Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero.

Summer is quickly coming to an end.

SUE: I have to fill my freezer.

Susie likes to be chunky.

NARRATOR: Blood thirsty bugs invade Glenn's mountain paradise.

(COUGHS) I got a mosquito in my throat right now.

The Hailstones are looking to strike it rich.

CHIP: I could be floating over $20,000 mammoth tusk as we speak.

I found it!

And Andy battles the Yukon for a summer catch.

ANDY: I'm using a net this year, a small mesh net.

Nothing in the net.

Jesus Christ.

I've got a couple of beautiful bulls that way.

I've got a major winter storm coming in.

It's due to hit tonight or tomorrow.

Gonna be here for a week.

Lots of snow, ice and freezing.

I mean, my winter is gonna set in.

It's... It's...

The middle of August,

and I'm worried about winter.

So, I have to fill my freezer.

Susie likes to be chunky.

NARRATOR: Although the sun stays above the horizon in Kavik

for more than two months,

winter will soon return

and the caribou will travel out of Sue's reach.

Caribou are called ghosts of the tundra.

You won't see anything and then all of a sudden

they're popping up everywhere.

They're hanging here. They're over there.

I say, I get into the river bed,

try to snake my way over, see if I can get 'em.

Pony up, girls. It's time to go.

See, they're on the top,

and they're still quite a ways away.

But I got a lot of open ground without trees.

He's walking away.

He's standing there looking dumb.

There's a baby.

Okay, so let's think like a caribou.

What I'm going to do...

There's a little change in elevation right here.

They're happy grazing right now.

The wind kind of sucks for what I'm doing.

That's why these guys,

by the time I get part way out,

those guys are gonna scent me and be gone.

These guys, as long as I keep it kind of low

and scooch around, I might stand a chance.

At some point I'm gonna have to cross

absolutely open tundra.

That is a long shot.

I can't do that shot.

That is probably 400 yards, 500 yards.

I've got to get my ass out there.

I can get a little closer.

Let's try it.

So I'm gonna slip down here, kind of crawl,

hopefully get close enough without anybody seeing me.

I'm gonna cross a lot of open country. They may see me.

GLENN: I just feel really well living out here.

I just can't imagine wanting to live anywhere else.

And I feel really alive out here

in a way that I don't when I'm not here.

This is my sod house where I keep meat, mostly,

when I'm trying to keep it cooler in the spring

when it warms up here.

Sod is just the roots and some of the soil

that's on the top of the ground.

This makes really good insulation

and it's got some holes in the sod.

It's been a long time since I patched it up.

Right now, the little chickadees,

they fly right through those cracks.

So, I need to get some more sod to put on it

to get it back in condition.

I'm looking for an area where there's moss growing on the ground.

And it's not easy to find around here

but there's a place about a quarter mile down the lake.

NARRATOR: Summertime brings huge swarms of hungry mosquitoes

that makes Glenn's every task miserable.

I just got to go look for my head net.

I think I might have left it over here when I was grayling fishing.

Pretty essential.

Wouldn't want to head out of here without a head net.

It's bug season so

they'll eat you up if you're not protected.

The mosquitoes are just a big problem out here.

In the summer it's like the worst thing out here is the mosquitoes.

If it wasn't for them, it'd be paradise.

They go for your head.

They're attracted to carbon dioxide in your breath

and they tend to swarm around your head.

And that's one of the most vulnerable places, so...

So, it's real important to have a head net.

I'm gonna keep looking.

The problem is,

if you don't have a way to protect yourself,

everything you do becomes a lot harder

when you're just constantly being harassed by mosquitoes.

You're just getting hundreds of bites

and it just wears you out.

A human couldn't live out here without a way

to protect themselves from the mosquitoes.

And I sewed this shirt out of a really tight-woven cotton

that they usually don't bite through.

They usually don't get through my pants,

but if you don't have anything to protect you,

you won't last long out here.

This isn't a place where you'd want to end up naked on the tundra.

You'll get eaten alive.

Mosquito in my eye.

I did not find my mosquito net.

(CLEARS THROAT) Got a mosquito in my throat right now.

Looked everywhere I can think of

and could not find it.

But I got other things to do so I'm gonna have to move on.

Look at this.

How'd that get there?

I have no idea.

(SIGHS) Relief.

Try getting me now.

Little bastards.

