Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Deep in Alaska, the thaw has come, but the land is alive.

SUE: Bears wake up, they're hungry.

ANDY: You can see him in the woods there.

CHIP: You fall out of the boat, you could die.

AGNES: Chip!

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero...

(WHOOPING)

It's hunt or be hunted.

ANDY: Worst thing to do is turn and run.

NARRATOR: High in the Brooks Range, the primal way lives on.

It might be the last chance I get to get a caribou.

NARRATOR: Sue has 48 hours to kill a bear.

I got nothing in the freezer right now.

NARRATOR: And the Hailstones brave a new frontier for valuable fur.

You don't get a second chance, and we're flying by the seat of our ass on this one.

NARRATOR: It's spring in Alaska.

The bears are awake and looking for food.

And one just showed up at Andy Bassich's remote homestead.

ANDY: Hyah! Get out of here! Get out of here! Hyah!

Come on, girl, you've gotta stay inside.

(ANDY SPEAKING)

You have to be cautious up here.

You're on their turf all the time.

So you gotta be careful, and you gotta be vigilant.

Quite frankly, they're intelligent, they're predatory,

and when they come out of hibernation, they're hungry.

Where the hell did you go?

Early in the springtime up here,

bears are our early meat.

It's the first fresh meat that we see after a long winter.

He's in the yard here, so he's gonna be fuckin' dinner tonight.

There he is.

(COCKS RIFLE)

I see him in the woods there. Right here in the woods.

NARRATOR: If Andy doesn't get the bear right now,

it could return and take him by surprise again.

(GUNSHOT)

Bad day for the bear, good day for me.

This bear didn't back down.

He kept coming even when I yelled at him.

He wasn't afraid of me at all.

Yeah, come here. Come here. It's okay. Good girl!

Good girl! That's what I want you to do.

When you smell those guys, you gotta let me know.

Actually, he's bigger than I thought he was.

Look at that. His paws are as big as my hand.

Looking at his hide, looking at his teeth,

he looks like a really healthy bear,

so this should be some really good eating.

It's really unusual for me to see bears this time of the year.

I think that's why I had my guards down a little bit on this.

There are a lot of wild animals up here and...

...you're on their turf a lot of times.

So you gotta be careful.

All right, let's see if we can't get this guy drug in

and start getting him butchered up here.

CHIP: This is life without a clock.

But if we don't get up and make ourselves do this stuff,

we're gonna suffer for it.

You girls be safe, and no going to the river.

-No going to the beach at all. -Yeah, I know.

We'll see you when we get a load.

-Love you. -Love you, too.

NARRATOR: Chip and Agnes live in an isolated native village with their five daughters.

Just putting food on the table is a constant battle in this harsh environment.

CHIP: Where I live beyond the end of the road,

it's all hunting, fishing and gathering.

If I go to the store and I get two small bags of food,

I'm probably paying a couple of hundred bucks.

So the fact is we have to go get the food ourselves.

There's everything you need to make a living out there.

The river's broken up,

and flood waters came and went,

and we're gonna go downriver

and try to catch up to the flood.

And hopefully, when we get there,

we'll be able to hunt rats, beavers, otters, fresh meats.

Different change of diet.

Right now the muskrats and beavers

are all out of their homes and stuff.

There're gonna be quite a few out there,

and hopefully, this will be a good hunt.

We have a flood come up, and the flood forces out all the animals.

And as the flood goes down again,

those animals have places to go and go hide.

So it's imperative that we be there when the water's at its highest.

The flood has gone by here already.

It's already starting to recede. The water's going down.

So as we go downriver, then we're gonna go catch the flood

where the ice is jamming, where it will be solid ice.

We're going to go to places that are totally inaccessible for the rest of the year.

And that's where we got to be, because out on the main rivers there is nothing.

Out on the big lakes, wherever it's easy access, there's nothing.

So we're going to the nooks and crannies

'cause that's where the animals are going to hide.

We're kind of flying by the seat of our ass on this one.

NARRATOR: Warmer temperatures have broken up the ice

on the Kobuk River, creating dangerous chunks.

One bad hit could breach the boat's hull.

(AGNES SPEAKS)

Slow down!

Slowly!

Slowly!

CHIP: Very soon the water will go down,

and we won't have access to the really shallow places.

