This morning all the hunters in the camp awoke to bright sunshine.
Overnight, all the clouds that have been ruining our lives for the last two days have disappeared. Our visual range couldn't be better; there are only little clouds floating on the horizon. The temperature is rising rapidly, and the more sporting among us are even considering unpacking their shorts.
The hunting camp is almost fully booked.
Hunters have arrived here from all over the US, hoping to bag a Dall sheep or a caribou. Each of them, without exception, is friendly and cheerful, and it's easy to get on with them. We all chat a lot, discussing the different hunting potentials of our respective countries. Here, the hunting laws vary from state to state, as do the hunting opportunities. Local residents receive preference over foreigners
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and hunters from other states, and all the states that I know about give Native Americans even more privileges. For me, the big lesson from these conversations is that, over here, hunting is not the sport of only the 10,000 richest people in the country. Here the average person in an average state has great opportunities for hunting as their basic right, and for reasonable prices. So hunters, who come from all levels of society, all have more or less the same chances when out hunting in their state’s forests. For a bit more money extra permits can be bought, usually from the Native Americans. The Hunting Lottery is a special institution that operates in many states. "When there are a lot of Eskimos, but only a few seals”..that is, when there are many more hunters than there is game available to be shot that year, then it is decided by the lottery who will get a permit to hunt that particular type of animal. Anyone can buy one of these lottery tickets. It's fair, clear and unambiguous regulation. The almost institutionalised principle of "who do you know", so common in Eastern Europe, is unheard of here.
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Today, just to myself, I have formally re-named Kavik Camp; from now on I shall refer to it as the Kavik Hilton. I have been sampling all its amenities, and I can honestly say that they are excellent. In the shower, apart from soap, there were two types of shampoo. Susan, the strict commander of the camp, even helped me to find the correct progam for the washing machine. Clean clothes are always a problem, and I have to seize every opportunity I come across.
I'm always looking for something.
I never seem to have all my clothes and all my equipment together at the same time. There's always something missing, but whatever it is, it usually turns up in a pocket, a bag, a compartment or a box where I would never have thought of looking for it. If I unpacked all my luggage, it would cover the entire tundra. I don't think my demands are too high, but when travelling for 81 days, you do need an awful lot of stuff. I don't think it's possible to reduce the number of bags I have.
I want to emphasise that, right now, we are on the tundra.
When it comes to describing the taiga and the tundra, I get slightly confused, though I try not to show it. Travellers in these northern regions should be expected to know the difference between the two habitats. I always forget which is which, so, for my own benefit, I'd like to write down the differences between them.
The word taiga is of Russian origin; apparently, it means "the land of small twigs". I can't swear to the accuracy of this translation, but this is the origin given to it in the atlas of Alaska by Delorma. It means both a climate zone and a particular area for certain plants. I would never have thought it, but the taiga is the largest biocenosis land area on the planet. It is a place of coniferous forests, where only a few species of tree grow. It is found all through the Arctic Circle, that is circumpolaris. (What clever words I know!) In parts where the frost is not so intense, a few deciduous trees turn up, but the taiga still remains the taiga. It seems that most of Alaska is taiga, so you'd better like that type of forest.
Towards the north it borders on the tundra, and in the south, the steppe. (I always thought the steppe was a bit like the prairie, just in Russia; but it's not only that: it's a climate zone too.) The success story of the taiga goes back to the time of the land- bridge across the Bering Sea, which connected Alaska to East Siberia, and enabled the development of a huge unbroken biocenensis.
The annual average temperature is beneath freezing point, and the fluctuation throughout the year is huge: in the summer we can lie in the sun at 86 F, but in the winter -58 F is not unusual. The soil is low in nutrients because of the profusion of pine-needles: if a forest doesn't have leaves to shed then fresh nutrients will not return to the earth. Also, such cold does not encourage much forest-floor fauna, as the nutrients decompose very slowly. A particular curse of the American taiga is the Spruce-Bark beetle, a horrible little insect which has wreaked significant damage to the tree population.
Unlike the taiga, the tundra is almost completely barren. In the arctic region, because of the constant
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cold, trees cannot easily establish themselves. This climate zone is typical of the coastal regions and islands bordering the Arctic Ocean, which means that every hunter in the north will, sooner or later, have to become acquainted with it.
It's an unfriendly world.
The wind is relentless, and because the summers are so very short, only the upper layers of the ground thaw; the mercury in the thermometer never climbs above 50 F, but in winter it gets cold. Very cold.
Talking of this, I'd like to mention the phenomenon of permafrost. By that I mean the layer of soil that remains frozen for at least two years at a stretch. We can speak about a constant permafrost if the average soil temperature does not exceed 23 F, whereas if the ground is warmer than that, patches develop like islands, and are referred to as non-constant permafrost. In Alaska it is the Arctic Circle that marks the border between these two different areas of permafrost.
Permafrost represents a constant challenge for builders: the soil will begin to thaw near pipe-systems and heated buildings, so that houses that have not been carefully constructed will start to subside and, eventually, to collapse.
Permafrost is a good indicator to the effects of global warming. In both1998 and 2001 the size of the area of permafrost shrank by an amount never previously recorded. In Canada's Yukon province the permafrost border has moved north by over 60 miles! In Western Siberia alone, an area of 350,000
sq.miles has thawed, releasing methane and other hydrocarbons that were previously trapped in the frozen soil, into the atmosphere; these then add to the increasing greenhouse effect. Swamps and marshes, frozen since the ice-age, hold around 70 billion tons of methane, all of which will be released as they thaw. If this happens, global methane emmissions will double.
