Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening Hunt Don't Meet
Speaker 1: e podcast. You can't predict anything presented by First like
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to
Speaker 1: technical outerwear for every Hunt First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer,
Speaker 1: all right Man, super special gas to date. We're joined
Speaker 1: by Seth Cantner, who I've been wanting to have on
Speaker 1: for a long time. Writer, photographer, commercial fisherman hunter born
Speaker 1: in a sad igloo in Alaska or a cave raised
Speaker 1: in the sade Igloo. Go ahead, well, I'm filling the gas.
Speaker 1: Sadly enough, it's true. A when I uh finally was
Speaker 1: able to find a girlfriend in my middle ages, I
Speaker 1: uh she started saying I was born in a cave,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, it was It just had
Speaker 1: a tunnel and dirt floor, and and uh, I went
Speaker 1: to a lot of work to describe how it wasn't
Speaker 1: a cave. And now I'm sort of accepting that A
Speaker 1: lot of mice running around on the floor and dark
Speaker 1: and cariboo hairs and everything, um cariboo hides to sleep
Speaker 1: on and Cariboo first where and Cariboo muck lux And
Speaker 1: that's I guess why I ended up writing about Cariboo.
Speaker 1: So they say, right, what you know about uh, We're
Speaker 1: gonna get into this book. You got a lot of
Speaker 1: books though, three three books, now four books, I think
Speaker 1: it's five or six. Yeah, when's the children's story. But
Speaker 1: I first became aware of you when Ordinary Wolves came out.
Speaker 1: That was my first book novel. I wrote it as
Speaker 1: a novel so I could tell the truth about uh,
Speaker 1: northern Alaska and inpact villages and being a white boy
Speaker 1: in the huh, in the native communities I grew up in,
Speaker 1: and um and uh. I didn't really tell the Alaska
Speaker 1: that people were used to and had a hard time
Speaker 1: finding a publisher because of it, and oh abs freaking
Speaker 1: I got fifteen hundred dollar advance after ten years of
Speaker 1: trying to get it published. Yeah. Yeah, but that book
Speaker 1: got around a lot though a certain extent. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but um yeah, it's kind of shocked people. I was
Speaker 1: always irritated as a kid reading about well, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to read about Alaska, super boring. Um, we had
Speaker 1: so much uh, you know, bear licking the acts or
Speaker 1: you know, every wolves outside hauling at the dogs, and
Speaker 1: so to read about Alaska was super boring and um
Speaker 1: and when you did, it was all glamorized and bullshit.
Speaker 1: And so when I wrote about that country, I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of described the real stuff, you know, um,
Speaker 1: which had to include you know, drunks where they are
Speaker 1: fifteens and the stuff that maybe the New York houses
Speaker 1: didn't want to hear about Alaska and expected you to
Speaker 1: leave out. Um. Yeah, that was my first book. It
Speaker 1: took me probably twenty years of trying to get to that,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you follow that up with Shopping
Speaker 1: for Porcupine. Yeah. People wanted a memoir and I didn't
Speaker 1: realize it was weird to grow up in a Saudi
Speaker 1: glue and uh and be sort of separated from people,
Speaker 1: and uh, I expected a lot from humans. We didn't
Speaker 1: see him very often, and and we would sort of
Speaker 1: run barefoot up the hill and tell my parents travelers
Speaker 1: that was the word for people here. Yeah. Whoops, almost
Speaker 1: said the wrong word, but anyway, Um, yeah, travelers. It
Speaker 1: was a big deal back then because they brought news
Speaker 1: of other villages, usually any pack hunts and um, and uh,
Speaker 1: we just saw people the least of you know, most
Speaker 1: animals and um, so bears super common, grizzly bears show up,
Speaker 1: but but people were not. So. UM. I could go
Speaker 1: on and on about all this, but anyway, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize until part way through my life that I was
Speaker 1: sort of in between white and uh native, and in
Speaker 1: between sort of human and U or nature and humans
Speaker 1: and um. And then when I did go out into
Speaker 1: this what we called the white world, it was incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult to understand, um why people didn't make sense. Which
Speaker 1: now I've accepted that they don't, um, which is a
Speaker 1: lot easier once you accept that. But um, at that
Speaker 1: point it was like, well, bears to me makes sense.
Speaker 1: Uh um. And then also there's that whole thing where
Speaker 1: when you're armed in dangerous as you know, igly boy,
Speaker 1: I never went anywhere without a very few places without
Speaker 1: a gun, and um it was kind of like a shovel.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't think of it as a Um.
Speaker 1: All this stuff about guns now is weird, but it's
Speaker 1: more like shovels. So um, take your shovel. Um. And
Speaker 1: so to me, the idea of like, uh, everybody being
Speaker 1: excited about a bear being dangerous is such a weird
Speaker 1: concept compared to what about humans. I mean, they're so
Speaker 1: fucking dangerous, um and weird and unpredictable, and bears generally especially,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I can tell you a lot more
Speaker 1: people on guns because of humans than they do because
Speaker 1: of bears. My worldview is horribly warped. And I'm just
Speaker 1: at fifty seven, I'm finally realizing that. Well we'll get
Speaker 1: into that, Okay. Then you followed up most recently, Well,
Speaker 1: this is I love this book Man A Thousand Trails
Speaker 1: Home Living with Caribou, which like kind of moves outside
Speaker 1: of just general I mean, there's a lot of general,
Speaker 1: broad experience you talk a lot about growing up, but
Speaker 1: it gets it. I mean it gets into the sort
Speaker 1: of biology, the biology of cariboo along with the cultural
Speaker 1: significance of caribou. Um it really paints like a really
Speaker 1: in depth picture. And I like about as you can't
Speaker 1: talk about I shouldn't say you can't. Reading the book,
Speaker 1: one realizes you cannot talk about cariboo without talking about people. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is pretty indicative of everything we have going on
Speaker 1: with the modern world. Um um, I just I can't
Speaker 1: stand that to a certain extent, It's like I want
Speaker 1: to protect the wild land up there, and which is
Speaker 1: you know, me protecting my lifestyle. But you gotta turn
Speaker 1: your focus to people, which is a painful thing. You know,
Speaker 1: I want to focus on Cariboo, embars and wolves, but
Speaker 1: it all goes back to the people and them are
Speaker 1: guing over, you know, more and more resource conflict and
Speaker 1: who gets hunt what and um. So it's a really
Speaker 1: hard book to write for me because I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to say, and I guess to a certain extent
Speaker 1: I still don't. And I did the best I could
Speaker 1: to go back and describe, you know, the whalers coming
Speaker 1: and what that meant for uh, for natives in Alaska,
Speaker 1: and and very quickly what it meant for Cariboo, which
Speaker 1: was you know, um um almost wiping out the herds
Speaker 1: and um and then too and that was that had
Speaker 1: to do with firearms coming. And then nowadays we have
Speaker 1: UM basically this big influx of technology, cell phones, communications.
Speaker 1: So if a Cariboo swims across the Kobuk River, uh,
Speaker 1: people know pretty quickly and and uh and so there's
Speaker 1: all these boats and some automatic guns and so being
Speaker 1: a Cariboo is um is um starting to look like
Speaker 1: it did UM in eighteen seventy five when UH rifled
Speaker 1: UH um my skits and then repeating guns first arrived
Speaker 1: in the Arctic. It's this um danger zone for um
Speaker 1: us uh wiping out animals with our technology. So that's confusing.
Speaker 1: But the thing I really wanted to do with this
Speaker 1: UH book was UM described you know, my love of caribou,
Speaker 1: which started with you know, meat and furs and uh
Speaker 1: you know, utilitarian use, and then UH this idea of
Speaker 1: being out on the tunder and having this you know,
Speaker 1: thousands of cariboo come across the across the tunder towards
Speaker 1: you and that companionship on the land, so you know,
Speaker 1: all these different forms of greed. I think where you like,
Speaker 1: you know, caribou roasted ribs, and you like the warm furs,
Speaker 1: but you like the companionship of this animal too, and
Speaker 1: UM and what it would mean to be on a
Speaker 1: on an empty land if if we mess up, you know,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things We're gonna cover off on
Speaker 1: some stuff. And one thing that I wanted to get
Speaker 1: into is the long line. Just as an outside observer
Speaker 1: who enjoys just spending time in Alaska, as a tourist.
Speaker 1: You know, Uh, the long line of things that all
Speaker 1: seemed to be competing to be the thing that ruins Alaska. Uh,
Speaker 1: meaning it was white people. It was the snow machine.
Speaker 1: It was the bolt action rifle. It was the bush plane.
Speaker 1: It was if you ask Buck Bowden, it was in
Speaker 1: reach devices. Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's it's been getting
Speaker 1: rude a long time. Yeah, that's interesting. And then and uh,
Speaker 1: I think it was before this started you were talking
Speaker 1: about these these are the good old days. And in
Speaker 1: some ways it really is because um, I like to say,
Speaker 1: you know, regardless of that crazy amount of change we've
Speaker 1: had in climate and because of vegetation, and then uh
Speaker 1: just kind of we're kind of buzzing with technology up
Speaker 1: there now. Uh lots of times them out on the tundra.
Speaker 1: You know. I just came from spending breakup. I never
Speaker 1: saw a human, you know, for almost a month, and
Speaker 1: um uh just animals and trees and thunder, and so
Speaker 1: that the land in some ways is is uh we're
Speaker 1: the ones who really changed, um um and um yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I always like writing about it. I have this impulse
Speaker 1: to to describe that, uh, the Innupact people and the
Speaker 1: land and the connections and the um how we used
Speaker 1: to live. I guess this focus on um every animal
Speaker 1: when it's fat, the innupact. We're fixated on fat for survival. UM.
Speaker 1: So I grew up. If you uh, if you came
Speaker 1: home with a skinny caribou, you are significantly more disgusting
Speaker 1: than uh, you know, serial rapist or or any other
Speaker 1: kind of criminal. Um because you brought home the skinny
Speaker 1: caribou and um and uh and you laugh, but it's
Speaker 1: not funny. Uh and you know all that was back
Speaker 1: to survival and the fat just kept your dog team
Speaker 1: and your family and yourself going. And UM, I hate
Speaker 1: to tell you, but uh, I gotta cooler muck tuck
Speaker 1: here next to my ankle that I'm gonna pull out
Speaker 1: here in a minute. And uh so we'll need some
Speaker 1: cold weather afterwards. And I'm not seeing that outside right now,
Speaker 1: But get the get the muck tuck ready, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna talk about a couple things that we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back in. And when we jump back in,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about cariboo fat. Okay, Uh, all the first
Speaker 1: light solitude kit is now it's not windproof. They added
Speaker 1: in a windproof membrane. So tried and true sanctuary line
Speaker 1: back in stock now was out, but now it's back
Speaker 1: in stock. And what's even better about the sanctuary line
Speaker 1: for white tail hunting improved windproof membrane. Okay, you can
Speaker 1: officially declare it that. So the solitude vast saltude jacket,
Speaker 1: solitude bib sanctuary two point oh jacket sanctuary two point
Speaker 1: oh bib. Check them out. You want kill big, huge
Speaker 1: white tails, not be chilly. Oh, so Seth is officially married. Yep. Now,
Speaker 1: when you set your date, did you realize that you
Speaker 1: set your wedding date for the Custer's death. No, never
Speaker 1: occurred to you, dude. The minute you told me you
Speaker 1: were getting married that day, I was like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: day Custer died, And I know exactly what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about when I officiate the wedding. Never occurred to me.
Speaker 1: It didn't occurred to me that it was Kenyan Ferrywell
Speaker 1: eye do either. But you know how you're living. You
Speaker 1: learn now like Serve Tea, you on a silver platter.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it when you told me that. The
Speaker 1: next day I went to we we had like you know,
Speaker 1: very Catholic like memorial for my grandpa's passing, which happened
Speaker 1: about ten years ago. So I drove over to Bill
Speaker 1: and I saw the fam had this deal and my
Speaker 1: stepdad was walking around being like, you know what happened
Speaker 1: this weekend? Right? I was like, huh, interesting, We're at
Speaker 1: a memorial for someone who passed away, and somebody is
Speaker 1: bringing up the death of George Armstrong Custer, which was
Speaker 1: geographically much closer to where we were, and the day
Speaker 1: prior we were at um a ceremony celebrating the union
Speaker 1: of two people, and you brought up George Armstrong Custer,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of made me think what would
Speaker 1: be the more appropriate venue seth wedding? This confused because
Speaker 1: Little Big Horn is July and twenty six, but Custer
Speaker 1: got killed on twenty five, and it was just kind
Speaker 1: of like a skirmish over on what the hell's is
Speaker 1: in June. I'm sorry, confused people. It was just like
Speaker 1: a little bit of a skirmish going on in oh Man,
Speaker 1: my ancestors went down the old George Johnson Henderson's represented
Speaker 1: on that Fateful Day anniversary. Do you think they had
Speaker 1: an idea what was what they were getting into. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened a long time ago. You
Speaker 1: know what really threw me for a loop last night? Seth?
Speaker 1: What's that? Uh? You know how you and Chester think
Speaker 1: you're all the ship on catching walleyes. I was going
Speaker 1: fish for fish. I was going fish for fish with
Speaker 1: Chester last night. Well, he's probably, which makes me feel
Speaker 1: like I could be like no, no, it makes me
Speaker 1: feel like I could like be in there the tournament.
Speaker 1: What we need to do is get to boats, two boats,
Speaker 1: you and someone else, Me and Chester, and that's how
Speaker 1: we'll figure out who the best wool I'm in is.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you guys limit out? We limited out
Speaker 1: on our top end fish, yeah, meaning we got one
Speaker 1: when we do this tournament. Yeah, it's hard to limit
Speaker 1: out on the low end fish or something like that.
Speaker 1: When we do this head to a tournament though, Prior
Speaker 1: to we need to go through Seth and Chester's boat
Speaker 1: and divvy up all the good ship so we're on
Speaker 1: equal footing. In my boat, when I went fish for
Speaker 1: fish with Chester, my neighbor got a goose egg. Oh
Speaker 1: he did? It was rough. I heard you were getting
Speaker 1: him on plastics some where. Did you hear that from
Speaker 1: Steve's not into sharing tournament ticks. I heard that from
Speaker 1: from Chester. I got my first one. I leach I
Speaker 1: was drowning. Oh yeah, my talk Chester, my barrel leeches
Speaker 1: that I gave Chester to take along with him. Uh,
Speaker 1: real quick speaking to Chester and weddings. When I get
Speaker 1: to Chester's house to pick him up, it's like a
Speaker 1: chaos at his house because his wedding ring fell out
Speaker 1: of the diamond fell out of the ring onto a
Speaker 1: gravel driveway. We sat on our knees for probably fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: He had it kind of down to like a circle
Speaker 1: about a yard wide, and he knew like what should
Speaker 1: be the center of the circle. And we spent about
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes removing pieces of gravel one at a time
Speaker 1: out of that circle. And then Chester he's like, we
Speaker 1: should probably go fishing if you want to stay and
Speaker 1: look for this diamond. I'll stay and look for the
Speaker 1: diamond out care And he's like, now we'll go fishing.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, you should look up on the internet
Speaker 1: how to find a diamond in the gravel. Um. I
Speaker 1: told him just to search where is my diamond? But
Speaker 1: I messaged Danielle and told her to go out at
Speaker 1: night with a headlamp. Well that's Chester learned. So Chester
Speaker 1: was waiting. He was gonna go when we got back.