And the muskrats will start fighting each other,

and they'll be putting holes in their skins.

And when they start doing that,

the hunt is over.

The skins, they can make into parkas.

And if we can get 120 rats, we'd have enough for about three adult parkas.

And to us, that's 15,000 bucks.

It's not a hunt you want to screw up.

It's fun to change seasons. We got off our snow machines, we get in our boats.

This is our first good boating this year.

So that's what makes it more exciting than anything else,

is that the change of transportation.

It is blazing hot.

It's got to be, like, at least 40 degrees.

And we don't have any chances of freezing to death unless we get wet first.

So that kind of narrows down everything we're doing.

It makes everything better.

We got four months to get up enough food

to get us through winter without having to buy a bunch of food.

GLENN: I hunt to live 'cause that's how I get most of the food I eat.

It's a part of my life every day.

The cycle of life and death.

I'm thinking about going out and looking for something to eat today.

I could use another caribou this spring.

NARRATOR: Glenn Villeneuve left the lower 48 and moved to Alaska,

where he's carved out a primitive existence

in the high mountains of the Brooks Range.

GLENN: I live about 200 miles from the nearest city

and a 60-mile walk from the nearest road.

I live by myself.

I'm hunting, trapping, fishing.

NARRATOR: Glenn makes his way in the wild

almost entirely by hand.

No machines, little fuel,

powered by his own two feet over miles of mountains

in search of every bit of food he eats.

GLENN: And nine years ago I walked out here

because it was the last place in the world where I thought I could live like this.

I lived in Berlin. I've lived in New York City.

After living out here,

I think I'd feel like I was living in a hamster cage if I went down there again.

NARRATOR: It's an existence that makes even the simplest task

a life and death struggle for survival.

GLENN: Spring is a transition time

because the caribou leave and things really change here.

Up on top of those ridges, right on the skyline there,

is where the caribou like to travel a lot of times.

Didn't see anything looking around today from down here,

so I'm gonna head up the mountain and see if I can find something up there.

NARRATOR: But every hunt means

the choice between finding food and leaving his camp unprotected.

Living out here alone,

there's always a risk of a bear coming and ripping up my camp when I'm gone.

All I can do is secure things a little bit.

When I'm around camp, I can chase 'em away.

But just a chance I have to take when I'm gone.

I try to pack as light as I can.

For butchering, I got my main hunting knife

and this little hatchet comes in handy.

I'm going to carry a .22 today.

I'm also gonna take the .30-06.

If there're no caribou, there's always the chance of finding a grizzly bear.

This is really hungry country up here.

It's the Arctic, and life is spread really thin over the land.

The only way I can find enough food to eat out here

is to keep really close track of the territory I hunt,

watching all the time and walking all the time.

I hunt from the ridge tops all along that side of the valley

to the ridge tops all along this side of the valley.

It's an area of about 60 square miles.

I have to come up here,

because from my lake down there, I can only see this side.

A lot of times there are caribou just along the ridge, a little bit out of view.

I can see some caribou tracks now.

Looks like a big group.

Might have been a couple of hundred caribou.

Look at all these spots where they peed in the snow.

There's an antler shed right there.

Yeah, there were caribou here.

We just didn't intercept them today but...

I probably climb up this mountain 10 times

without seeing caribou for every time I come up here and there is a caribou around.

NARRATOR: In spring, the caribou migrate from the 6,000-foot peaks

to the calving grounds in the foothills and out of Glenn's reach.

GLENN: There might not be another caribou in this valley for months now.

SUE: Some people can handle the challenge of being a food group,

some people can't.

You're either the mouse or the lion.

It's time to find out which one.

This is not winter any more.

It's a whole new world.

Instantly when I hear "thaw," my brain says,

"Holy shit. I only have two-and-a-half months to get all my shit ready for winter."

NARRATOR: Sue has only 48 hours to hunt a bear before the season officially closes.

And with a nearly empty freezer,

this is a kill she desperately needs.

SUE: I live at Kavik River Camp up on the north slope.

My closest neighbour would be 350 miles south.

I've recently bought Kavik instead of just working here.

I'm now the owner,

and it comes with a tremendous amount of pressure

because if I don't do well this summer,

I may not be here next season.

