by Bill Heavey
After 200 yards, I am winded and struggling to keep up with Tom, who is my age but far more determined. Steve, carrying a muzzleloader, has already fallen 100 yards behind us and is in no great hurry to twist a knee. Tom grimaces. “I think Steve’s gonna hold us back a bit,” he says when we finally take a break. “Yeah … ,” I pant. “Steve … hold us back.” He waits for Steve as I slog another 50 yards to top a rock mound for a look. My Bushnell Elite 10x42s clearly show a herd of caribou on a hill at least 2 miles south. In this kind of walking, and with absolutely no cover for an approach, they might as well be across the Bering Sea.
Steve announces he is happy just to sit on the rock mound and see what develops. Tom and I slog on across the hill, traverse a little creek, and head for a higher perch 500 yards away at the foot of the shale mountains. From there, we can glass, see if they’ll come our way, and possibly intercept them. The 20-knot winds slice through us and buffet the spotting scope on its tripod. At 60-power I can just make out the bodies of the older bulls, larger and whiter than the other animals, with shaggy dewlaps. It’s tough to get a feel for racks at this distance, and the scale and austerity of the landscape are, frankly, mildly terrifying.
The distant herd continues to feed but does not really move. Several times an hour, Tom and I take short walks below our observation post to keep the blood moving. On one, we suddenly catch sight of five caribou, three females and two juvenile bulls, coming our way from above and left on the mountain. They will soon pass within 200 yards. We hunker down and watch, fearful that spooking them will start a chain reaction. Meat on the hoof, they amble along, grazing the lichens and late blueberries. Their antlers are bigger than those of any deer I’ve ever shot, but as caribou go they are negligible. After three hours, the herd, including what I can now tell are eminently shootable bulls, is no closer. With the light leaking from the sky, we slog home.
Camp Meat, Part 1
Back at camp, David and Jeff are warming themselves by the fire, both having taken bulls a couple of miles from camp. Their faces tell of satisfaction and exhaustion, initial euphoria followed by five hours of dressing, quartering, and hauling meat and antlers. Steve, the slowpoke, is the only one who has husbanded enough energy to cook. He shaves long strips off one of the fresh tenderloins, seasons them with garlic salt and pepper, and threads the strips onto green poplar sticks. We eat it hot off the fire with our hands, accompanied by the choice of beer or Canadian whiskey.
It sounds picturesque, but our camp wouldn’t make it into an outfitter’s catalog showing the romance of the wilderness. It’s nothing more than three two-man domed tents crammed in among the poplars and spruce, strewn about with waxed cardboard boxes containing our canned goods, perishables hanging in plastic tarps and bags from trees just downwind. But a smoky fire and a damp log to sit on are welcome after a day on the tundra, as is the caribou. It’s hunter’s meat: flesh that was walking hours earlier. Camp falls quiet while the butt of one of the logs slowly turns into a mosaic of glowing orange tiles that crumble, one by one, into the fire. And one by one, we finish up and crawl off to our bags.
Camp Meat, Part 2
In the morning, heading down to the river for water, I take my rifle and remember to walk loudly, recalling the outfitter’s advice about bears. “Keep your meat and latrine downwind of camp. Make noise when you go to crap or get wood. Anybody with half an ounce of common sense should be fine.” Well, I think, that lets me out. On top of this, I’m lightly gunned: a Winchester .270 with 130-grain Ballistic Silvertips for “light, thin-skinned game.” It’s plenty of gun and lead for caribou, and just enough to seriously aggravate Ursus horribilis. On the other hand, who am I kidding? A charging grizzly can outrun a quarter horse over the same distance. The best hope for a guy with my combination of nerve and shooting skill is that the bear will be put off by the poopy smell emanating from my trousers.
I’m halfway done filling the big jug before I see it in the black sand by the water’s edge. At my feet is a print as big as my size 12s, only twice as wide, and belonging to someone in serious need of a toenail overhaul. It’s a griz, and it’s popping fresh. I stare at it, wide-eyed, and am instantly transported back 10,000 years. Deep inside my monkey brain, a circuit connects and the ancient warning courses through my bloodstream: You not top predator here. We’ve been told that the bears in this area get hunted hard and generally avoid humans. But if ever I needed a reminder that we are on the unpaved side of the guardrail, this is it. My heart tachs up to about 130 beats per minute. I walk very loudly back to camp and whistle as I go.