Speaker 1: He was gonna go out with a light and spend
Speaker 1: his night looking for the thing. But then Danielle came back,
Speaker 1: his wife came back and got some other friend to look,
Speaker 1: and he got a really bright light and was able
Speaker 1: to find the diamond. And he found the diamond in
Speaker 1: areas that we had cleared. We declared it like, we
Speaker 1: went out and ever expanding gravel removal circle, and the
Speaker 1: diamond was within what we had cleared out, you know, searched,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Can we hit leech is real quick? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was talking leech trapping with Steve. I would talk
Speaker 1: with Jay Siemens about leech trapping. Well I did, I
Speaker 1: just watched his YouTube videos. I don't think you're in
Speaker 1: a good spot though, I think you're in a stupid area. No. Well,
Speaker 1: according to the wide world of Internet, that seems like
Speaker 1: as good as spot as a lot. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna bounce around and look where my kids get leeches
Speaker 1: on them when they swim. Yeah, I got a spot
Speaker 1: for you because I we waited in there for all
Speaker 1: of three minutes and came out with five leeches. Stuff.
Speaker 1: I like that, and my kids got But I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys do understand that the spot I hit is
Speaker 1: about half a mile from my house and the spot
Speaker 1: that you guys are talking about. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start at the center and you could order five pounds
Speaker 1: of leeches for what it would require to go around
Speaker 1: the three forks. That just gives them away. But I
Speaker 1: mean that's where my spot is. Well, this guy look
Speaker 1: for bucks. You get more leeches than you use off
Speaker 1: the summer. It's fifty bucks a pound. Those are the
Speaker 1: leeches that you're in gold dudes like morel The leeches
Speaker 1: you're using last night were from him. Um, he gets
Speaker 1: from Minnesota. So you just chucking in a chunk old
Speaker 1: meat or something every once in a while to keep
Speaker 1: these things alive? Are you trying to keep them all
Speaker 1: still live for months? With that? Yeah? They live. I
Speaker 1: just keep the water yet flushing the water. He's gunk
Speaker 1: up your water. Leach keepers do put like something in there.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what. I don't know. Let me you know,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. I don't know how to catch
Speaker 1: them real quick. My dad when my dad's best bodies
Speaker 1: was a guy named Ron Spring, and he owned Springs
Speaker 1: Sporting Goods and later he sold Spring Sporting Goods, but
Speaker 1: he remained. Uh. He was a commercial bait fisherman, so
Speaker 1: he got commercial fisherman right. But he was a commercial
Speaker 1: fisherman that caught fishing bait. And he he had a
Speaker 1: team of people that tide flies. He had a team
Speaker 1: of people that tide spawn sacks. He was a leech trapper,
Speaker 1: a wiggler trapper, raised red worms, leafworms, crawlers. He did everything,
Speaker 1: supplied all the live bait. He got to be in
Speaker 1: his early eighties and I wanted to profile him for
Speaker 1: a magazine. And I pitched the magazine and got the
Speaker 1: green light to profile him. And when I approached him
Speaker 1: in his eighties, he said no, because these are trade secrets. Oh,
Speaker 1: I love that. That's awesome. I couldn't believe it. Uh.
Speaker 1: He ate so much fish out of the Great Lakes
Speaker 1: that um they would every month or everything. No, there's
Speaker 1: every six months. He'd go to University of Michigan to
Speaker 1: do tests on heavy metal contamination and um like testing
Speaker 1: his mercury and all that ship. So he'd go down
Speaker 1: there and they'd give him a list. They'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you gotta go to the store, right, you need two
Speaker 1: dozen eggs, two leader bottle of Coca cola, pound of butter,
Speaker 1: three autocadles whatever, right, and give them a list. And
Speaker 1: then he'd wait a coup mists and they'd be like, Hey,
Speaker 1: what do you got to buy at the store. And
Speaker 1: that was like the kind of ship they were testing
Speaker 1: with them. And he told me, and I'll quote him,
Speaker 1: he said, Steve, I wouldn't remembered that list if I
Speaker 1: never ate a piece of fish at all. So he
Speaker 1: felt like it was biased. But I'd be like, but
Speaker 1: you don't know, Uh, I want to get out on
Speaker 1: this podcast though. It was I built my leech trap. Oh,
Speaker 1: went out to a spot nobody has any business of
Speaker 1: going into, threw my lead trap out and somebody came by.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of people watch him. They sabotaged it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they cut my line, which is really stupid because they
Speaker 1: left like, I used an old line spool and put
Speaker 1: some fly line backing on there. But they think you
Speaker 1: were doing well. I think they were probably even more
Speaker 1: confused when they took a look at a little tanfull
Speaker 1: you know, old beef liver. But they left that out there.
Speaker 1: They left the trash out there, but they just cut
Speaker 1: the line and then took like the sectional line attached
Speaker 1: to the reel. So anyway, you left the whole reel
Speaker 1: out there? Well, yeah, because I had a line. Oh
Speaker 1: you're gonna reel it in? Yes, yeah, because you know
Speaker 1: it's all bogged. Don't gotta worry about the thing all
Speaker 1: tangled up and ship. Yeah, and I'm on in like
Speaker 1: full flip flop mode. I'm not so they stole your
Speaker 1: boots around. They just took this. I don't it's very confusing.
Speaker 1: But no, no leeches. But they stole the real or
Speaker 1: not stole the real. They all the line off the
Speaker 1: reel and left the reel. Yeah, got such a like
Speaker 1: finicky thief. Well again, I think they've probably had an
Speaker 1: idea what was happening in their in their mind thought
Speaker 1: you had a set line. Maybe I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a single leach, not a single leach. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep broadcasting out from from home here. So you
Speaker 1: get ready to turn you onto a hotspot man, people
Speaker 1: of Bozeman. You find something soaking in a local settling
Speaker 1: pond around here. It's not don't touch it, or we
Speaker 1: get one of those people that can speak to the
Speaker 1: dead and we to go talk to Ron Spring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be a Korean start setting that up, all right,
Speaker 1: The first meat Eator Medium podcast. It's a great space
Speaker 1: for a seance. Honestly, I gotta tell you a horrible
Speaker 1: story about Ron Spring real quick. Um, well, my greatest
Speaker 1: moments a shame. We're fishing. My dad called a big
Speaker 1: northern and it was real cold out and it froze,
Speaker 1: and so later my dad said, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: to catch a big northern? And I was like yeah.
Speaker 1: So he threw me the big northern and I caught it,
Speaker 1: and I told Ron Spring I caught a bit whatever
Speaker 1: the hell inch northern And it felt so bad. I
Speaker 1: later called him back and said I didn't actually catch it,
Speaker 1: like he thought that a little that was my birthday?
Speaker 1: Was my birthday? Uh a black bear. This is a
Speaker 1: crazy a story reported by her friends at USA Today.
Speaker 1: I was so pissed. I texted Spencer this morning, was like,
Speaker 1: how does the USA Today know about this? And we
Speaker 1: don't know about it? He's like, because they got four
Speaker 1: thousand reporters a black bear and what's date was this? Tennessee?
Speaker 1: A black guy, Okay, a black bear gets a closed
Speaker 1: car open, Yeah, which is not a usual? What is
Speaker 1: the usual? What happens next? It's a hot ass day.
Speaker 1: He gets the door open, gets in the car and
Speaker 1: starts eating scraps, but the door closes behind him. It
Speaker 1: gets up to a hundred degrees that day and kills
Speaker 1: the bear inside the forty degrees in the car, and
Speaker 1: the bear died inside the car of heat, like what
Speaker 1: happens to people's dogs. And the weird part is then
Speaker 1: the Fish and Game Agency uses it as a chance
Speaker 1: for people to to not leave bear attract And so
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, there's some ship in your
Speaker 1: car which is closed. Counts is leaving bear attract and self, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd have to keep your car. My truck is littered
Speaker 1: with bear attracted from all the crumbs and ship. My
Speaker 1: kids leave everybody's cars. I just don't count that. I
Speaker 1: don't count like your car and your driveway closed as
Speaker 1: being like being not bear safe. You have to run
Speaker 1: a pretty sterile car. But I get the sentiment they
Speaker 1: think the thing got in there. This is weird. He
Speaker 1: was in his car at ten am and he found
Speaker 1: the bear dead at seven pm, middle of the damn day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ambient temperature. There's a picture of the bear kind of limp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another baby. I mean it's like every other days when
Speaker 1: we get to Seth in a minute, here he'll be
Speaker 1: able to speak to this. Not you, Seth Morris Seth.
Speaker 1: Canada's gonna be a confusing podcast. It seems like every
Speaker 1: other day this happens. A minor, a gold miner and Yukon,
Speaker 1: the Yukon Territory of Canada found a thirty five thousand
Speaker 1: year old mummified baby wool mammoth. That thing is so
Speaker 1: that is bad ass with the big snout. What do
Speaker 1: they call that? A proboscis? Is that called? They named
Speaker 1: him none? None child hut long. I mean it looks
Speaker 1: just like a little amaciated baby mammoth laid out on
Speaker 1: a blue tart. Yeah, like everything else. When people find
Speaker 1: something to far north, there's a high likelihood it will
Speaker 1: wind up laying on a blue tart across anything like that. Um,
Speaker 1: you guys are making me laugh because years ago I
Speaker 1: started calling myself, you know, part part of the blue
Speaker 1: tarp tribe. We lived along with South Tent City along
Speaker 1: the edge of the cot Spy. There's North Tent City
Speaker 1: in South Tent City. But we discovered blue tarps. I
Speaker 1: think this is about thirty years ago. And take four
Speaker 1: pieces of plywood and nailm together and um put a
Speaker 1: blue tarp over. The only thing is that you look
Speaker 1: funny because the light um, you know, under a blue
Speaker 1: tarp And so anyway, we're the people of the blue
Speaker 1: tarp um. Which but speaking of mammoth, uh, I brought
Speaker 1: Karin a little chunk of mammoth ivory. I told her
Speaker 1: be careful because very addictive searching for ivory. You just
Speaker 1: that's choke of a manoth tusk. Yeah, that's blue. Is
Speaker 1: Vivian night. It's a mineral that sort of deposits into
Speaker 1: the soaks, into the ivory. And so it's every time
Speaker 1: you find a piece of ivory, it's different color, either
Speaker 1: real dark or brown. Or you didn't saying that? Did
Speaker 1: you not at all know? It? Um like feels like polished.
Speaker 1: Where do you find something like that a long river? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: it's getting complicated nowadays because I think the state no
Speaker 1: longer once you picking it up in the in the
Speaker 1: feds don't and um on native land. You you know,
Speaker 1: if you're not native, you're you're not supposed to. It's
Speaker 1: it's more, it's more complicated. I don't know the laws
Speaker 1: about you know, mean high water, you know, sea level
Speaker 1: along the shores. But people go along the shores looking
Speaker 1: and um, um it's very common to find uh. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say very common. You hear, oh, so and so
Speaker 1: found h seven foot tusk or or whatever. And I
Speaker 1: was on the coast looking and somebody just found a tusk.
Speaker 1: And um. I was searching the smelting permafrost bluff and
Speaker 1: came across this big round thing that I chipped out,
Speaker 1: and it was a turd, um, mammoth turd. And so
Speaker 1: I save myself by saying, I don't need the tusk.
Speaker 1: Everybody finds tusks. It's not very many people find mammoth turds.
Speaker 1: And um. So I carried it around it as a
Speaker 1: black for a while. Um, and then uh sent it
Speaker 1: to the university. They never thanked me for my ship.
Speaker 1: It was super disturbing. I never did hear back. But
Speaker 1: um anyway, yeah, searching for mammoth I was super super addictive.
Speaker 1: We find these big molers. Those are pretty common to find.
Speaker 1: Should have brought a picture of one of those. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really fun. They say this, this one was the
Speaker 1: best one found on the continent yet and it had
Speaker 1: its last meal still in stomach. I guess what it
Speaker 1: was eating, Yanni, mm hm, circus peanuts is eating grass.
Speaker 1: Nebraska is introducing a uh you can read about this
Speaker 1: at the medior dot com conservation. Wildlife Management. Nebraska introduces
Speaker 1: controversial July elk season. Damn crop damage. Better have the
Speaker 1: freezer ready, people. Yeah, people are bent out of shape.
Speaker 1: Other people are not because they're just sick of losing
Speaker 1: corn crops shooting them in land. They're they're working with
Speaker 1: landowners to lower elker words and crop land areas. Colorado
Speaker 1: used to have a spring summer crop damage hunt. The
Speaker 1: elk are spending the elk are spending their summer in
Speaker 1: the cornfields, not not dispersing until the corn is picked.
Speaker 1: It's private land only hunt. Um. Even landowners have to
Speaker 1: pay like ten or five bucks to get get a
Speaker 1: depredation tag and then uh, it's open to residents and
Speaker 1: non residents. Um. But you need to have prior permission
Speaker 1: from a landowner in the areas that they're carrying on
Speaker 1: the hunt in order to purchase a tag. I mean,
Speaker 1: am I rot and maybe you know cow like it
Speaker 1: seems like this is a part of the state where
Speaker 1: they don't even really want a bunch of elk running
Speaker 1: around in the first place, and that that's typically how
Speaker 1: you know, like the good folks at our m EF
Speaker 1: can can tell you, like when they go in, when
Speaker 1: I used to go in and do reintroductions of elk,
Speaker 1: it is there's a very serious plan in place, like
Speaker 1: these things. We want them to stay in between these
Speaker 1: highways in this type of habitat because they're they're planning
Speaker 1: ahead for this type of conflict. I think there's only
Speaker 1: about three thousand elk in the in the whole state.
Speaker 1: And you know, a July hunt with cows carrying calves
Speaker 1: and a little soft horned bowls running around isn't as much, Uh,
Speaker 1: isn't very romantic compared to the way we all want
Speaker 1: to picture hunting milk. U. But this can be effective
Speaker 1: for the folks are catering to here. Is it going
Speaker 1: to be too effective? I think that's what some audience
Speaker 1: members were kind of nervous about. Yeah, well that's I
Speaker 1: mean that's like the great thing is that when it
Speaker 1: gets in any of the stuff with like, well there's
Speaker 1: too many, like according to who, right, Yeah, I wait
Speaker 1: my whole life to you know whatever. Some person in
Speaker 1: Nebraska be like, I've waited my whole life to hunt
Speaker 1: elk Nebraska. It's native elk range. He thinks it's too
Speaker 1: many because they're getting in his corner. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's nearly enough. So it's like you're always gonna have that, right,
Speaker 1: Like according to who, car insurance companies, crop insurance people,
Speaker 1: the ornamental uh landscape industry, hoof, and people that don't
Speaker 1: want lime disease we're talking about I mean before the
Speaker 1: podcast too. It's there's all just as Steve's pointing out,
Speaker 1: a lot of different stakeholders, and the really one of
Speaker 1: the few stakeholders that I actually care about are the
Speaker 1: folks who were like farming that ground. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: during this huge period of elk being non existent, and
Speaker 1: now somebody decided to put elk out there that are
Speaker 1: causing significant damage to the way they're making a living,
Speaker 1: and their whole business is based around or you know,
Speaker 1: it was based with the idea of this type of
Speaker 1: competition not being part of the business plan. And so
Speaker 1: I do have some sympathy sympathy for those people that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, now here's this big X factor
Speaker 1: that is growing like crazy on the landscape. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: probably seems like pretty academic when you point out to
Speaker 1: him that they used to be here, like define used
Speaker 1: to then we're here in my grandpa like to first
Speaker 1: turn the ground over, right, So what's used to me?
Speaker 1: Yeph Down there on the river they're pulling um uh
Speaker 1: musk ox out of the river bank. They used to
Speaker 1: be here. Sorry. Uh. One last thing be where we
Speaker 1: get back into our esteemed guests. Broady, he's got a report.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about hippie, Steve Dude, listen. I
Speaker 1: like definition, though, well, when did the hippie ever do
Speaker 1: anything bad to me? I don't know, never to some
Speaker 1: people like if I could pick it and have it
Speaker 1: be that most of the world was hippies, I like,
Speaker 1: I don't find they don't like to hunt, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: like I like when I wake up in the morning.
