Original subtitles

SUE AIKENS: I'm gonna be going to town.

I am making some major decisions for the business this year,

and one of those is I'm going to invest

into getting a big piece of equipment.

The Bobcat is my go-to piece of equipment.

But Kavik is now growing,

and the little Bobcat, much as it tries,

it can't keep up.

I am beating it to death.

I am asking it all of the time

to do a job that far exceeds its abilities.

The future of Kavik is gonna greatly depend

on being able to do more, not less.

Hey, Bob-o.

Hey, Sue.

Thanks for coming out.

SUE: Buying a new piece of equipment is a huge venture.

It will either be one of the slickest, smartest things I've ever done

to catapult myself into the next level of business in life,

or it's gonna be a huge mistake and cost me every penny I have.

My entire life is invested in this camp.

My heart is invested in its success.

It's time to start a new chapter at Kavik...

Hopefully.

SUE: I am in town. For camp,

I'm always trying to improve,

always trying to make things better.

I'm not gonna say I bought a new toy,

I bartered, traded, and got some new equipment.

Ta-da!

There she is.

What is it? It's a 966 Cat.

This is the grownup version of,

(HIGH-PITCHED) the Bobcat is small...

(REGULAR VOICE) The Sue-Cat means business.

You know, this is the next beast for the job, so,

when I say welcome to Kavik,

the beast and I will be there to meet you.

Ah. Takes me several steps to get up into here.

It's the natural progression for where I need to go.

I have to have the right equipment for the job.

Bucket on the Bobcat's about that wide. That's

four times, eight times the Bobcat.

I can go out and scoop up gravel and fix things now,

as opposed to, you know, doing it a teaspoon at a time.

Now I've got a shovel at a time.

(TOOL WHIRRING)

Fixing the 966

and getting it good to go on the... On the tundra,

is one small piece.

At the same time that that's being worked on,

there's a sled.

All of this is one piece of a very large puzzle.

(SIGHS)

Well, little Betsy, it's you and me now.

Let me get in here and see if I can figure it out.

(ENGINE STARTING)

How's it getting home?

There's no roads out to Kavik.

I've got to take this across the tundra.

(WHOOPS)

(BRAKES SCREECHING)

I am a bit nervous about the trip.

It's a big journey, and you got to ask yourself,

why the hell would a 50-something-year-old woman

decide, "Oh, that's the way to go home"?

Because I have to.

Be safe, have fun with your new toy.

I will do that. Thank you so much.

I'm always trying to improve Kavik.

To keep my lease, I got to keep working at it.

There's no sit down, take it easy, and hope it works out okay.

I have to make it work out okay.

This is gonna get the job done, so,

little lady we're onto the next chapter in Kavik.

CHIP HAILSTONE: The fact is success is really opportunity

meeting preparedness,

so what we do is we prepare ourselves.

Looks like springtime's heading our way soon.

Soon this will all change. All this water will flow, the ocean'll open up.

It'll green up, the fish will come in, the birds.

But for now, it's light winter.

The thing to do today is go look for an ox.

So today, me and Agnes are leaving Kiwalik.

We're gonna go over the mountains and up on the ridge tops,

here, until we spot a herd of ox.

Well, you know, getting to hunt muskox

isn't something everybody gets to do. You have to win a draw.

And the draw is based on how many years you've hunted ox,

how many years you would've hunted ox,

and how many times you've been successful.

So I've been successful at this

plenty of times.

Enough to where I was able to qualify and obtain a tag.

So I'm pretty happy with that.

I spent three years on felony probation for a nonviolent crime of perjury.

I wasn't allowed to use any type of firearm whatsoever,

so I used a bow and an arrow, and I used a lance. And I did my best.

I sat back and I watched my wife take over the hunting.

This here is a .50 calibre Hawken-type rifle,

and this is legal. This is black powder.

This is what I can use right now,

and if it's what I got to use, then I'm gonna learn it.

I'm gonna use it well,

till I can get back to a cartridge gun.

Basically what it is, is that I'm not allowed to have cartridges

or use what they consider a modern firearm,

which would be a firearm manufactured after the year of 1898.

