The wild hunt in Alaska

Now I (Peter) would like to tell you a little about my first huning trip here in Alaska. In the end of October I was invited to join two friends: Ben and Dean, to a hunting area close to White Mountains out of Fairbanks. We were mainly going to hunt grouse, of which there are 5 different species here, but if we would happen to see a bear, Dean had brought his "special gun". Dean and Ben are a little bit like John Wayne (especially Ben who walks and talks like him). With great confidence and a good sence of humor they are playing with words and throwing funny comments back and forth during our trip north towards the "Whites". One fantastic hunting story follows after the other, and I'm listening with big wide open ears. These guys have a lot of experience from hunting in the wild Alaska, so I am of course trying to get as much as possible, and to learn something new. They've been hunting everything from bobcat, lynx, wild goats, moose, deer, buffalo, wolf, and coyote, to black bears and grizzlies. Just like home in Sweden, moose is considered to have the best meat, and as being the best game to hunt. Carol and I have thanks to our good friends tasted some moose meat here, and it does taste a bit different from Scandinavian moose. Perhaps it has something to do with what they are eating, here in Alaska there is a greater variety of forage species to choose from 

      So our ride goes on, Ben, in his big pickup-truck with one four-wheeler on the back and one on the trailer, takes off from the main road and we're zig-zagging our way in to smaller and smaller roads as I watch the thermometer to see how the temperature keeps dropping. Just below 0 F now. It.s going to be a bit cold to hunt in the morning before the sun rises.  It took us about an hour, and then we stopped, unloaded the four-wheelers, and put some warmer clothes on. I went riding in the four-wheeler with Ben, who had heat inside - no need to worry about the temperature yet!!  Then we took off up the mountain, following some of the narrow trails that we could see everywhere.  I noticed that there was more and more snow on the ground, and I hoped that it wasn't going to be all too deep - it's tough to wade and walk through deep snow while hunting....  After about an hour we stopped and looked out over the mountains, and had some coffee.  A great view, with the sun rising from the east over the Whites. When there's such a beautiful light in the sky it's so amazingly beatutiful. Especially at sun rise up here in the mountains. Down in a valley we could see some old goldmines and piles of rocks and sand, they are all over the place around here.  There's still some gold left around here since the old gold rush, that started in western Alaska after "three lucky Swedes"  found gold close to Nome - Scandinavians were here early!   Large areas of land has since then been turned upside down to find the precious metal. A very hard work due to the permafrost. Imagine digging by hand, then making a fire to heat up the ground, or flushing it with steaming hot water, dig some more, etc, etc. The permafrost runs deep here, and at the same time, you have to be lucky enough to dig at the right place....  Only around 3% of the miners made some kind of a fortune out of it, most lost more than what they came with. Those who really made it out here were the people who started some kind of business in the mining towns....
We kept on driving, and after 15 minutes or so I started wondering when we should reach the hunting areas and start walking? I was just about to ask Ben when it struck me - this is the hunt!  I hade never even thought about it - being Swedish...  sitting in a vehicle hunting!  Well, that was a completely new hunting experience in it self!  After a while we went around a bend, and Dean suddenly stopped ahead of us, pointed further up the trail, and there was a grouse! Ben choose the shootgun, took a step out of the vehicle, and there was our first steak - a Spruce grouse. I then had to tell the guys that I thought we were going to hunt in the traditional way, and Ben and Dean just laughed out loud! "you have a lot to tell about the crazy americans when you come back to Sweden" Ben said, and laughed even more. We moved along in our safari, and got to see some moose and some ptarmigan at a distance. Suddenly a whole flock of them lifted from a tree, flew right over the trail, and landed some distance away. Ben handed me the shootgun and brought out a handgun (!), and said "lets go kill some birds", as we tried to sneak up on them. 

        The birds were good in hiding, we had almost passed them when we suddenly heard them take off behind our backs "we'll get them on the way home" Ben said, sounding like John Wayne again. We did get one of them one the way home, a grouse on top of a birch tree that Dean got with a good shoot from outside the four-wheeler. A few weeks later I came along for a pick-up hunt, but I'll save that story for later.... From this first day, I brought home the memories of a great new experience in a fantastic early-winter weather, with a beautiful sunset, great views, great guys, some animal meetings, and a different kind of hunting.