Speaker 1: When I wake up in the morning, the last thing
Speaker 1: I'm on the lookout for is hippies. My buddy in
Speaker 1: grade school, I had a shirt that you'd wear all
Speaker 1: the time that said hippie smell. And he was always
Speaker 1: very quick to point out that the shirt doesn't say
Speaker 1: how they smell. Uh, my daughter, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this, but Gilligan's Island hats are in style
Speaker 1: for little kids, little girls, a little bucket hat. I
Speaker 1: call him Gilligan hats. Now I call my daughter Gilligan.
Speaker 1: Which pistols are off? I called her Clyde. I used
Speaker 1: to call her slim and I called her Clyde. Now
Speaker 1: it's Gilligan. But hers has a ammunitem ascaria like the
Speaker 1: flying Garrick's hallucin and it's got that little hallucigenic jungle
Speaker 1: frog on I was like, you know, your hat's got
Speaker 1: twin hallucigenics on it. She's know what hallucigenic is? Shut up, dad,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Who got that for? She bought it on
Speaker 1: Amazon because yeah, because she's like, I thought it was
Speaker 1: like a frog in them. It's like a Gilligan's Island hat.
Speaker 1: And she thought it was a frog in a mushroom.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know what that mushroom is like
Speaker 1: that frog are She's on Amazon like a like an
Speaker 1: eight dollar Gilligan's Island hat. I saw a T shirt
Speaker 1: with those mushrooms on the really big ones on the
Speaker 1: covering the whole back, and it said make America giggle again.
Speaker 1: Now this is when hippies come for you. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got the dog people. Now the hippies are gonna
Speaker 1: come for me. Um. There's a particular brand of hippie
Speaker 1: called the Rainbow Family, Family of of being Light. They've
Speaker 1: been around since Um. I used to live in Boulder.
Speaker 1: We see these people all the time panhandling. Um. And
Speaker 1: this group of people has what's called a range. You
Speaker 1: know that they were from this group because they have
Speaker 1: rainbow Yeah you just have you ever lived in a
Speaker 1: state that was having a rainbow gathering going on? I know,
Speaker 1: but Rony just said, I lived in Bolder and I'd
Speaker 1: see them all the time. There's a residual effect. They're
Speaker 1: there months before the gathering and then it takes a
Speaker 1: month to disperse. It's a huge deal when the rainbow
Speaker 1: gathering comes to town. Right, there's like a group that's
Speaker 1: all the Rainbow children and Boulder that were like it
Speaker 1: was like a known group of people. Anyway, they have
Speaker 1: this deal every year where they called a rainbow gathering
Speaker 1: where they get together on public land and it's generally
Speaker 1: thousands of people. UM. This year's gathering was planned for
Speaker 1: Adams Park, which is north Esteemboat Springs on the Medicine
Speaker 1: Bow Route National Force UM, and they're thinking up to
Speaker 1: ten thousand people will gather, not just people rainbow people.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a care bear countdown. And uh, there's been
Speaker 1: like an increasing concern about what kind of impact this
Speaker 1: is going to have on public lank. They when they
Speaker 1: did it near Missoula, Man, it was like a bio
Speaker 1: has yeah yeah, and this is like an area that's
Speaker 1: an important calving ground. UM. It's like very pristine public land.
Speaker 1: And so there's been calls to uh kind of shut
Speaker 1: this thing down. And generally speaking, when you have like
Speaker 1: an organized event on public land, you need a permit
Speaker 1: for it. And that's never like the Rainbow Gathering has
Speaker 1: never been a permitted, like sanctioned event. UM. And the
Speaker 1: Four Service took the step of closing Cow California Park,
Speaker 1: which is near Adams Park where the event is going
Speaker 1: to happen. I'm not sure why they didn't close Adams
Speaker 1: Park where the event is happening, but they did shut
Speaker 1: down an area near the gathering, and there's already been
Speaker 1: some arrests, like people are already gathering there that the
Speaker 1: event hasn't taken place yet. It will have happened by
Speaker 1: the time this this podcast airs, but there's already been
Speaker 1: arrest for various things. Um, let's see here. I appeal
Speaker 1: logs with a dude named Barefoot, and he'd go to
Speaker 1: the Rainbow gathering every year and he carried around when
Speaker 1: he went there. Well, he always carried it around. He
Speaker 1: carried around a black powder pistol revolver. It. It doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me. They've already had rest for damage the natural resources,
Speaker 1: interoperable equipment, and ardocotics possession or distribution, aggravated assault on
Speaker 1: a peace officer, felony possession of a firearm. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like very hippie ish to me. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the deal man, here's what you know. Why you know
Speaker 1: how dog people don't like you even though you're a
Speaker 1: dog person. You won't get feedback because the hippies aren't touchy.
Speaker 1: I don't know, they're not touchy people. I'm expecting some
Speaker 1: feed now. I did this thing with Clay on Clay's
Speaker 1: podcast and we were talking about how beekeepers are touchy
Speaker 1: people because they all just got into it and they're
Speaker 1: all in a swinging dick contest to be who's most
Speaker 1: into it. And people who enthusiasts who grew up doing
Speaker 1: like nothing and then they start doing something become touchy.
Speaker 1: Hippies aren't touching. You won't get feedback from hippies, but
Speaker 1: they don't do anything. You got people who live their
Speaker 1: whole life not knowing about some souped up breed a
Speaker 1: bird dog. And also they're like Joe bird dog, They're
Speaker 1: gonna be touchy. So I say this thing about beekeepers,
Speaker 1: and then what did I make the mistake of looking
Speaker 1: at social media comments? There's a comment from this guy like,
Speaker 1: you don't stand up for hunters. You don't stand up
Speaker 1: for the Second Amendment. You don't stick up for hunter
Speaker 1: because you want them all to go away so you
Speaker 1: can have all the area for yourself. I click on
Speaker 1: this thing, beekeeper, We'll see, we'll see. I think like
Speaker 1: they should be getting a permit for this. I mean
Speaker 1: the amount of damage that ten thousand people can cause
Speaker 1: just by walking through an area, the human waste. I've
Speaker 1: seen what thirty people can do to my backyard in
Speaker 1: the past few days. Do you work for bass pro Shops? No?
Speaker 1: What is what the beast pro Shops had they send
Speaker 1: They sent these to the office. Thought he walked out
Speaker 1: to get married to have that is wearing a bass
Speaker 1: pro Shop hat for the You ask Brodie if you
Speaker 1: work for on X, if you don't know what the
Speaker 1: rainbow gathering? Yes, and you want like an idea and
Speaker 1: this will touch some people on our sphere and piss
Speaker 1: a few folks off. If you've ever been in a
Speaker 1: town where there's a three or five day fish concert,
Speaker 1: that that will give you a taste of folks gathering
Speaker 1: preve concert and taking days to get out and they
Speaker 1: have like a very very noticeable look to them. We'll
Speaker 1: take those guys three to five days to do one tune.
Speaker 1: I just want to go on record before we leave
Speaker 1: this subject. I want to go on record saying this.
Speaker 1: I support hippies because I just don't see where the
Speaker 1: problem is. But I don't support the rainbow gathering on
Speaker 1: national on public land. And in the old days, in
Speaker 1: the old days they went to a guy's farm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and outside of New York City, I think should go
Speaker 1: back that I don't like public land rainbow gatherings. But
Speaker 1: like I said, man, when I wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: the last thing I'm on the lookout for is a
Speaker 1: hippie doing something to me, especially like the disenfranchised ones
Speaker 1: that don't vote. I'm not worried about him doing something
Speaker 1: to me because they say it's like I don't care.
Speaker 1: Probably not good for the ECONO. They strike me as
Speaker 1: people that don't listen to podcasts, so they're probably not
Speaker 1: even gonna know that you're saying that. Hang out on Reddit.
Speaker 1: We're ready to move on, all right, Seth Canner. We're
Speaker 1: gonna start out with. What are we gonna start out with?
Speaker 1: It's our Alaskan sampler platter. We're ready, man, are you gosh? Uh?
Speaker 1: It's still I'm kind of uncomfortable with this hippie thing
Speaker 1: because my parents were accused of being hippie down the
Speaker 1: middle of the woods. Well not at all. I think
Speaker 1: they were trying to get away from people, but they were.
Speaker 1: I think they were hippies. And none of them, those
Speaker 1: people that went north with them smoked or drank or um.
Speaker 1: But they did, uh, I guess not cut their hair
Speaker 1: as often as other people should. I should someone on
Speaker 1: record saying that I got no problem with we're we're
Speaker 1: talking specifically the rainbow family of living life. What do
Speaker 1: you think Seth made him hippies? Yeah? Why do you
Speaker 1: feel because your dad was your dad was came up
Speaker 1: north as a caribou biologist, right. No, he uh was
Speaker 1: born and raised in Toledo and was trying to get
Speaker 1: away from Toledo and and then Catholic school, and so
Speaker 1: he went to UH seventeen years old, went to the
Speaker 1: territory Alaska and UM and UH applied for college UM
Speaker 1: and then studied UH zoology and biology. And then along
Speaker 1: came Project Chariot, where they were going to bomb use
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons Obama Harbor up in the northern part of Alaska.
Speaker 1: So he got a job studying cariboo at that point
Speaker 1: because they were like they were trying to do baseline
Speaker 1: work on what that they were trying to do. What
Speaker 1: you should explain, like when once we get into our sampler,
Speaker 1: you should explain Project Chariot. I had heard of that,
Speaker 1: but until I read your book, I didn't really understand
Speaker 1: the details of it. It's some you know, right, I'm
Speaker 1: fighting the Sambler Road that they want to build through
Speaker 1: the brooks range from the pipeline road to you know,
Speaker 1: basically where I live, and they want to come all
Speaker 1: the way across. Yeah, and I equate that as dropping
Speaker 1: a bomb on the native culture and the way of
Speaker 1: life in the in the wilderness country there. Um. But
Speaker 1: in the fifties, uh, United States had all these nice
Speaker 1: new weapons, uh, and then nobody to drop them on
Speaker 1: hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs. And so they started this
Speaker 1: Plowshares program, which was hypothetically to do uh, peaceful work
Speaker 1: with nuclear weapons. They build a canal and a new
Speaker 1: Panama canal or and so they decided, well, Alaska Territory
Speaker 1: would be perfect place to uh, let's make a harbor
Speaker 1: with five or six nuclear weapons. And that was near
Speaker 1: where I grew up. I wasn't born that then, And
Speaker 1: and so my dad ended up going north from you know,
Speaker 1: Fairbanks where he was working as a biologists up to
Speaker 1: the Arctic to study the effects of radiation on caribou.
Speaker 1: Other people were studying you know, walruses and and native
Speaker 1: use of the land and food and resources there, and
Speaker 1: and it was it was touching go the um this
Speaker 1: this Alaska became a state nineteen fifty nine, and so
Speaker 1: right in there was this giant alleged economic opportunity to
Speaker 1: you know, get nuked. Um and uh so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people were for it, and um. Of course,
Speaker 1: uh the natives were not because they were about to
Speaker 1: get their you know, their backyard bombed. But for a
Speaker 1: while their their voices were more sort of muted and um.
Speaker 1: But anyway it was stopped. Um, and that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: It certainly would have my life would have been totally different.
Speaker 1: Bombed northwest Alaska to make it a better place. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen images of the creators they made in
Speaker 1: Bikinia Toll? Absolutely unbelievable. Man, it looks like the blue hole.
Speaker 1: And at that time that um, I'm gonna lose my
Speaker 1: numbers here. But the radiation that was there was so
Speaker 1: much fallout from the Americans and Soviet testing weapons that
Speaker 1: that caribou were um kind of radioactive because they eat lins.
Speaker 1: The primary favorite food is this this lin that absorbs um.
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting the ces M one for I can't remember
Speaker 1: that at this point. But anyway, one of these isotopes
Speaker 1: that would leach out of the atmosphere like and would
Speaker 1: absorb it and caribou, we'd eat it. And then of
Speaker 1: course our whole focus was fat, so we would eat
Speaker 1: tons of caribou that our bio concentrating this um this
Speaker 1: radiation and um um the fat store that. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then if you have a bear, um, if a bear
Speaker 1: eats the fat, then and we're all say about rendering
Speaker 1: out bear fat and making you know, whatever we made
Speaker 1: with the bear fat. So um um. In my young life,
Speaker 1: the people that went north with my parents, Um, they
Speaker 1: were tested and I guess they're like you're describing earlier,
Speaker 1: super high and uh in radiation, living out this uh
Speaker 1: this semi hippie sorry, um this wilderness Uh, strange white
Speaker 1: people living in the wilderness. Uh uh. We never used
Speaker 1: the word wilderness. We're scared of that word, but I'm
Speaker 1: using it now. But um, living out off the land
Speaker 1: and then you know, uh, far higher than somebody in Chicago,
Speaker 1: probably on the glow in the dark, seemingly the most pure,
Speaker 1: the most pure food and most pure existence. You guys
Speaker 1: didn't like the word wilderness because you didn't like federally
Speaker 1: designated wilderness. Uh. In my life, as things are changing fast,
Speaker 1: pipeline was being built, which you know, made the Native
Speaker 1: Claim Settlement Act was necessary, so UM, the land up
Speaker 1: there would have a title ownership. Somebody could say who
Speaker 1: owned what, so then we could start tearing it up,
Speaker 1: um and um. At that time, living out, we just
Speaker 1: thought of UM. We were people on the land. We
Speaker 1: cut wood for firewood, We hunted, uh, you know, bears
Speaker 1: for skins and fat or whatever, and um, and we didn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't wilderness. We were there and then, and the
Speaker 1: natives had no this was home. They knew you had
Speaker 1: named for every slough and lake and and sandbar where
Speaker 1: you caught this and that, and so it wasn't wilderness
Speaker 1: in our mind. And the only time we heard that
Speaker 1: word was when strange white people landed and started talking
Speaker 1: about what we were not allowed to do. UM. So
Speaker 1: wilderness was a dangerous word. Um and uh. At some
Speaker 1: point five or ten years ago, as asked to talk about, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what the Wilderness Act meant to me? Of
Speaker 1: course I've never heard of it, um and UM. I
Speaker 1: was there with UM four tall white ladies and twice
Speaker 1: as tall as me and um, and they were describing
Speaker 1: you know this very interesting um effects of the Wilderness Act.
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly, when was from Chicago. I had
Speaker 1: grown up in uh, Colorado and etcetera. And and then
Speaker 1: along comes my turn. I went last, you know, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, we were I don't know, we're
Speaker 1: always scared. He it was it was, you know, white
Speaker 1: people coming from somewhere else, and then um terrifying us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were my family. Um speaking of hippies, Um, um,
Speaker 1: sorry that they did. You know, reading your book, man,
Speaker 1: I kind of got like a mild hippie vibe, but
Speaker 1: I didn't get a total hippie vibe off your parents. Well,
Speaker 1: because they were like hunters and trappers. Sure, but my
Speaker 1: dad has devoted his life to avoiding a steady job.
Speaker 1: Does that count? No? Oh? Okay, um that that that
Speaker 1: the hippies do not in my mind we're talking about
Speaker 1: it very hard to define. Tournament in my mind, planned
Speaker 1: by your own rules is not owned by hippies. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I don't know any I didn't
Speaker 1: know fishing talk about people who love anything you're saying
Speaker 1: talking about people who um first and foremost. When looking
Speaker 1: for an explanation to an unanswered question, if you told
Speaker 1: him there's a conspiracy that they're like, well, that's what
Speaker 1: I believe before you finish the sentence. Okay, that's so.
