Original subtitles

SUE AIKENS: We know there's large predators roaming around right now.

(SIGHS)

People will say there's never been a recorded instance

of a wolf attacking a human being, they just don't do it.

But my experience out here is far different.

You know, for example, I had my granddaughter, Drew,

visit, uh, this last year.

She is very petite.

She tends to wander off,

and every time my granddaughter

would get about 10, 12 foot from me, you know, here,

slipping right over the river bank,

is this big grey wolf, and they belly crawl.

They get down on their bellies

and they very slowly will crawl up.

And he's trying to get into position to take her out.

The wolf is here, I'm here.

I'm coming at him and he starts taking off.

Well, they can go fast.

My experience is

if you act like a pork chop, you'll be a pork chop.

I get along with all the animals,

even with the ones that want to eat me.

It's... It's a very honest, very natural relationship.

They want to eat me, I don't want them to.

(CLATTERING)

Hold on a second.

There's a wolf.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

I need to see who's been coming around my house.

Since I don't know what I'm walking into,

Old Betsy's coming with.

You know, so I can protect myself.

Even looking for tracks,

as hard as it is for me to try and find a track,

I know whatever I find is going to be fairly fresh.

You are never alone.

You've gotta try and track them down.

Source 'em, see where they're coming at,

where they're going to.

What vantage point is he taking

to find out how to get me

is gonna to tell me what vantage line I need

to take, to take care of him.

Here's a wolf print. This is pretty goddamn big.

I mean, he's just sticking to the south side of the bank for safety's sake.

And, uh, wanting to see what I do, where I do it,

how I do it, and, uh, laying in wait.

And that's what it is, it's a waiting game.

Who's going to fuck up first, me or him?

Oh, God!

Thirty yards from the front door.

Who's gonna show a sign of weakness,

who's gonna leave themselves a little too far out,

who's gonna circle a little too close?

So, every chance I get, I'll be looking for 'em.

Every chance he gets, he's gonna be looking and smelling for me.

CHIP HAILSTONE: We don't complain. We just work harder.

Everything we do, we have to do for ourself.

You know, that's how we lump it. I'm not complaining.

AGNES HAILSTONE: My sister needs fish and we need seal oil,

so we've arranged a trade.

Trade is a big part of our life up here,

and her village is 30 miles away,

and the only way we could get there is by snow machine.

Eight months a year we're using our snow machines.

Anything that requires a heavy load or long distance travel,

probably requires my snow machine.

(ENGINE SPUTTERS)

(SIGHS)

I blew my belt on my snow machine,

so it's not really gonna take me anywhere.

When my snow machine's not working, it's a lot harder to hunt,

it's a lot harder to, uh, bring home large things,

like if I got a good net check or if I got logs.

I have to rely on other people or I have to do stuff on foot.

(ENGINE SPUTTERS)

-Damn it! -(THUDS)

(BEEPING)

CHIP: We tried the store.

The store here is very limited.

Doesn't have much of anything.

So I'm gonna ask on VHF, 'cause I have a VHF.

This is the telephone of the village.

Good afternoon, Noorvik.

Um, anybody out there got an 11080 belt for sale?

Uh, it can be used, in good shape.

Uh, if you've got one, call me at home, 2524

or just come over to the Hailstone's. Thank you.

Well, folks look out for each other up here,

and we have a great communication system in the village with the VHFs.

People often buy and sell things over the VHFs.

It's a pretty good way to go.

Snow machines are so important that when they don't have pieces and parts

around here, there's always a big trade going on.

If you can't get it in the stores, you gotta get it from somewhere.

MAN: (ON VHF) Chip Hailstone, Chip Hailstone. You gotta copy.

This is Hailstone's, go ahead.

MAN: Yeah, I hear you're looking for a belt.

My brother say he got one,

but, uh, Mom says he needs meat better than cash.

Caribou meat is better than cash.

How much you guys want? Half caribou, full caribou?

Hindquarter and briskets.

Sure. Hindquarters and briskets sound good to me.

I'll even bring back straps. Maybe even a tongue and heart.

