Original subtitles

(EXHALES) What, uh, what's happening is I got up,

went out, tossed my old coffee water out this morning,

and there's caribou right across the runway.

Really unusual for this time of year.

Problem is, on this landscape,

there's almost no way to sneak up on them.

They look close, but they are actually 300 yards out.

Ah! There they go.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

(RELOADS GUN)

That's every bit of 500 yards there.

They're just too far out.

What's that? Hello.

I don't see anything that tells me I've injured one.

So now I'll go and see if I can lay up a better shot.

Winter hunting is...

A son of a bitch.

I'm not wearing inconspicuous colours.

This makes noise.

All of these things are... Are not in your favour

when you're trying to get an animal.

They shouldn't be here now.

It's still a month, two months early,

for them to even be here.

Just like I use the foxes to tell me

where the animals are at,

the caribou are using the animals, too.

When ptarmigan go, "Oh, my God!"

And they flock up,

they know to head in the opposite direction

because there's something spooking 'em.

You know, if they're in here,

it's way easier to lay in a plan of attack.

If they're out in the open,

it's just damn near impossible.

The best course of action for me

to have success hunting today,

I'm gonna bag on the caribou

and I'm gonna get the .22

and I think I'm gonna go for Ptarmageddon.

I saw so many ptarmigans out there,

that what I need to do is put food in the freezer.

How I do it,

is in the manner I'm gonna be the most successful.

A bird in a hand's worth two caribou in the bush.

CHIP HAILSTONE: There's no social security benefits to this.

There's no retirement to this. There's just death.

That's what I look forward to.

You ladies got your hats and you're ready to go?

-BOTH: Yeah. -You need a mini goggles, too.

'Cause it's gonna be kicking up snow.

But I... We tried to make you a nice little protection thing

so it doesn't just fly straight into your face.

It's prime fishing season now,

and, uh, we just wanna go look

and see if we could find a school of fish

under the ice, so me, Chip, Ting, and Carol

are going out into the new camp at Emonakrov.

This camp down there,

it's a place where we had received

new titles from my grandma,

so, um, we have a tent frame down there

that Chip made this fall, and now that

the ice is thick enough and we can travel,

we're gonna go spend a first night down there.

And hopefully we'll be fishing out

some pretty nice-sized fish.

That's everything, eh?

Uh, I got a couple traps I wanna set down there,

so I was gonna put these on top of my stuff.

You know, since we're gonna be down there permanently,

I figure why not just have some traps

to start to set that way.

And then in, uh, dark winter when I'm here,

I could use that for a roundabout. It just depends.

First what I wanna do is

get to learn that area down there,

see what it has to offer, and then figure out

what time of year I'd wanna be there and, uh,

what it'll, what it'll turn out to be for us.

There might be stagnant times of year

when you don't wanna be down there.

Never know. We don't know. It's like a new adventure.

So, our plan is to just outfit the place

with the proper tools and start testing the waters

and see what's there.

AGNES: This is something I'm looking forward to.

It's, um, a new place for the girls,

but yet a place where I've been all through my growing years,

and, um, I hope these girls will find it their home, too.

AGNES: Wow!

CHIP: Slick, huh? AGNES: Yeah,

-it's on the platform, too? -CHIP: Yup.

How's this sound? About three bends up,

there was a dead moose beside the...

Beside the side of the bank there.

It's kind of frozen into the ground there.

Did you see its ribs sticking out?

-TING: Yeah. -I'm gonna go back there

and go put a couple of my traps there.

Or at least one and maybe one closer.

-Is that okay? -We'll just unpack, huh?

CHIP: Yeah, just unpack, please.

I'll be back in a little bit.

GLENN VILLENEUVE: I don't think this is for everybody.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people

that aren't doing what they love to do.

I've had this little caribou hanging in the closet

for the last four days thawing out.

It was frozen solid.

Now it should be thawed out enough that I can skin it

and cut it up into smaller pieces.

NARRATOR: For Glenn Villeneuve, hunting is an essential tool

for surviving in the Brooks Range.

And utilising every piece of his kill

is key to maintaining his subsistence lifestyle.

GLENN: This little caribou will have enough meat on it

to feed me for a couple of weeks.

And the hide.

I'll make into a blanket.

It's got a really warm fur, on a caribou.