Speaker 1: I guess we weren't. Yeah, we weren't hippies, but it
Speaker 1: was that time frame though, right, Yeah, I definitely was.
Speaker 1: I think the people that were doing, um, they're back
Speaker 1: they're part of the back of the Land, They're extreme
Speaker 1: edge of the back of the Land movement. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was I mean, barefoot kids and living in a cave.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, so, um, I guess you I don't
Speaker 1: know what to call it. It was home really nice.
Speaker 1: But he was But but you're old man. He's not
Speaker 1: trying to just like and understanding your biography, Like I
Speaker 1: don't want to go back all to Toledo, but you're
Speaker 1: old man. Became like your father, right, became familiar with
Speaker 1: the area that he would homestead and claim through that
Speaker 1: through the caribou work, right, my mistake, Um sort of. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he got done that summer working with the other battlegists,
Speaker 1: and he had spotted this sided glue on the coast
Speaker 1: right next to the ground zero where they were gonna
Speaker 1: bomb that, you know, and uh, he got his stuff
Speaker 1: and went to live there for the winter. And when
Speaker 1: he got there, Uh typical of you know when you
Speaker 1: get home and you find a porcupine in your house
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um there was um a native couple who
Speaker 1: had decided they going to spend the winter there. And
Speaker 1: so my dad was like, oh, you know, he's not
Speaker 1: gonna um invade you know, their territory. It was an
Speaker 1: abandoned sod house. But they were like, they couldn't really
Speaker 1: speak English, but they thought, yeah, the old inn you
Speaker 1: pack extreme generosity is important. And you're you're about to
Speaker 1: spend the winter and h sade igloo as big as
Speaker 1: your average bath room, and they said you should stay.
Speaker 1: So along comes this white guy who's gonna sleep on
Speaker 1: their floor for the winner. And and so he uh
Speaker 1: spent the winter hunting for this couple. The man had
Speaker 1: you know, one leg, and the woman was u uh
Speaker 1: not young and and so um here's this energetic, young
Speaker 1: white guy that wants to learn the old ways and
Speaker 1: and um and was willing to go out every day
Speaker 1: to hunt for the dogs, dog teams and the and
Speaker 1: the people and and so he got UM. I think
Speaker 1: I would just say terribly enamored with old Innu pac
Speaker 1: way of life. Just the connection, the hunting every day.
Speaker 1: Harsh life, but um simplicity, I guess, and and so um,
Speaker 1: you know he went back to Fairbanks and and more
Speaker 1: or less you know, uh got my mom and they
Speaker 1: went north and build a sad iglo and started that life, um,
Speaker 1: which was you know, using caribou sinu for thread and
Speaker 1: and sewing muck lux out of uger steel, um tied
Speaker 1: in caribou and um, just the old ways. We just
Speaker 1: had dried fish for lunch and and seal oil and
Speaker 1: and uh whipped caribou fat and I could go on
Speaker 1: and um that was the life. You guys. When you
Speaker 1: were a kid, you guys traveled by dog team day
Speaker 1: you Yeah, but was that was that like a was
Speaker 1: that sort of like a like a conscious decision to
Speaker 1: do something in old way because you were sort of
Speaker 1: like your age would have been where dog teams were
Speaker 1: definitely on the way out. Absolutely. I was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen and it was like dead nuts on the arrival
Speaker 1: of snowmobiles, and and pretty quick into that, my dad
Speaker 1: got rid of his uh his dogs, and and I
Speaker 1: think it was bothering him shooting uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: hundred caribou of fall for for dog food. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: Well that was people food and dog food, but um,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. And they didn't have they didn't have
Speaker 1: much when they arrived, so they didn't have fish nets webbing,
Speaker 1: you know, to catch the very reliant Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and everybody was uh, I shouldn't say everybody. You know,
Speaker 1: the villagers were way ahead of my family as far
Speaker 1: as catching fish. Pretty quickly we got um uh fish nets.
Speaker 1: And then my dad got a stone bile archaic bowlands
Speaker 1: with the track in the front and a seat that
Speaker 1: drugged behind on wooden skis and it was terrifying machine.
Speaker 1: But um and then I think we didn't have a
Speaker 1: dog's again in Toil, maybe I was eight. I wanted
Speaker 1: to have dogs, and so I got dogs and built
Speaker 1: my own sled and started using a super small dog
Speaker 1: team for uh trapping, and uh, we didn't have neighbors,
Speaker 1: so uh, you know, my dogs were kind of my friends.
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't allowing the house or anything, but
Speaker 1: um um hunting and every day and trapping and and
Speaker 1: all that was you know what I did. We Uh
Speaker 1: it was kind of substitute for go and senior neighbors
Speaker 1: or whatever you said. So you didn't have neighbors, Um,
Speaker 1: how did your parents like learn all those skills? Were
Speaker 1: they learning from locals or trial and error or um
Speaker 1: I gotta get back to the hippie thing for a minute.
Speaker 1: So um, during about the time I was four, a
Speaker 1: bunch I think there was as many as maybe fifteen
Speaker 1: or so people living in little Sadi glues around us.
Speaker 1: So we did have a brief time of neighbors. Um.
Speaker 1: These were what we call commune. Yeah. Yeah, these were
Speaker 1: what we at home call white people. Um. And so
Speaker 1: outsiders you refer to yourselves as white people, Um, yes, Um.
Speaker 1: But it's a weird mix because when I'm out on
Speaker 1: the country even now with my friends, Um, if you
Speaker 1: lift up your binkoclers and you're like, hey, look like
Speaker 1: white people. Um, that's how I grew up. So it's
Speaker 1: weird to be standing with your innu pact friends and
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, you, how come there's white people over
Speaker 1: there and and there's me and um, so I kind
Speaker 1: of um, um, I don't know. I guess, as Sarah
Speaker 1: Palin would say, I shuck and jib um that I
Speaker 1: don't know, Um where that fits in? But my myself
Speaker 1: where I fit in? It's it's hard to uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel white outsider ish a lot. And then other
Speaker 1: times I'm like, hey, I don't you know, I get
Speaker 1: uncomfortable when I see uh this outsiders. But I really
Speaker 1: want to explain that it's um, it's just sort of
Speaker 1: a sloppy term, like so many other things. And part
Speaker 1: of that you're talking about hippies. It says it's a
Speaker 1: loose uh, you can accuse somebody of something and not
Speaker 1: really be careful with it. And and so um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of comedy involved in the village. Some um
Speaker 1: black guy showed up a school teacher and and the um,
Speaker 1: the kids were calling him a honky um and uh,
Speaker 1: and it was just they didn't know um. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've been called that a ton of times, you know,
Speaker 1: and for you know, everything, you get called everything. But um, um,
Speaker 1: I guess that if a person, let's just say, an
Speaker 1: Asian person showed up, they would be referred to as
Speaker 1: white people, which is just an euphemism, a broad a
Speaker 1: broad euphemism for outsider. That makes sense. So so it's
Speaker 1: almost become a joke in a way. It's a sloppy term.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I grew up um kind of a
Speaker 1: weird mix of that where, um, if you know, if
Speaker 1: somebody looks at you a mile way through the binoculars,
Speaker 1: you know, you're one thing, and then you walk over,
Speaker 1: oh you know you're um, you're into the your local
Speaker 1: you know, and didn't recognize you. Um. That was a
Speaker 1: long winded explanation of the tip of the iceberg as
Speaker 1: far as race relations at home. But um, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: so my parents went north. Um, I think part of
Speaker 1: that back to the land movement, but at that time
Speaker 1: we're so focused on it that um uh, it's almost
Speaker 1: like in the village is the inn impact population was
Speaker 1: looking forward at modernity, blue jeans and plywood and and
Speaker 1: whatever else in my family was you know, actively looking
Speaker 1: back and and saying, oh, yeah, we'll stick with kerosene
Speaker 1: lamps or or um. Were you guys regarded by Native
Speaker 1: Alaskans as like did they sort of like recognize the
Speaker 1: movement your family was part of. Was there enough of
Speaker 1: that going on that they're like, oh, there's these white
Speaker 1: people showing up on the landscape trying to sort of
Speaker 1: like act like how we lived years ago. Yeah, things
Speaker 1: are complicated. I want to catch you for a second, because, uh,
Speaker 1: you said something about your family went there and claimed
Speaker 1: homestead and all that. My parents didn't claim the land
Speaker 1: because they wanted to be like natives. The natives didn't
Speaker 1: have ownership of land. Um. And so my parents actively
Speaker 1: didn't claim the land, which was a huge mistake, but
Speaker 1: they didn't. And then very quickly that that ended. Um
Speaker 1: and uh. And then they found out their mistake because
Speaker 1: we're on the BLM burn list and they were gonna
Speaker 1: come if they could get our sod iglu to burn,
Speaker 1: which is doubtful because it was sort of damp, but um,
Speaker 1: they were burning people's cabins out at that time. And um,
Speaker 1: these hippie squatters. Um. So I've never owned the land.
Speaker 1: Um and and and now I'm I think I'm the
Speaker 1: last person in Alaska who has a National Park Service
Speaker 1: permit to reside where I was born and raised. Which
Speaker 1: is some writer that I think Senator Ted Stevens put
Speaker 1: into a NILKA the Native Claim Settlement Act. Um. So
Speaker 1: your daughter will lose, yeah, that's the idea, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is is not does lose at home? Yeah, um, which
Speaker 1: is home to her too. And and then you know
Speaker 1: to get back to really if you die, they destroy it. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the idea. Yeah, I think I'm supposed to when
Speaker 1: I'm about ninety, I'm supposed to destroy it before I die,
Speaker 1: so like your last act before you die. Well that's
Speaker 1: why I'm always picking my trash. Otherwise I just leave
Speaker 1: it on the ground. No, kid, really, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that you guys didn't do I just I don't know
Speaker 1: why I assumed that they did the homes toad because
Speaker 1: then I noticed that, like you still hang out there
Speaker 1: and your daughter hangs out there, and yeah, I just
Speaker 1: you know, I just spent a break up there, but
Speaker 1: you know, not very long before before coming here. You know,
Speaker 1: never saw a person the whole time. And it's in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, it's like the um. You know,
Speaker 1: it hasn't changed that much. You know, my companions are
Speaker 1: in Cariboo and bears walking around, et cetera. But um,
Speaker 1: then in other ways, there's a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: um land claims and permits and rules Alaska. You probably
Speaker 1: know this, but it's real weird that way um up
Speaker 1: there in the Arctic. Uh, there's a ton of rules
Speaker 1: written on paper about that land. But the paper is
Speaker 1: far away somewhere else, and we don't know anything about
Speaker 1: it and kind of do what we used to do. Question.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna ask that did your family when
Speaker 1: you were younger, did they have like interactions or run
Speaker 1: ins with federal officials like trying to get you to Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was yeah, the blm uh first, but then more
Speaker 1: of that was the precursor to the National Park Service.
Speaker 1: Was was showing up and pretty terrifying. You know, plane
Speaker 1: land on the ice and these big white guys walk
Speaker 1: up the hill and start telling us that basically we
Speaker 1: were you know, might have to move. And that's what
Speaker 1: I grew up with. Lots of like fear of the parks. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: fear of yeah, lots of things. But um, but I
Speaker 1: would say that the natives had that too, I mean
Speaker 1: they did. Is that, um, you've got thousands of years
Speaker 1: is living on the land here and then and then
Speaker 1: the plane comes and they say what you can't and
Speaker 1: can't do? And it just all sounds very confusing until
Speaker 1: the plane flies away and then it's not confusing anymore.
Speaker 1: What okay, when you mentioned when you when you when
Speaker 1: you were young and you guys are living off caribou
Speaker 1: and you had a dog team, Uh, was there a
Speaker 1: regulatory structure in place at all, Like if a family
Speaker 1: is going through a hundred caribou, I mean you're not
Speaker 1: out putting metal locking tags on the things. Like was
Speaker 1: there any sort of regulatory structure in place that you
Speaker 1: were aware of in those days? Okay, so me, I
Speaker 1: was a little kid, you know, just chewing on a
Speaker 1: bone or something. So now I wasn't aware. Um, my
Speaker 1: dad may or may not have gotten a hunting license.
Speaker 1: I assume he would try, but I don't know how
Speaker 1: you'd go about it because Juno is, you know, about
Speaker 1: as close as Miami. Um, local people certainly didn't get
Speaker 1: hunting licenses, and it was, um just such a weird
Speaker 1: idea that you'd have to get a license to hunt.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to come up with an analogy, but um,
Speaker 1: no I understand the analogy. What I'm I'm asking like
Speaker 1: a very buying. I'm asking like a very like I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about pertate of Alaska. Have some I said,
Speaker 1: had I gone, had I gone to Juno? And I
Speaker 1: had said, and I had said, I'm living where you.
Speaker 1: Let's say you had gone, your dad had gone to Juno.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, what was whether it was regarded or not regarded,
Speaker 1: and I'm not like saying that it should have been.
Speaker 1: I can't answer that real easy. I have no idea. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh no, I think, Um, yes, there was game management
Speaker 1: units already set up, I think. And and if you
Speaker 1: went down to the forty mile herd or something, there
Speaker 1: was probably a bag limits and and more accessible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And everybody was supposed to get a a hunting license.
Speaker 1: And I think as a so called outsider or whatever,
Speaker 1: if you had flown to the northwest Arctic, you probably
Speaker 1: would have had a limit of such and such amount
Speaker 1: of cariboo locally, I don't think there was limits. I
Speaker 1: think you could. You could choot cows, calves, bowls, as
Speaker 1: many as you want it. Um. And And then when
Speaker 1: in the seventies when they had a photo census where
Speaker 1: they fly over and the caribou aggregate in the middle
Speaker 1: of July, where there's some at times, you know, a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand or more in a in a tight mass,
Speaker 1: they would take pictures of those. You count the cariboo
Speaker 1: in the picture. That's the short version of the photo census.
Speaker 1: And um, in the seventies they came up with this
Speaker 1: very very low number of I'm gonna say, seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand caribou for the Western art occurred and they promptly
Speaker 1: cut us from unlimited to one per hunter per year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was in my book. I use this uh analogy
Speaker 1: of like you'd be allowed one blueberry, um, so you've
Speaker 1: you know, you've always picked blueberries and then suddenly you're
Speaker 1: only allowed one um and um and people were you know,
Speaker 1: terrified and confused and um. And then we that at
Speaker 1: that point we were ish. We not me as a kid,
Speaker 1: but my dad was issued this little locking silver thing
Speaker 1: which was very uh fancy, nice piece of metal with
Speaker 1: some numbers on it. But people didn't always click that
Speaker 1: thing together because you needed to carry when you got
Speaker 1: your next caribou. Um and UM. Yeah, I think this.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, there's lots of different ways of seeing things.