A Bull in the Scope
It seems ridiculous (and will turn out to be more ridiculous still) that the second day of the hunt is my last. Tom, Mark, and I head back up to glass in the foothills of the shale north of camp. There are ancestral trails all around and above us: on the ridges, along the river, through saddles. There is even a caribou interstate heading diagonally up the slopes to a very high pass in the mountains some miles distant. It glistens silver in the sun, like a fresh scratch in old lead, traversing a grade where a single misstep would send you tumbling thousands of feet. The only drawback at the moment is that there is not a caribou in sight.
The three of us hunker down out of the wind in the lee of a boulder, slam some energy bars and water, and try to figure the best move. Tom wants to continue north alone to prospect. Mark and I decide to try our luck back south, nearer to camp. In the folds of the foothills there are two streams running from the mountains down to the river. The ’bou use them as travel routes, and any animals spooked by one of our party higher up might be ambushed here as they flee. As we make our way down through a meadow, however, we spot a herd that has moved into the tundra belt above camp in the two hours since we left. Sure enough, they are feeding slowly toward one of the streams. “If we really book,” says Mark, “we could sneak up the stream and have a shot if they stay put for a bit.” It’s a lot of running and only a slim chance at gunning, but that’s what we’re here for. We set out at maximum slog, pushing hard just inside the cover of the trees at the meadow’s edge, sneaking out now and then for an update.
We duckwalk low up the streambed, only 500 yards from the herd, in which we now can see several shooters. But a shot above us in the mountains seems to unnerve them, or maybe they’ve caught a whiff of something. They start to break up. Mark wants to stay put in the hope that they’ll regroup.
Mark, I salute you. But you have three more days and my ears are already stuffed with David E. Petzal’s delighted howls. “You whiffed on caribou, the highest-percentage of all big-game hunts? I know dead guys who have gone on caribou hunts and scored!”
So I backtrack down the creek to the trees, head south for a few hundred yards, and edge up a little fold in the terrain to another rock mound. My reasoning is simple: A few animals seem headed that way and I can’t think of anything else to do. I stalk the area, hoping to see something good when I finally poke my nose over the crest. The wind has risen to 15 or 20 knots, the sky has darkened, and intermittent rain hits my face like needles. I set the .270 before me on its bipod and make like a log, hoping a caribou will venture within range. Half an hour later, the only things that have changed are my body temperature and the amount of daylight remaining. I back down out of the wind for a minute to regain feeling in my feet and hands, wondering whether the sins I’m being punished for are from this incarnation or an earlier one.
And that’s when the Tooth Fairy finds me. Directly behind me, less than half a mile downwind, stands a herd of 40 animals or more grazing in the longer grass near the river. I have no idea how long they’ve been there. I was so sure that anything downwind would take off that I had not bothered to monitor that direction. It makes no sense—but then again it doesn’t have to. Because there they are. Better still, although they aren’t moving much, when they do it’s in my direction. There is a lot of open ground between us, and nothing but a thin belt of knee-high shrubs 50 yards away for cover. If I can so
mehow get there undetected, I’ve got a chance.
Dumping my pack, I sling my rifle over my back and start a fast crawl on hands and knees. Every few yards, I fall face-first into the soft, wet moss. My gloves are gone, my boots are full of water, and I have dirt in my teeth, but I am thankful beyond all reckoning to have electrical-taped my rifle muzzle. The wind is still perfectly wrong, but the herd continues drifting in my direction. I put my rangefinder on the lead animal: 273 yards. This is a reasonable shot for an experienced, competent marksman, and I wish I had one along at the moment. I am a mediocre shot on a good day, and this—heavy wind, rain, a body shaking from cold and adrenaline—does not really qualify.
