“Hey guys… I’m bringing snacks in the tent!”

Such was the random hilarity of caribou hunting, as this became the so-called ‘quote of the weekend’ with Simon Mangold, Dan Pratt, Levi Russell, and Jake Horazdovsky.

On the weekend before last, these four drove the grueling Dalton Highway for a four-day hunting trip in the area south of Deadhorse. On the first day they made the requisite five-mile march away from the road in order to hunt with rifles, but bad weather convinced them to stick near their vehicles after the first day.

Along the road, a number of other hunters could be seen, late autumn being the busy season. They had nearly come back empty handed, but on the morning of Oct. 1, Horazdovsky managed to land an impressive 50-60 yard shot to a female caribou with his compound bow. They immediately took chase to make the kill shot and drove back to Fairbanks later that day.

Upon the insistence of a Cutler Apartments’ RA, the group moved the carcass to a dry cabin off of the Parks Highway last Tuesday for the skinning and gutting. Ownership of the hooves and skin were agreed upon, then what was left was moved to a SAC apartment for the butchering via a pick-up owned by a very considerate girlfriend of one of the hunters.

Seeing and smelling the contents of the night’s work enter the apartment, Tim Cronin, Mangold and Horazdovsky’s roommate, promptly closed the door between himself and the kitchen. The carcass was thrown on the table, pans and bowls were gathered to separate the cuts, and the job got started. The knives changed hands many times over the two-hour process and the job of cutting the meat from the bone was shared between Mangold, Horazdvosky, Pratt, and Adam Koegle. The group was jovial over what some people would regard as a chore, but Pratt and Koegle added fun to the event with what their friends describe as a very unique sense of humor. Some choice quotes by those two include, “When you clean, you gotta have beer,” and “Look at that! Oh, that’s sexy.”

Word got out of what was happening and the apartment was soon host to a number of visitors wishing to see the event.

For those frustrated with moose hunting, you might be interested to know that caribou season on the north slope lasts until April 30. Rifle hunting is not allowed within five miles of the Dalton Highway and Russell warns about carrying a carcass a minimum of five miles back to your parked vehicle: “It’s a brutal hike.”