Speaker 1: But I suspect the the state of Alaska miss some
Speaker 1: cariboo in their photo census. And I also suspect that
Speaker 1: at that time, with the introduction of um, you know
Speaker 1: more uh many fourteens and and and not too long
Speaker 1: after that Air fifteen with rapid shooting uh small caliber bullets,
Speaker 1: and then stomobiles had just derived, which was changed you know,
Speaker 1: our our relationship immensely with the with the natural world,
Speaker 1: like you didn't need to wait for caribou to come
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, yeah, and go further and faster. And
Speaker 1: so I suspect there was two things going on. There
Speaker 1: was that the cariboo were dropping in numbers, and the
Speaker 1: statement might have missed some, but it was a good
Speaker 1: time to wake up and say, okay, maybe we need
Speaker 1: to um not just shoot every cariboo we feel like
Speaker 1: at all times, all seasons, you know. So it was
Speaker 1: just a little rough the way it went about you
Speaker 1: fish commercially? Now, yeah, does what is the fishing you
Speaker 1: described when you're when you when your family was living
Speaker 1: out in the land, you described a need to get
Speaker 1: like like learning how to get nets and fish. What
Speaker 1: was that fishing? And then what does the fishing you
Speaker 1: do now? Oh? Interesting? Yeah, so um um, I say,
Speaker 1: you know, when we get done commercial fish and we
Speaker 1: go back up river and immediately set all our nets
Speaker 1: for for a non commercial But um my dad and
Speaker 1: um mom, I guess fished out of cots Abue in
Speaker 1: the late fifties, I think it was or nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: right around then, and there was a canary. Um, I
Speaker 1: think you got the thirty five cents of fish and
Speaker 1: they made a hundred dollars for the season or something,
Speaker 1: and so people kind of discovered fishing was it was
Speaker 1: real hard to get cash. Then it was either whitefish
Speaker 1: or in salm salmon, and so they didn't fish for
Speaker 1: another twelve years in that fishery went up. You know,
Speaker 1: we lived up the river, up the Kobuk River, which
Speaker 1: is like a hundred and fifty river miles from from
Speaker 1: Cotsebue where the fishery is. So they never fished again
Speaker 1: until I think nineteen seventy four. My dad built applywood
Speaker 1: boat and we went down and lived in a tan
Speaker 1: and fished uh ninety four and and they grossed like
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars or something, which we had never heard
Speaker 1: of that much money before. Um he built he built
Speaker 1: the boat up yeah yeah, in Ambler or near the
Speaker 1: village of Ambler, and ordered marine plywood and et cetera,
Speaker 1: and then then took the boat down river, down the river.
Speaker 1: He has uh maybe two hundred miles down the river
Speaker 1: and across Kobac like camp the camp ten miles across
Speaker 1: from cotsbu at a fish camp, and and back then
Speaker 1: if you wanted green American cash. There weren't too many
Speaker 1: ways of getting it, and commercial fishing was one. Fishing
Speaker 1: was becoming. Uh the price was great then it was
Speaker 1: like fifty cents a pound for salmon, which is it's
Speaker 1: not even That's about where we're at today. And you
Speaker 1: guys using like drift gillnets, uh, set nets, hang your
Speaker 1: own nets and um and set we were allowed nine
Speaker 1: feet of it. And you guys were sitting here talking
Speaker 1: about fishing earlier, and I didn't understand it. Gosh starn
Speaker 1: thing you were saying nothing. Um, but my idea of
Speaker 1: sport fishing is to set six or nine feet of
Speaker 1: I'm joking about the sport. But I love commercial fishing
Speaker 1: and super exciting and especially when the fish are hitting,
Speaker 1: but set and that effective. Um. Yeah, So when your
Speaker 1: parents were commercial fishing, were they doing it themselves? Are
Speaker 1: working for no? Okay? So I didn't answer either one
Speaker 1: of your questions, but so we would. We started doing
Speaker 1: that as a as a way to trap in the winner.
Speaker 1: My dad would make a dog sledge or some um
Speaker 1: sleds that people towed behind their snowmobiles, sort of like
Speaker 1: a dog sled for cash. And then the summer we
Speaker 1: go down and commercial fish for for cash, and it
Speaker 1: was all pretty feeble, but would end up with you know,
Speaker 1: some actual money. But they're running their own operations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody's doing their own things small super small boats. And
Speaker 1: then uh, come late August, we would put the dogs
Speaker 1: and the family and the tents and head up river.
Speaker 1: And my dad's boat was like four ft long, thirty
Speaker 1: five horse. Three days a holding the tiller to get
Speaker 1: home and then unload the dogs. And then we would
Speaker 1: spend the next eleven or ten and a half months
Speaker 1: at our house, pretty much staying home because he didn't
Speaker 1: want to you know, buy gas and and travel. We
Speaker 1: would go to Ambler, that closest village five miles away,
Speaker 1: but we would go oh once or twice a winner,
Speaker 1: and you know, once or twice by boat, and and
Speaker 1: so they're at home. Uh, back to your original question.
Speaker 1: As soon as we got home, we put nets out
Speaker 1: and started once again gathering fish and um. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then at that point cariboo would be crossing, so we
Speaker 1: would get a couple uh to eat and dry and whatever.
Speaker 1: You just oh, if there's cariboo, well we need food.
Speaker 1: But we would kind of hold off on the winter
Speaker 1: supply of cariboo until late September when it's cold enough,
Speaker 1: because we didn't have electricity, so we didn't have freezer.
Speaker 1: So everything had to line up with the season and
Speaker 1: every even every season, and about hunting different things when
Speaker 1: they're fat, when they taste good, when the fur is good,
Speaker 1: and then when you can keep it. And there's just
Speaker 1: really no use in boating home on August shooting a
Speaker 1: bunch of caribou because their flies were out and it
Speaker 1: was too warm. And what was the you guys do
Speaker 1: at home? You do whitefish or salmon or what. Along
Speaker 1: the river there is grailing trout, trout which would be
Speaker 1: Arctic char, salmon, she fish, pike, mud shark which is
Speaker 1: a bourbon like you guess called mud sharks. That's a
Speaker 1: great name. Yeah, I don't know, I got it's a
Speaker 1: very confusing fish names. Yeah. Well, at home we call
Speaker 1: them ticktalic, which is that's the innu pack word, and
Speaker 1: so that's kind of ticktalic. You can find it in
Speaker 1: my book. And so I have a hobby of collect
Speaker 1: bourbon names. Oh yeah, oh, well, there's such a great fish.
Speaker 1: I love hooking them. We hook them through the ice
Speaker 1: in October and at night, lay on a caribou hide
Speaker 1: and look slowly freeze ass as you When I when
Speaker 1: I told someone I have a brother, that I have
Speaker 1: a brother lives in anchors. When I told him that
Speaker 1: you were coming to do a show, and he said,
Speaker 1: if you can get he told me, if you can
Speaker 1: get one thing out of this, you need to get
Speaker 1: out of this. An invitation to fish. She fish through
Speaker 1: the ice? Oh yeah, absolutely. It was like he was
Speaker 1: like strongly encouraging me to lean on you for that opportunity.
Speaker 1: He just did that, like, yeah, I just said a
Speaker 1: net to bring her a fish. I guess maybe I
Speaker 1: should have brought you, but I assumed you had already.
Speaker 1: He know, he wants you. He wants me to make
Speaker 1: you take me rotting and reeling for she fish through
Speaker 1: the ice. Well, we just used a stick with the line.
Speaker 1: But yeah, okay, okay, okay, okay. The open water she
Speaker 1: fish is like he fishes those I mean, washing him,
Speaker 1: jumping stuff. But he thinks that the the epitome she
Speaker 1: They're not in it for this, the epitome of she fishing.
Speaker 1: He likes she fish, all right, but the epitome of
Speaker 1: shea fishing would be she fish through the ice. I
Speaker 1: guess I kind of agree. I have a hard time
Speaker 1: with the hook and line thing that you cast and
Speaker 1: tangles up and then I don't know, man, Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: hold on a second, somebody takes your hook or hooks
Speaker 1: on it. Well, I just it's all. I was listening
Speaker 1: to you guys, and I know it's fun. We used
Speaker 1: to do it, but I'm not good at it. But
Speaker 1: hooking through the ice, to me, makes more sense because
Speaker 1: you've got a stronger line and you got you got
Speaker 1: to make sure the hole is big enough otherwise you
Speaker 1: can't get it. Yeah, they get up to what like
Speaker 1: sixty pounds or bigger maybe I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: weigh things or stuff like that, but they're big. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure you a picture here afterwards. But how many feet
Speaker 1: long is a big shea fish? Probably four out of
Speaker 1: at all whitefish man white fish family, I think, I
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah, at all those different fish that your
Speaker 1: family would catch and late summer, what was your favorite?
Speaker 1: What we really liked? What we called trout, and it's
Speaker 1: Arctic char. At that time, we didn't know that, and
Speaker 1: we called them either a mean trout or a nice trout.
Speaker 1: Um and the mean trout is when it spawned out,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of bright right right, and long and
Speaker 1: skinny and of course back to fat, which is very important.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't fat, it was you know, dog food. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the mean trout were skinny and we thought
Speaker 1: they were different trout and it turned out they're not.
Speaker 1: They're just they go for eighteen months without eating and
Speaker 1: all and stuff and and trout or arctics are amazing.
Speaker 1: But like I think it pretty much is. But you
Speaker 1: have to check with the run um. Well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: lose track of this whole show if you start talking
Speaker 1: about it. You got a question for you. The fish,
Speaker 1: the varieties of fish you would net in August, You
Speaker 1: were able to dry those fish? Yeah, we start trying
Speaker 1: to dry. It was hard because we were not yet
Speaker 1: people of the Blue tart Um, which is really import Yeah,
Speaker 1: we always had fish tracks, but but trying to cover
Speaker 1: them and what to cover them with. But is that
Speaker 1: because the blue tart wasn't around yet. It wasn't around yet.
Speaker 1: Everything was pretty It's it's shocking to think about how
Speaker 1: different it is with all this the ship we have nowadays,
Speaker 1: like plastic bags. Well, where you going to get those
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. And and that brings me to a
Speaker 1: question too about and sorry to regress a little bit,
Speaker 1: but about your dad deciding at some point he decided
Speaker 1: to try to make some American cash. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: was like a dilemma for him. No, he wasn't he
Speaker 1: didn't have it wasn't a hippie in the sense that
Speaker 1: he didn't want cash. He just didn't want a job. Um.
Speaker 1: And to him, a job separates you from life. He
Speaker 1: wanted to live and be out on the land and stuff.
Speaker 1: And so if uh, you know, when links became very valuable,
Speaker 1: we trapped links. Um Uh. He didn't like bothering the
Speaker 1: wolves much, which was a personal thing, maybe because they
Speaker 1: were hunting much like he was, you know, walking a
Speaker 1: lot and out on the land every day. But um,
Speaker 1: we trapped wolverine and and when foxes, when they first
Speaker 1: got their foxes were worth nothing. And then as an
Speaker 1: eight year old, I trapped some foxes and sent them
Speaker 1: to gosh was it called Goldberg's. I'm trying to remember now,
Speaker 1: But anyway, we went of the fur buyers and I
Speaker 1: got like sixty ninety bucks apiece, and my whole family
Speaker 1: took notice's we trapped foxes for the next because the
Speaker 1: guys needed money to buy gas or tools or whatever.
Speaker 1: It wasn't put it in the bank. Yeah, yeah. It
Speaker 1: was crazy. Thing was we um, I mean we made
Speaker 1: our own dog collars and harnesses and sleds and tow
Speaker 1: lines and we anything that was what we called store
Speaker 1: bought very suspicious and the family had to have a
Speaker 1: big discussion about whether you're gonna spend any money, which
Speaker 1: was the final answer was no, so you might as
Speaker 1: well not have the discussion. But but they did order,
Speaker 1: um um, they did order stuff. It was real long
Speaker 1: process to you know, basically get to the village, take
Speaker 1: an envelope and mail it to you. Probably, I mean
Speaker 1: probably you guys probably bought a stove, cookwere white gas, yeah,
Speaker 1: white gas for sure, kerosene um, and you know, coffee
Speaker 1: and sugar and flour. And then as the years went
Speaker 1: by and we started commercial fishing and had money, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they'd order potatoes from Palmer, Alaska, and we
Speaker 1: we plan a garden so we'd grow that potatoes also.
Speaker 1: But then uh vanilla for you know, making snow ice
Speaker 1: cream and powdered milk, and we just more and more
Speaker 1: stuff but but nothing like just walking in the store
Speaker 1: and filling your shopping cart. My parents were pretty much like, um,
Speaker 1: don't waste was well, they were you know, they were
Speaker 1: depressionary era people. They grew up in uh my dad,
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of the Depression and World
Speaker 1: War two. Um, and so there was already that pretty
Speaker 1: strong don't waste. And then you go far enough north
Speaker 1: and trying to get up a pound of butter was
Speaker 1: complex experience. And so as kids, which you if your
Speaker 1: hippies indoctrinating your kids out in the wilderness so called wilderness,
Speaker 1: you can um tell them, oh, don't use that, don't
Speaker 1: use that, and don't cut string, and no you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to use any nails. But if you find a
Speaker 1: bad one, we'll discuss whether you're allowed to have it.
Speaker 1: Um um so um. Yeah. It was a lot of
Speaker 1: everything was sort of in this don't waste. But you
Speaker 1: certainly were caribou hides that wasn't in the uh you
Speaker 1: use those for whatever you want. That was your blue target.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was yeah. Well yeah, so anything you want
Speaker 1: to do with the caribou hide was pretty much open season.
Speaker 1: And your book, I'm surprised by the amount of Um,
Speaker 1: this is gonna segue into you're given us some of
Speaker 1: that food you got there. But the amount of boiled
Speaker 1: meat you guys eat boiled joints and boiled feet and
Speaker 1: like a lot of boiled meat. Not a lot of
Speaker 1: deep frying going on. No, yeah, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of and uh, you know the local thing is like
Speaker 1: caribou soup is is just a standard as his. He
Speaker 1: catch a trout at home, you give it to an elder.
Speaker 1: They're gonna make soup out of it, with the skin
Speaker 1: on and all the bones and stuff, and and certain
Speaker 1: people are like, cool, that's not what I would have
Speaker 1: done with that fish. But um, but um, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: that was a certain amount of ease. Or you've got
Speaker 1: the witch dove going and you talk about the waist.
Speaker 1: So because like you guys described taking sort of like
Speaker 1: carribout pelvis is oh, and just put that pelvis into
Speaker 1: pot and boil it until he could. Oh, I'm getting
Speaker 1: ready in salt white people, I can't believe at home
Speaker 1: if you leave the bones, well, let's just back up here.
Speaker 1: At home, we look at the rear end of the
Speaker 1: animal caribou to see if it's fat, and we kind
Speaker 1: of joked that the white guy or the outsiders are
Speaker 1: looking at the antlers. Well, we're not looking at the
Speaker 1: antlers where it's got to be fat. And then, um,
Speaker 1: the fat is you know, maybe back fat or or
Speaker 1: stomach fat or whatever a chark, you know, the lacey
Speaker 1: fat around the intestines. But um, the bones are where
Speaker 1: the flavor and the fat is. And so there's just
Speaker 1: so many stories of um, you know, some old innu
Speaker 1: pack elderly woman just disgusted with her daughter bringing home
Speaker 1: a white boyfriend and he goes out hunting and brings
Speaker 1: home the antlers and they're just like, you know, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with this guy? And then um, and then the
Speaker 1: other sort of standard story is, um, this outsider handing
Speaker 1: elders or somebody respected handing them a chunk of meat
Speaker 1: without a bone. You know, how come that guy show
Speaker 1: stingy Um. Yeah, yeah, we think about that. You're gonna
Speaker 1: bring someone something nice, You're gonna bring him a backstrap.
Speaker 1: You just try to keep the moose is knee. But seriously,
Speaker 1: I mean, now I cook a lot with a not
Speaker 1: suit but a Dutch shoven with you know, put some
Speaker 1: oil in it. It's here the knee real quick is
Speaker 1: your fuel mostly would to make heat into not anymore. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, propane is an amazing thing. Nowadays everything has changed.