CHIP: Since our kids are grown up enough

that they can watch themselves.

Me and her in the last few years have been back to

being really good partners on a lot of things.

Especially hunting.

Hell, it's all good.

We are going mammoth tusk hunting.

This is the time of the year where you can actually

walk down the beach and find things like,

um, $10,000 piece of tusk

or a real nice tooth.

NARRATOR: Indigenous Alaskans have a long tradition of

making art from mammoth remains.

Harvested from their native lands.

Yep, I'm ready to go check out the other side of the lake.

CHIP: Mammoth tusk, dire wolves.

Maybe even a 10,000-year-old beaver would be mighty fine.

That you can make beautiful things out of...

Just recycle them back.

Uh, that she'll sell... Make something out of it.

Well, you can obviously see I could use a new boat.

Tusk came along, I can definitely get a new boat.

It would be really beneficial.

Bye, Mom!

Love you, kids. Be safe now.

Bye!

Right on!

And this is how you find them.

NARRATOR: While it's illegal to remove mammoth remains

from state and federal lands,

Alaskan natives are exempt from these laws.

Do you want to walk or do I walk?

I can get off here.

We're gonna drift on to see if we spot stuff away from the shore.

We'll direct you to them.

Oh, man, I can smell the smell of mammoth

and I can see the dark ground.

(SAWING)

ANDY: Everything is planning ahead.

Utilising the resources when they're here.

Nothing is right now, here.

Everything seems to always be for the future.

Make sure that all the lines are in front of you

so that when that goes out,

nothing can wrap around you and toss you out.

-Okay. -Okay.

Kate's daughter Jacquie, who's up visiting for a month,

is here to help us

and to reunite with her mom and to meet me.

Here's a good life jacket for you.

JACQUIE: I've never been here before.

I called my mother and told her that I'd like to see her.

She invited me to come and experience her life and I jumped at the chance.

To come here and be with my mom,

and learn her lifestyle

is the chance of a lifetime for me.

Today I'm gonna see what she's made of physically, as far as work.

The king salmon run on the Yukon river is in dire straits right now.

It's been tanking for about a decade now.

And I'm one of the people that's pretty outspoken

about conservation of king salmon, so...

To practise what I'm preaching,

I'm not gonna be using my fish wheel any more.

I'm using a net this year. A small mesh net.

So, I'm gonna be learning.

Um, one of the dangers that you have

when you're net fishing is buttons.

Or anything like a belt.

If it loops over your knife handle,

when you go to let the net back out...

(SWISHES) It'll just take you with it.

NARRATOR: To set the net requires a two-step approach.

First, Andy and Jacquie will drop a carry-line tied to the shore.

-Is it there? -Yeah, we're tight.

It will be pulled taut,

and then an anchor will be released to keep it in place.

Let the ball go. Just let it go.

JACQUIE: This is heavy.

ANDY: Yeah.

There it goes.

Yeah.

-It's kind of fun. (CHUCKLES) -Yeah.

Next process for us to take care of

is that it's a new net.

I need to set the net up on the ground.

We'll go get Kate, we'll put everything in the boats.

And the three of us will go out

and stretch the line out.

You grab it, Kate.

-Got it? -Got it!

Kate, hold on to one end.

Jacquie, hold on to this end here.

Kate, don't let go!

Kate, hold on to it. We're trying to get the boat

facing the other way. Okay, girls?

KATE: Got it! JACQUIE: Yeah!

Walk forward now. Kate, you walk back.

There you go. Now you guys can just ferry the line.

Let go of the line.

-We're going out to the anchor, okay? -Okay.

When you just pulled that, you just pulled my anchor in.

ANDY: You know, we're gonna go through some struggles.

We're gonna have some tangles,

we're going to have some...

Missed cues on who's doing what, when.

That's the way to do it. Just like that. All right.

Now, let's ferry our way up to the float.

Like everything in life, experience is knowledge.

And we're gonna gain a lot of experience

in the next couple of days, messing with this net.

We're gonna go way upstream

and then we'll have to re-adjust

once I get out into this current.

Fishing on the Yukon can be dangerous.

People drown every year.

From either cold water or just falling out of boats.

KATE: That line's gonna go tight on her.

Shit!

Shit.

I'm caught.

Shit!

Thank you!

Okay, be ready to grab the line, Jacquie,

'cause we're gonna come in relatively fast.