-(RIFLE CLICKS) -Oh, didn't go off.

AGNES: Aw, man.

CHIP: At these temperatures, the grease just congeals.

Put another cap on.

-Aim again. -(RIFLE CLICKS)

-AGNES: Ah! -Nothing.

Add a few grains of powder in there.

AGNES: Okay, let's try that again.

-(GUN CLICKS) -AGNES: Ah!

CHIP: It's why I got the 12-gauge.

This here is the backup.

Whoo!

(LAUGHS)

The shotgun's a smoothbore.

But this .50 calibre rifle

throws the bullets much more accurately,

so the whole deal with this 12-gauge is

that I have to be a lot closer.

-Well, let's go get our ox. -(AGNES CHEERS)

NARRATOR: To intercept muskox,

the Hailstones must travel into the mountains

west of their hunting grounds in Kiwalik.

With their shotgun as their only working firearm,

success will rely on locating a herd within a short-range distance.

CHIP: You know, a muskox isn't a huge animal.

They're actually rather small when you see 'em. It's kind of amazing.

-(MUSK OX GROANS) -But yet,

they're probably twice the amount of meat as a caribou.

(MUSK OX GROANS)

(AGNES TALKING)

CHIP: Oh, I see something over there, probably maybe a herd of caribou.

There's something over there.

Oh, I think those are muskox, Agnes.

Here, tell me what you think.

AGNES: I believe you're right.

Like a herd of 'em.

The deal is if they were down here

where I could sneak up close to 'em

that wouldn't be a problem,

but right now it's as open as where we are.

AGNES: Yeah. CHIP: And the only way

I'm gonna get at one of them things is to have that rifle working.

If I don't have the rifle working, I'm gonna have to use the shotgun.

I don't think I'm gonna get up that close.

So basically, we've come over this far,

we know that there's muskox in the area, and we finally located some.

And we're pretty happy with 'em.

There's a lot of 'em, they're looking good,

the problem is I don't have the range with the shotgun that I brought,

so I got to get the Hawkens to work.

The only way I can see getting the Hawkens to work and quickly,

is probably drive to Deering,

go to my friend Jerry, who's an elder,

and then hopefully repair the Hawken,

come back, and work on those ox over there.

AGNES: We know where the muskox are,

and they're not gonna go far.

They'll probably be

in the same area when we start heading back towards them.

You know, once you got the ox in sight,

all you need's a working gun.

GLENN VILLENEUVE: You got to take care of it yourself out here.

That takes knowledge, it takes experience.

If you don't know what you're doing, you don't belong out here.

Today, I'm gonna

head to the east to another camp I have set up.

Down in the valley, I have a small wall tent that I set up.

It extends my hunting range.

It's a place where I can stay further away from home.

But there's been a big snowfall since the last time I was down there.

Hopefully my tent's okay. It snowed a lot.

It's probably snowed a foot since I've been down there.

That tent could have collapsed.

But I'm gonna go down there, take care of things.

The snow's more than knee-deep now in the woods.

It's difficult to get around without a packed trail.

Makes walking real difficult.

That's why I got to use my snowshoes,

pack down the trail.

Travelling in fresh snow is difficult and time-consuming.

But when I have a broken trail,

I can travel up and down it quickly and efficiently.

Once I have a trail, I use it over and over and over.

It's the highway in the wilderness.

Hey, look. There's the sun! The sun's coming up.

That's the first time the sun has come up down here in the valley

for more than three months.

Amazing.

The sun's right to the south, now.

It's midday, and it's just rising above the horizon.

It'll just be up for a little while today,

but each day the sun'll come up for longer.

What a beautiful time of year when the sun comes back.

Moving out of dark winter and moving towards light winter.

Hey, there it is!

Oh, wow. It looks like it might have broken or something.

So much snow on it.

It's partly fallen down.

I haven't been down here since the last big snowfall.

My woodpile's all buried.

It looks like there's over a foot of new snow.

Tent's partly collapsed.

I got to dig this out and get it set back up.