Every animal is different when you go to skin it.

Some animals require a lot more work with a knife.

Others, like a caribou,

you can tear a lot of the skin

right off with just your hands.

It's actually faster and more efficient.

These are the warble flies.

Those are the maggots, live underneath the skin.

(GRUNTS)

There!

There. That'll make a nice warm blanket for my bed.

Cutting it up into smaller pieces,

the legs, the ribs, the back.

Each time I wanna eat something I take it out and let it thaw overnight.

Now, a big caribou will last me a month,

but this little guy here will barely last me two weeks.

One of these shoulders, gosh, I can eat that in a day.

(BONES CRACKING)

I got this little caribou all cut up into small pieces now.

And every bit of it's gonna be useful to me.

I got meat here,

I got marrow in the bones, even in the hooves,

and I got a hide there to make a blanket out of.

I'm just gonna throw some snow over it

to keep the birds off while I go inside

and start working on that hide.

ANDY BASSICH: I'm not real paranoid about predators.

They gotta be paranoid about me.

I'm on the top of the food chain.

You guys wanna go for a run?

Who wants to go set some traps?

Oh, Topaz does. (LAUGHS)

You ready to go?

We're gonna go downriver today.

Now I'm gonna hook up the dogs,

and head downriver,

set some traps for the day,

try and get that done before it gets too dark here

and hopefully we'll catch some little fur, some big fur, and

I can put together a hat and make something up later on.

We'll see how it goes.

(DOGS BARKING)

Hup! Hup!

Straight ahead!

Okay, easy. Haw! Haw! Haw!

Attaboys, easy.

Easy. Easy.

Whoa, easy.

The thing about trapping, you just gotta go out,

set the traps. It's a... It's a big crap shoot most of the time.

So you set where it's likely and then, uh,

it's a waiting game.

Trapping is one of these things that I...

I have a lot of mixed emotions about.

I really don't like killing stuff,

but part of living out here is you gotta... You gotta kill to eat.

And you gotta kill to clothe.

You know, that's, that's a part of living out here

and I've learnt to deal with it.

Okay, everybody, whoa.

Ho!

Ho! Ho!

Good, everybody stay.

So this is probably gonna be kind of deep snow out on the lake here,

but I think it's gonna be worthwhile to go over to that area and try

and get rid of some of these traps.

And that way if multiple animals come through,

you have different types of equipment out there to... To harvest those animals.

I got some old tracks right here.

Those are lynx tracks.

Kind of a roundy, you can kind of see...

Right here there's these nice, rounded little pads.

So that's good. I think I'm gonna just walk up into this draw a little bit.

I'll try and set the trap right in here.

When you're working with traps, you always have to be paying

really close attention to where you're putting your hands.

This is the part I always don't like...

Getting my hands in there.

It's a hair trigger.

That's why you don't put your hands in there.

(LAUGHS)

Let's try round two, let's put the paper under, in there first.

What this wax paper does is it keeps the snow off the trigger.

If you don't put something like this over the trigger, it'll just freeze shut.

Yeah, I feel pretty good that at some point in time within the next couple weeks,

something's gonna walk through here.

It might be a fox. It might be a lynx.

Potentially a wolf.

I mean, even a wolverine bounding through here could do something.

So, yeah.

I think I'm gonna set a few snares around here since I'm in this nice tangle.

I'm liking that pretty good.

That makes a nice, tight little hole right there.

Now we just have to do the old adage, time will tell.

So that looks pretty good.

I'll get on out of here and I'll come back,

see if we got something.

CHIP: We're hunters, not farmers.

We chase it down to kill it

and we get instant satisfaction or we get nothing at all.

This here's a dead moose, all right,

that's pretty well-embedded into the river.

It's gonna make a good bait.

Animals will keep coming to this.

This thing's frozen solid,

it's a real big attractor to animals,

and the fact is that dead animals

don't get eaten up in just one day,

and, uh, it's a great bait, so...

It's natural, it's in sight, and I'm gonna use it.

Get the springs set on these guys.

Well, this trigger doesn't wanna fucking move over.

They're not a complicated trap,

but, um,

you've always got everything sliding and bending and

shit moving and it fucking tries to kill.

Well...

It's just a little too tough and my hands are frozen.

Well, these are very thin gloves.

