to the trailhead. The truck is another mile beyond that. Along the way we ran into hunters from Nebraska.
“Giving up?” one asked.
“No, sir, still in it. We are packing meat,” I proudly replied.
“Are you the Illinois boys, by chance? Their truck hasn’t moved since we’ve been here, starting to get a little worried.”
“Yep! I’ll take that as a compliment. We are better than OK, just heavier than when we left,” I said.
We continued relaying; by 4 p.m, all the meat was at the trailhead. We were beat but not broken. The decision was made to carry some meat further toward the truck, then to head up the switchback road and bring the truck down as far as we could – it might save us some time and energy.
As we started to climb switchback road, the Nebraska crew was done hunting for the day and returning to their camp – on ATVs. “Can we help?”
“Yes, yes, you sure can.” Their assistance saved us about a mile
each way and a couple hours’ time. All the was meat loaded in coolers, which had been prestocked with ice. When you plan as if you are bringing something back, you’ll be ready when you do.
Before we left the flatland, Bob and I had real conversations about scenarios we’d run into. From the beginning, the plan was if you had a shot, take it, and we’d split whatever we brought back. Hell! Bob had even presented the idea of using a bandsaw to split the skull.
It’d be a good story, but there was no need. I had meat, a damn good story and a hell of a friend. The experience was unlike anything else, and the meat was an added bonus. Both were unlikely to have happened without public land.
Drew Kazenski resides in rural Central Illinois and serves as co-chair of the Illinois BHA chapter. With a great passion for hunting, fishing, conservation and the future of it all, he believes we all take something from the land; therefore we should all give something back.
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HOOF BUNDLES
BY MIKE STEVENSON
Lime green lichen grew between the hooves, shreds of faded hair and rawhide still clung to them, and gnaw marks from mice and grizzlies had long ago turned gray against the white bone. I was surprised that the elk hoof bundle was still there. Time had changed the forest, and through the falling snow, it had taken a while to find the tree in which it hung. The old No. 9 lookout phone wire had held tight though, and there it was. I remembered back to the day I’d hung it up; was it really almost 40 years ago?
The bull had known I was on his trail. I was not the first predator to follow him, and he knew some tricks. But that day must have been his day off because he wasn’t in a hurry, and he made two mistakes: he bedded upwind and too close to the old logging road where I tracked him. For the last half mile his meandering tracks had told me he was thinking of laying down, and when he got close to the little knoll where I knew bulls had bedded before, I started tasting elk steaks.
His tracks left the road and snuck into the thick forest. The snow was quieter on the road though, so I stayed on it a little longer. With my finger on the trigger, I inched forward. Then like a rocket, the bull was up and changing address fast. Seconds before, I had subliminally noted a narrow window through the brush. As he moved, my sights were on the opening a split second before he was – just long enough for the .30-06 180 gr. Nosler to find his heart as he passed through.
After preparing the quarters for pack out, I cut the four hooves off at the knee joints. Drops of dark blood fell as I tied them up together, as high as I could reach.
I thought back to when I was a kid hiking with my grandfather in the foothills behind East Glacier, Montana. Hidden just off the trail, I had found an old bundle of elk hooves hanging in an aspen tree. When I asked Grandpa what it was, he said cautiously, “I think it’s a way that some of the Blackfeet still say thanks, a way to show that they tried to use it all.” Something about the find and his reply stayed with me, and later, after my father taught me how to hunt, hoof bundles often marked the kills on my backtrail.
It was snowing harder now. I watched the big flakes weave
down through the pine branches, past the beards of black moss, taking their time to find the ground. One of them spiraled lazily around the bundle, pulling me back through the years. I found myself at the center tree now, in Nolan Yellow Kidney’s Sun Dance lodge. I was there wondering why they’d asked me, the newcomer white guy, to help tie up the prayer cloths and leave the tobacco offerings at the base of the tree. With all the people watching, I was nervous as I carefully wrapped the many colored cloths around the aspen trunk. Then, while trying not to cover the photo of a woman’s face that someone had put up, a voice behind me quietly said, “It’s OK, you can cover her up now.” I turned around to find a man sitting on the ground, his smile inviting me to join him.
Friends had told me about him. “Bob Stump is a medicine person,” they said. “He can maybe show you some things about the old ways of taking plants and animals.” I was skeptical. After all, I had hunted, trapped, fished, logged and farmed all my life. “What could he show me,” I thought ... but curiosity nudged me to sit down. As it turned out, the photo was of Bob’s wife, who had just passed away.
He needed a place to stay, and I had an extra room in the back of my old house, so we made a deal, knowledge for rent. He’s still there.