Should be easy to grab now.

You go back there, Kate, and just sit back there.

-Right on the little wooden box. -Okay.

I will pull gently.

No, don't pull anything yet until your mom's ready.

-Here you got it? All right. -Oh... I got it.

All right. Let's go out to the ball.

Gently.

I'm gently, gently going.

All right, slow down, 'cause you got a lot of momentum.

I think regular net fishermen are probably laughing their ass off at me.

Oh, yeah. It's the newbies out on the river.

"What a dumb-shit? How come you don't do it like this?"

This is a technique that a commercial fisherman

described to me in a bar one time.

That was about 15 years ago.

And I thought I'd just give it a try, see if it works.

All right, Kate, pull us towards shore.

Okay, stop.

I think we're almost there.

You guys did good on that.

After I get this tied up,

we're gonna go back along the line

and I'm going to put in all the shackles,

and then we should be done.

Like everything in my life,

every day is an experiment for me.

I set the net non-traditionally.

Kate has never really net fished with me,

Jacquie's never done it.

Kate, let's go some more.

So we're all a bunch of greenhorns out here,

trying a totally new method.

I hope we catch all our fish in one day.

It looks like it's gonna work. We'll see.

I think we can just let go and float away.

-Let go? -Yeah.

One, two, three... We're fishing!

Yay! (LAUGHS)

Come on fishy, fishy, fishy, fishies.

All right, nets in.

Just a matter of time now.

KATE: Yes, it is.

GLENN: As enjoyable as it is living out here,

it's even better if you've got someone to share it with.

You know, most of the time that I lived up here

I wasn't out here alone.

I had a family out here. I had two kids.

Their mom and I, we split up

a couple of years ago.

Unfortunately, things just didn't work out.

I'd rather not be living alone.

But there aren't a whole lot of people

that want to live the way I want to live out here.

I'm looking for something that is mostly just moss.

And a place where it's easy to cut it.

Where there aren't trees and limbs in it.

Where there isn't much brush growing through it

and where it's thick enough.

This place would be easy to cut

but I think it's really thin here.

You can just tell by walking on it,

it's not soft and cushy.

It's hard to find moss around here

that's good for building a sod house with.

This here is not the best

but it's probably about as good as I'm going to find

anywhere close by tonight.

When I cut sod, I use an axe.

Underneath this moss that I'm getting,

there's dirt and it's got rocks in it.

That's why I'm not swinging it very aggressively.

'Cause I don't want to chip it but it is really hard on the bit of the axe.

This moss can be used for a lot of things

besides just the sod house.

If I had some extra, I'll put it in a pile,

leave it in the yard.

Once it dries out, it's really good for wick.

I make a lamp sometimes with it in winter.

Use it to wipe things up that spill.

I can use it for toilet paper.

Supposed to be antibiotic.

I guess it's good to put it on a wound.

Dragging down through this side one more time.

Pull out as many of those little roots as I can.

(GRUNTS)

Now, I'm just tearing off the roots on the bottom of it.

Trying to get it as thick a piece as possible.

Just like a big roll of fibreglass insulation.

Now, I'm gonna see if I can carry this thing.

(GRUNTS)

Do it right now.

Shit!

(CHUCKLES)

I got to roll that back up.

That's what I wish I'd brought a cord for.

Tie it so it wouldn't un-roll.

I got the sod.

I got a couple holes in the house that I'm gonna patch up.

And then the sod house will be in good shape

when I get here next fall.

CHIP: We're hunters. We're opportunists.

And the thing for us to do as opportunists is

to make the most out of every opportunity.

'Cause if it passes by you, then you're poor.

We call it scouting.

We're looking for nice chunks of wood,

nice pieces of bone.

Anything that we can make artwork out of.

NARRATOR: Mammoths went extent nearly 12,000 years ago.

But their remains are preserved

in the frozen permafrost.

Warmer temperatures melt the ice

and reveal the bones in the mud.

We could be floating over $20,000 mammoth tusk as we speak.

And I try to jab it with my little poker here

on the end of this walrus harpoon.

The ocean sifts out all the sand

but out here is where we got to keep our eyes open

for tusks, teeth...

JON: This looks like a good place to check.

But it is a little sketchy.

This is all permafrost right here.

Frozen water under a big layer of mud and sod and tundra.

That could fall anytime.

Found a bone.