And this metal here is very cold

and it's, like, 3 below right now.

When you're trying to do this, and your hands are cold and you get clumsy,

you're just flirting with disaster.

So I'm just gonna take a few minutes

and get some feeling back in my hands and

carry on slowly.

I've been down this road many times.

I just know it takes patience. I just gotta be patient.

As long as I'm patient, it'll happen.

I'll try it one more time here.

It's getting to be a pain in the butt.

That's okay, too.

Ah, there it goes.

Okay, I got the springs done.

Now let's go over here where we're gonna set this baby.

I think I'm actually just gonna set it in here.

Probably right on top of the hole.

As long as an animal doesn't smell me out,

this sucker's ready to go.

Have some bone shards around.

You know, a little bit of anything,

a little bit of everything a fox or another animal really might like

and that would...

That would be marrow for sure.

And it's already in a well-established hole.

I got one more trap, and I'm thinking,

you know, I'll get one more out there.

I got a double set right here.

When I got a trap going, the trap is hunting all night for us.

When we go fishing, we're actively fishing,

so we can be down there jigging away fishing

and the traps will be right here

waiting for something to come along and try to take a bite.

So I could get a nice predator fur

and a fish meal all at the same time.

It's pretty cool.

I'm gonna leave this one out here in the obvious.

Maybe they'll move over to that one.

That's kind of what I'm thinking.

We'll come back in the morning and check it out.

You know, it's just the first set, first time, first night,

and, uh,

we'll just see how it goes.

GLENN: It feels different

when you're wearing animal skins

and you're sleeping on animal skins.

It connects you to the whole environment out here.

That's what it's all about.

The animals provide a lot more than just food for me.

Hides are very useful. I use animal hides for my clothing.

I use animal hides for my bedding.

There are even certain bones that I use for tools out of a caribou.

This caribou hide's gonna make a nice blanket.

You don't just rip a caribou hide off

of the caribou and start sleeping on it, it's gotta be cleaned up.

There's still fat on here, there are these warble fly maggots that I'm cleaning off.

Warble flies lay eggs on caribou...

In their fur.

In the summertime, when the eggs hatch,

little maggots bore under the skin,

down on the legs usually, and then they migrate up to the back.

They're kind of a pain because they

degrade the hide.

Some people find it kind of tedious, but I just have to work,

taking all that stuff off.

You want the hide to last, you don't want any fat

or junk that's gonna be rancid on it

without cutting holes through the hide, that's the big thing.

It's a very delicate operation.

The goal is to get the hide flexible, soft after it dries.

Mostly it's by scraping, sometimes chewing on it.

'Cause what you'll see is you'll actually see it turn into leather.

Like right here, if you just chew it a little bit.

You know, in old days, people used to chew hide all the time.

Saliva actually helps it.

A lot of people don't get to do stuff like this any more.

Everybody used to do this.

Everybody used to work on hides.

That was just

a normal way of life.

It's a special feeling when you've got

your food and your bedding

on a mountain that you can see right out the window while you're in your cabin.

That's what subsistence living is.

It's just nice, it's like doing the dishes, it's like chopping firewood.

Working on a hide.

You see the results,

right in front of your eyes.

Look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

That's gonna make a beautiful blanket.

I like it.

SUE: It's all good fuel for my personal fire.

Susie gets to keep on burning her way through life.

What I'm gonna do,

is, uh,

I'm gonna go down this way into the riverbed,

and just hopefully fill up my bucket with ptarmigans.

But I know the animals here,

there is a pattern, the sun is out,

they're doing good, we're supposed to get a blizzard,

they're gonna be here and gone.

I'm gonna back up, get in there,

and hopefully have a case of Ptarmageddon today.

Foxy! Coming with?

(MAKES KISSING NOISES)

Dum-Dum!

My biggest worry right now is zeroing in on a flock of ptarmigan.

It's one of the only food sources out here for a lot of the year.

You don't exactly see a whole lot of food

running around out here on the tundra.

I got one up over there, I think.

Got a lot more up there.

That whole bush is covered in 'em.

What I see up here

is more ptarmigans, the little white cotton balls.

(COCKS GUN)

(BREATHS HEAVILY)

Hunting's pretty good.

In the end,

you know...

Yeah, I could spend the day going after a caribou.