Since I was here last, it snowed a lot.

It collapsed the tent,

snowed in my trail.

I had to get back down here to clean this out

and salvage this. If I left this without cleaning it off,

eventually, it would just be destroyed.

This is a really nice little camp.

A nice place for me to stay down here.

I can get out further. With this camp here,

I can hunt further away from my main camp.

-(WOLF HOWLING) -I got a place to spend the night,

place to get warm,

place to get shelter.

I just hope nothing got torn.

Oh, look, it's okay!

I'm gonna be able to set it back up.

Okay, I got to go outside and tie the corners back up.

I'm really glad I got my trail broken out,

and I got down here before the next snowfall, because this tent

had about as much snow on it as it could take.

If it had snowed again before I got to it,

it probably would have cracked the ridgepole.

This is an important camp to me,

and I'm glad I got down here and saved it before the snow destroyed it.

The tent's set back up. Nothing damaged. I'm gonna head home.

It's cold out.

I got to get back to camp.

ANDY BASSICH: There's no 9:00 to 5:00 jobs out here.

If you want to live out in the bush,

you got to be self-motivated and self-employed.

Tomorrow's the end of the trapping season for me, so I'm gonna

close down some traps,

make sure that I get everything closed down in time.

Time to get going. Burning daylight.

It's time to pull all the traps.

I like to collect up all my traps and all my snares,

and then I can reset in new places.

I'm not a big-time trapper.

I do it because I'm out running my dogs,

and if I'm out running my dogs, I might as well set a little bit of steel out

and try and pick up a few animals,

and that helps pay for my dog food.

It helps pay for gasoline for the snow machine.

No, nothing in here.

I still got quite a few miles to get home from here.

I got to keep on moving.

I got, I think one or two more lynx sets.

I wanna pull all the steel

so it doesn't get washed away in overflow,

or lost in the summertime.

Last trap of the day.

(SIGHS)

(GASPS) Holy shit.

Yee-haw.

Look at you.

Look like you must've climbed that tree, huh?

You're all tangled up.

I better go get my snare, then.

It's totally unexpected.

I was hoping to catch a couple wolverines this year, that didn't happen.

Actually, this is the first lynx.

And I guess it'll be the last lynx of the year too.

Starting to run out of daylight now,

so I'd like to just get this taken care of, and get on home.

It's not just the fur.

It's the bones and the claws and everything

I'll be able to utilise too, so it'll be

absolutely nothing going to waste on this lynx.

Boy, that's a beautiful fur.

Nice and light. What you want on lynx is you want

really nice belly fur and a nice grey back.

That's a nice lynx.

It's a lot of work, trapping.

To do it right, you should be checking your traps every three or four days.

So it's very time-consuming.

It's a lot of harsh conditions.

And, this is the payoff.

You know, every now and then you get just a really beautiful animal,

and this is gonna be food.

This is gonna be a really nice fur hat.

This is a good end to my trapping season,

and a good beginning for springtime.

This was a good day.

CHIP: It's hunting.

It's not shopping in a store,

so we're flexible. If you're not flexible, you don't survive.

AGNES: Hey, Jerry.

CHIP: Hey, Jerry.

AGNES: Good to see you again.

NARRATOR: Chip and Agnes spotted a herd of muskox,

but were unable to get close enough for a good shot with their long-range rifle.

-(RIFLE CLICKS) -AGNES: Ah.

NARRATOR: Fixing the antique black powder gun for the hunt is crucial,

and to do so they must travel to Deering

and seek the help of a village elder.

CHIP: I need the tools that Jerry's got.

He's got all kinds of really small tools,

and he's got the things I would probably need to make this gun work again.

There's no cartridges.

It's a black powder Hawkens .50 cal.

And I tried repeatedly to get this thing to go off.

I took it all apart, I cleaned it as best I could,

I still couldn't get it to go off.

JERRY: This is a counterweight?

The bullet is soft lead, and it's on top of black powder,

and it's down here, and the black powder won't go off.

I was thinking probably best thing to do would be brush the bore really good,

lube it up, maybe take it apart,

take the lock off and take the barrel off.

