Life Below Zero

Caribou are one of the most important animals to me

up in this country.

Most years about half the meat I eat is caribou.

I've been seeing caribou down in this country

earlier in recent years,

and I'm wondering if there might be some around right now.

The biggest thing about caribou, you just can't count on them.

It's different every year.

Sometimes, there's not a single caribou

in the country for months.

Knowledge of the animals you're hunting

is a big part of the equation.

It's important to understand animals and their behavior.

When I'm hunting moose in the fall,

I'll make a sound that a moose makes with my voice,

and that'll call the moose to me.

That doesn't work with caribou.

This time of year, if there's caribou around,

I can't call a caribou to me.

I'm gonna try and sneak up on the caribou.

Approach him silently.

So I'm looking for signs of caribou.

I'm listening for caribou.

Looking for tracks in the snow.

You got to know the animal you're after.

You got to understand it,

and you got to tailor your approach to that animal.

A lot of times, the caribou will travel up

kind of high on this ridge.

So, I'm heading up here, see if I can find any tracks,

see if I can possibly find any caribou.

Snow is good for tracking.

If any caribou came through,

I should be able to intercept their tracks.

Look at this, something went through here.

What is this?

This is no caribou track.

See this? The whole body's dragging in the snow.

See these lines?

Those are the marks of quills.

That's a porcupine track,

but I got to know which way he's going

if I want to catch up with him.

Porcupines are good eating.

Just by feeling the track with my bare hand,

I can feel the details of the paw print.

I can feel the bed of the track, which way it's angled.

Toes are always gonna be lower than the heel

when they're traveling in snow.

Yeah.

That porcupine's headed this way.

I'm gonna try and catch up with it.

I never know what I'm gonna find.

I have to take advantage of the opportunity.

I'm thinking mostly about caribou,

but I never know what I'm gonna find.

Whatever I find, that I can take advantage of,

I take advantage of.

I'm an opportunistic hunter.

If I hustle, I should be able to catch up with it.

This is a pretty fresh track right here.

It is very hungry country.

There aren't that many animals around.

I have to take advantage of whatever I can find.

If you're not prepared, you're not gonna score.

If you're not prepared,

you're probably not going to survive it.

Hey, puppy-puppy.

Today, we're having a blizzard.

It's the first one of the year.

We have real thin ice,

and this isn't doing our ice any good.

The ice isn't gonna thicken with this crap on top,

and it's really warm out.

But it's really windy, too, and it's really wet.

I need to get me a pole

that I can make into a handle for an ice chisel.

Call 'em a tuk up here.

Ice is going to thicken.

It's just not happening right now,

and I'm gonna need that ice chisel.

I'm gonna need to go along and test the ice as I go.

I'm also gonna need to make

a way to make a hole through the ice,

and a really efficient way of doing it is with an Eskimo tuk.

It's got a nice weight to it,

it's a little heavier than I want,

but it's gonna lose weight when I skin it.

Since it's freeze up, and it's stormy,

and nobody's going anywhere,

it's the time of year to sit down and get your tools made.

And here in the land of ice and snow,

this is the tool for me.

If you want to get to fish,

you got to knock a hole in the ice.

If I want to knock a hole in the ice,

I need to have myself a tuk.

I'm stripping off the bark right now.

I'm gonna take off the lumps, bumps,

the slivers, and the knots.

We're going into dark winter.

We have thin ice, we have limited daylight,

and it's time to prepare ourselves

for when the sunshine comes back and the deep cold is here.

Not going on any ice until I can have a look at how thick it is.

This right here, not only will it be the thing

that I would use crossing the ice,

tuking ahead of me, but should I break through,

I have a stick I can put sideways in my hole

and use to get myself out with.

For the Hailstones, Arctic waterways

provide vital transportation and fish for consumption,

but they can be extremely dangerous.

And a misstep on thin ice could be fatal.

If you live out in the country like we do,

you'd end up using one of these quite a bit,

and they don't make 'em in the stores.

They make cheap imitations, but nobody makes a good one,

and if you want the best, you just do it yourself.

This is the time of year,

while the ice is thin, to make my ice chisel.

So, when it gets thick here in a couple days,

I can go put this baby to use.

This needs to be done before I can go out on the ice.

If I don't have this to test the ice,

then I won't know what I'm walking on,

and I'm taking a big chance.

I'm just about done here.

This is what I'll use as I walk ahead of me,

to see if this will plunge through the ice ahead of me.

If this will go through the ice, I'll go through the ice.

If this doesn't go through the ice

after a good hefty thump,

then it's safe ice to walk on.

And you can't buy this in the store.

No, this is something you just got to make yourself

if you want to have the best.

And if I don't have much, I might as well have the best.

It's in your best interest

to not underestimate the dangers out here.

Zeus, Thor, you want to go haul some wood?

Getting my dogs watered here,

and then I'm gonna go get my harnesses and lines set up.

Take the dogs out on a run, out in the flats.

Finally, winter is setting in.

We're having ideal conditions with the nice snow pack.

So I'll be conditioning my dog team

while I'm going out with a purpose,

and I need to get some wood around here

because it's starting to run slim

on the immediate amount of wood that I've had stocked up.

Your safe haven is the woodpile,

for living up here in the winter,

got to have wood to make warm food for the dogs

and to warm my cabin

so I can have a safe place to come home to.

Wood's a huge commodity to me out here.

We're not talking like a little pile of wood.

I need, like, stacks of wood.

Yeah, these dogs love to run, so when you get hooking them up,

they get all crazy and excited.

Oh.

These dogs ain't gonna wait around no longer.

They're ready to go.

I love to hear the dogs barking and screaming and howling.

That means they're ready to go, they're feeling good.

You ready, guys?

Woo!

I build on that attitude.

Alright! Straight ahead!

So it's time to get to work now.

The level of comfort I enjoy in my life

is absolutely directly related

to how hard I've worked to attain it.

What I'm working on here, these are my solar panels.

And now that the sunshine has come back,

what I can do now is get up here,

start clearing it off, and I expose these solar cells.

Right over there.

I got ptarmigans.

What I want to do is, before they make me,

I want to get down, get my binos, get my rifle,

and take the opportunity to maybe get some fresh meat.

It'd be nice to be able to shoot the gun and get my own dinner,

in my own backyard, on my own terms.

Ptarmigan, it's one of the only food sources out here

for a lot of the year.

And for being one of the dumbest birds on the planet,

they get away from me all the freaking time.

Good Lord, they're all over the place.

I'm seeing maybe 500 ptarmigan or so.

But they're spread out, a little on the far side.

Might be a case of my eyes are bigger than my stomach

and certainly bigger than my talent with a .22 open sight.

Still 100, 120 yards that direction,

looking this way.

Can I physically get close enough to maybe take a shot?

It's a roll of the dice, man.

They're a little on the far side,

but I wouldn't be me if I didn't try.