But right here,

I'm expending energy but I've got instant benefit.

All I'm gonna do is angle back that way,

and if I see something, take some more shots.

It is good to know, where does your food come from?

It is good to know how to be responsible

for your own carbon footprint on this planet.

I know where this ptarmigan's been.

I know what it's been eating.

It doesn't have anything to do with injections, antibiotics and growth hormones.

That's something that I want my grandkids and my kids to be able to do

and then pass on to their families.

So what I'm gonna do,

is try to get...

Try to get the breast and I take...

Put my thumb underneath this portion,

lift it up...

Find that nice little pumper,

toss 'em in, that's a keeper.

And I'll finish cleaning it off inside.

I've got lots of nice little breast meat here,

I'm gonna make myself some soup stock,

I'll get the meat,

I love the little hearts.

I mean, I may take a fair amount of bullets doing it, but I had a lot of fun today.

CHIP: I think I see it as all being really good.

Because even the worst day of fishing is better than being at work.

Whoo, that wind, huh?

Whoo! It's cold out here this morning.

It ain't so cold as it is the wind, girls.

If I were you, I would just stay inside and work in there,

'cause your hands are gonna get chilly out here.

AGNES: Is there a wind?

CHIP: There's a wind for sure.

It's, uh, it's cold.

This morning's just starting.

Had some coffee,

and right now I'm gonna gas up and make sure that the ladies can

do a little bit of fishing out here.

They're getting some fish jiggers put together.

We came down here to see what the fishing's like.

We don't know how good it'll be or how good it won't be.

But, um, you don't know till you try.

(MACHINE BUZZING)

I know the channel's fairly deep right here,

and, uh, since we got a new camp going on here,

the best thing we can do right now is find out what resources there are.

The only thing up against us today is this wind.

If the wind gets stronger, we might not fish long.

You just simply get chilled sitting still jigging, you know, in the wind.

But, we'll see.

This is basically what we call a jigger.

I'm gonna sit there and put this through the hole

and I'm gonna jig it up and down in the hole.

The folks up here have been using these things for thousands of years.

They don't have any fancy spinning device to break.

Don't have any eyelets to go through.

The method is to just jigger up and down.

Any luck yet?

CHIP: (LAUGHS) Just got it wet.

Hey, babe. You look ready.

It's nice to come down here and, uh,

check out the new properties we acquired.

The time to go fishing is now, so, uh, except for the wind,

it just started to get a little breezy here,

and these rivers has never failed my mother and her mother,

so I don't see why they should fail me and my girls.

CHIP: And just keep it moving. Just gently.

And when you feel a weight, then you really have to lift.

Just keep it moving.

AGNES: And not make movement by your hole too much.

No.

I'm just pretty much just taking some of the, um,

snow away from her ice so the snow don't just keep filling her ice hole,

so we just try to pile it up and make a little wind block.

Keeps us a lot warmer that way while we're standing here.

CHIP: You feel something?

Don't be too discouraged if we don't come up with nothing here.

That's why it's called fishing, Bun, not catching.

AGNES: Fishing takes a lot of time once you get under the ice,

and then you sit here for hours and hours,

and sometimes days and days just, um, jigging.

We're just gonna give it a try and see how our luck is.

CHIP: This wind is picking up, ladies.

AGNES: Yes, it is.

Come on, fish!

GLENN: I was looking all over the world

for a place to kind of live close to nature like this and I ended up, up here.

I have to keep hunting. And the caribou are around us.

I've seen signs of them, I've seen a few caribou

just a couple days ago across the lake,

so I'm gonna keep hunting today.

Go out there and see if I can connect with another caribou.

Whenever I'm hunting for caribou, I start right at home.

I'm always watching, right here from the front yard.

Right from the lake just in front of my camp, I get a good view.

I can look all around and see if there are any caribou to go after.

If I can't find any caribou from here,

then I have to walk further and look.

But I always start looking right here in my yard.

I like to keep my hood down as much as I can

just so I can see better and hear better,

but right now, it's about 50 below.

And that's extremely cold.

It's cold weather to hunt in but I can hunt in these temperatures when I have to.

There I see some caribou tracks.

They're real hard to make out because of this flat grey light.

The sun isn't up above the horizon yet.

If I keep looking I might find the caribou themselves.