Where the ox are, and where they tend to stay, is where it's really clear.

And where I got to go to 'em, I'm gonna have to sneak up pretty good.

By the time they would run away, I could probably be 100 yards away.

I can't close that range with the shotgun,

so I need something with a nice big bullet,

nice big rifle.

And this is the gun for that trick.

I got to make this rifle work,

either that or else they have to be down by the river

where I can put the sneak on 'em.

There we go.

All right, man, I think this will do it.

(DOGS BARKING)

I'm gonna go down here a ways towards this cliff.

I'm gonna go give this thing a test shot.

So what I've done is I've cleaned out the vent

as best I could, and the drum as best I could.

And I went along and I added new fresh powder to it,

and I put it all back together.

Hopefully I've got something that will come right out of here.

I think this should be good.

There it goes.

That's what we want to see.

Now, I'm happy. This baby is ready to go.

I can't wait for ox now.

SUE: You know, this country, there is no room for forgiveness.

You make a mistake, it could be fatal.

This is the last thing for me to do, really.

Oh.

It's the final hook-up to getting the sled on there.

Trailer's on, rig is running.

Daylight's burning. I got to go.

I've got 86-and-a-half land miles, 60 by air.

But I'm not flying, I'm driving.

(METAL SCRAPING)

The plan is, get it up to the haul road,

then I got to turn right, hold onto my butt,

and hope I make it home okay.

I got to have a big piece of equipment.

This is not, "Suzy just wants to have something cute in the driveway."

This is, "Suzy has to get it done."

NARRATOR: For Sue, returning to Kavik from Deadhorse

is an 86-mile trek across rugged tundra.

On the journey, she must cross three rivers and deep snow.

Doing so in an unfamiliar vehicle

and in volatile weather is a dangerous undertaking.

SUE: The challenge is gonna be little ignorant Suzy behind the wheel,

going 86-and-a-half miles across the tundra home.

You know, weevils wobble, and hopefully I won't fall down.

I'm a little nervous about it.

It's a whole lot of power and I'm...

I'm... It's like setting me up on Secretariat and saying,

"Win the Triple Crown, Sue."

I've got to do it.

Do I know how to do it? No.

Will I learn? Ab-so-freaking-lutley.

(GROANS)

All's I'm doing is spinning tyres.

Really? Fucking really?

I'm stuck!

We're done.

This is the Sagavanirktok River.

I'm right where the bank meets the river,

sitting on, half on ice, half not on ice.

Um, this amount of snow should not be a problem.

My tyres should of dug down, found the dirt, and gone.

They found ice and they're spinning.

So my chains are tits-up fucking worthless.

Yeah. All's I'm doing is spinning tyres.

Of course it's frustrating.

I should not get stuck in this little of an amount of snow.

I'm gonna have a hell of a lot deeper snow out there than this.

So if this is how it's gonna act, it won't make the journey.

I'm gonna reach 20-foot drifts,

and have to dig myself out.

And if I can't do that then... Then there's a fucking problem.

Next plan of action for me is to try to get a hold of somebody

to try and get me on the right track.

Hey, is this Delta Leasing?

Hey, this is Sue, I'm stuck already.

It's possible I'm biting off more than I can chew.

I mean, I may have to make an executive decision

to stop before I start.

Was it too much to ask that one fucking thing go right?

I'm not usually defeatist,

but I kind of want to kick the machine's ass right now.

I still got to get it out, so we'll see.

It's a whole lot of hurry-up-and-wait.

ANDY: The more you plan out here,

the more efficient you are, the more you get done, the more you learn.

That's the way I like to live.

(WOLF HOWLING)

It's time to skin out this lynx here.

Think it's thawed out enough,

so get it started here, see what I come up with.

(BARKING)

All right, well, time to try and take care of this lynx.

It feels like it's somewhat thawed out. It's still a little bit frozen,

but see if I can't get him skinned out here.

Was definitely excited to catch this.

Lynx like this is worth a fair amount of money.

I think the real value in this lynx is that it's in such good shape

that it potentially could be taxidermied.