Okay. That will do.

Okay, um, you'll drop it by and pick up the meat out here, huh?

Uh, Hailstone out.

Signing out.

Sokat, come in!

Oh, sweet.

Check it out.

Here in the Arctic, trade is really important.

And this is part of it. These are the things that I can't go living without.

Basically, right now, with my snow machine,

it would take years for me to have a dog team again.

And, um, these are necessary,

and the necessary things take money,

and, luckily, sometimes they take trade.

We got back leg, front legs, can even give you ribs.

And I'll give you a chest, and right here I've got a bag

-full of, um, heart, tongue and liver. -Yeah.

-It's pretty heavy. I think you... -I can help you.

All right. Well, we'll just drag it over to your house.

-Yeah. -Okay, that'll be good. All right.

ERIK SALITAN: The real value of wilderness is aesthetic,

and it's a non-tangible asset.

I'm just looking for a, uh... Looking for a cat trap.

Some real decent lynx signs in this area here.

I'm gonna make a few cubby sets and hopefully catch a cat or two.

And there's a real decent price being paid right now for, uh, lynx pelts.

-Make sure its springs are working good and everything. -(SPRINGS CREAKING)

So we're gonna go put a couple of traps out and on foot

and see if we can't get a head start on the trapping season

despite the weather obstacles.

I'm looking for a spot here that funnels the animals

through a narrow opening.

There's millions of miles of wilderness here.

The pan of the trap is only about an inch big.

You need that foot to step right on it, so...

Come winter, there's zero daylight.

This really affects a lot of people,

and the mental preparation that's involved is what really takes most people down.

I'm crazy as a loon to begin with,

so it doesn't faze me at all.

I just go with it.

Trapping is a great way for me to get out, do a little alone time,

and make a little money while I'm at it.

This tree here is one of my favourite cubby sets.

You can see, uh, in past years where I've had success,

and all the brush was all mowed down and chewed up here.

Here's my old tassel string.

Still have a trap wired to the tree here.

I'm gonna start off by just tying a new tassel on there,

a little visual attractant.

We have a termagant wing.

And this here, it kinda blows around in the wind,

and lynx are curious animals and he'll bat at it

and hopefully get himself caught in a trap.

Let's make a little bit of a cubby.

We're gonna take sticks,

make an enclosure that's going to funnel the animal in

to step into the trap.

Goin' to just to take snow in our hands, cover up the chain.

We're gonna take our trapping axe

and we're gonna just dip it into this untouched powder.

The purpose in this is that the snow doesn't become compact

and prevent the trap from springing.

So it's just a fine layer of thin snow that's obscuring that trap.

And we don't want him to just step over it, so we're gonna put that there.

These are called guide sticks.

And we're gonna sink it right there, so kitty steps over.

And the trap is essentially ready to go.

There you have a visual, scent, and food item bait, which is a moose femur.

Here you have a tassel, which is a termagant wing, which is a visual draw.

A little wind spins that around, attracts the cat.

So I just finished setting one cubby

and I got a bunch more to set up before I'm done here, so I'm gonna get with it.

Hopefully, when we come back, we'll have a cat.

ANDY BASSICH: I believe in embracing technology,

but I think any time you embrace technology,

the most important thing is how you embrace it.

(DOGS BARKING)

Having some kind of problem with the solar array today.

So goin' to reset the charge controller and see what happens.

Another day of fixing shit.

Some kind of a hiccup in the charge control here.

I was getting all kinds of erroneous readings this morning,

so, basically, I just rebooted it.

Oh, that looks a lot better.

I love the technology, but I tend to try and keep it at arm's length.

We use wood heat for all of our buildings.

We don't use any oil heat.

We're trying to remove ourselves from any dependency

on fossil fuels as much as possible.

I got about two or three loads of wood I need to get back to where I'm happy.

That usually last us a couple of weeks if it's not super cold.

If it's real cold, we burn through the wood pretty quick.

(REVVING)

It's pretty critical for me to get over to my wood lot,

cut some trees, stockpile wood there,

so that I'm well supplied for when the cold weather hits.