Nice big one.

-Antler? -No.

Looks like a leg bone.

-Is that a mammoth? -Yeah.

(CHUCKLES) All right.

It might be a femur, if that's the hip.

AGNES: It's the mammoth. It's got to be, yeah?

Ooh!

I found it!

That's a tree stump there.

Yep, sure does look like the end of one, doesn't it?

See what he's got going on over here?

Looks like a horn.

That's nothing.

Good start.

Well, now here's something interesting.

This was cut by people.

-You see the cut? -Mmm-hmm.

They snapped it off.

Here you can see where they cleanly cut

the base of this by chopping it.

Probably getting themselves specific pieces and toss this.

This was done a long time ago.

This is all wet mud.

All this permafrost here is melting like crazy.

New stuff falls down every day.

All that new stuff is 10,000 plus years old.

AGNES: Sometimes you come out with little pieces.

Sometimes you come out with the whole piece of tusk or bone

or some kind of hoof or tooth or something.

This is it. This is what we do.

Playing in the mud all day.

(CHUCKLES)

As you can see over here there's a big old bluff

with a whole lot of permafrost.

A mammoth could have easily gone and died

and 10,000 years later, have us look for it.

I think, today, we'll get a whole mammoth tusk or two.

Looks pretty nice. We're getting to the interesting parts.

There's a whole lot of treasure out here.

ANDY: Nobody gets away from here

without a little bit of work one way or another.

That's the way it is out here.

This is kind of a working dude ranch of the North.

All right, so what's the bet?

I'm going to say one salmon, one burbot, one shea.

I'll get one of something.

I hope.

(LAUGHS)

NARRATOR: Andy's opted for fishing king salmon in a sustainable way

using a simple net.

He's about to find out if the eco-friendly gamble pays off.

ANDY: To practise what I'm preaching,

I'm not going to be using my fish wheel any more

as a matter of trying to provide

some conservation for the king salmon

so it has less of an impact on the overall run.

Great. Nothing in the net.

Nothing?

That's not good.

ANDY: Jesus Christ.

I'm gonna take you guys to shore.

And then, I'm gonna fuck around with some other stuff, okay?

Yeah.

Oh, well.

KATE: Careful, Jacquie.

Don't tie it off, just leave it.

I'm gonna go back out.

Yeah, I'm pulling my net out.

I've got better things to do with my time

than fuck around with this.

A lot of important things to do this summer

that I can't dedicate all day long

just to fishing right now.

SUE: Most people, where they live, it's the middle of August.

They're still thinking about putting on the bikini

and drinking coconut drinks with little hats.

For me, I'm worried about getting enough meat in

'cause I will be below zero, four weeks from now.

NARRATOR: Sue's on the hunt for caribou.

But in the wide open field of the tundra,

she's got to get close and stay hidden

or lose her shot.

If you look, of the six that are there,

you can only see one-and-a-half.

If you can't see them,

they can't see you.

So I'm trying to use the topography of the area in my favour.

But, as you see, it's not like I have a forest to hide behind.

So I have to use what nature gives me.

Sometimes it's just a four-foot elevation change.

I'm about to lose my cover.

Dirty, rotten, prick bastards.

They know something's up, man.

Ah, come on, come on, come on.

(SIGHS)

(WHISPERING) It looks closer than it is.

It's 100, 150 to maybe 200 yards.

This guy's curious.

(GUNSHOT)

(RELOADING)

I spined him.

Okay, go down, stay down.

(GUNSHOT)

-There's one down. -(RELOADING)

I got one down over here.

I got some more standing here.

I'm allowed five caribou for a whole year.

Stop.

Broadside me.

-Really? -(LOADING)

They clipped a weed.

Willow brush.

I've got a few more running here.

But they're running.

We'll just go retrieve now.

Let's go see what I got.

All right, little caribou.

Well, I got him.

It's a little bull.

So, he'll be a tasty little meat bull.

This animal gave up its life so that I,

you know, can eat this winter.

It's a harsh environment.

But I appreciate every single life that I take.

Gives me life.

So I say thank you.

Time to get him done, though.

I'm gonna walk back here

and, uh, get the four-wheeler.

Get my knives. Get them set up.

Cut them up. Get him in the bag. Get him cooled down.

He's number one. I got four to go.

Yeah, I could have hung out and tried to get the other little dudes.