The way I look at it, if you're gonna kill something like this,

there's a certain amount of respect

that is owed the animal too, you know?

As far as how you treat it

and what you do with it and all that, so,

maximising the value of it

is another way of kind of showing a little bit of respect for the animal.

I got to be real careful down here where he was caught,

his trap was right across his foot here,

so I'm gonna have to be really careful right in there.

Or I think I might just take it off at this joint here.

It does cost money to buy fuel.

It does cost money to buy dog food.

So, you know, a lynx like this contributing to

that cause just makes life sustainable out here.

That's what I like to do. I like to use the resources out here, to uh,

take care of my needs.

This lynx is one of those things

that's gonna help take care of my monetary needs.

My guess is the going price for this fur to a taxidermist,

probably 300, maybe.

It's a quarter of a year in dog food.

A nice little shoulder roast.

Whenever I eat lynx, it's mainly just the tubes.

That's the legs.

Got the trapline all closed down now.

Got a nice piece of fur.

Got some good food.

And a good experience.

GLENN: It's a very physically demanding lifestyle I live out here,

and I'm always pushing myself pretty hard.

I made it to the tent.

There was a lot of snow on it.

But luckily, nothing was damaged.

It's a long, long trip

to go all the way down there and back the same day,

especially breaking trail through fresh snow.

Having a real problem with my leg.

Not feeling too good right down here on my shin.

Trying to get all the way back to camp tonight.

I probably should have just stayed in the tent.

It's a lot of walking on snowshoes.

Breaking trail through fresh snow,

it puts a lot of stress on those particular muscles

and tendons in that part of the body.

Because every time you lift up that snowshoe,

you're lifting up all that weight.

All the weight is right there on my toe,

and it's putting a lot of stress right in here,

but I'm more than halfway back now. I'm gonna keep going.

Just gonna try walking on one snowshoe for a ways, see if that works.

Out here, my two legs are my transportation.

One thing I do have to be able to do

is get back home to camp every night,

get to some place where I have shelter.

Oh!

Long walk on a cold day.

One thing I've learned about injuries

is listen to your body.

If your body's hurting, it's trying to tell you something.

In this case right here,

this leg's trying to tell me not to use it.

I just got to take it easy,

take it one step at a time.

Eventually I'll get back, even if I get back slowly.

Made it back.

Feels good to be home.

I just want to get inside, take my clothes off, get some rest.

Hurts even just taking my boot off and on.

If you can't walk on snowshoes, you basically

can't walk out here at this time of year,

you can't get around.

Oh.

Oh, yeah, it's definitely swollen right in this area.

I think I'm having a problem with the tendons.

That they became inflamed because of overuse.

I was snowshoeing so much,

so I'm gonna try heat and cold.

I don't get injured very often.

But when I have a problem like this, I have to take care of it myself.

I can't make a trip to the doctor's office,

'cause it's 200 miles down to Fairbanks.

Costs a few thousand dollars to go there.

(BIRD CHITTERING)

(GLENN SIGHS)

Just give it time, and have patience.

Your body will heal itself eventually of most things

that happen to you. That's all I can do is just wait,

treat it as best I can and see what happens.

ANDY: I love living a lifestyle where

everything that I need to live is out here.

I just have to either kill it,

fish it, or grow it.

Couple nice, big hunks a meat.

It's been a lot of work the last couple weeks,

and there's a ton of work coming because it's springtime.

Springtime means lots of projects.

The plate is full.

And uh, I guess I'll

fill it up with some lynx meat tonight.

Yum-yum.

Got some barbequed lynx.

Let's see if it's all cooked up all right.

Look at that.

Mmm-mmm.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

This is a little bit different addition to my diet.

I eat a lot of moose,

a lot of black bear,

a lot of salmon.

Don't eat a lot of lynx, but it's...

It's good meat.

Chow down.

SUE: Like any skill set in any walk of life,

you learn it as you go.

Oh, there he is. He's coming in. Nice.

NARRATOR: Not long into the journey from Deadhorse to Kavik in her new loader,

the vehicle got trapped in a patch of deep ice and snow.