I wanna go get a quick load of firewood.

It's a little quicker with the snow machine to just banzai across the river

to my wood lot, cut some wood, throw it in,

then I'm back here in maybe 45 minutes.

The snow machines, they're a pain in the ass.

But they're kind of a necessary pain in the ass.

(ENGINE STARTING)

So I'm gonna go get my coat on and we'll go get some wood.

(ENGINE SPUTTERING)

Aw, come on, man.

-(ENGINE STOPS) -Son of a bitch!

Goddamn it!

Why you gotta do this crap today on me?

All I wanted to do is go get some stupid wood.

See maybe that floats. Maybe that floats.

It's stickin'.

So sick and tired of screwing with all this stupid machinery.

Son of a bitch.

These damn machines.

I just spent a bunch of time working on it.

It's something wrong with the fuel.

The recoil's not working.

It's just the same old crap all the time with machinery in the wintertime up here.

If I can just get it into this sled,

I can just go home and get some dogs,

have them tow it back.

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

(EXHALES)

(SIGHS)

Yeah, baby, that's gonna work.

Yeah, dogs are gonna love me for this.

I was about a mile away from home when this happened.

I'm gonna go hook up about 10 dogs

and we'll just drag it back to the shop with the 10 dogs.

And then go back with the dogs and get a load of wood with them,

I probably should have done that in the first place.

CHIP: It's pretty much a do-it-yourself kind of deal.

You gotta get yourself from one place to another.

There's no tow trucks and there's no gas stations.

I blew my belt on my snow machine.

Got myself a belt. It took some trade.

This will get me back out to the caribou

and I'll replace the caribou that I got the belt with with these.

Fucking total bullshit.

This machine is 10 years old.

It's probably got 50,000 miles on it.

Machines are very personal things.

You, um... You don't let other people go riding around in your machine,

you don't let other people work on your machines.

(ENGINE STARTS)

Anything that requires a heavy load or long distance travel

probably requires my snow machine.

And if you can't maintain your own, you're gonna walk a lot.

ERIK: You take a hot steam in the sauna,

relax your muscles, eat a good meal,

hit the rack, wake up the next day and do it again.

(COUGHS)

Kind of draggin' here.

Been sick for a few days, but I gotta get out and check some traps.

Alaska is a harsh place.

It's, uh... The climate's harsh.

The culture can be harsh in ways.

If you don't like it, don't live here!

It's that easy.

(COUGHS)

The last time I came down to the set here,

there was a fresh cat track coming right down this trail.

I don't see any sign right now, but maybe, uh... Maybe we'll get lucky, eh?

The last time I checked this pole,

a lynx had come along,

torn this bait down,

sprung my trap, and then he walked off that way.

Here I am coming back from my trip, checking traps again,

fresh snow, a lynx again came by, sprung the trap.

Okay, so we're gonna reset this pole.

There's a lot of self-reliance associated with, uh, living out this far.

(COUGHS)

I love being out here and doing this,

but when you're sick, this really'll run you down.

We got ripped off by a big ol' tomcat here. Lynx.

But, you know, you can't win here every time.

So we're gonna go and check this cubby down the way,

and you never know, maybe we'll get lucky

and even that tomcat'll be stuck there, so we'll see.

(COUGHS)

So here's the cubby trap.

Okay, the trap is sprung.

Son of a gun.

We got a little bit of fur here.

We pinched a kitty.

Must've... It just barely got him, you know?

(COUGHS) He may have actually even sat on it.

This cat's run devastation on me here. He's teasing me.

Beat me out on the cubby.

He's not gonna win the next go around.

Let's check some more traps.

Being sick sucks.

Got a couple of miles of trap line here.

I'm just gonna walk some short foot lines I have

that are pretty close to the house here

and, hopefully, we catch a cat or martin or something.

I'm looking forward to maybe skinning some fur tonight.

We have a lynx here.

Just an unbelievable animal, a keen predator.

Beautiful and valuable pelt,

and he's a true adapted predator of the Arctic.

And also one of the few fur bearers that we can also eat.