And it's critical for me to get meat

'cause the grocery stores are 500 miles away,

and in the dead of winter, I can hunt, but there's nothing to hunt.

But now my bears wake up. They're hungry.

The caribou are supposed to be migrating in. They're late.

So it's time to go get supper.

You shouldn't go too many places without a weapon in your hand.

I'm an old-school gal, I like my lever-action guns.

But I've saved up my money and bought myself what I call the equalizer.

Booya!

It is a gun that as quickly as I can pull the trigger

another bullet will come out.

Every situation you have

with your predator is different.

I might be some bear's dinner,

but it's an acceptable risk

to achieve the type of lifestyle I want.

(ENGINE SPUTTERS)

I have children and grandchildren.

Because I'm a hermit and I have a very private life

does not mean they don't deserve to have me in their lives.

'Cause the bear is probably looking at his own regulations, going,

"Hey, it's still Sue season. Awesome."

I mean, I know more than most people

exactly how dangerous these animals can be.

About five, six years ago,

smart bear who was hiding in the cut bank

and reached out and snatched me and was just rolling me around.

I mean, you can still feel here and here

where his teeth went into my head.

The hips were torn out of the socket,

and he slipped out over the bank.

The hips did not hold,

and I ended up having to drag myself up

from halfway across the river, um, and got inside.

And I just had to lay here.

And it took 10 days for somebody to find me.

So I accepted a long time ago

that I may be bear crap any day.

So you cannot live here and do this without accepting

your place in the food chain.

There's the bottom, there's the top,

and I'm somewhere around here.

(SUE SPEAKING)

NARRATOR: With less than two days left in the hunting season,

Sue's next move is critical.

I don't know if I'm gonna come walk out there

and jump right on top of him.

Or did he manage to get past me, and he's way far away?

I just don't know.

I got nothing in the freezer right now.

So I've got two days, today and tomorrow.

At midnight tomorrow, bear season ends,

and it could be my last opportunity to get a bear,

put some meat in the freezer.

Well, I either see a bear or a moose,

another god damn mile that way.

So, it's time to get some meat.

Daylight's a-burning.

For me to survive, I have to hunt for the meat that I eat.

So, I'm worried about getting that bear.

Finally see the big dark shape.

He's right over there.

Quarter mile, half mile.

It's a moose.

But I can't shoot that moose. It's not moose season, it's bear season.

So no matter how badly I need the meat, he walks free.

I got 40 hours left of the season.

But I took a chance.

It's the people that don't take a chance,

those are the ones I feel sorry for.

ANDY: I like to be self-sufficient.

The outside world could totally implode,

and we'll be in good shape here.

In the springtime, we are out of meat usually,

and we're looking to start providing for the next year.

And I learnt a long time ago

that when something presents itself as an opportunity...

...if you pass it up thinking, "Oh, I'll go get the next one,"

the next one never comes.

This bear presented himself as an opportunity...

...and I took advantage of it,

and it's gonna be a big pay-off in the long run.

What did I shoot? Three rounds?

So, this bear cost me about $1.50

for 80 to 100 pounds of meat off this bear.

So, that's pretty good economics.

You can't buy a cup of coffee for that.

And I can tan this hide up,

and if I want, I can sell this hide,

or I can trade with somebody for this hide.

So there's barter value in it.

The claws will be made into jewellery.

The main canine teeth will be pulled,

and I'll be making jewellery out of those.

When I'm all done,

the only thing that goes to waste on this whole animal is the blood.

Here's all the fat.

This is gut fat we call it.

And it's really the sweet fat for rendering.

Out in this country, we crave fat.

In cities people want a fat-free diet, but out here fat is energy.

I've got the lungs...

...and the heart right here.

This heart will be good, good eating.

It's a good start on the summer to have some fresh meat here.

We're not gonna be able to hunt moose until...

The first season is in late August.

So one bear is gonna feed Kate and I

for probably a month, month-and-a-half.

Kate will be excited.

Look at the hair on him.

-Oh, my gosh, it's soft. -Yeah.

-That is really nice. -It's a really prime bear.

We came out here to live in the woods

and make a life for ourselves

and live the way we want to live.

For Kate and I, it's about taking care of ourselves...

...providing the food that we want,

fishing, gardening.

