James Dommek Jr. - The Hunter’s Moon

 

 

I'm at the Kotzebue boat harbor. I'm pushing a boat out into the water. I jump on the bow, I climb in. My hunting partner, John, turns on the boat motor, and we're off. Three and a half hours later, into the wild, off the grid, we're setting up our Arctic oven tent on a heavily wooded island in one of the many bairds that make up the Kobuk River Delta. It's a perfect spot to set up a moose hunting camp. It's right in a bend of a river. It's on a sandy beach. It's flat. We set up our tent, we're working, we're getting it going. 

 

The Iñupiaq elders from my area used to say, “A long time ago, life was a struggle. It was very hard to live, but the people were fulfilled. And nowadays, it's very easy to live, and the people are not fulfilled.” I think about that as I struggle setting up the tent and getting things ready, because we had to get up early. Because to catch a moose, you got to meet the moose on its own terms. You got to get up real early. 

 

So, we go to bed early. We put wood in the stove when we set up, and we go to bed early. And in the middle of the night, I have to use the bathroom, I go outside the tent, and I'm immediately greeted by a million sparkly diamonds. The full moon was up over the hills, and it was making all the ice crystals dance, because while we were sleeping in that hot tent, a deep freeze had set in. 

 

And the once soft sand that we were walking on, it was now hard as concrete. The thing was frozen. All I can hear is the wind blowing through the trees and the sound of this little waterfall that was flowing off the tundra into the river. We liked that little waterfall. We picked this camp for that reason. The sounds would mask our sounds in the camp. The sounds of the water falling would mask our sounds. But also, if things got hairy, we'd be close to a fresh source of drinking water. 

 

In the full moon, I'm looking at it and it reminds me of all the wolf tracks we found in the sand around this camp that we set up. Lots of wolf track, big wolf tracks. I heard from some of the locals there's a super pack in that area, 15 to 30 wolves. In my sleepy brain, I start trying to do the math of just how many teeth and claws 30 wolves would be. [audience laughter] So, I haul ass back to the tent and get in the tent. [audience laughter] I put in a log, try to get a few more minutes of sleep before we have to get up and go look. 

 

So, we get up super early. I make coffee. I make breakfast. We get ready. We get all our stuff on. We're bundled up. We look like a dita rod dog mushers. We got headlamps on. We go to leave. It's quiet. We could barely see. The moon has going down over this horizon. The sun was not even close to coming up. It's very dark, but we could just barely make out the edges of this little river. I go and kick the anchor to try to get it loose. It's frozen solid into the sand, frozen. I quietly as I could jostle it loose, put it in the boat real quiet and we get in. We try to leave. The boat's frozen to the riverbank. It's cold. But hey, no mosquitoes. [audience laughter] 

 

So, we finally rock back and forth, we get the boat going, we get it out. The plan was to slowly putt down this river, real quiet and slow, calling for the moose and trying to catch it. The bull drinking its water in the morning on the riverbank. When you're driving and you're hunting, there's lots of time to think because you got to be so quiet. And I think about how my ancestors really needed this meat. They needed it. And how for me, it was just a want because I live in Anchorage now. 

 

I think about how I was raised, born and raised in Kotzebue, living off the land, learning from my uncles how to hunt, how to fish, all the tricks to live off the land up north. I think about how when I moved to Anchorage in 1996, I felt very disconnected from all of that. We get going. We make a way. We're slowly going. We'd stop once in a while, we get out and look. We get up, get up and look around, glass around. We call for the move, still nothing. We keep going. Still got time to think. I think about how last year, me and John went out twice up two different rivers, spent about a week total and got skunked. All we saw were bears. I don't know, maybe it was too warm, we didn't see anything. So, this year we had to get something. 

 

And about an hour after slowly going down, we decided to turn around and slowly putt-putt our way back to our hunting camp. And just then, the CB radio went off. “John C, do you copy?” John? Oh, someone's calling my name. He picked up the VHF radio. He said, “Go for John.” And the voice on the other side said, “Congratulations, John. You're the proud father of a baby girl.” He looked at me stunned, because a week before, him and his wife were down here in Anchorage, they were set to adopt a baby that was taking a long time to come into this world. And the window of opportunity to go hunt was closing. It was getting colder and colder, so it was decided John would go up north and go hunt with me, and his wife would stay here with the baby. 

 

John just looked at me stunned and said, “Holy shit, I'm a girl dad now.” [audience laughter] And I said, “John, it's going to be the best. It's the best. I know a couple things about being a girl dad,” because a week prior, my own daughter had just turned 18. So, I shake his hand. I slap his back. He's still stunned. And I say, “John, now we got to catch that moose.” [audience laughter] He said, “Yeah, we have to.” 