So we're gonna try to angle around

and see if we can't just put one shot with this .22 pistol in it.

(GUNSHOT)

Beautiful, mature animal.

Spend a lot of time checking empty traps,

having snowed in traps, and then finally you go...

And when you get a target animal like the lynx,

you know, it's always exciting.

SUE: To make the decision to live here,

you know, you're deciding that you're gonna pit yourself against

some of the worst shit that mother nature has to give.

I know I've got some predator circling me.

I don't know where he is.

I need to widen out my search

just to make sure that my immediate work area is safe.

A daytime attack would be unusual,

but it is the Arctic and people are food groups.

You got some tracks here.

Fox and a wolf travel fairly similarly.

This is pretty goddamn big.

Although the stride isn't great.

Possibility, this could be wolf.

If so, it's a smaller one.

But, uh, he definitely out here,

and that would have definitely been from this morning.

Right here, this would have been, uh, where...

I mean it's blown over now, but at some point it was the entrance and exit.

These little prints here, those are fox prints.

Over the years that I've been here,

I've got, uh, now 12 to 15 foxes.

They've become my buddies, they follow me everywhere I go.

Um, I've got one, Foxy,

he just, he walks all the way inside.

He'll sit on the couch and watch TV with me.

Uh, it's gotten to the point now, I mean, I just put up his barrel by the window

and he sits there, turn the TV to face him.

If I turn it away, he cries.

It's, uh, you know, I can pet them. They are my little buddies.

When one of my female fox, Loxy, when she was a little kit

it was her first year, and I heard his horrific noise

and instantly knew there was a bear getting into the fox den.

I ran outside and here's little Loxy,

and she's pulling on my little pant legs

trying to get me to come over to the den

and I could hear that the bear was getting into the den

and eating all the foxes.

She's crying and crying.

She tried and tried to pull me over to save her family,

and once she realised I couldn't do it,

she just sat down right on the tundra and cried and cried.

Next thing she did, she just ran under the trailer and just hid.

She is the only one that survived that bear attack.

Loxy!

Loxy!

In order to complete the circuit, I'm gonna get up on my perch

and see where my predator threat... If there is a threat.

We know there's large predators roaming around right now,

but the nature of a predator is

they don't walk out into the open and shake your hand.

They sneak up on you.

There's a wolf out there!

Typical predator activity.

They're gonna circle you,

lookin' for all your weaknesses, lookin' for your pattern,

when they have the advantage at night, they come in.

You let your guard down once and you end up going home in a body bag.

Typically, what they're going to do is circle,

circle, wait for you to get comfortable, wait, and then pounce.

Because he's 100 or 200 yards out

doesn't mean he needs to go down.

When I feel my comfort zone for safety has been comprised,

that's when I need to take care of it.

My job then to protect myself,

get all of my f-ing work done and be inside.

They have the advantage if I go outside at night.

I need to change that around.

They want me bad enough, they're hungry enough,

you come inside, motherfucker.

'Cause then I have the advantage.

People want to know why I do this, this is it.

You know you're fucking alive

when you got something wanting to eat ya.

You gotta beat feet to get your shit done,

and hopefully, you outsmart 'em or outwait 'em.

Dangerous? Yeah.

Scary? No. It's a challenge, I like it.

CHIP: We're not stoppable.

We're the irresistible object.

It's our will.

CHIP: The object today is to go get some seal oil.

We missed a couple of really good hunts this last fall,

so we've taken to trading and purchasing it.

Here in the Arctic, because we are beyond,

way beyond the end of the road,

this is just kind of the way things go.

Um, trade is really important.

My wife wants more seal oil, which is a favourite condiment of ours.

Seal oil goes all over everything.

Makes eating frozen food calorically viable for our bodies.

Her sister wants some white fish,

so it all came together to make a great reason

to go on a trip to the next village, which is Kiana.

AGNES: These down here are all the special fish.

These fish in here are, uh, from Melevik.

They are fatter and got more, uh, white fish eggs in them.

I wanna bring these to my sister Nita in Kiana, the next village up.

They didn't get much fish up there this year

and I told her I'd save her a bag.