There's only three things you really need in your life,

and that's food, shelter and water.

If we can provide those for ourselves, we're doing really good.

-We gonna make a rug or a wall hanging? -Something.

I'd like a wall hanging.

I think that'd be better 'cause of the dogs walking on it.

-Yeah. -Awesome.

CHIP: Nature doesn't give you a warning.

Nature doesn't send you a little card that says,

"You done screwed up. Please come back."

You have to be ready before. You have to be prepared.

We're heading downriver still.

We're trying to catch up to all this busting-up ice.

And stay caught up with the geese, beavers, muskrats and ducks.

NARRATOR: Although air temperatures have risen in the Arctic,

the rivers are still icy cold.

One dip in these waters could easily result in hypothermia and death.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

CHIP: Being on the water, there's always some sort of danger.

I mean, you fall out of the boat, you could die.

(AGNES EXCLAIMS)

My wife's especially leery of ice since it's killed her family before.

It's just part of living. Take a calculated risk every time you go somewhere.

We might have a tough time just getting out of here.

CHIP: I think we're screwed. AGNES: Hold on. I think we can push it.

(CHIP EXHALES)

Thank you.

AGNES: Ready? CHIP: Yep.

We don't have a safety mechanism other than ourselves.

So we have to take care of ourselves first.

AGNES: Watch where you're going!

CHIP: I'm not so sure about this piece of ice.

I don't want to be on it.

Chip!

(AGNES SPEAKING)

Now that we've gotten through the main channels

and the things that block us out of our way,

where we wanna go is down by the lake,

and the closer we get to the lake and the edge of all this stuff

is where the greatest amount of animals

are gonna be kicked up by the high waters.

There's a lot of muskrats,

and those are the real prize, you know, the fur that we're after right now.

AGNES: Oh, there's something right there.

It's a muskrat or a beaver.

AGNES: It's right there. CHIP: It's still swimming right there.

(CHIP SPEAKS)

-There it is. -I see it.

Now, stand up.

Shoot fast.

Right there. Shoot it.

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

(CHIP SPEAKS)

Should be right around here holding on to willows.

CHIP: Right there! Right there! Right there!

There you go. Good one.

-AGNES: One more time? -Yeah, one more time, until he's dead.

There you go. Good one. That's a good one.

AGNES: It's a beaver.

CHIP: A beaver pelt's worth quite a bit to us.

My daughters will take that and probably sew it into a hat

and get themselves $250 bucks.

(AGNES SPEAKS)

(CHIP SPEAKS)

You can't predict what there is and what there isn't.

You have to go out and find out.

And that's part of hunting.

AGNES: Faster!

Ooh, first duck!

There's dinner.

Mallard, mallard, mallard!

Look, there's another one. Is that a duck or a beaver?

It's a duck.

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

AGNES: Yeehaw!

CHIP: Beaver! Beaver! On the bay.

Yeah!

AGNES: Got it!

There's a duck.

(GUNSHOT FIRED)

Ducks for dinner.

Beavers and ducks, beavers and ducks. That's what it's all about.

-Three ducks and a beaver. -We gotta fill up this muskrat order with ducks.

But we have yet to find a muskrat.

AGNES: Not one muskrat in here.

We'll be totally skunked on muskrats evidently.

But sometimes you go out for caribou

and you come home with a moose, you know. What can you say?

Rats have hit the low cycle, and we need to seek other animals.

We're opportunists, we're hunters.

You can't be a hunter with a fixed frame of mind.

So what you end up doing

is following what you can, catching what you can and doing what you can.

And making the most of your day.

AGNES: Not one rat. I'll be damned.

GLENN: A lot of people would probably find this a scary way to live.

I don't think it's anything to be afraid of.

It's just difficult.

I had to learn a lot in order to live out here.

From reading books, sometimes from talking to people.

But mostly I just experimented.

I had to figure out a lot of things on my own.

Physically, it's been very hard

'cause a lot of my time is spent getting food,

getting firewood, getting water.

I don't have plumbing.

I get my water out of the lake.

It takes a significant amount of time and energy

compared to turning a faucet on.

NARRATOR: Getting to Glenn's water supply

requires constant effort using hand tools.

All I have to worry about now

is that my arms can do the job.

Boy, I don't really know just how thick it is,

but I'd guess it might be four feet.