 

We're about a half a mile from our camp. The sun is not up yet. It's slowly trying to come up over the Kobuk Valley. There's a meadow to the left. We decide to go stop at it. John makes his moose call. I get out of the boat. I put the anchor in the mud real quiet. I climb up the steep river bank about 5ft, 6ft. And on top of this riverbank was the tundra, and it was walled by this spruce trees way back into this meadow. 

 

But right at the top of this riverbank were these willows of about 3ft, 4ft high. So, I get up onto the riverbank and I stay low. I stay crouched down. I'm on my hands and knees, and I'm low and I feel like one of them wolves. I slowly lift my head up over the willows and look around towards the back of this meadow. Looking around, I quickly drop back down, and I look back at John and he signals to me quietly, “Anything?” And I squinch my nose, “No.” This means no, Iñupiaq no. [audience laughter] 

 

And we're at this point we're talking in Navy SEAL type hand signals. [audience laughter] So, I tell him, “I'm going to look one more time.” [audience laughter] He says, “Yeah.” So, I slowly raise up again. I'm on my hands and knees still. I'm down and I slowly raise up over the willows. And I look back, and that's when I see them, two big antlers bobbing over the willow tops, coming towards us about 200 yards away. 

 

I turned back to John, and as quietly and as loudly as I could, I put both thumbs to my head and made the international moose sign. [audience laughter] John turned off the boat. He grabbed his rifle. He was the one with the tag. He grabbed his rifle, put on his ear protection. He walked up and I told him, “Right over here. Right over here” So, he climbs up and I wait down by the boat. 

 

 And just a little while later, I hear boom. And I run up there. I run up and I said, “John, did you get it?” And all he said was, “Yup.” And at that moment, we raised our hands in the air and we screamed. We were so excited. We were so excited to have caught something. We were screaming. We made our sounds. We do in our culture, Oo-oo. We were so happy. But then, we realized the work had just begun. [audience laughter] You guys know. All that excitement quickly, “Okay, here we go.” This is where all the glory is carrying that meat back to the boat. 

 

So, we start field dressing. We start cutting our moose. And in just that moment, it starts snowing. And as soon as it starts snowing, the sun came up slowly over the Kobuk Valley, and it was red, and it was making the falling snow look red. It was beautiful, but at the same time, me and John knew that red sky meant there was a big storm coming. So, now, we got a ticking clock. We got to get this moose out of here. 

 

So, we cut it. We're going, we're doing our thing and we hear a boat pull up on the river. We see three guys walking towards us and we say, “Oh, here's the troopers.” He was a game warden. No, it wasn't. It turns out the guy who called on the CB radio and told John that he was a father, he was in the nearby village about an hour and a half away and he brought two young men, strong young men with him to help carry our meat. That's the Alaskan one. [audience cheers and applause]

 

And that was the best feeling to see they came to help. And I said, “Oh, thank God.” [audience laughter] We start doing our thing. We start butchering. We have so much respect and reverence for this animal. We have the fanciest game bags from Bass Pro Shop. [audience laughter] Brand new tarps, everything brand new. We take care of the meat. There's not one leaf, one little piece of dirt, no nothing on it. These guys help us get all the meat back into the boat, and then they follow us back to our camp to help us break down our camp. 

 

And in return, we gave them gas. They were very excited for this gas, because that meant they were able to go by to the other village farther down, because there was a very high stakes poker game [audience laughter] that they wanted in on. So, this gas meant a chance. And off they went. And so, with about three hours of daylight left, we knew we had to make a three-and-a-half-hour boat ride back to Kotzebue with a storm behind us and the setting sun in front of us. 

 

So, we take off, we get going full boat and we put the moose head right in the front. We do that where I'm from, because the story is the moose gives itself to us, because it wants to see. It wants to go for a ride. It wants to see the ocean. So, we put it in the front. We slowly make our way back. Actually, we weren't going slow. We were going as fast as we could. [audience laughter] We were going pretty quick. 

 

Three and a half hours is a lot of time to think. I start thinking about how a human life was just born and how animal life was just taken. I wonder how many times that's ever happened on this river, where two friends have gone out, risked it to bring back meat for their family. I think about the elders, and how they say how the struggle makes them feel fulfilled. 

 

And in that moment, with every muscle sore, I feel fulfilled. I feel a sense of belonging to the land. And as we make our way back to Kotzebue, we turn the last bend right as the sun is going down, and the city lights are reflecting off of the water leading us home. And as soon as I get cell signal, I text my family back in Anchorage and I tell them, “Sharpen your knives and ulus.” Thank you.