Speaker 1: You know. I have a place in Cotspy with electricity,
Speaker 1: so I have freezers there. So when I come down
Speaker 1: from upriver, uh, where I don't have any of that,
Speaker 1: I'll bring meat and starting a freezer and sharing meat
Speaker 1: and a freezer. I don't know if you guys know
Speaker 1: about this is amazing. Well, I want to talk to
Speaker 1: a guy that he uh, he's actually a friend of
Speaker 1: mine and for his graduate work he was doing, um,
Speaker 1: he was doing sort of this hundred years survey of
Speaker 1: of hunting magazines, and one of the things that he
Speaker 1: really took note of is just the way the conversation
Speaker 1: changed when freezers became a thing. I mean, it just changed.
Speaker 1: It changed everything about people's perspectives on deer hunting. Um,
Speaker 1: once every Joe Blow on the planet had a freezer
Speaker 1: in his house, because like the whole like filling the freezer,
Speaker 1: that's like a new like relatively speaking, that's a new concept. Right.
Speaker 1: It would be that you got a deer and you
Speaker 1: had to figure out what you're gonna do with that deer.
Speaker 1: Right now, absolutely. And I really value living seasonally, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go home and start commercial fishing, which means
Speaker 1: that I bring home a seal bit salmon that you
Speaker 1: can't sell, you know, seals are working them. And so
Speaker 1: I eat salmon like all summer, but come August, and
Speaker 1: of August, people are like, oh, how many salmon do
Speaker 1: you put in your freezer? I'm like one, And even
Speaker 1: then I started begrudgate because it's not going to be fresh,
Speaker 1: and uh and I'm kind of sick of salmon by then, anyway,
Speaker 1: and then heading up river hoping to you know, start
Speaker 1: eating caribou and then um and whatever else and uh.
Speaker 1: And I like that seasonal connection to your food and
Speaker 1: and so a freezer um is handy too to save
Speaker 1: food and not waste hypothetically. Um, but I kind of
Speaker 1: like just eating what's in season. And um. A lot
Speaker 1: of hunters and anglers use their freezer as a prolonged
Speaker 1: wasting machine, funk. I'm so glad to hear you say that.
Speaker 1: Like it's like it's a way that you can get
Speaker 1: something and then put off the waste. When it's five
Speaker 1: years old, You're like, oh, I can throw it out now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: freezer burn. I'm so glad to hear you say that,
Speaker 1: and you know that bugs me most about uh, you know,
Speaker 1: many things, but at home there's it's this uh conveyor
Speaker 1: belt to wasting because um then you especially something like
Speaker 1: she fish which you mentioned, people love to go out
Speaker 1: and hook them through the ice really close to town
Speaker 1: and there. What do you do if you get a
Speaker 1: sledload of sheat fish, you know, and you can leave someone.
Speaker 1: I'm joking, but I actually wrote a proposal to make
Speaker 1: it illegal to leave them on the ice when you
Speaker 1: you know, your head home. Uh oh absolutely, Um, but
Speaker 1: uh in the state past that proposal. So now it's
Speaker 1: illegal to leave your you know, spare fish there. But
Speaker 1: but people bring them home and they put them in
Speaker 1: the freezer. So many, you know, because you can catch
Speaker 1: a lot of big fish. And and so I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to hear you um mentioned that the freezer is is
Speaker 1: uh you know, a wasting device. It's it's it's one
Speaker 1: of it's one of hunting and fishing. Uh. Many dark secrets.
Speaker 1: Is the the the old Like I'll put my freezer
Speaker 1: then later I'll throw it out for some weird reason.
Speaker 1: I won't feel bad about it in two years. The
Speaker 1: same goes. You know, if you get sixty geese and
Speaker 1: don't get around and plucking him and stick him in
Speaker 1: the freezy pull out. I've never done that because I'm
Speaker 1: very fanatical, But I see people pulling out geese that
Speaker 1: are not plucked and not gut it and in the freezer.
Speaker 1: That's an extreme. They're scary. Okay, what do you got
Speaker 1: front of man? We gotta I gotta know so I um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're I don't want to scare
Speaker 1: any of your listeners. But so that's a fermented whale
Speaker 1: bowhead meat. This is fresh mucktuck, which is bowhead, the
Speaker 1: skin and blubber. I don't know how scary you want
Speaker 1: to get. Do we need something I've had? This is
Speaker 1: walrus kind of the same idea of the skin. This
Speaker 1: has still got the hair on it, which looks like
Speaker 1: unshaven one of your neighbors. Um but um, but the
Speaker 1: same idea as muck tuck. It's the skin with the
Speaker 1: layer's lever. What else do I got here? Oh? This
Speaker 1: is for you? You touched on which one walrus? Um?
Speaker 1: This right here is is uh yeah, that's got the
Speaker 1: hair on it you touched on this earlier. So, but
Speaker 1: like the walrus and the whale, is this stuff that
Speaker 1: was was given to you or were you yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because so they have this right here is uh this
Speaker 1: is just salted or raw or what it skills firm
Speaker 1: that's cooked. This is cooked. This is raw. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is raw. Um, so this is uh, this is right cariboo.
Speaker 1: So at home, my um uh kind of standard lunch
Speaker 1: would be um dried caribou and either steal dipped in
Speaker 1: seal or more likely uh boehead and muck tuck, which
Speaker 1: just raw very often the bluga muck tuck smaller whale
Speaker 1: the same idea is cooked. But but the wall you
Speaker 1: guys cook the walrus. Um the skin yeah yeah, it's
Speaker 1: got some blab and skin. Uh. My experience was trying
Speaker 1: to cut walter skin is you wouldn't get too far
Speaker 1: if you didn't cook that. What do you mean kind
Speaker 1: of bulletproof? Oh so, but you guys eat the hair
Speaker 1: like I just did. Right, Well, I don't know said,
Speaker 1: but I gotta tell you the old that I need
Speaker 1: you try to combo. You're you're gonna like this. It's
Speaker 1: some very fresh and simple Try it on them. So
Speaker 1: you're eating the cariboo with the fat. Yeah, it's super good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this's other stuff. Give me a photo. That's not a frad.
Speaker 1: He's doubling down. Do that wallus me to something. Man,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like that on the planet. Holy God, this
Speaker 1: is bow ahead. Yeah. I don't want say like it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say I don't like what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: There is nothing like that. So Steve, the first time
Speaker 1: I had um, it's like if a deer was made
Speaker 1: out of fish. The first time I had uh, this
Speaker 1: walrus was some we were camped at fish camp. One
Speaker 1: floated in so the hunter squad and shoot shoot them.
Speaker 1: And I hate to say this, but a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time to get the tusks. But um, but if
Speaker 1: they sink, they stayed down for a while and then
Speaker 1: the gases form in the stomach, they float up and
Speaker 1: then they then they're floating in the ocean. They come ashore. Um.
Speaker 1: So one came ashore. Seagulls are on top, pooping on
Speaker 1: it and everything, and it's all sunburnt, rotten on top.
Speaker 1: Well underneath, the cold water kept it fresh, and the
Speaker 1: you know, the natives knew that. So they towed it
Speaker 1: ashore and somebody claimed the tusk. I don't remember that part,
Speaker 1: but so they cut that. Um, it's called coke. That's
Speaker 1: what the local word coke. You've probably had many a
Speaker 1: coke and your life, m but that's what they call
Speaker 1: this skin part of it. So they cut that off.
Speaker 1: That um floating did the corpulent walrus, and and and
Speaker 1: got a third of a drum, you know, fifty five
Speaker 1: gallon drum to cook boiling water over a campfire and
Speaker 1: then cook that. Well, my brother and I were barefoot kids,
Speaker 1: you know, fish camp there, and we walked down and
Speaker 1: they said, you want to try something. We thought it
Speaker 1: was the best thing ever what you just had. I'm
Speaker 1: not convinced that this is as fresh as that was. Um,
Speaker 1: that's fermented whale meat. You want to get into that.
Speaker 1: I'll try the non ferment I want to try, but
Speaker 1: I want to cleanse my pal I think the fresh
Speaker 1: wheel meat. Yeah, let's let's recap on on the bowhead, right,
Speaker 1: which is but what you're going about to have, Brody,
Speaker 1: what what are your thoughts on? I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: tastes like fat. It's pretty neutral. So UM, that demarcation
Speaker 1: between the black skin, and the where the blubber starts
Speaker 1: shows a tough layer. And you could tell how cool
Speaker 1: you are when you're given um uh muck tuck. If
Speaker 1: you are given if it's really tough that layer, you're
Speaker 1: you are given a section in the whale that's not
Speaker 1: as desirable. Um and often when I'm sort of joking,
Speaker 1: but um, I joked that if you're not if you're
Speaker 1: not cool, you get the tougher uh uh portion of
Speaker 1: the whale. You know, to go really good with this salt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why. That's that's really so, that's why you eat
Speaker 1: it with the caraboos, Steve the dried caraboo, because it's salty.
Speaker 1: But I'm a buehead. I got maybe I have like
Speaker 1: some delayed effects from my last round of COVID, but
Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to the walrus at all. Do you
Speaker 1: guys think that do you already render that fat into
Speaker 1: an oil? Absolutely? Yeah, yeamnum cover is super thick, and
Speaker 1: so people render a lot of se oil and store
Speaker 1: it and uh buckets and jars, and we used to
Speaker 1: always use wooden barrels, which I think is the store
Speaker 1: your seal oil. Yeah, I think it's healthier actually than buckets. Um,
Speaker 1: just for that ship. I try a piece here, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it, But to be honest with me, I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit chicken shit about the fermented whale meat. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's this? Oh no, no, you don't want that. You
Speaker 1: already had it. Um. Raw will meat is phenomenal, but
Speaker 1: it's fat and skin. So this is um. I didn't
Speaker 1: think this was the way I was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: I wasn't as excited. Is it okay to put that
Speaker 1: on the cutting board? That's fermented wheel meat? No? This
Speaker 1: is uh is uh beluga uh basically skin um. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it's not cooked. I usually you
Speaker 1: don't like it or like it. I didn't. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the section. This is the flipper so you can see
Speaker 1: that out of the outside, and then super sinowy section.
Speaker 1: I like it better than walrus, but I don't like
Speaker 1: it as much as bullhead. I wonder if you just
Speaker 1: got like a slightly tainted chunk of all risk I
Speaker 1: ain't pretty good Tony, what man? I wouldn't let a
Speaker 1: bullhead get by me? What size portion? When you said
Speaker 1: you eat that for launch seth? Sadly enough, I wolfed down. Uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of fat, and I'm I'd fight to not
Speaker 1: be a skinny white boy. I just don't seem to
Speaker 1: put on weight. But um, yeah, I eat a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of fat all year around. And um.
Speaker 1: When my daughter was young and her mom would go
Speaker 1: to work, she was like three years old, and she'd
Speaker 1: sit and have lunch with me, and I would catch
Speaker 1: her dipping whale blubber and bear fat. And I was like,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to have some dried meat with that, not
Speaker 1: just fat dipped in fat? Well, where, um, what's that there?
Speaker 1: I wanted to try that dried caribou, did you? I
Speaker 1: haven't had that I want with this? This is how
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll tell you what a little rock salt
Speaker 1: on there and so dry caribou And that's how. This
Speaker 1: is the bowhead skin And that's how thick a skin is. Nope,
Speaker 1: that's how thick the skin is. But the blubber would be, like,
Speaker 1: you know, way thicker than that. I love how it's
Speaker 1: like a little exclamation point or something, that bowhead fat
Speaker 1: melts in your meal. Actually, here's just my kids would
Speaker 1: like the bowhead, but they wouldn't like the wall. It's
Speaker 1: not too far removed from like a beef, And that's
Speaker 1: why I don't. I like both, but it's this is
Speaker 1: the simplest to slice this up, eat it with dry meat.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how to answer your question, but
Speaker 1: probably there's a uh, I don't know. I might eat
Speaker 1: a half a cup and then and then the local
Speaker 1: tradition is then to have um, maybe pilot crackers and
Speaker 1: jam and tea or coffee. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: the lunch we'd have. We'd have dried pike, dried whitefish,
Speaker 1: dried trout, which is harder if it's fat, right, cheap fish,
Speaker 1: um through that little combo of the dried cariboo in
Speaker 1: the bowhead. Oh yeah, that's lunch. Um. But shoot, I
Speaker 1: keep forgetting whatever what are the crackers? Uh, sailor boy?
Speaker 1: Pilot bread? Yeah? You hear so many lasting thought about that,
Speaker 1: and I built up like a high expectation of what
Speaker 1: pilot bread would be. And I foundly got some like
Speaker 1: that's what they're talking about all the time? Is it? Like? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a kind of a big cracker. Why do
Speaker 1: you guys eat so much of that? Because it preserves well? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: I joked that it's uh that pilot breader is actually
Speaker 1: in new pack food. It's uh, it's it's been so
Speaker 1: uh adopted by the culture that, um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you just get used to. It's like eating, you know,
Speaker 1: why don't you eat muck tuck every day? And so
Speaker 1: that's how could you survive without it? And that's how
Speaker 1: we could get pilot bread. I can't get that. It's
Speaker 1: just funny. Like rural Alaskans and the whole pilot bread thing.
Speaker 1: It's like it's kind of like a bland thick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's salted. Think you're getting your protein salt.
Speaker 1: It's a car I'm taking offense. I don't care if
Speaker 1: you don't like the wall or I love it. You
Speaker 1: guys love it. It's just funny because when I had it,
Speaker 1: I was like, well that's what they're talking about. When
Speaker 1: we lived in Fairbanks. Yeah, immediately, like first time I
Speaker 1: went to the grocery store getting some of these. After
Speaker 1: those ten months living up there, I didn't miss it.
Speaker 1: When I left Alaska, were you did you guys have
Speaker 1: many sweets at all? Or was that like my dad? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. My dad said that eating all that
Speaker 1: protein and fat made greatly desire sweets, and so he would, uh,
Speaker 1: we get done with some giant um meal of notice
Speaker 1: you got mediterranean Mediterranean sea of that was at the hotels.
Speaker 1: My dad collects salt along the shore. But um, we
Speaker 1: would get done with a big meal of you know,
Speaker 1: boiled caribou meat or something, and then start getting a hankering,
Speaker 1: large hankering for sweets. And my dad would take um,
Speaker 1: powdered snow, you know, fluffy snow, uh, dairy gold powdered milk,
Speaker 1: sugar and vanilla and start whipping it up in the
Speaker 1: corner and snow ice creams. Great, it's just like dairy green.
Speaker 1: And we had had that in your book. I wanted
Speaker 1: to make it for my kids. I never got around.
Speaker 1: You need that real fluffy uh cold dry snow. Yeah
Speaker 1: that falls almost like cotton e snow. Yeah, super nice
Speaker 1: and um yeah, we'd have that every night. Yeah sweets.
Speaker 1: Yeah it sounds great. So the the fermented way all,
Speaker 1: have you already had it? Yeah? No, I'd like to. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: well you so you explain why this is part of
Speaker 1: the diet versus what we just happen. Sure, just not
Speaker 1: that will be Manneth dropping down. Oh well, no offense,
Speaker 1: but it's you're gonna think it is it was bad.
Speaker 1: You're really selling it. You know. The thing that's my daughter.
Speaker 1: Just make this guy from Point Hope to bring her something. Um,
Speaker 1: she loves this. But yeah, I'm telling you what. My
Speaker 1: new favorite food is your jerky and your into this.
Speaker 1: Uh that's fermented well meat, their raw prosion. So what's
Speaker 1: what's the process of fermenting that? There's not? Um, well,
Speaker 1: we we had it's not. I'm like, I actually found
Speaker 1: that less remarkable than the waters small piece. I think
Speaker 1: you got to try the way. It's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: Let's give him some more waters, Steve, I think you
Speaker 1: got to try the wall risking you good because I
Speaker 1: think he got a funky piece because I thought it
Speaker 1: was I had a couple of pieces of the hair
Speaker 1: and everything. I didn't want to be rude. That fermented.