But, uh, let's take care of what I got first.

Get that taken care of, and then see what else is out there.

Winter's gonna come in with a roar

and I need to be ready for that.

CHIP: This is the life that happened to me.

I guess you could say I chose it.

But, um, I didn't come here with a plan.

I didn't have any idea I was going to ever live like this.

But me living like this makes sense.

AGNES: I wish I could find the bones

so I can be a happy little Eskimo.

Come on saber tooth.

Come on dire wolf.

Come on T-Rex. (CHUCKLES)

Smells nasty up here.

I almost want to barf.

(GASPS)

Oh, look at the size of these bear tracks.

CHIP: Isn't that crazy?

AGNES: Look like, uh...

-CHIP: Brown bear. -Big one and a small one.

(GRUNTS)

Another nice leg bone.

Getting closer and closer to something.

AGNES: Mammoth bone, or what?

I'm not sure.

CHIP: We got a nice mammoth, look like an ulna radius.

A bison leg or maybe a horse leg, and then we got...

That's a front leg from a caribou.

Let's move on to the next spot.

NARRATOR: These small fossils will bring the Hailstones some extra cash.

But they'll need a more substantial find to get the most

out of the time and fuel they're burning.

(EXCLAIMS)

Oh, look at that deep crack.

It's clay.

It's real clay.

-Let's get by, huh? -Yeah.

It's going back a long way, too.

AGNES: Fuck that.

Hey, I see a bone.

AGNES: You see a bone?

A little bone.

Oh, you found a bone!

-It looks like a bear forearm, huh? -Yeah.

No, it's too short to be a bear's forearm.

It's a little too stout to be a reindeer or a caribou.

-Maybe a pony. -Maybe a pony. Yeah.

Oh, another chunk of bone. Bigger!

I wonder if we can find, like, a horse's skull or something here, maybe.

Me, I'm just scooting along, watching the beach for

any kind of bones sticking out of the water

or making sure I have him in view, and...

My son is over there. He's catching up.

But he's going to the top.

We found quite a few different things...

Here and there... all along this area.

Every year is different.

Sometimes, you don't find hardly any.

And sometimes, you just find all the femur bones. (CHUCKLES)

-Come! -(CHIP CACKLES)

-This is awesome. -Son, your dad found something.

Mother-fuckers!

Come on, Agnes, get the fuck over here.

You've never seen a leg bone saying, "Take me"

like this one does.

AGNES: Holy shit!

CHIP: That's fucking crazy, huh?

Oh, my goodness.

(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)

(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE) From up there I think, too.

That's a good, big, solid piece.

That's what we're looking for.

I take my time and I put, like,

a month into something like this.

And then I just get real detail

and make it into a person standing up or something.

And then, a couple of grand. Couple of few grand.

Depending on who I'm selling it to.

When you start to find things like this

after you walk for a few hours

it makes you feel better

and you know there's something really out there,

so you just keep walking.

Mom!

I've got a piece of mammoth over here.

CHIP: There be mammoth tusks in these here hills.

We were at three-fourths the way up and you can just barely see

the edge of this tusk sticking out right here.

I'm gonna get a shovel and a couple of tools and dig it out.

Definitely mammoth ivory.

You can tell from the colours and the...

The way it's set right now.

Holy shit and to hell.

Awesomeness.

We're looking at a bull tusk here.

And it looks like, um, it's been sitting here so long

it's got green moss growing on it.

So it might just be a little piece.

It might be a foot and half long. We don't know.

Might be the whole tusk.

It might be both sides if we keep digging!

I knew there was something up here.

I could just smell it.

Yeah, let's hope it's long, huh?

-It looks the butt end. -Yeah, butt end.

Butt end!

You never know until you pull them out, how long they really are.

Yep.

It looks like it's all broken up all ready.

Yeah, looks like it's permafrosted up.

It's kind of busted up,

so you can look at all the grass and the moss that's growing on it.

-This thing has been... -Oh, I moved the whole thing.

Yep, here it goes.

This thing's been here quite a while.

-I didn't mean to... -It's starting to come apart.

But these small pieces can be made into jewellery easily.

Oh, you gotta dig.

This one here looks like it's been exposed for quite a while.

CHIP: It's still valuable to making inlays.

They make scrimshaws.

They make little utensils, little spoons and hands and little carvings.

And, um, a mammoth ivory is beyond 1971.

