Hunting Season

Aerial of Kotzebue in the background and the tundra nearby.

Lately in the early morning I've been hearing some distant popping sounds. They seemed familiar and yesterday I learned why. Hunting season has begun. At the club, youth talked of their excitement to hunt caribou this weekend. Some bragged of being permitted to skip school to hunt.

Travis told us that 90 percent of his family's meat diet is comprised of caribou they hunt. He explained that it is a waste of money to buy meat at the A.C. store, and tags for caribou are easy to get. Of his hunting challenges, this seventh grader said he was too little to carry even one caribou leg. Each one could weigh roughly two hundred pounds.

With a glow in his face, Travis explained that it takes two hours to skin the large animals, bleed and butcher them. Transporting he meat home can involve many trips on atv trailers. (Shooting a caribou from the water is easier because it can be hauled back with the boat.) The meat is hung up to dry and the hide can be bleached with sourdough or willow bark.

During the winter, some polar bears come down from the north to hunt. Travis told us of a trip on his snow machine where he came too close to one. The bear was quickly frightened away by Travis's father. He had heard stories of them going into the villages looking for food.

Travis knows a lot about the polar bear. Our fourteen-year-old expert said they hunt caribou and seal. These huge animals wait for their prey on the thick ice of the Kotzebue Sound. They can see seals swimming below the ice are there to greet them when one comes up for air or to rest. The ice has been as thick as ten feet in years past, he said. Ice fishing was impossible because the augers weren't long enough to cut the hole in the ice. Doesn't this sound like some National Geographic show about the far north? This is real life here.

Our former clubhouse manager hunts seal. A clubhouse youth talked proudly of Lance bringing in a seal and teaching club members to skin and butcher it. Chase spoke of how they learned to tan the skin and extract the oil from the seal that Lance killed. The remnants of seal oil pervades the air of the downstairs club area.

Lance offered me a taste of the oil from a jar that had been stored in one of the club's refrigerators. It tastes like fish. He said it's good on blueberries and of course people also cook with it.

Yesterday there was a mass exodus from town to hunt or go to camp. Outside our living room window, I watched people back their boats into the Sound last night. The small ramp has been quiet today and the familiar popping sounds could be heard in the distance.