Unable to drive the loader back onto solid ground,

Sue was forced to call for an emergency tow.

This is called a Steiger.

I'm on big tyres,

he's got tracks.

And he's got maybe a little more manoeuvrability.

Damn it, now I want one of those.

It's starting to get a little darker,

so now what I'm doing is I'm gonna separate the trailer,

yank it off,

get me out of here, yank me up.

I need to regroup and see how I want to handle this.

One false move, I'm back to square one.

If you ever want to make yourself feel pretty small,

try being the big girl wearing big girl panties on the tundra

and always having to be, you know, having to be rescued by the boys.

So now, he's gonna back up,

hook it to my clevis pin.

I've got to get in, throw it in neutral,

and he's gonna try and yank me out.

Okay.

Come on.

Come on, you fucking whore.

(GROANS) That was stuck pretty good.

(SUE LAUGHS)

Today, I tried to get across the Sag River and start on my journey,

epic fail.

But I got out, I'm regrouping,

time for me to just chill

and think about how I want to attack it.

This does not mean that I am gonna fail overall,

I just failed at my first attempt.

It is now officially a challenge and that's what I live for, so,

if it takes me all winter I'm getting it out there.

But I just can't do it tonight.

GLENN: All the animals, the sky, the mountains,

the lake, nature.

This is what living's all about.

The swelling's starting to go down.

I got less pain than I had yesterday.

Just giving it time to rest,

giving my body time to heal itself.

Helping it out a bit with the cold, and the heat.

That really did the trick.

There's still a little swelling.

There's still a little bit of pain.

But what my body needed was just to have a little break.

(SIGHS)

I was pushing things a little too hard,

and sometimes I do that out here. It's tempting.

I want to get that trail done, I want to get back to camp the same night.

I just had to slow down a little bit.

As time went by, I started to feel better.

And I'm back in action again.

Oh, look at the sun.

That is such a beautiful sight.

Everything looks different with sunlight on it, and it feels different too.

And my leg's feeling better.

That rest was just what it needed.

(WHISTLES)

Hey, little birdie.

Oh, that smells good.

Mmm-mmm.

Some great moose meat here.

The moose are coming back, too. Everything's changing.

This time of year, you'll start seeing moose on the hillside,

they're enjoying the sun out there.

The grey jays are coming around more.

Everything's changing.

It's the light part of the winter, and it's a whole different season up here.

Mmm. That's good meat.

A little bit of rest, time to recover.

Little bit of heat and cold, that did the trick.

My leg's feeling a lot better than it was.

Won't be long, I'll be back up there

on those mountaintops.

CHIP: Everything up here is kind of centred on food.

It's what it's all about.

NARRATOR: After repairing their long-range black powder rifle,

Chip and Agnes are back on the trail of a herd of muskox.

CHIP: If you see me waving, come on over. AGNES: Okay.

-See you in a bit. -Yep, good luck, honey.

We saw this herd from on top of the hill.

So we came towards this

and it's definitely a whole herd of muskox.

I'm hiding behind here and, um...

Hopefully they won't see me.

And he's just sneaking up closer

and trying to get a closer shot with his rifle.

You can see the herd. Oh, they're starting to run.

CHIP: What I need is a clear shot.

Soon as I got one of them I'm good to go.

Oh, right there.

I hit him! Agnes! Come on,

I hit him!

We have to keep on him till he drops back and I can get another clear shot.

AGNES: I see it! CHIP: Give him time he'll lay down.

The other ones will end up having to leave him.

I think we have an ox falling out of the herd now.

Now the jig is up.

I want them to see me so I can press them.

I want the wounded one to fall to the back so I can clearly identify him.

There he is on the outside now.

He's got somebody in the way still.

I'm basically, uh, pressing the herd

till it falls to the back, then I can get a clear shot.

It's the only way to do it.

We can go all day if we got to.

These guys make it tough.

It's a herd animal and they watch each other

so Chip's gotta stay close.

(FIRES)

Oh!

I think I went right over its head.

I'm down to a shotgun now.