Two important things to know about caribou.

They're gregarious,

if you find one, you'll often find others.

And they're long-distance migrators,

they travel hundreds and hundreds of miles over the course of the year.

So just because you see caribou,

doesn't mean they're gonna be here tomorrow.

You gotta take advantage of opportunities when they come.

You can never have too much meat out here.

You got a couple months of meat stored up on the cache,

but two months later, there might not be a caribou in sight.

Or anything else to eat.

I don't see any caribou on these mountains that I can see from this spot.

There are a lot of places I can't see from here.

If there are caribou in the forests

or if there are caribou on other lakes down the valley,

I won't know unless I walk down there and look.

I think I see some.

Hey, caribou! Caribou!

(GLENN SPEAKING)

It's not. But there are caribou around.

I've seen caribou tracks already,

but I'm gonna go a little further along on the edge of the lake.

Look at this.

These are caribou tracks and they're fairly fresh.

By looking at the tracks,

the feeling of 'em...

I can get an idea

about which way these caribou are moving.

When I see some tracks like this, it's exciting,

'cause I know the caribou are moving through this area.

There's still caribou around.

But, I also know that caribou move a long ways in a short time.

And the chance of me catching up with these caribou right here is minimal,

so I'm not gonna follow them.

I'm gonna continue along the lake.

They're long-distance migrators, and there are times

when there are caribou passing through the valley

and then times where months will go by

and there are no caribou at all in the valley,

so this is encouraging to see that there are caribou around.

So, I'm gonna keep going, see what I find up ahead.

CHIP: It's really cool getting things done

in the same way people have been doing for thousands of years,

simply because it's abundant,

it's there, it's healthy and it's the right thing to do.

AGNES: Did you all's get nibbles?

No nibbles? Darn!

Here, Agnes. Why don't you take this one?

I'm gonna jump on the snow machine

and I'm gonna go check that trap.

We got about half an hour of sunlight.

And the wind is really picking up.

That's quite possible. We'll go see.

Anyway, I'll be back in about a half-hour.

Before sundown.

I hope you guys catch something.

NARRATOR: The Hailstones are spending their first day at the new camp in Emonakrov,

to harvest the area's resources.

While Agnes and the girls look for sheefish under the ice,

Chip must check his traps

before the sun sets and conditions become dangerous.

Well, the sun's gonna be going down in about half-hour, 45 minutes,

and I've got a couple of traps set about

a couple miles away from here on a dead moose carcass.

The wind is really picking up,

and these ladies are continuing to fish

but, um, right now it's probably zero,

but the wind is picking up like 15 with gusting to 20, 25.

And it makes it a little too cold to wanna stick around, so...

So if that's the case, you know, we wanna keep it enjoyable.

We'll just go home. It's an hour-and-a-half from here.

Well, we got one trap that's sprung

and another trap that has the safeties on it.

I don't really understand what happened here.

Now, this one was set off.

I don't know what snapped it off.

I would assume either a weasel or something smaller than this trap

to set this trap off.

But this one I don't understand at all.

Oh, well. It's not for me to understand everything in this world.

The fact is, I set these, I probably almost had something.

I couldn't tell you what the tracks are

because the wind is blowing in a ground storm right now,

and it's starting to fill in,

and even if I left these traps here,

set, they would fill in.

And I would probably not catch anything, so...

Well, basically, the sun's going down,

so I'm gonna go home and see what kind of decision

the ladies have made. They might wanna, um, stay another night here

if the fishing's any good right now or they might wanna go home.

Me myself, I'm, uh, I'm gonna take these traps with me.

If the ladies wanna stay the night out,

maybe I'll put 'em in a different location

or maybe I'll put 'em back here again.

But for myself, I just gave it a try.

ANDY: I try and keep positive.

Positive thoughts bring positive results.

-All right. -(DOGS BARKING)

(LAUGHS)

Oh, boy. Let's go check traps.

I've had traps out for a few days now and...

And hook up the dogs. I've got a fairly good day,

it's kind of socked in a little bit, but not too bad.

We'll go see if we can find some fur!

Come on, Foge.

(DOGS BARKING AND WHINING)

Hup!

Attaboy, Carb.

I never get tired

just walking through these open woods like this.

This is beautiful back in here.

Even if you don't catch any fur, you...