CHIP: When we go visit folks in the next village or such, we don't have roads.

And, um, we have a trail system,

but quite often it's just a cross-country deal.

Not too many people around here have a taxi cab to jump into.

Actually, nobody does so.

So we use basket sleds, and we line 'em with caribou skins and a tarp

to keep the snow off the people riding behind.

And, uh, it's actually a very comfortable way to go.

It's the place where grandmas and newborns and, um, delicate things

are put into a nice flexible basket sled.

If it's a good year and a fella's got a nice ride, it can be 20 minutes.

Because it's probably 30, 40 miles.

This year it's kind of rough, we've got passengers, so we slow down considerably.

(DOG BARKS)

-AGNES: How's Jack? -Okay.

AGNES: We brought fish. CHIP: Still like white fish?

Right there, your, um, white fish.

CHIP: Trade is really important, and money is really hard to come by.

And if you can't make money, you can always trade.

It's all a big circle, we all watch out for each other around here.

-Right on, thank you. -Thank you.

It's really fresh. There's no taste.

-AGNES: It's good. -Nice, light, light oil.

No, pink's right.

We dip all our fish and frozen meats and stuff inside of it.

And that way we don't make our bodies cold.

-CHIP: It's rendered down from seal blubber. -Yeah, seal blubber.

-Real good one. -JACK: Yeah.

CHIP: These Inupiaq, their culture is all about food.

It's a medium of exchange, it's a medium of gift,

and, if anything, a really good reason to go on a little trip,

to go visiting, that's the way to go.

Since it's all about food, now I'm gonna go inside

and go eat with my-brother-in-law.

ANDY: For me, I love the technology.

If it's not improving my life, if it's creating more frustration for me,

then I know I'm depending on the technology too much.

Hey, Berg. You guys ready to go

perform AAA services?

This morning I woke up and planned to just do a quick trip across the river

to get some firewood with the snow machine.

Plans didn't work out the way I had envisioned them.

I got right to my wood lot, my machine died.

Then I had to walk home, about mile, mile-and-a-half.

How about you and Tea help me?

Let's go get that snow machine.

Hell with those damn snow machines today.

KATE RORKE-BASSICH: What's going on?

Ah, snow machine broke down again.

KATE: No!

So, um, why don't you go get dressed up and help me.

Let's hook up about 10 dogs and I'll go over there and drag it back over here.

Then I can use the dogs to go back and get some wood and stuff.

Sick and tired of working on damn snow machines all the time.

Hey, Kate, you gonna be able to come help me, uh, hook up some dogs?

-How many you gonna take? -Ten.

Living out here, we depend on each other.

We're a partnership

and she's really good at dropping whatever she's doing

to help me when I need help out here.

You got a neckline on one of those?

Yeah.

-(DOGS YELPS) -Gonna need your power today.

Gonna need your power today. Come on.

(DOGS BARKING)

Give me your right foot. Up. Good.

(BARKING)

All right, let's go!

I got better things to do with my time today then screw around with this.

So I'm just gonna drag that machine back

and then go with the dogs and get a load of wood with them.

I probably should've done that in the first place.

Up, up! On by.

That a boys. Straight ahead, straight ahead.

On by, let's go!

Everybody, whoa.

Up easy, up easy. Up easy, whoa.

Up a little, whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Everybody stay.

-Everybody stay. -(DOGS WHINE)

Everybody stay.

Stay!

If these dogs wanna take off on me, I'm screwed.

(WHINING)

Everybody stay.

Everybody stay.

Everybody, whoa. Whoa, whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

Everybody stay.

The snow machine crapped out on me.

I loaded it into the sled,

I went home, I got my dogs,

I bought them back, I hooked on.

And up. Up, up! Let's go!

Those 10 dogs ran with that snow machine home,

and it was a good feeling to see my dogs in shape,

pulling the snow machine home with no problems at all.

That a boys!

Straight ahead.

-That a boys! That a boys! -(DOGS BARKING)

That a boys, let's go.

That a boys.

Let's go. Let's go. Up, up.

Up! That a boys.