And since she's uh...

They're both members of the corporation that owns this land,

this is their land, too.

And they're legally allowed to gather these kind of things.

-Oh, fuck! -You didn't cut him.

-I didn't mean to do that. -There's no blood.

This can turn into a nice little chunk of change.

I'm not sure what it will turn into until we cure it up

and we dry it out, and clean it off and see what we got.

(SNIFFS) Smells like mammoth.

I would say you guys got a good score there,

especially if you guys make it into jewellery.

I'd say we can easily make a couple thousand bucks out of this stuff.

GLENN: But there was a period in my life

when I got very interested in travelling

and most of the places where I travelled were cities.

But there was still this part of me

that was really interested in nature.

I need to fix up my sod house right now.

I got the sod.

I got a couple holes in the house I'm gonna patch up,

and then the sod house will be in good shape

when I get here next fall.

NARRATOR: Glenn will soon leave his camp for Fairbanks

where he'll spend the rest of his summer

with his family and friends.

I might be able to tear some pieces off

without even using my axe.

Here's a place where the sod slid down.

I use this sod house mostly for storing meat,

and in the fall, I'll be hunting for moose

that will get me through the winter.

I'll probably be putting the moose in this sod house

because in the sod house the birds can't get to it.

That's how I use the sod house in the fall.

In the spring, I use the sod house to keep meat cool,

when it would be too warm outside

to keep meat any more.

Okay, that's all patched up.

This side here

is where a grizzly bear was trying to get in here one day.

The grizzly bear was pawing down the sod.

And I patched it up a little bit.

But I need to finish that.

I had a moose in this sod house,

and the bear came along

and tried to get in there to get that moose meat.

For some reason, he didn't feel like using the door,

so he started clawing at it right here.

I was inside, and I woke up and looked out,

and there was a grizzly bear right here,

digging into the sod house.

It was dark out.

I could just see him in the moonlight.

And I asked him to leave, and he did.

He walked away, he went up that trail

and growled a little bit.

And then he came back, so I yelled at him to leave.

"Go away! Get out of here!"

So he walked over there about 30 yards away from the camp

and then he turned around and started walking back towards me.

And I shot over him, just to warn him,

and he kept walking towards me,

so I had to shoot him.

That's the grizzly bear that I use in there for bedding.

So, after I shot the bear, he got to go in the sod house.

Looks pretty good.

I think I'm all done for now.

I'm gonna keep one piece of sod here

in case bears come and rip more off.

ANDY: Living out here, we try and utilise all resources.

We provide 90% of our food needs here.

In the combination of hunting, fishing and gardening.

It's about 10:00 at night,

and I'm hoping that I can get a net in tonight

and maybe start catching a few fish.

NARRATOR: Andy's last attempt with the net failed.

This one has to pay off,

or he could miss the king salmon run entirely.

King salmon are the first salmon

to come upriver here, uh, in the upper Yukon,

and they really...

In the summertime months,

they're the only fish we really have in the river.

The big problem, though, is that

this run is less than half of what it historically is.

And they really need to have some conservation measures put on 'em.

That's why I'm out with this smaller mesh net,

and I'm hoping to catch almost all males.

If I catch any females,

I'm gonna turn them loose if they are alive and undamaged.

I'm gonna pull into shore here

and start getting ready to set a net.

I think what I'm going to do is just set the anchor and the line and everything,

and then I'll come back through

and attach the net to it after I get the anchor and the line out.

I gotta get out there quite a ways.

Okay, that's gonna go on my anchor.

The end of that goes to the float.

So, we'll give this a shot and see how it goes.

I like working alone,

and I always have and I always will.

I can go at my own pace,

and I don't feel like I have to keep someone else busy.

And that works just fine for me.

Sometimes it's more useful to have hands on deck,

but they better know what the hell they're doing.

(CHUCKLES) Otherwise, they're not a help.

Yeah, I think that line will work there.

Out here where the current is,

is where I want that ball to be so...

I'm gonna extend this out another 20 yards or so.

For me, about 12 to 15 feet

is gonna be ideal for fishing with this net.

I think this will eventually work for me really well.

It's like anything you do.

The first time, it's kind of a cluster.

The first time you do it.

And then once you do it a few times,

you figure out what works well and what doesn't.

All right, I'm gonna leave it like that.

I can feel it on the bottom.