I move again, then once more, until I am out of stalk-sustaining shrubbery. A few of the animals seem to have noticed me and have slowed but are unalarmed. Perhaps I am blessed with body odor that is agreeable to caribou. Or maybe, though they are not God’s brightest creatures, they can somehow intuit hunters who can’t shoot worth a damn. Meanwhile, the bipod keeps sinking into the muck, giving me a steady bead on the ground 2 feet away. What I need is a rodent hole I can sink into so that the rifle will be higher than my body. But, like cops, rodent holes are never around when you need one. At last, still crawling, I stumble into a wet depression and kick away at it until it accommodates my shoulders. My butt is elevated provocatively, my back is bent like a Cheez Doodle, but none of this matters because there is a bull caribou clomping along in my scope.
I’ve got more experience driving chariots pulled by matched teams of racing squirrels than I do shooting moving targets at a distance, but it’s now or never. I laser him at 170 yards and focus on swinging through as I let out a breath and squeeze. The report scatters the herd. I run the bolt while trying to reacquire him. The bull has stopped and is swaying on his feet with lowered head. Another shot anchors him.
I slog over in a sort of dream state. He is the whole package: more than 300 pounds, thick tawny antlers, the cinnamon coat, white mane, and dewlap common to the older bulls I’ve glassed. I kneel and stroke his flank and tell him I’m sorry for having taken his life. And then I scan the horizon for hunters and bears. Seeing neither, I prop my rifle close by on its bipod and set to work.
Going Nowhere Slowly
The next morning, as I’m packing up for my flight, a plane from another outfitter flies low over our camp, which I figure is a heads-up that my ride is on the way. I continue to think this right until dark, at which time I unpack and drink beer. This pattern of activity continues for the next two days. I have had the foresight to bring no reading material whatsoever, so I spend most of my time collecting wood, tending the fire, and reading the fine print on the granola bars, Pringles, and soup cans in camp. Occasionally, there is a trip out to haul caribou quarters. Draper wounds a bull one day and, while following the blood trail, notices a blondish grizzly, most likely a large juvenile boar, which has smelled blood and decided to participate in the search. At this point, David decides that the polite and wise thing to do is to let the bear take over. He hustles back to camp with his rifle unslung, walking backward most of the way.
Three days after my scheduled departure, on the day the rest of the party is due to be picked up, we haul everything down to the river and wade back through the water, now half a foot higher, to the gravel bar, leaving only our bags, rifles, and one tent at the campsite. We consider ourselves old Alaska hands now, sourdoughs almost, and know that the plane may fail to show. Which is exactly what happens. Fortunately, we are prepared. We have prudently used up all our firewood and are also out of boiled drinking water. We have wisely moved our cots, without which sleep is nearly impossible, to the pickup spot, along with almost all the food. Remaining at the campsite are two spoons, a big can of beef stew, a roll of toilet paper, and whiskey. We cobble together a fire, roll the can of stew in, and wait until we are reasonably sure that the bottom is burnt and the top is cold. Then we sit by the fire, open it, and pass it from man to man, followed in short order by the whiskey. At a certain point, the liquor laps the stew, then laps it again. The smoke, held down by low barometric pressure, visits each hunter in turn. It’s democratic smoke, making sure everybody gets a good whiff. We are too cold and tired to move out of its way. You just sort of try to put your head in your armpit until it moves on to the next guy.
Aside from the exhaustion, soreness, smoke inhalation, and missed flights, we’re all feeling pretty good. We are in no particular hurry to return to our cubicles and mortgages. We’re lucky enough to be AWOL from our daily lives and adrift in a world with a much stronger claim to reality.
One by one, we crawl into the tent, all of 9 feet square. It just manages to hold six if we lie four across the middle, head to toe, with a man lying crosswise at each end. Roots assault us through our thin sleeping pads. Each of us is getting involuntary acupuncture treatments, mine in the small of my back and left shoulder. Each is also convinced he is sandwiched between the group’s two most objectionable hunters in terms of body and breath odor, snoring, and general personality. The darkness fills with groans, complaints, and audible farting as we all struggle for positions that might allow actual sleep. “Cowboy up!” Tom finally mutters. “I’ve had it worse than this.” I have too, I suppose, though it’s hard to remember when. Now that I think of it, the nights back in Kotzebue were worse. More comfortable physically, but that was before I knew and liked these idiots, before we had forded rivers and hauled caribou quarters and eaten burnt stew together.