NARRATOR: Glenn needs water,

but right now he needs food more.

And he has to get close enough to make the shot.

Whoo!

Whoo!

Whoo!

NARRATOR: The last caribou of the season is in Glenn's sight.

But his chance to get close enough to kill it is slipping away.

GLENN: Not a whole lot of caribou left around here right now.

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

(GUNSHOT)

(GUNSHOT)

Both shots missed.

(WHOOPING)

NARRATOR: Caribou have large hooves that prevent them from sinking in the snow,

making it easy to outrun Glenn on the frozen lake.

Whoo!

Whoo!

GLENN: Sometimes I've been able to get caribou come in pretty close

just by yelling like that.

I'll run right at 'em and yell and try to bounce my voice off the shoreline.

(WHOOPING)

And you sometimes get 'em to stop and turn towards you,

get 'em to come in 75 yards or so while you're doing that.

Unfortunately, this one didn't work out.

Looks like my ice hole filled up with water while I was gone.

I can't stand in the hole any more,

so I just have to use a longer chisel.

And it's a little bit harder on my back.

NARRATOR: Water has seeped in through a small crack.

If Glenn doesn't make a large, clean hole,

it will freeze over, and he will have to start again tomorrow.

GLENN: I thought that might be the last chance I get

at a caribou this spring.

So I decided to take a shot

that was gonna be pretty difficult

considering how out of breath I was.

It's too bad. I would have liked to get that.

I might not have another chance this spring.

Most of them seem to have headed further north now.

SUE: Best possible scenario, I get meat and I don't starve.

The worst is, bear gets meat and gets Sue.

It's the last day of bear season. It ends at midnight tonight.

And I've got that much in my freezer.

NARRATOR: If Sue kills a bear out of season,

she could face fines and criminal charges.

This is her last chance.

SUE: There he is.

Let's keep going.

There's an area just up here.

I nicknamed it Bear Creek and Caribou Crossing.

That's where I'm gonna hit.

But I only got about six more hours and the season closes,

so I gotta fill the freezer.

So much more than just "Bam, bam, bam, bam."

If that's your only goal, I mean, you're missing the whole picture.

Up here, I mean, a lot of my inland grizzlies are 800 pounds of meat.

That's a lot for a fat chick to cut up and haul back.

But spring bear's real tasty.

And I have so many uses for the bear.

It'd be great to have some more warm fur,

some fat so I can make soap and shampoo and stuff.

I'm worried that I got snow and I got fog coming in from the north.

I'm not liking that 'cause if that drops in, I can't see.

I'm very limited.

But that bear can switch from eyes to nose and still be god-damn dead on.

He can smell what direction I'm in and just go charging and bowl me over.

I won't be able see.

NARRATOR: Grizzly bears can lose 40% of their body weight

during their six-month hibernation.

When they emerge in the spring,

they will eat as much as 90 pounds of food a day.

They can be blinded by their hunger.

SUE: I'm on his menu.

He may have a Sue tag, so I've gotta keep my little peepers peeled.

That son of bitch will jump me just as much as I wanna jump him.

We got deep snow over there again.

And the snow might blow this whole friggin' hunt...

...'cause where I wanna go is covered in too much snow.

The other place...

Other place I want to go? Can't get across the river.

Kind of boned. A little bit boned.

ANDY: Transitioning now from winter to summer.

We have four months to prepare for a whole year.

Now, the real work begins.

All right, let's go get some dogs.

NARRATOR: A few weeks ago, Andy and Kate evacuated 25 of their dogs

when the ice on the Yukon River started to melt and break up,

threatening to flood and destroy their homestead.

In the 2009 flood, one of their dogs drowned.

This year the dogs were taken to the safety of the nearest town, 14 miles upriver.

ANDY: Come on over here.

You're such a good girl.

In the summertime their job is to be our alarm system here.

Early in the spring is when we see a lot of bears in this area

and when we have all of our dogs here, the bears can't come anywhere near us

without the dogs picking up the scent

and giving us a really good warning.

KATE: Today is a good day.

We get our puppies home.

These dogs work for us,

they pull sleds, they pull water.

They're our world.

I'm excited. I just can't wait!

Come on, Uzo!

-Up, up, good boy! -Come on.