Optimists say that the resilience of the planet, combined with Mother Nature, will be strong enough to reverse the damage caused by Homo-sapiens. If we're lucky the thawed-out soil and rising temperatures will facilitate the spread of plant-life into these areas which will have a beneficial effect on global temperatures.
Life in the Kavik Hilton is buzzing.
Hunters are constantly re-arranging the contents of their bags. They pack their rucksacks; then they unpack them; then they pack them again. Everybody is giving orders, making plans, and packing.
Those with nothing to do watch the busy ones, give them advice, and generally get in the way. Some dress casually for hunting, just in jeans, while others favour camouflage gear (these are the majority).
Guns lie about on rucksacks, or quite often behind them, and there are tents and equipment lying all over the ground. We're all standing in a circle, pondering our chances of success; everyone has their own opinions. This morning someone bagged a caribou about two miles from the camp. The hunter, a
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young man, is proudly looking at the velvet on his prize. A trophy-head will be made out of it, and they are already carefully skinning it.
Susan introduces me to some of her dear little friends. These are little rodents - they must be some sort of squirrel - and are quite tame. They eat from her hand, and don't take long to accept me too.
Burt it's only Susan they'll allow to stroke them.
There's a lot of air-traffic over the camp. New hunters are arriving from Deadhorse; several have been stuck there for the last few days, while others are going on from here to the hunting grounds. A short while ago there were two planes circling above the camp, waiting to land, and there are another five parked in front of the containers. I've just noticed that there is a gas-station here, and right now, a plane is being refuelled. The camp has also received a visit from State Trooper, an armed security force that, up here in the wilds, functions as the police. The young trooper has his own company plane and used it to fly into Kavik. He's not here to check up on anybody, merely having a 30min. rest before flying on. Just after 1.00pm Greg Jenner's plane arrives. There are three of us who are his clients, and we all flock about him.
We establish yet again that Brooks Range is covered in snow, which would make spotting the sheep in their white coats rather difficult, so Greg decides to take our equipment straight to the caribou and bear-hunting camp, and we must wait for him here. That camp is in a different hunting area, and there the bear season has already begun. We shall leave the Kavik Hilton either tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on the snow. There are several directions we can take, and many hunting grounds have airstrips, but from here it's impossible to guess which we can or can't use. Greg and the other guides are busy flying here and there, checking out all the possibilities. We clients, however, have very little to do, and in the afternoon I start packing my rucksack. I'm taking an absolute minimum of equipment, as this is going to be a real "rucksack" hunt. We will eat, sleep in, and use only what we carry on our backs. We shall sleep wherever evening finds us. We will be totally separated from civilization and for a few days will have to rely solely on each other.
The Guide and the Hunter.
Their lives, during the hunt, will be completely entwined.
Almost all of the afternoon has passed uneventfully, but I'm not bored. At various times Greg's plane turns up, and then flies off somewhere else. I would not say that he's keeping us right up to date: none of us knows what the general hunting situation is. I'm a bit concerned about his little yellow plane. It's so light that it hardly seems to exist. The fusilage is not made from some hard material, but from sheets of PVC. Let's hope it doesn't rip.
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One of my fellow hunters is a very good cook; he quickly produces a pan and a camping-stove, and, in the open air, starts to cook some of the recently shot caribou. I don't think I've eaten such delicious game in a long, long time. The atmosphere is just as it should be among a group of hunters. We admire each other's guns, and everyone has words of encouragement for everyone else. The planes continue to arrive one after another and take hunters off to various camps. We wish all those about to leave good luck, as here there is no superstition against it, and help them with their loading. We are twenty complete strangers, yet I feel as if we have been hunting together for ever. There have been no harsh words, or quarrels, at all.
One of the hunters has a daughter, who is walking around the camp, rather bored, so she shoots down a bird with her Turkish shotgun. It's a slim weapon, suitable for a woman, a. 410 caliber. I ask if I can see a bullet. Interestingly, it's a re-usable shell-case. It's a nice little shell, that despite its size, makes a very loud bang when fired. And its effectiveness has just been demonstrated.
Our enthusiasm over her success makes us all decide to go for a hunt in the neighborhood. There are
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six of us sharing the one Turkish gun. The gun is carried by the 14- year -old son of one of the hunters, and we are its escort. We walk for 1/2 mile from the camp without seeing anything. On the way back we spot two foxes, about 150 ft away. They sense our presence, but do not run off. There is a dried-out river-bed nearby, which enables us to get behind them. They hand me the gun, and trampling my way through a thicket I reach the river-bed. After going 150 ft I circle back towards the foxes.
They win.
They see me before I see them.
We are enjoying our hunt so much that we keep going. We walk straight through the camp. The boy has the gun again, and shoots a bird. Now it's my turn. In front of me a bird suddenly takes flight, but I miss it. Completely. With both barrels.
I'm not really bothered as I've hardly used a shotgun before. One thing: birds don't need to worry about me.
Finally, I have been hunting in Alaska!
Greg has landed again and gives us his verdict: we must spend another night here. We will go to the camp tomorrow, which means that we cannot actually start hunting until the 13th. He gives me 4 - 5
sheets of paper, two aluminum bands and a pile of plastic cards. (I have no idea what the latter are for.) Mark, the father of the boy with the shotgun, produces whisky and beer from his huge bag.
This is the life!
We don't know if alcohol is allowed in Kavik Camp, so we sneak behind the buildings.
Slowly, silence descends on the Kavik Hilton.
Sheep and Caribou Camp
Brooks Range
Sadlerochit Mountains