Speaker 1: So explain the process on the fermented stuff. Well, it depends.
Speaker 1: You know, we ate a lot of frozen fermented fish
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and is it like legitimately fermented. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just like do you have the fermented candle fish?
Speaker 1: I hear that's quite the culinary experience, haven't Uh I
Speaker 1: don't know what a candle fish is, but oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't had the fermented I've ried. So let's get
Speaker 1: back to uh. In the fall, we were we would come,
Speaker 1: you know, set our nets and uh beat drying fish,
Speaker 1: and then it would reach a point where, um, I
Speaker 1: guess it was cold enough that the flies were not
Speaker 1: gonna blow things, and so then we just start uh
Speaker 1: dumping washtubs of fish in the grass, tryed to laying
Speaker 1: them up so they weren't criss cross, because you need
Speaker 1: to chop apart when they're frozen, and then cover them
Speaker 1: with grass. And I don't know how we kept the
Speaker 1: bears away then, but I guess we had dogs and guns.
Speaker 1: But um and then um that would uh ferment. You
Speaker 1: could use a different word if you wanted to rack
Speaker 1: and um and um. Then after it got cold, which
Speaker 1: used to happen sort of consistently in late September, the
Speaker 1: ice would freeze, and uh we'd separate those fish and
Speaker 1: then store them all winter and said we would have
Speaker 1: lunch that was very similar to this, which would be
Speaker 1: uh dried meat, dried um fish, pike, whitefish and other
Speaker 1: dried meat. And then frozen raw um, fermented um trout,
Speaker 1: she fish, whitefish, um. And you take your boats, you know,
Speaker 1: and saw it like you're cutting a log into what
Speaker 1: like you fry steaks. Those were super cold frozen. Bring
Speaker 1: him in and put him on a um cutting board
Speaker 1: and then um peel the skin off and then just
Speaker 1: eat those chunks. Cut it in chunks between the bones.
Speaker 1: So what the pike and white fish? Are you cutting
Speaker 1: the pieces so thin? You just chew the bones right up? Um?
Speaker 1: I guess I feel like we also kind of went
Speaker 1: around the bones because you can see everything pretty clearly
Speaker 1: when you say that. You you catch fish and you
Speaker 1: lay them out in the grass and you just because
Speaker 1: you don't want the freeze together, and they sit there
Speaker 1: some number of days before they froze, like weeks weeks,
Speaker 1: and then eventually just pile them up. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: we put them on like you had to put him
Speaker 1: up on a log cash for the winter because they're fermented.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like most people would look at and be
Speaker 1: like that fish is kind of rotten. Totally yep, rotten
Speaker 1: fish yet just a desired taste as flavored to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then we would eat um like grayling. We would
Speaker 1: jigs through the ice after the ice frozen the fall,
Speaker 1: we're setting that's under the ice to catch whitefish for
Speaker 1: people and dogs and hopefully trout under the ice two
Speaker 1: and chap fish, and then jig for grailing next to
Speaker 1: your nat because whitefish re spawning and eggs are coming out,
Speaker 1: so the grailing would swarm there. We would jig there
Speaker 1: and then we would eat the grayling frozen raw. So
Speaker 1: it was the same ideas. So fermented frozen fish, cut
Speaker 1: them up and they're super good. I if you said,
Speaker 1: you know, do you want fried grailing or frozen raw,
Speaker 1: definitely want the frozen really fried fresh grailing is fantastic.
Speaker 1: That is a tasty fish. We ate what was it,
Speaker 1: frozen thin sliced. That's good stuff. So that's the same idea. Well,
Speaker 1: the seal oil is like I like the frozen tom
Speaker 1: cod because it's just like it's it's it's thin slices.
Speaker 1: It's so like clean tasting and it's frozen and it's
Speaker 1: just kind of it's refreshing. The seal oil adds a
Speaker 1: whole other element to it, man where it's like a
Speaker 1: very peppery, like a like a very like a like
Speaker 1: a spicy oil. I thought it tasted. I thought we
Speaker 1: said it tasted like cantaloupe. Almost didn't it well? I
Speaker 1: think you guys did pretty well, because what I'm finding
Speaker 1: with seal oil now is um it's often kind of strong.
Speaker 1: I mean I thought I thought it was strong. I
Speaker 1: think when they used to use wooden barrels to render it,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it was it did a better job of
Speaker 1: making uh, sort of a fresh tasting oil. I wasn't
Speaker 1: a coastal person, so we were we were known, as
Speaker 1: you know, up up the river Inland as um having
Speaker 1: crappy oil because it was you know, you're lower on
Speaker 1: the totem pole as far as trading, and you had
Speaker 1: your jar of oil that was from last year as
Speaker 1: opposed to the seal you got yesterday or whatever. But
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff um. I have to be
Speaker 1: careful culturally not say the wrong thing, but I feel
Speaker 1: like the a couple of generations back, the elders had
Speaker 1: um um. I thought they did a better job of it. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I end up now with with all that, I
Speaker 1: often am not as excited about the flavor as when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. And and some of that's me.
Speaker 1: I noticed, I'm getting more squeamish. Um. We used to
Speaker 1: my parents would we get a muskrat or many muskrats
Speaker 1: and cook them up, and we'd eat the feet and tail.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask about that. When you say
Speaker 1: you guys are eating the tails, I don't get it. Well,
Speaker 1: what are you eating off the tail? I need to
Speaker 1: tell you about raising kids. Um, if you don't tell
Speaker 1: your kids not to eat the butt hole or the
Speaker 1: head or the tail or the lips, they will um.
Speaker 1: And especially if you did tell your kids, like it's
Speaker 1: time to eat, and you open the soup pot and
Speaker 1: there's the entire you know, I got it, But the
Speaker 1: rest of the muskrat there while the tail's fat and
Speaker 1: chewy and uh great, So there's a there's enough under
Speaker 1: that skin, between the skin and the bones of the tail.
Speaker 1: You guys are nibbling off like a layer of fat
Speaker 1: and meat. Yeah, and the yield's got to be really
Speaker 1: low though. Yeah, but wait a minute, what else would
Speaker 1: you do with the tail? Just cut it off and
Speaker 1: fling it in the willows, put it in the pot um.
Speaker 1: And the same thing with with beaver, Like springtime, the
Speaker 1: ice would go out and beaver send their teenage kids
Speaker 1: out to find new homes. Um, And so along the
Speaker 1: river would be we would uh my brother and I
Speaker 1: would paddle in our little kayaks that my dad made,
Speaker 1: and we would shoot and shoot beaver and muskrat with
Speaker 1: twenty two. Um. So you skin out the beaver, save
Speaker 1: the hide, and then cook the feet and head and
Speaker 1: tail and um everything else. Um and yeah, but the
Speaker 1: tail on a beaver man that's got a lot of fat?
Speaker 1: Did I try? I'll try the muskratch? I just can't
Speaker 1: really picture it. I've handled like quite a pile of
Speaker 1: me know. Yeah. Well, I mean, like I said, now,
Speaker 1: I probably would. I don't really need muskrat fur. And
Speaker 1: I can't remember the last time I got one actually. Um.
Speaker 1: I just I think after I ended up with my
Speaker 1: first girlfriend and later my wife from uh we're not
Speaker 1: together anymore, but were living along the river, I started
Speaker 1: being uh more careful of like, oh I should cut
Speaker 1: that off, and oh, I don't think she would be
Speaker 1: that excited to have the head grinning out of the
Speaker 1: pot at her and um, well, I mean I knew
Speaker 1: she wasn't. Um and so I started my long road
Speaker 1: to being more squeamish. But as a kid. My parents
Speaker 1: were just like, that's what we're having for dinner, and
Speaker 1: fight over the tail. Um, and then of course beaver, uh,
Speaker 1: beaver of the tail. What's the favorite part? Tell me
Speaker 1: about the Tell me about this road situation you're involved
Speaker 1: in here. Um. Probably in the early nineteen hundreds, they
Speaker 1: built Kennicott Mine down by McCarthy and built a railroad
Speaker 1: from Cordova across the glaciers and up and got copper. Uh.
Speaker 1: They got that copper and then they started looking for more.
Speaker 1: And so right about the time my parents went uh
Speaker 1: to the Kobuk Valley, there was a cabin above our
Speaker 1: place called did a right thing, Pastor McCarthy. Nope, no,
Speaker 1: Sorry I'm being long winded, but there was a cabin
Speaker 1: that we always called the Kennicott cabin. And we didn't
Speaker 1: sort of put these pieces together, but that was that
Speaker 1: mining company, uh, coming up the Kobuck and had discovered
Speaker 1: um or new about previously discovered copper um up the
Speaker 1: Ambler River and in those mountains in the Kolbuck watershed. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And so all these years, uh, the UM, Senator Makowski,
Speaker 1: Senator Stevens, all these people have tried to figure we're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to access that, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty you know, remote. UM. So they talked about railroad
Speaker 1: from they could get the ore. Yeah. And so now
Speaker 1: there's been uh this steady push over the years that
Speaker 1: has built um crescendo now where they're they've got the
Speaker 1: I s kind of mostly through. It's a little complicated
Speaker 1: that uh all that, but they're they're wanting to build
Speaker 1: a spur road off the pipeline road two hundred miles
Speaker 1: sort of um, straight west from the pipeline road through
Speaker 1: an through the controlling reserve. UM. Well in this case,
Speaker 1: it's it would go about through battles and then some
Speaker 1: native lands, some state land, and through the gates of
Speaker 1: the Arctic National Park UM and then hit the head
Speaker 1: of the Kobuk and end up at UM basically Kobuk Village,
Speaker 1: which is which is the village at the furthest um
Speaker 1: up the Kobuk River. It would be a two hundred
Speaker 1: mile industrial corridor that would then open up the Brooks
Speaker 1: Range and northwest Alaska to the many many uh large
Speaker 1: deposits of minerals and coal and oil and the UM.
Speaker 1: From my point of view, it would uh uh ruin
Speaker 1: the maybe the last largest uh intact ecosystem ecosystem in
Speaker 1: the world uh um the Brooks Range UM. And then
Speaker 1: put this these many giant open pit mines at the
Speaker 1: at the head of the kobuk and the um Manila
Speaker 1: can cocollacta conambler, all these rivers that flow into the
Speaker 1: kobuk um and UM and also sort of bring this
Speaker 1: tidal wave of technology that would change the innupact way
Speaker 1: of life, which has already greatly changed. But what sort
Speaker 1: of finish it off with UM technology and money and
Speaker 1: uh influx of people and and and and and the
Speaker 1: final things change hunting greatly as far as um, um,
Speaker 1: resource conflict and UH and then back to the technology.
Speaker 1: But then UM, the Western art occurred is just just
Speaker 1: sort of flowing the river of Cariboo that was almost
Speaker 1: half a million cariboo twenty years ago and has dropped
Speaker 1: now to just under two hundred thousand, hundred eight thousand,
Speaker 1: I think, and so on that though, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: like a wildly cyclical population of animals that goes up
Speaker 1: and down with great frequency. I mean, don't you agree
Speaker 1: with that? I do agree with that. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very complex subject because right now there's some UM. Locally,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of effort put into um keeping so
Speaker 1: called outsiders or from coming up to hunt UM. But
Speaker 1: to me, it makes no sense if you're um not
Speaker 1: uh looking at your own actions. So at home, there's
Speaker 1: a uh, there's a kind of this is stereotypical. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm I'm speaking in broad broad terms,
Speaker 1: But at home there's this feeling that, you know, outsiders
Speaker 1: damage to the herd, but locals dome and and at
Speaker 1: home that we there's more of us locally, we have
Speaker 1: more guns and more boats and and UM, and the
Speaker 1: herds falling as we're you know, we have more UM,
Speaker 1: more stuff to hunt them with, and more access and ability.
Speaker 1: And then there's a push to build this road at
Speaker 1: the same time and and um get more high paying
Speaker 1: jobs and and all that. So what was it? What's
Speaker 1: the general UM? I'll point out that anything like this
Speaker 1: my I was gonna say my reflex, but it goes
Speaker 1: beyond my reflex. Uh. I'm always gonna be on the
Speaker 1: side of habitat and I'm always gonna be on the
Speaker 1: side of wilderness. You though you don't like that word,
Speaker 1: I'm okay, with it now because it's pretty handy. Like
Speaker 1: I'm always gonna be like people like, well, you have
Speaker 1: a house and all that. I'm like, okay, uh, if
Speaker 1: I get to a point where I don't have a house,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll have this conversation with you. But right now,
Speaker 1: um uh. We're not gonna win every fight. But I'm
Speaker 1: always gonna be on the side of Wilder's always goa
Speaker 1: on the side of wild life habitat. But what are
Speaker 1: the people like your neighbors? Okay, like, what like if
Speaker 1: you had to gauge I'm sure there's a lot of
Speaker 1: sophisticated polling in Alaska about the project, But what's just
Speaker 1: sort of the like the mood on the street as
Speaker 1: you live your life up and down this vast kobuck drainage.
Speaker 1: That's a complicated question. Um, there's uh. I would argue
Speaker 1: that the culture has a lot of fatalism built into it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand years ago, you just sort of had to
Speaker 1: let nature do what it did. You couldn't really control
Speaker 1: a lot and hopefully the the ubern whales and caribou
Speaker 1: showed up, and if they didn't, well, so too bad.
Speaker 1: Starvation And so I think fatalism is a cultural norm.
Speaker 1: And then along came the I'm gonna call them white people, um,
Speaker 1: and sort of we're kind of uh pushy um as
Speaker 1: far as you know, saying what you could do moving
Speaker 1: in change of culture. And so locally there's just these
Speaker 1: uh this dual fatalism, like these outsiders are gonna come
Speaker 1: take what they want. There's nothing we can do about it. Um.
Speaker 1: Separate from that is a huge cultural change where you know, uh,
Speaker 1: living off of hunting and fishing is uh dwindling rapidly.
Speaker 1: And the young generation really likes their phones and or
Speaker 1: their toys and their stuff and um, and so who
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to uh very high paying job running heavy
Speaker 1: equipment or something. It sounds like fun. Um. And then um,
Speaker 1: they're Alaska. This is complex thing, but uh it was
Speaker 1: divided up into U regional Native corporations. The native corporations
Speaker 1: paid dividends to their native shareholders. So can we pause
Speaker 1: just for me explain this for a minute. You've touched
Speaker 1: this earlier. You know it better than me, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna like it, so correct me where I get this wrong. Um.
