A friend with a little more hunting experience invited them to go with him and two others on the 40 Mile hunt. This refers to the 80,000 strong 40-Mile herd, which winds up in the central interior of Alaska around August. The hunt is within three hours of Fairbanks and is considered pretty much a guarantee because of the size of the herd--until you account for the thousand or so hunters that descend on a two-lane dirt highway in a sea of ATVs and side-by-sides. It's a little crazy.
Rick and Bren sighted in their rifles and borrowed a 4-wheeler and headed out early one Monday morning. The weather was absolute garbage--rainy and cloudy, with highs in the low, damp 50s. As they were up above the tree line, it was even colder, and the mist was almost impenetrable at times. Everyone was drenched. Bren tried to tough it out, but Rick took one look at her shivering self and made her come home with one of our friends who had only gone out for the day.
And that's how Brenna got brought home by the cops at 1:30 in the morning.
Too fast? I'll back up.
The plan had been for them to camp out there. There is no cell coverage out there, so Rick couldn't call me about the change in plans, and so about 10 I silenced my phone and went to bed. I woke up three hours later to the doorbell ringing. Dazed, I stuffed myself into the nearest pair of pants and stumbled down the stairs. The best I could figure, Rick and Bren must have gotten their caribou and come home earlier than expected and just didn't have keys.
Well, I was partly right. I opened the door to Bren, and when I didn't see her carrying any meat sacks, looked up in confusion and saw the officer. I wish I could say that woke me up a little more, but it didn't. I provided proof of identity and claimed my daughter and helped the officer fill out an interaction report. Apparently, I had slept through 5 calls from the friend who had given B a ride home--he couldn't just bring B home because he's a civilian and can't get on post due to Covid restrictions. I had also slept through the half-dozen attempts the gate guards and military police had made to contact me. Finally they called in Officer Armstrong--who initially suspected Bren of breaking curfew and other nefarious deeds until she flashed her nerd cred--to give her a ride home.
As for Rick, he shivered away the night in a thin, cold tent that would have been perfect for August anywhere else, and waited for dawn. He and a friend managed to get their caribou the next morning. Rick took his, a young cow, on the run at 350 meters with a clean lung shot. The victory was a little salty because he managed to flood the borrowed 4-wheeler crossing a river on the way back to the truck. Fortunately it just needed a new battery and the battery compartment drained.
Now, caribou are a little larger than your average Arizona white-tail but fortunately much smaller than your average moose, so skinning and processing the meat only took a couple hours. Our situation was slightly complicated by the fact that there are no freezers to to be had in the state of Alaska for love or money, and there haven't been since March. After striking out at every appliance-store and sales-page in Fairbanks, I did manage to get ahold of a second fridge from our housing office, and between the two small freezers we were able to fit the 70-ish pounds of harvested meat.
Rick and friend's caribou
We saved as many roasts as we could, but the bulk of the meat was ultimately processed at Santa's Smokehouse, a local meat processor. It wasn't our first choice, but they had a slot available and the other place wasn't taking new meat until mid September so we went with it. I'm pretty pleased with the results. They took three days to return 40+ pounds of processed, wrapped meat for a decent price. Rick cooked up a tenderloin, searing it in bacon grease and serving it with Alaskan-grown potatoes fried in duck fat and local-grown baked brocciflower. It was hands down one of the five best meals I've ever had. Seriously.
Our caribou adventures weren't over, however. Rick decided to try and tan the hide. This led to three days of soaking in saltwater alternated with Rick fleshing a manky caribou hide stretched over my garbage cans. The smell was...well, let's just say we had hopeful ravens hopping around outside our garage thinking some corpse was ripening to perfection.
The aforementioned bucket o' skin.
Salted, stretching, fleshing. If there's a next time, there will be proper tools. And air freshener.
When all the remaining bits of tissue were scraped off, we washed the hide with dish soap to remove dirt, oils, and crusted salt. It was a struggle to adequately rinse it clean, so Rick stripped, turned on the shower and went full Viking on the hide. I didn't ask too many questions. I helped rub in the tanning solution just before our trip to Homer, and we left it to dry.
After a week, we came back to a dry, stiff hide. Rick trimmed some manky parts, stretched and softened it, and then we finished by smoking it over the firepit to finish curing and waterproofing it. As for the smell--well, I'd rather my house have a lingering smokiness than the sickly sweet stench of flesh.
It lives on the wall for now. It's not perfect--there are a couple of spots where blood settled before Rick had a chance to skin the caribou and the hair fell out--but it looks awesome for a first attempt. Rick is pretty pleased with it and wants to venture into tanning hides and making leather. He has plans for sheaths and holsters and moccasins. I'm cool with it...as long as our garage is adequately ventilated.
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