You kind of feel like...

You've had a really nice experience in the woods.

All right. Let's go see if we got anything.

That almost looks like a place where the lynx were

chasing after rabbit.

You gotta have the prey if you wanna get the predators.

Well, it doesn't look like anything in this Conibear.

That's kind of disappointing.

Everything I do out here is just,

a little bit here, a little bit there,

a little bit over here to make this life.

You don't make your living all on one thing

but if you lose one of those components

it can really impact your life a lot.

Looks like I'm skunked again.

No marten in this one.

No fresh tracks around, no critters in the traps

and, uh,

it's a little demoralising, a little frustrating, but

I just have to go to the next place

and hopefully I'll get a little bit of fur, but...

That's the game this is.

Let's go check the rest of the trap line, guys.

Ho! Let's go!

Easy.

Easy.

Easy.

Easy. Ho, ho.

I'm coming up to an area that

I've got quite a few sets...

Couple of marten sets and a wolverine set.

Ah, these guys are picking up. They smell something.

You guys smell something, huh?

Ho, ho, ho!

Hey. Look at that.

Yee-haw.

Got a little bit of fur!

Everybody stay.

All right.

We've got some fur.

Nice little marten.

He's not a giant but I'll take it.

Yeah.

Well, that made my day.

I was beginning to get pretty...

Pretty bummed out here not catching anything,

so... At least we got one. Right, Shilling?

Hup!

Let's go, boys.

Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa.

We almost missed that one, you guys.

All right.

Number two.

Bush economics trip was... (CHUCKLES)

...looking pretty poor

but it's starting to pick up a little bit.

Yeah, boys!

(CHUCKLES)

There we go.

I'm liking this day.

Feast to famine.

Oh, yeah.

Hey, that's a nice-size marten, too.

That's two on the bottom and...

That guy's a nice-sized marten.

He barely fits in my tote.

Turn around and head on home and

get these marten thawed out and do some skinning.

Won't be able to do that tonight, they're all frozen.

All in all, this was a good effort.

That's life in the wilderness.

(LAUGHS)

All right.

Let's go home, boys!

Ho!

SUE: You achieve success by jumping back on that horse

not by selling it and buying a kitten.

Hunting is a part of what I do

and it's a very important part of my lifestyle.

However, it does not define me.

I need the food

but I don't lose sight of saying, "Thank you, birdies."

Without them...

I wouldn't be here.

Some spices.

I'm gonna let 'em just kind of marinate.

I put the spices on 'em, I put the oil on 'em,

and I am going to cover up those ptarmigan breasts,

let all those spices make out with the meat...

So that that flavour soaks in.

Today was just a really good day.

I went after the caribou,

didn't get 'em,

but in the process of trying to get the caribou, I saw all the ptarmigan.

I changed gear,

went over and went after the ptarmigan

and now I have several week's worth of food.

The bird, the land, the air, the snow,

everything that makes up the beauty of the Arctic

all in a little bitty bite.

Ptarmigan soup, even better.

GLENN: In order to take advantage of opportunities,

you have to learn the country and you have to learn

where things are happening and when they're happening at.

NARRATOR: Glenn is searching for caribou,

a crucial food source in dark winter.

But tracking the animals requires him to cross the frozen lake

and any mistake while walking on the ice can be fatal.

I can see some spots where there's water

coming up under the snow.

It's called overflow and it's very dangerous.

Since the last time I went out at camp, it's snowed a lot.

And this deep snow,

pushes the ice down into the water.

Water works its way out through the ice

in certain places, it actually will melt holes

right through the ice, even when it's 50 below zero.

Those holes are called spider holes

and looking down here with binoculars,

I can see some places where there's spider holes on the lake.

That's not good.

I gotta be careful crossing the lake.

Make sure I do not get into the overflow

and do not fall into a spider hole.

If I get my feet wet, I'm finished out here.

Whoa.

I can feel something...

That's dangerous.

I'm on snowshoes, so it's holding me up on top of the snow,

but under this snow it's not solid ice.

There's overflow.

It's a layer of slush and it can be pretty deep.

It's 40 below zero.

If I fall into that overflow, I can freeze my feet.

It'll build up all over the snowshoes,

you can get totally stuck in it, it's very dangerous.

The water has spread out all under the snow here ahead of me.