Speaker 1: During the Carter administration, Uh, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: undecided there's a lot of like undecided questions about who
Speaker 1: owned what parts of Alaska, and you had a lot
Speaker 1: of like they didn't have They don't have the reservation
Speaker 1: system in Alaska like they have in the lower forty eight,
Speaker 1: and they started to they wanted to come to some
Speaker 1: finality about certain land areas, and so they started to
Speaker 1: formally like divide up the state. And one of the
Speaker 1: things they did differently than they did in the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds in the lower forty eight is when making settlements
Speaker 1: with Native Alaskans. Um they built corporations and oftentimes multiple
Speaker 1: what we might think of as tribes or multiple groups
Speaker 1: of Native Alaskans will belong to a Native Alaskan corporation
Speaker 1: and they'll have a board of directors and they have
Speaker 1: a chunk of land and they run that chunk of
Speaker 1: land like industry, mineral extraction, timber extraction, whatever, and that
Speaker 1: income produces payments to shareholders the same way if you
Speaker 1: are a stockholder in a in Amazon and you draw
Speaker 1: dividends or whatever, is that good or not good? Um,
Speaker 1: that's a good start. So it wasn't the Carter administration
Speaker 1: that was a nail cove which set up like that
Speaker 1: national parks and stuff. So previous to that was anksa
Speaker 1: Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act, which I think Nixon signed,
Speaker 1: UM and that set up the corporations. It gets incredibly
Speaker 1: confusing from there. And and uh, don't quote me on
Speaker 1: any of this, hopefully you're not recording this, UM. But
Speaker 1: um uh, the Native corporations do have the land as
Speaker 1: a uh you know, for resources extraction, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: they also were given a big chunk of change that
Speaker 1: they can invest in, like a company that um uh
Speaker 1: provided toilet paper to the troops in Iraq, or or
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things. And so like the uh
Speaker 1: North Slope Regional Corporation has done very well on oil
Speaker 1: and gas. Um some of the other ones um almost
Speaker 1: like the Alaska Permanent Fund might have invested in uh
Speaker 1: what ever you know. So so in the North on
Speaker 1: the North Sult, for instance, they've taken oil revenues and
Speaker 1: diversify their portfolio and invested in presumably you know, a
Speaker 1: pension fund might go running investing. Yeah, yeah, presumably. And
Speaker 1: and so um what happens back to the Ambler road
Speaker 1: is that um uh people, the Native corporations are for profit,
Speaker 1: and so they're kind of like a corporation saying well,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a good idea, we want this,
Speaker 1: this will provide jobs, and we'll also pay you separate
Speaker 1: from your job, give you know, native corporation dividends. So
Speaker 1: in that sense, like wow, what a great deal. Um.
Speaker 1: And then separately they say, will protect your subsistence hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing. Uh you all there talk of like limiting
Speaker 1: the road, that the road will never be open to
Speaker 1: outside traffic like the Hall road, the pipeline road was
Speaker 1: which is now open. Yeah, and so there's it would
Speaker 1: take you know, hours and hours and hours just to
Speaker 1: touch the tip of iceberg on this. But but those
Speaker 1: are the the thing the propaganda for the road. Um,
Speaker 1: it's hard if you're actually paying attention to say this
Speaker 1: billion dollar road or and then many open pit mines,
Speaker 1: which I know would lead to more roads and more mines. Um,
Speaker 1: is not going to damage the caribou herd or the
Speaker 1: or the subsistence hunting, or the quality of the water
Speaker 1: or anything but fishing in itself, right, like all the
Speaker 1: different spawning species of fish that you mentioned, right, and
Speaker 1: and just small streams. This road, as it's perceived, would
Speaker 1: would have to go over. Yeah, many thousand small streams
Speaker 1: something like that, and many major rivers and et cetera.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a giant industrial corridor into the into
Speaker 1: the Brooks Range, which it's hard to if you don't
Speaker 1: know the Brooks Range, it's hard to explain just how
Speaker 1: wild that is. But it's imagine the Mountain Ranges side
Speaker 1: of California, Okay, yeah, with with no people, with road,
Speaker 1: with road across no road, no roads and yeah, and
Speaker 1: then if you're going up the pipeline road and you
Speaker 1: you know, and you wander off to the west, you'd
Speaker 1: be like you'll hit another road in Siberia. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot, like there's a lot of parallels between
Speaker 1: this road and the Pebble mine where you have and
Speaker 1: the Pebble Mind you had like a lot of diverse
Speaker 1: groups that pushed back against the road. Is that happening. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to hear you say that, because it's
Speaker 1: been uh, super frustrating to me over the last decade
Speaker 1: that Pebble Mind is so known and people have stickers
Speaker 1: and hats and and every other dude that was well
Speaker 1: marketed man. Yeah. Uh. And meanwhile, from my point of view,
Speaker 1: the Ambler road is much much more detrimental. Um. We
Speaker 1: don't have the Bristol Bay fishery to say, well millions
Speaker 1: of dollars and uh red salmon harvest potentially could be damaged.
Speaker 1: We have you know, the fishery that I've fished in
Speaker 1: forty seven in years that makes very little money and um,
Speaker 1: but we have and we have those the she fish
Speaker 1: that you know, the most sheafish don't um live everywhere,
Speaker 1: and so we have the the she fish population there.
Speaker 1: We have these incredible long, huge rivers that are you
Speaker 1: can dip your cup in the water, and but but
Speaker 1: how do you equate that to value? And say, like, well,
Speaker 1: dipping that cup in the value in the water feels
Speaker 1: good to me. But but oh, this road would bring jobs.
Speaker 1: And so it's a hard argument, and it's not been
Speaker 1: publicized at all, let alone on the on the couple
Speaker 1: and and I would say, it's uh, um, I don't
Speaker 1: want to um. The apples and orange is thing, but
Speaker 1: it's at least as important as pebble. And I would
Speaker 1: say much more so. Where you gave me a hoodie,
Speaker 1: did you design that hoodie? Not that one? And I
Speaker 1: gotta admit you know, I went to Rdova to uh
Speaker 1: do a book reading, and somebody came up to me
Speaker 1: and gave me a shirt that said no road Cordova.
Speaker 1: Didn't say anything about protecting your food or anything. And
Speaker 1: I I asked people and they were trying to stop
Speaker 1: a thirty mile road I think it was, or do
Speaker 1: you I'm not familiar with it, but so I wore
Speaker 1: that around and and then I was like, I gotta
Speaker 1: make some of these that say no road. Amblers is
Speaker 1: and um, a lot of the time up home, UM,
Speaker 1: I feel like the lone ranger. I mean, people know
Speaker 1: I'm against the road. But locally, um, this is getting
Speaker 1: back to before we started talking about the Native Corporations
Speaker 1: and the Land Claims Act. But locally people have that
Speaker 1: fatalistic attitude. But they also have this you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to speak out. Um, you're supposed to just you know,
Speaker 1: keep to yourself about if you're against the road, you
Speaker 1: just you're not supposed to talk about it. And and
Speaker 1: so I'm this lightning rod, this lone ranger, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to stop the road. But I don't. People come
Speaker 1: up to me in private and say, you know, can
Speaker 1: I have a hoodie and thanks and whatever. But in public, uh,
Speaker 1: people are not speaking out. Um. And part of that
Speaker 1: is that the Native corporation um, you know, potentially would
Speaker 1: provide jobs, and you won't you know, if they're going
Speaker 1: to build the road, you'd maybe you'd want to be
Speaker 1: one of the people with it. Um. You don't want
Speaker 1: to anger your neighbors. You don't want to There's all
Speaker 1: the normal reasons that humans might or might not speak out.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are against the road, but it would be hard to quantify.
Speaker 1: It would be hard to get them to speak out. Um. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the propaganda machine is sort of grinding forwards, um, saying
Speaker 1: all the the goodness the road would would bring, um
Speaker 1: a lot of jobs and moles. Will I actually like it?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um because the cariboo someone got that famous
Speaker 1: picture of caribou getting shade under the pipeline. Oh yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they like it well. And then like how much easier
Speaker 1: it is for a caribou to run down a road
Speaker 1: versus over tussocks. So the north of uh Cots, beyond
Speaker 1: the coast is it's a red dog mine which was
Speaker 1: established probably years ago between Kamenko Native mining company and
Speaker 1: the local Native Corporation nana Um and Um. They have
Speaker 1: a fifty two mile state road from the Mind to
Speaker 1: the coast the port site and um and it's very
Speaker 1: very popular at home. It's brought people piping jobs, which
Speaker 1: is a whole another subject what that does to hunting
Speaker 1: and and and people's lives and stuff. But Um, that
Speaker 1: road doesn't lead to you couldn't drive from Miami to
Speaker 1: it's not on the road. The road on the road
Speaker 1: and then UM but um cariboo come down that coast.
Speaker 1: So western Ardo Kurd hits that road at times and
Speaker 1: the fishing game callers, radio tracking collars show uh that
Speaker 1: that stops the caribou for extended periods of time or
Speaker 1: potentially keeps them from migrating UM further south. And that's
Speaker 1: a little road, a short road that um Um there's
Speaker 1: a little speck along the coast star compared to UM
Speaker 1: this road that would come up the pipeline off the
Speaker 1: pipeline road north of Fairbanks and then two hundred and
Speaker 1: eleven miles UM east west UM. So as far as
Speaker 1: the caribou migration, UM, the effects could be uh um catastrophic. Really,
Speaker 1: you can't have a heard of uh you know serengetti
Speaker 1: like uh animals roaming over giant areas um and then
Speaker 1: slowly cut back on that area without um something happening
Speaker 1: UM and UM. I guess I wanted to say another
Speaker 1: thing about the migration. So the migration has changed greatly
Speaker 1: in the last uh ten twenty years, and we got
Speaker 1: really spoiled in my young life. Where August, September, October
Speaker 1: all in there it comes this flood of cariboo coming
Speaker 1: through the yard. You know, thousands of cariboo. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get one tonight. You know, I got
Speaker 1: a band aid on my thumb. I'll get one in
Speaker 1: the morning, you know whatever. There's just so many caribou
Speaker 1: flooding through to now where these last falls i've seen
Speaker 1: like zero um or or a cow and calf eighteen
Speaker 1: miles away or something. Um. And that's the migration uh
Speaker 1: um not happening or delaying. All different things are taking
Speaker 1: place and super warm in the fall. Um. There's more
Speaker 1: hunters on these rivers, local hunters driving boats. And then
Speaker 1: the final thing which I mentioned before that people like
Speaker 1: to um blame the lack of migration on which is
Speaker 1: flying outside hunters which are are coming in on super
Speaker 1: cubs and stuff to the leap Frog north of US. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a very contentious issue when you
Speaker 1: mix the resource conflicts with the development and and and
Speaker 1: all that, and then and the lands claim stuff, which
Speaker 1: is super confusing too well with the industrial development. I
Speaker 1: think that you'll look back on the pists and match
Speaker 1: between outside hunters and locals as the good old days.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, And uh, you know, I recently met
Speaker 1: um people that talked about oh working together and stuff
Speaker 1: that locally we don't really have a reason to work
Speaker 1: together because you can this is gonna sound uh mean,
Speaker 1: but that the locals can kind of go to the
Speaker 1: federal government and say, um, you know, protect us because
Speaker 1: Anelka said, um, well, on federal land there would be
Speaker 1: a subsistence preference for local hunters. Um. Yeah. Uh. I
Speaker 1: don't want to get into it, but I think that's
Speaker 1: been grossly exploited. Oh yeah, they take I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of bullshit with taken. Um. There's been like
Speaker 1: a lot of overreach I feel on the part of
Speaker 1: like really like blaming small amounts outside hunters for these
Speaker 1: like huge macro issues about caribou I think it's just
Speaker 1: it's like just sticking it to people. I don't disagree
Speaker 1: with you, um, but I think that most groups on
Speaker 1: planet Earth have long used whatever they can to their advantage.
Speaker 1: Most Yeah and so oh yeah, yeah, that's trying to
Speaker 1: soften the edges on that. But yeah, and so that's
Speaker 1: in place right now. I Um, I put a proposal
Speaker 1: into the board of game to limit, um, the number
Speaker 1: of cariboo that myself and others up there were allowed
Speaker 1: to get, because I thought it was, um ludicrous. If
Speaker 1: we're saying, um, we live subsistence, we should be allowed
Speaker 1: to do whatever we want, and outsiders shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to do anything. Um, and so what about taking a
Speaker 1: look at ourselves and trying to make our subsistence activities
Speaker 1: more responsible? Um? Why do we need to be allowed
Speaker 1: you know, five cariboo a day, every day of the year. Um,
Speaker 1: when we're uh worried about the cariboo herds, the dude
Speaker 1: that comes in and gets one, it's like blowing the
Speaker 1: whole thing. And so I got horribly shot down on that. Um. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think it's comeing. I mean, I hope it's coming.
Speaker 1: I think as as uh people who live there and
Speaker 1: care about that spot. I'm one of them, and and UM, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I do think there's a local attitude
Speaker 1: of um, locals can't hurt the resources, it's only outsiders
Speaker 1: and and all that needs to change. I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: say it's I'm sure I'm going to have some people
Speaker 1: that give me some flak over that. But our our
Speaker 1: local um way of treating the resources as has gotten
Speaker 1: a little out of hand. And then, um, if we
Speaker 1: do want to blame the outsiders, which is great fun
Speaker 1: and really UM feels good. Um we can every group
Speaker 1: out there. UM, we need to clean up our act
Speaker 1: as best as we can. Uh, Seth Canner? Three things?
Speaker 1: How do people find out? What's the best resource for
Speaker 1: people to find out your perspective on the road? And
Speaker 1: then what's the best way for people to find you
Speaker 1: as a photographer and author and to find your work? Um,
Speaker 1: I have a a website which apparently is uh hideously
Speaker 1: unkempt kept and I don't I don't, I don't do much.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do computers very well. But
Speaker 1: any you have a website Seth Kantner dot com and
Speaker 1: I S E T H K A n T N
Speaker 1: E R dot com and UM and on there. I
Speaker 1: have a few of my thousands of caribou photos and
Speaker 1: and um in my books, UM and a few of
Speaker 1: my articles. UM. Nowadays I think everybody, Well, you mentioned
Speaker 1: googling how to find a diamond out of a ring.
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty interesting. I don't google much
Speaker 1: at all, but you can google me and you end
Speaker 1: up with these articles. I've written books, have written and
Speaker 1: then uh op eds about the Ambler Road, which some
Speaker 1: of them have been pretty happy with. I recently had
Speaker 1: a crazy opportunity to meet Secretary of Interior deb Holland
Speaker 1: and uh and uh I wrote about that and uh
Speaker 1: and these are sort of boiled down. I try to
Speaker 1: make the Ambler Road issue as uh. You know it's complex,
Speaker 1: but I try to clarify it. And you know, you know,
Speaker 1: a thousand words for people. UM my books. Remember most
Speaker 1: recent book this A Thousand Trails home. Uh, Living with
Speaker 1: Caribou is uh available on there if you want, uh,
Speaker 1: you know me to ship you on and uh and
Speaker 1: sign it however you want, but it's uh then you
Speaker 1: got paid for postage. So there's other sources. UM. My
Speaker 1: publisher on that is a nonprofit Mountaineers Books UM out
Speaker 1: of Seattle, and they are you know, strong advocates of um,
Speaker 1: you know, um environmental protections and other the use of
Speaker 1: the outdoors, and so ordering from them, I imagine um
Speaker 1: uh mountaineers dot org u is uh potentially makes more
Speaker 1: of the money go to a good cause. UM. But
Speaker 1: my publishers have all been nonprofits and and haven't I say,
Speaker 1: I make enough money and from writing to pay for beer.
Speaker 1: But it just keeps going up. Uh yeah, hundred hundred
Speaker 1: ten dollars and cots to be for five six packs um,
Speaker 1: And so that's become a little challenge. And that's not
Speaker 1: something kind of goofy yanni beer. That's probably like this
Speaker 1: regular beer yea, So like is it hoppy? Like? How
Speaker 1: how citruacy? Yeah, you might have brewing your own over
Speaker 1: the winter something. Oh well, no comment. I think it's
Speaker 1: a felony. But up there all right. Seth Cantner, author
Speaker 1: most recently of the phenomenal book A Thousand Trails Home,
Speaker 1: Living with Caribou um, and many many, many damn near
Speaker 1: All the themes we covered in today's episode will be
Speaker 1: picked up. Stay tuned Wednesday's drop. You'll see how Seth
Speaker 1: Cantor does on the Trivia Show and spend there, probably
Speaker 1: will throw him a bone like what Seth Cantor's favorite color. Uh,
Speaker 1: he'll probably throw him some kind of bone, but UH,
Speaker 1: stay tuned. Game on sockers coming up.