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

I'll call my wife down.

'Cause I wanna use the snow machine to flank them on the side.

Cool, here. Don't need that, don't need this crap...

Okay. Excuse me.

(FIRES)

I slowed it down.

I hunted a good ox down.

It left the herd, they left it.

So I'm safe from them, and he's my dinner.

AGNES: I love cold successful days.

-Looks pretty fat, huh? -CHIP: Yep.

AGNES: Don't usually get to hunt very many muskox.

It's a permit hunt only.

So, um, Chip and I are lucky to be able to do this hunt.

We're gonna have some good meat for the rest of the winter.

He's gonna give me probably about a good 300 pounds of meat.

He's also gonna give me an excellent fur for a rug.

Maybe I'll make something out of the horns there.

AGNES: We'll give this first piece to Jerry?

-That's what I was thinking. -Right on.

CHIP: Well, I'm gonna bring Jerry back the liver,

then I'm gonna bring him back the, um...

The chest.

And now I'm done.

AGNES: One, two, three. CHIP: Up.

There you go.

We got our ox on.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

CHIP: You're welcome.

Yeah, thank you for your help.

Well, the least we could do is go bring Jerry a chunk of meat.

AGNES: Shall we?

Hey, Jerry.

CHIP: Not bad, huh?

-Yeah. -He's a chubby.

Well, we could boil this up tonight. What do you think of that?

CHIP: Yeah.

AGNES: Okay. (LAUGHS)

Fresh muskox.

This is gonna be the first meal of our ox,

and, um, we're sharing it here with our village elder, Jerry.

It's something we don't eat every day, muskox,

so, um, it's gonna be a good meal, good stories,

and good friends.

CHIP: Well, it feels good to come here to my friend's house

and share a meal with him.

When you got friends close by, and I didn't have the tools I needed at camp,

to take care of the problems I had,

I could go to the closest village, and go hit up a friend.

That black powder ain't nothing

like no high-powered rifle, I'll tell you that.

Chip had to walk like, two miles,

to get to the muskox before he could even shoot.

(LAUGHS)

Good to eat fat meat again, huh?

CHIP: Mmm, yeah.

Well, every day's a successful day in some way or another,

but this is a meat day,

and we done made some meat. I'm happy.

Man, I think I ate enough.

I'm so glad muskox was on the menu.

SUE: It's all going to come together,

just seldom does it come together the way you expect.

You always got to have a Plan B to your Plan A, your Plan C, and your Plan Z.

NARRATOR: After getting her new loader stuck in deep snow and ice,

Sue was forced to use a costlier method

of getting the vehicle across the tundra

and back home to Kavik River Camp.

It's not a possibility for me to continue

to try and take the loader out myself.

Some things have come up with the difficulty,

the snow level, the travel conditions.

Uh, I... I'm... I've had to come up with a whole alternate plan.

The Steigers and some trailers

are now gonna do the job I was going to do.

You don't bring anything across the tundra on sleds,

leaving a lot of empty space.

I've got things here that can come out,

so that's also what I'm gonna do.

I'm spending big bucks, I might as well get a big load.

These are the goods.

Hey, buddy, how you doing?

-Pretty good. -Cool.

-Looks a lot nicer than it did the other day. -Yeah.

Well, we fuelled it up, checked it.

She's not a bad old loader.

Yeah, I'm gonna walk around it and make sure.

Yeah, it'll be nice to get this thing home.

It's my little baby.

There's no denying I'm...

I'm mad as heck that I can't drive it out myself.

Um, 'cause that's... You know I don't have

a lot of dreams and things on my bucket list, that was one of 'em.

But I've got to get home and I don't have the luxury.

So, let's just posse it all up and get it out.

All right. See you in Kavik.

It's headed up on its way to Kavik.

I got to try and catch a plane to get there.

Boom, the two of us meet, make out,

and then the journey really begins.

Thank you so much, man.

-You're welcome. -Appreciate it.

-I'm glad we were able to do this. -SUE: Oh, yeah.

For me to stay competitive in business,

I've got to have the equipment to do it.

Time for the next step.