Easy, easy.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Easy.

I need you to grab the middle of the line

and drag the dogs in the middle of the team this way

so I can clear this damn tree.

Up easy, let's go! Up, up!

-Kate! I need the middle of the fucking team! -Okay.

That way!

Stop yelling or you're on your own.

Okay, let's go! Up, up! Up, up!

KATE: Whoa, whoa!

ANDY: Up, up. Whoa, whoa, whoa!

-Whoa! Easy. Whoa. -Whoa!

Go. Whoa! Everybody stay. Good job, you guys!

Every day is not a rosy day.

But, you know, you have to remember we're together 24/7.

Just a little pissed off. I'm not meant... Trying to get on your case, Kate.

I'm just pissed off 'cause this damn snow machine is doing this.

I don't want to rely on that equipment any more to do a quick job.

I'm gonna use my dogs 'cause they're reliable.

(PANTING)

Remind me on my next shop to have an automatic winch at the back door. (CHUCKLES)

So my quick day of going out and getting one quick load

of firewood with the snow machine,

because of mechanical problem's turned into an all-day event

which pretty much shot my plans for the rest of the day.

That's the way it is out here sometimes.

Goddamn thing.

I could've gotten five loads of wood

for what I just put into that crap with the dogs.

I'm just trying to debate whether I want to go get a load of wood with this

or just use the dog sled, you know?

Right. Just use the dog sled. Hook them up and go again.

(YELPING)

Stay. Okay, let's go!

Up, up. Chi, chi.

That a boy! Chi, chi. Chi, chi.

Yeah, baby! One more. Chi, chi.

CHIP: It's always been about food.

It's a medium of exchange, it's a medium of gift.

It's, um, what hunting produces,

it's what fishing produces, it's what gathering produces.

CHIP: Currently, there's 18 people living in our house.

There's me, my wife, our five daughters.

Our son and his woman have come to visited us and brought a couple of their children.

And then my wife's sister just moved up from Iowa.

She's occupying one room with her five children.

People flow in and flow out. It's, uh, never the same.

There's no hotels. What can you say?

Everybody's welcome.

This is a pretty standard meal for us.

Fish, meat, something from the ocean, some oil, some blubber.

Right here is a little bit of dried seal meat.

Rose is cutting up, um, beluga.

This is, um, Inupiaq real food.

We have crackers or fresh bread.

We'll have apples, carrots, celery,

whatever fresh vegetables we can find at the store

we're always glad to include in a good meal like this.

Our stores try hard, but a lot of times,

there's no fruits or vegetables at all to be had for quite a while.

But this right here reduces our overall grocery amount vastly.

If we were to live out of the store,

we'd probably be spending maybe $3,000 a month to feed us.

We've got some smoked salmon here,

we have some carrots and some celery and some apples.

There's bowhead muktuk, which is the pink stuff with the black tops, the skin tips.

Then we have beluga, which is a white whale.

There's, um, frozen caribou, there's some dried smoked caribou,

and there's some frozen white fish and frozen white fish eggs.

And it's all been smeared over with seal oil.

If you eat frozen fish or frozen caribou

and you're outside, even inside, you'll chill your body.

But if you dip 'em in seal oil calorically,

you gain, you get heat out of the deal.

Makes our bodies come up to temperature.

It's what makes people live in the Arctic so well

and, uh, we made some good trades this year for seal oil.

What can I say?

It all comes back to food, it's all about food.

The hunting is about food. The fishing is about food.

The interactions with folks around here we have is about food.

Seems my life is kind of centred on food.

And, uh, it's best when we go get our own. I think it tastes better.

SUE: I'm my own master.

I tell the ship which way to sail.

You can live life on the sidelines or, you know, be on the front charge.

I know I've got some predator circling me.

I don't know where he is.

I have to not just believe that I am safe in here,

I've gotta know that I'm safe in here.

And that means checking it. I gotta find 'em.

The top predators, they tend to be sneaky.

They'll draw you out to bring you in so they can get you.

The way a wolf hunts, they send out scouts first, to draw you out.