-Come on. Heavy guy. -Come on.

-Come on, Gambo. -Quick, Gambo.

Come on, Iceberg! Come on, Ti!

You guys ready to go home?

Let's go home.

This is the first boat ride for a lot of these dogs.

My biggest concern coming down the river is that the weight

shifts in the boats

and if we were to tip these boats and swamp them,

everybody would be gone.

All the dogs are chained in real tight to these lines

so that they can't shift their weight too far

to one side or the other.

And this is a big river, and it moves fast up here.

It's got a lot of power.

NARRATOR: The Yukon River is notorious for extreme eddies and undercurrents

that have already claimed one life this year.

ANDY: When you're out here in the middle of the river, there's nothing you can do

to change anything if things go bad.

NARRATOR: With only four miles to go, Andy is nearly home.

But on the unpredictable Yukon,

nothing is guaranteed.

(BARKING)

Hold on, hold on.

These dogs are, you know,

we do a lot of different things with them

so they're pretty used to being exposed to new ideas

and new adventures and new things.

Once they get the hang of it, it doesn't take them very long

to settle right in and enjoy the ride.

Every week out of the year

the Yukon River is a different place to be on.

And it's just something about rivers, they just seem alive.

My whole life revolves around the Yukon River and dogs.

Go, Gecko, go! On the beach!

-(DOG WHIMPERS) -Come on, Keith.

Good, take the rest of those guys with you!

KATE: Come here, girl!

Drachma!

(DOGS BARKING)

It's exciting for the dogs to come home.

Come on, Crim. Come on. At a boy, good boy.

Peso!

Hey, Shilling!

Come here, Shilling.

I know, it's so much excitement.

GLENN: Out here physical work has meaning.

You feed yourself.

It's work just to go to the bathroom out here.

NARRATOR: Glenn sustains himself primarily on animal protein and fat,

but he's down to his last reserves from winter.

Every bit of food he acquires is critical to his survival.

GLENN: A lot of my energy goes into getting food out here.

And not only getting the food,

but preserving the food, preparing the food,

eating the food.

We're gonna take a couple of these heads and get them thawing out

so we can skin 'em and...

...eat 'em.

There's a lot of good food inside the head of caribou

or inside the head of any animal.

Here are some foetuses from the four cows

that I killed this year.

You can eat just about the whole thing.

When you're eating mostly animals for food

and not too much in the way of plants...

...you need to eat as much fat as you can find usually

or you'll get really sick.

There's the eyeball right there,

and right behind that eye there's gonna be a nice chunk of fat.

And then you can start to pull out some of that eye fat.

That right there is just delicious fat.

Mmm!

That's really delicious fat.

I've never gotten sick eating anything raw off the caribou.

I eat a lot of different parts of caribou raw.

I eat it raw if tastes better to me raw.

And if it's a part that tastes better to me cooked,

I cook it.

I got a considerable amount of fat right there.

I mean, that's like a stick of butter, you know,

that was right behind that caribou's eyeballs.

I'm also gonna take the brain out and fry the brain.

I just happen to like brains fried best.

There! Right through the brain.

Boil up the eyeballs.

And the brains I just scoop out.

They probably look like scrambled eggs

to a lot of people.

Mmm.

I really like brains.

There's a lot of muscle, but there's only one little brain

that you can eat up in one meal,

so it makes it extra special.

It's pretty powerful food.

You eat this stuff and you got energy to run these mountains

and look for more of this food.

If I was eating store-bought food I don't know if I would be able

to get around these mountains the way I do.

CHIP: We're hunters, and the thing for us to do

is to make the most of every opportunity.

People call it work, I just call it living.

We haven't done very well seeing muskrats.

We've been coming across a lot of beaver,

so there's always something in the gap.

-What's that, Agnes? -A beaver?

Muskrat! Oh, there it is!

Shoot it.

He's going right up there.

I can't get a clear view of it.

CHIP: Right by the base of the tree.

I can't see which way it's heading.

I have the sun in my eyes.

Oh, there it is!

CHIP: He's going under us! He's coming right to you!

He'll come up over here. Go ahead!

AGNES: There it is!

NARRATOR: Muskrats have partially-webbed feet and a tail

to quickly propel them through the water...

(GUNSHOT)

...making them a difficult target to hit.