Later, Bob and I were up in the mountains gathering plants for his 101, an old-time healing blend. “You have to communicate with them,” he said. “That’s what makes the medicine work.” It was a hot day in August and sweat soaked my shirt. “Tell them they are beautiful,” he continued. “Then let’s give thanks to the Creator by leaving a little tobacco.” He sang as he folded the pipsissewa leaves into a beaded bag. I tried to remember the strange words, but they got tangled up in the heat, while my mind stretched to make sense of it all.
Then I drifted back to the Sun Dance ceremony where Bob and I had met.
I could smell the sweetgrass smudge. We passed the four pipes around the circle, an old man praying with one for a long time before he smoked. I could hear all the laughter and the songs. I felt the drumming – or was it the heartbeat of the earth? Dancers kept rhythm with eagle bone whistles, and for four days the smoky dust mingled into the spirit world.
Suddenly, a gunshot echoed from the northern ridge, and I was back at the hoof bundle. The snow had stopped, and I wondered how the chickadees on the branch in front of me had arrived unnoticed. Pouring a little coffee, I smiled, knowing my daughter Jessy had followed an elk track up to that ridge earlier in the morning. I glanced up at the hoof bundle once more. Then I left some tobacco on the ground, shouldered my pack and rifle, and looked for a game trail heading north.
BHA member Mike Stevenson writes from Missoula, Montana, and roams between western Montana, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and Alaska. In his younger years, he worked as a mule packer and guide in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, where he spent many solitary winters trapping and exploring.
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Lessons from September
BY LINDSEY YUNDT
There are things that you learn in September like the difference between a creak and a crack a sway and a snap a scrape and a crash
one means life
Wind that can just dissipate dust will carry your scent across a ravine your boots and bows will never beat it
These woodland ghosts –there is no quiet quite like theirs no way to see shape or shine or shift quite like they can They listen to the other creatures – ravens, squirrels, the bark of a muley –They listen to the footsteps and heavy breaths and near-silent whispers and disappear
Their screams echo and haunt the daylight, the dark, the dreams They make you wonder if they are real or imagined And only when your partner nods and turns and skips a heartbeat like you do do you know for sure
A dead branch barely hanging on to a wind-and-winter-ravaged ponderosa can send an arrow astray, the flight bringing sheer thrill and utter disappointment
I learned why we wait all year for September
My husband has always been a hunter, and I have always been a hiker. I never had much interest in hunting myself, as something in my brain (fear or anxiety, perhaps?) makes it extremely difficult for me to pull the trigger of a gun – but I enjoyed exploring public lands in Idaho alongside him. He started bowhunting 10 years ago and has been suggesting to me for nearly all of those years that archery would be something I could be quite good at due to my detail- and precision-oriented personality. We picked out a bow in November 2020 for my birthday, and I fell in love with it.
As I progressed as a shooter and increased my draw weight, I decided to take hunter’s and bowhunter’s education courses to qualify for an Idaho hunting license. We were both fortunate enough to get high-demand archery elk tags in our favorite unit. The early part of the season was hot and the elk were silent, so my first lethal arrow got us a beautiful dusky grouse.
The second half of the season was a completely different story. We hiked over 50 miles during the last week of the season, with the bulls still screaming. We found an incredible drainage that gave us access to five different ridgetops, which all held multiple bulls. We started our hike each morning at 5:30 a.m. – waders, headlamps and down layers all quite necessary – and once we reached the juncture, we would listen for the loudest (and closest) bull and head up whatever face he was on. The timber and deadfall were incredibly thick, the hillsides were terribly steep, the shaded areas were too cold to rest or glass in, and I could not stop smiling. The bulls kept us encouraged and moving for hours upon hours, miles and miles, day after day.
The most memorable moment of the hunt for me was when I nocked an arrow and drew on a monstrous 6-point, I lowered my head towards my bowstring and thought, “I don’t know how to use this thing!” Finding a familiar anchor point helped me shake that feeling off and get a sight pin on him, but I had to laugh afterward at how the intensity of that moment affected me.
Neither of us were able to harvest this season, but we had some heart-slamming and adrenaline-filled close calls.
I drafted this poem as we were hiking out on closing day, because I wanted to remember all of the things I learned and felt that will continue to shape my identity and success as a bowhunter.
BHA member Lindsey Yundt is a clinical assistant professor in STEM education at Boise State University and was a first-year bow hunter in the fall of 2021. She and her husband Jake were high school sweethearts and together have two adventurous children who enjoy exploring the Idaho backcountry with backpacks, bows, bikes, or boards – whatever the season calls for.
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