“Gimme another shot of that whiskey,” calls Mark. “Why?” someone asks. “Because I’m sleeping next to Draper and he’s starting to look good.” Steve touches off a silent one that has the guys closest to him burying their faces in their bags for protection. “Funny, I don’t smell a thing,” he murmurs placidly. The Fall Asleep First Contest, unique among human competitions in that the winner never knows of his victory, is under way. Steve is looking very strong, already snoring, though surprisingly lightly for a big man, as if he’s trying to be considerate even in slumber. Jeff keeps skimming just into sleep and out again, a stop-and-start sort of snore. David mumbles that a lit match would blow us all to hell right about now. I find that by turning on my side, wedging a boot under my temple and a spare watch cap under my hip, I can reduce the root pressure to near tolerable levels, as long as I take hourly sips of whiskey. But the noise of snoring and groaning precludes rest for me.
Eventually, I chew up a piece of cardboard packaging that once held chocolate pudding and cram the warm, wet pulp into my auditory canal. At last, I let go and fall slowly into another rodent hole, this one filled with sleep. As I tumble into slumber, I have the half-conscious notion that it’s all a question of knowing how to recognize moments of good fortune, that there is always some kind of luck hanging around for those who can see through its strange disguises.
A Hunter’s Heart
If you’re looking for an unlikely pair, match the fresh-faced girl with two earrings in her right ear sitting with the cowpuncher with the droopy gray mustache, sweat-stained hat, and dusty jeans. He is leaning more than halfway over the coffee table in the windblown desert town of Rock Springs, Wyoming, here in the lobby of the Best Western, and holding both her hands in his upright palms. He holds them like precious things he might break were he not careful, and behind a three-day stubble and his weathered features, he is smiling so hard as to be on the verge of tears. “I been looking forward to this more than any hunt I’ve booked all year,” he tells her. “We’re gonna get you a good deer, honey. I promise you that. You’ll see hundreds of deer. They’re moving down off the mountains now, coming down into their winter range. The big ones tend to move last. Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re finally here.”
He turns and smiles at the girl’s father, sitting next to her on the couch. “You have to hunt with me … forever. Every year. You and your dad. On me. Understand?” She blushes, glows, looks at her father, then back at the cowboy. He is serious. She hardly knows him, but he is, h
ere and now, making a commitment that will last as long as either of them lives. The cowboy drops his eyes for a moment, giving her time to take it all in. But she doesn’t need time. She neither flusters nor embarrasses nor flees to the safety of a polite protest that it is too great a gift. She smiles. He coughs, then continues in a different tone. “Now, it’s okay to spend a little time with this fellow,” he says, cocking his head in my direction but keeping his eyes on her. “Just remember,” he says, slowly tapping his chest with a forefinger, “I’m your number one.” His eyes are watering again. The gray mustache that obscures his mouth stays put while the silk bandanna around his throat rises once and then settles back into its place.
Her eyes dance and change with the light, sometimes hazel, sometimes green. She is beautiful. Her metal crutches lean against the back of the sofa. She has been waiting for this moment forever, nearly 10 months, since last winter at a sporting show in Grand Rapids, when her two brothers wheeled her by the booth of the outfitter who had agreed to work with the Hunt of a Lifetime charity. That was when the man asked her and her father to be his guests for a mule deer hunt. Her name is Alyssa Iacoboni and she is 15 years old. Her head is smooth. Her eyebrows and eyelashes are gone. The chemo took them all (although she insists that a few eyelashes are already growing back). It is as if her head and face in their unashamed nakedness permit her beauty to shine stronger. She is unself-conscious about her appearance: her lack of hair and the stump of leg that stops above where her left knee once was. She smiles and talks freely. Yet she holds within herself a world that is hers alone. Later, photographer Erika Larsen and I will discover that we both thought of Vermeer’s famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring upon first seeing Alyssa. In that picture a similarly luminous girl has just turned her gaze to the viewer, as if someone has just entered her room. Vermeer chose to portray his girl without hair, too, though hers by virtue of the blue and gold cloth that covers it completely. It is a trick the artist used to draw your eye to her expression. Both share that startling combination of openness and self-containment, present and vivid, yet reserving unto themselves a mystery.