And I think I'll fish it like this for a day.

Come back in the morning, check it out.

Put the net in last night.

I'm gonna go down and see if we have some salmon

or some sheefish or white fish or pike.

Hopefully we have something to cut up

and put on the grill tonight.

Go out and see what we got here. (SIGHS)

There might be something right here.

All right, now we got a couple of kings here.

It looks like one is still alive here.

We'll see if she's a female or a male here.

That's a male, so I'm not too worried about releasing that one.

Pull this net up on and try and get him untangled here.

(GRUNTING)

We got ourselves a nice king salmon here.

This is going to be a good eating.

This is a male, and they get some pretty gnarly teeth on 'em.

And as they come upriver, they begin to morph,

and they'll get really hooked jaws

and a really hooked beak right here.

Their teeth tend to get bigger and bigger.

And the way they get caught in the net,

as you can see, he swam into the net,

and then when he tried to back up

his teeth got caught into this webbing on the net.

It's probably...

I'm guessing that's a 20-pound fish.

Twenty-two, maybe.

He's still alive.

One of the things I like to do on these fish

is called gilling them.

So, you take the gills right here,

you can see this is where all the blood is.

This is how they breathe.

You tear that gill and they're gonna bleed out really quick.

And that really helps a lot.

See how their heart is pumping this blood out.

That cleans a lot of that blood out of the meat,

and it makes it a lot better for processing it.

The blood is what will spoil the meat.

So you have to get that out.

Well, we got something.

Feels good to finally catch a few fish.

-Fishy, fishy, fishy. -Geez.

BOTH: Oh, wow!

Looking good, boys.

Oh, that is so beautiful.

The king salmon is the prime salmon in Alaska.

Probably one of the prime salmon in the world.

You know, it's a tradition, you have to kiss the fish

when you eat your first king salmon.

Let's do your tradition. A nice, bloody big male.

Kiss the fish.

Oh, there's gonna be some good eating tonight.

I'm thinking why don't we strip the big one,

and we'll turn the little guy into a barbeque tonight.

So what I like to do is come in behind the head here.

I'm extremely excited to get back to my home

and tell everybody what I've done here

and all the things I've learnt,

and it's just gonna be awesome

to be able to tell everybody what life's like here.

Hey, Jacquie, what part do you want?

You want a piece of tail or a piece of head?

Piece of tail, please.

-Head or tail? This one? -That's fine. That's fine.

-You want the skin on it? -Yeah.

-There you go. First king of the year. -(GLASSES CLINK)

First king.

Well done.

SUE: My safety depends on having guns and bullets.

Booyah!

My health, my food and being alive.

I mean, it's all dependent on the guns and the bullets.

All right, time to go to work.

I'm gonna skin him.

Quarter him up. Get what I can.

It is very hard on me,

the whole skinning and gutting,

'cause your half bent over.

That's hard on the old bear injury,

and, uh...

My surgery that I just had.

But they're pretty easy once you get 'em going.

This is a littler guy.

Um, caribou, while their racks are enormous,

um,

there's not...

You know you might get a 100-120 pounds, maybe,

out of a big guy.

This little guy here, I don't know,

probably 70, 80, maybe.

I like the heart.

I don't know, it's tasty all the way around, man.

Yummy, yummy meat.

I'm anaemic. It gives me iron.

The game bag.

Most people want to hang their meat

so that it cools down.

But the bugs.

You've got flies, mosquitoes, bugs.

They will lay their eggs on the meat instantly here.

You put it in a game bag,

and the flies and the bugs can't get at it.

I'm just trying to get the big pieces off,

and then I'll get to getting the rest of the meat.

Am I a pro at this? Nope.

Has anyone ever taken the time to say,

"This is exactly the right way to do it,

"so you don't look like a moron?"

No.

See, here's a nice piece of meat. It's called the back strap.

Look at that, nice and red.

The Sue-way.

You take a life,

you be respectful about it and you use that meat.

I mean, yeah, I suppose I could saw these up

and put them on the barbie,

but I kind of like the rib meat.

I'll put it in the crock pot and have sandwich meat for a week or more.

This is the end of the road for cutting this guy up.

Um...

Guts are there, I got the heart and stuff I wanted.

I have widdled the meat down

to what I feel is really good.

I have been respectful.

I thank the animal for helping me out.

Excellent day. Really profitable.