(GUNSHOT)

CHIP: When you're shooting a rifle, you miss.

The animal doesn't always cooperate.

Quite often the animal's moving

and shooting at something and missing is very, very common.

Thirteen shots.

You know why you're missing so high it's because that

-thing's aimed for about 100 yards. -Yeah.

CHIP: It always matters when you waste ammo.

I mean, you're wasting your time,

you're wasting metals and propellants, and you're wasting money

'cause that stuff costs a lot nowadays.

Ammo's crazy! Shall we carry on?

CHIP: He's way ahead of us, you see him?

CHIP: He's got his head up. AGNES: Oh, it's coming. Just stay still.

CHIP: You see him?

(GUNSHOT)

AGNES: Almost.

You got him in sight?

(GUNSHOT)

(AGNES SPEAKS)

Oh, you got him.

-I saw that. -Right in its back.

CHIP: That's the first rat of the year so far!

Right here. There you go.

Look, there's another muskrat!

Way up front, you see it?

CHIP: That's a full-grown adult. Get it!

(GUNSHOT)

That's a decent sized muskrat.

That was a good one!

NARRATOR: To prevent the meat from spoiling,

Chip and Agnes must skin and gut their kill

before the long journey home.

(AGNES SIGHS)

I feel like this was a successful hunt.

-This has been successful! -Yep!

CHIP: When you have days like we've got now, nice and hot,

probably 50 degrees, tee-shirt weather,

this is, this is one of the better times of year.

Check out your beaver pelts, girls.

High five.

Come down here and check out what we got for you girls!

No way.

Are those baby beavers?

-That's a muskrat! -That's a muskrat!

-Now these are beavers! -His eyes look nasty.

Help us clean up the boat, please.

CHIP: We didn't catch much muskrat,

so we settled for beaver and did very well with those.

Let's go, girls.

CHIP: When you go hunting, you can't say I'm after one specific thing.

We hunt what is available and what we can use

at that time of season and that time of year,

and we're just opportunists 'cause we're hunters.

SUE: I'm not exactly the cookie-baking,

knit-you-a-sweater type of grandma.

I am the king of Kavik.

This is the last day of hunting on the bear season.

And big game fills up your freezer.

So if I don't get a bear in the next three hours,

the season ends and that's it until the next season opens.

It doesn't sink in that,

"Aw, I'm a grandma and I'm actually 500 miles from safety

"and I'm hunting grizzly bears.

"What the hell are you thinking?" I don't think that way.

I see it very much like somebody that might go,

"Oh, yeah, don't forget to stop off at the five and dime

"and pick up milk on the way home."

For me, it's like, "Oh, yeah, bear hunting, I gotta get it done."

But, you know, I'm chasing a needle in a haystack

and hoping to see if they stuck by the river,

I'd be able to see some tracks, some poop, something.

I don't even see any sign, the hunting is just,

I don't think very good upriver.

I'm now officially down just below the final hour.

And there's a couple of dots of interest down this way...

...and that's three hours of journey.

So, I'm not gonna go chasing off across the tundra,

but I've got zero game meat left and I needed to get it, I wanted to get it.

But I don't live my life dwelling on the negative.

Well, I mean, this is it. The bear season's over.

Land of the midnight sun. I mean there's my alarm clock. It's midnight and it's done.

So the bear wins.

So the next challenge is getting enough small game.

Always nicer when you can put pound packages in your freezer

but, you know, I'll just start doing it bite by bite.

Life just got a little harder.

ANDY: We spend a lot of time working with these dogs

and providing for these dogs but they provide for us, too.

It's a real symbiotic relationship

we have with them.

Hey, Gamble, come here, Gamble.

Well, they're all happy to be home.

It's good to have these guys home again.

It's a whole different feeling when the dogs are here

as when they're not.

-Yep -It's like empty-nest syndrome.

You want bear ribs for dinner tonight?

Absolutely.

I'll get some of those going.

Bringing the dogs back to Calico Bluff

a really good feeling for both Kate and I.

-Here we go, dinner music. -(DOGS HOWLING)

ANDY: Life's getting back to normal

and we'll celebrate with a cold beer

and the sound of the dogs in the dog lot again.

Cheers to the bear!

(DOGS HOWLING)