Once you're out, the rest come in from behind.

The one you can't see is the one you need to worry about.

I have the utmost respect for my environment.

The utmost respect for the predators in my area.

But not a hell of a lot I fear out of life.

It's just a challenge I haven't met yet.

That's all it is.

I got a wolf sitting on the other side of the bank, so I'm ready.

You know, bring it on, boo-boo.

Bring it on, boo-boo.

(GUNSHOT)

Always, my first option is deflection.

Can I scare him, make him run away?

One of my predators...

It's a good idea.

Rather than just hunker, run inside like a weenie,

uh, let off a few blasts.

Let's them know that I mean business.

They appreciate what a bullet sounds like.

It's putting the noise out there.

It's kinda like throwing down the gauntlet.

I'm being proactive with the wolf.

I'm saying, "Bam, bam! This is my territory, you son of a bitch. I dare ya.

"Cross that fucking line.

"Come on, you want me, come get me, motherfucker. I'm ready for ya."

ANDY: We're not hiding from anything out here.

We're just living the way our hearts tell us

is the best way to live for us.

Gonna chi up here, guys.

Chi, chi! Chi, chi!

This morning, planned to just do a quick trip

across the river to get some firewood with the snow machine.

The plans didn't work out the way I had envisioned 'em.

That's the way it is out here sometimes.

You gotta pretty much adapt to things as they happen.

Stay.

So I'm here right now in my wood lot.

I'm going to go get a couple of trees here. There's a couple right there.

There's one dead tree there. I gotta worry about that one hitting the dogs, though,

so I think I'd rather get stuff over here.

Hopefully, this thing will run.

(WHIRRING)

(PANTING)

All right, there's three.

(SIGHS) I'm gonna try and take that tree down.

If I can get it to fall on this side of these two trees, I'll be happy.

Jerry-riggin' stuff, man, that's my middle name.

That's all I seem to do around here, you know?

If you don't have the resource,

you look around, you figure out what you got and then you make it work.

(WHIRRING)

(SNIFFLES)

All right, baby, go where I want you to go now.

Come on. Come on!

Come on, baby, come to Papa.

Yeah, baby, go.

Go, go, go, go. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Oh, yeah!

Oh, yeah!

It's always the biggest ones that's farthest to carry.

Never fails.

All day long just sweat my ass off

I think that's going to be it for the night after that.

That's a pretty full day.

Oh. (EXHALES)

Okay, let's go!

That a boys.

That a boys.

That a boys. Yeah, buddy! Whoo-hoo!

Yeah! Let's go home.

ERIK: Tomorrow, it'll be kill or be killed.

That's a serious reality.

So there's a lot of blood in the snow around my house.

Saw the lynx from across the slough,

jogged over there.

Looked at it.

It was a nice, big, mature animal.

Made a clean shot. Dispatched it.

I was happy packing that lynx home.

It's always good weight to have.

You're on your own time zone here.

You can wake up at 4:00 in the afternoon

and accomplish just as much as if you wake up at 6:00 a.m.

And you sleep when you're tired, you eat when you're hungry,

you work when there's work to be done.

I tell you what, I'm happy I got that done.

I'm gonna skin a lynx and go to bed. I'm whipped.

You make your own, your own time up here.

You know, Alaska is a harsh place.

It's either you like it or you don't.

It's the only place that I could live.

You know, the satisfaction of trapping, it's nice.

I spend a lot of the year guiding clients.

Spent a lot of time out in the woods with other people.

It's one of the few times of the year that I get to be on my own.

I like that serenity and to get out there and get some alone time.

Yeah, the lynx is a prized animal.

(COUGHS) It's a valuable hide.

They're not a difficult hide to flesh.

They bring a good price.

If you're self-employed, there's no sick days,

so you gotta just keep plugging along. (SIGHS)

(COUGHS)

But even on days where it's kind of bum,

I'm pretty sick and I got a fever...

(SNIFFLES) It's pretty late at night, I'm hungry,

I don't really want to be fooling around, I wanna just get in bed...

This is better than any office job, you know?

I wouldn't make it very long in an office job.