I gotta move off the lake here. It's too dangerous.

I have to leave the lake here and go through the forest for a ways

because of the overflow.

Normally, it's easier travelling on the lake.

Much easier because it's flat.

In the forest, the ground is rough and uneven.

It's harder to travel.

But the lake's too dangerous with that overflow.

From up here I can see 'em a little bit.

When you're down on the lake, they're very hidden.

If I fell on a spider hole, I'd be dead.

If I step in the overflow in these temperatures,

I'll freeze my feet.

I might be past the overflow.

Right here it feels all right.

It doesn't feel like there's any overflow under my feet.

I'm gonna try and hug the shoreline.

But it's a lot easier

out here on the lake than it is in the forest

where the ground's so irregular.

There.

We made it over to the far side of the lake.

Broke out about a mile-and-a-half trail today.

I didn't find any caribou today.

But that's typical.

I'll go out hunting 10, 12 times before I find caribou.

It's not uncommon. I just have to keep watching,

take advantage of opportunities when they come up,

and now I've got a trail that I can utilise

to get more quickly to the other side

of the lake when I see caribou over this way.

ANDY: For me, it's all about being utilitarian,

using the product for how it was intended to be used.

I've got my, uh, day's catch here.

I had a really good day.

I was getting skunked and then

the last four or five sets on my, uh,

check on my line, I nailed, uh,

four really nice marten here, so, it's time to skin 'em.

I brought 'em inside and thawed 'em all out.

They're gonna make some really nice fur products for me.

I'll probably end up making a nice marten hat out of this.

Fur is king

and there's nothing better than fur to keep you warm

up in these northern climates.

And fur is a great skill to know

if you're gonna live up north, because it's something

that nature can provide for you.

So once I get 'em to this point,

a lot of times I like to hang 'em up,

so I can work on 'em a little bit better.

Very little goes to waste.

You wanna kinda take your time and get it started pretty good.

Then you can pretty much just pull straight down on 'em.

I'll just drop 'em on the board.

The way they grade these furs is

the length from the nose here to the base of the tail.

That's what you get graded on.

So the longer it is,

within reason, the better.

First thing I like to do is

once they're on the board like this,

I'm just taking

the lower legs, stretching 'em out.

You're just trying to expose the flesh

so it'll dry out.

I like to just tack 'em on gently first.

The final thing you do is take a

stretcher here, you stick that up in there,

if you don't do that the skin dries so tight

that you won't be able to get it off the board.

This allows you to have something you can remove, leaves a little bit of

slackness in the fur.

Just needs to dry tonight, I want this to feel like paper.

Tomorrow morning, I'll probably come in with a cup of coffee,

turn all these marten around

and put 'em back on the board,

let 'em dry for a couple more days

and then they're ready for tanning

and making a hat out of.

If I can take fur and make something out of it,

it has a much higher value,

not only monetarily but personally for me.

The fur I trapped today

is gonna keep me warm for many years to come.

AGNES: Every day's a learning experience for these girls.

Even me, I try to tell them,

even though I'm old I still learn something new every day.

Getting pretty windy out here.

Even though we keep trying, we ain't catching any fish.

We're lucky we built these, uh,

little wind breaks for us,

'cause this wind is really whipping it up.

CHIP: No fish? AGNES: No fish!

CHIP: Ah, shucks.

-That's fishing! -How about the trap?

Oh, I don't even think I had a good time with that one.

You guys wanna stay another night and try to keep fishing?

Or do you wanna call it a weekend

and just head back and go eat dinner at home?

I think we're about done here.

This is get... The wind is starting to get

strong enough to blow in our face.

CHIP: Well, let's go home.

Well, you know, we came down here,

we wanted to show the girls this camp

that their grandmother once owned this place.

And that her mother and grandmother had once fished here.

I mean, these are Inupiats right here

and these folks have been on this land for 10,000 years.

And to see my wife and kids flow in that direction,

I think that's pretty cool.

Well, let's go home.

What we're taking out of here today

isn't gonna be fish, it isn't any fur.

We're gonna take out of here a little bit of story,

a lot of culture, and family connection between my wife

and the daughters and the actual ways

that they make a living around here.

Someday, when me and Agnes are dead and rotting in the ground,

their grandkids will be down here.

I hope so.