Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On this episode of Life Below Zero,

winter prep goes into overdrive

as the big chill descends on Alaska.

ANDY: Last year's moose hunt was a big zero.

NARRATOR: It takes a village to keep the home fires burning.

CHIP: There's no point in me trying to get myself a new stove

when I could just make one.

NARRATOR: Erik travels to a bear-infested island for his next meal.

ERIK: A sow with two first-year cubs.

Holy shit!

Let's get out of here.

NARRATOR: And time is running out for Sue to land a movable feast.

Are you fucking kidding me?

ERIK: I'm here in Kodiak Island.

Wind's blowing. It's overcast.

Had a little frost last night.

Had a bear come down the creek and wake me up.

I've been engaged in guiding-related activities

since spring bear season in May.

It's late fall now.

I've been going essentially for six months straight, every day.

I'm really fired up just to get out and do a little hunting of my own

where I'm the triggerman, and it's all about me.

NARRATOR: Erik Salitan is in one of the most remote parts of Alaska,

hundreds of miles from his home in Wiseman.

But for a subsistence hunter,

the quest to stock enough meat for winter is never-ending.

First thing when I wake up is, here's these goats up on the hill.

So that's pretty neat.

I'm gonna give that about 3, 3.5 miles from camp.

It's some pretty rugged terrain

that needs to be crossed in between here and there,

but it should be fun.

NARRATOR: Erik won't only be dealing with a hostile environment.

His path to the goats is littered with aggressive brown bears.

ERIK: I don't really like what I have going on here.

It's a whole different world down in the creeks.

Thick alder.

A lot of times in Kodiak, you jump bears and deer down in these creeks.

There's bears on the Alaska Peninsula that can reach up to 1,400 pounds.

A little microhabitat.

You never see these animals out on the tundra.

When the weather's bad they're all holed up down in here.

So, always ready if we jump a deer,

or bear, or whatever.

I already seen a couple goats

that I didn't know were here,

and nothing real accessible yet, though.

But goats aren't known for living in too accessible of a spot.

We'll keep trucking up to that high peak and see what happens.

ANDY: Every day brings its challenges,

every day brings its frustrations and its triumphs.

Hopefully the triumphs prevail over the frustrations.

(DOGS HOWLING)

(ALL BARKING)

ANDY: I think people are becoming very disconnected

from knowing where their food comes from,

taking care of their own needs,

preparing their own foods, gathering their own foods.

I think that's a very dangerous thing

for people to become complacent about that.

Cool. That powder's working. It's dry.

What I'm doing now is preparing to go get our meat for the year.

The focus on hunting this year is gonna be really strong.

It's critical to me that I get a moose this year.

Last year's moose hunt was a big zero.

And we had to spend a lot more money to bring meat in from Fairbanks.

I've been living out here for about 30 years,

and pretty much everything you need to live is out here,

but you gotta go get it.

Making bullets is just one more step

in being independent of other people and other companies.

To buy a box of factory-made rounds

is close to $60 for this particular calibre,

and I can reload these bullets for about $1.50 each.

One bullet placed well,

hopefully, will put enough meat on my table for one entire year.

NARRATOR: An average moose weighs approximately 1,600 pounds,

and Andy and his wife, Kate, will need the protein

to survive the long Alaskan winter.

Hunting for moose is the most frustrating thing to do up here.

We live in an area where moose are not highly populated,

so you got to work hard to get a moose here.

I'm definitely seeing some moose tracks here.

It looks like a cow and a calf.

So where there's cows, there's gonna be a bull.

Gonna do some calling for a moose right now by scraping,

and I'll be imitating what it sounds like

when a moose is rubbing his antlers to clean the velvet off.

You up your chances of harvesting a moose

if you hunt in some of these back sloughs.

They tend to be full of water and very nutritious food for the moose.

NARRATOR: With sunlight wasting away,

Andy only has a few hours left to find his prey.

ANDY: You know, the stalking them and hunting them is...

Is always the part that takes the most patience.

It could very easily be down here in this area.

We'll see what happens.

(COCKS RIFLE)

SUE: Maybe it'll just be a scouting mission,

but there's no guarantees.

I mean, if you got something every time, it'd be called shopping.

Holy crap.

Snow on Monday. Snow on Tuesday.

This is an absolute,

smack-in-the-head reminder.

My full-blown winter is four or five weeks away,

and I'll be below zero.

We're not getting above zero, no running water again.

This is my opportunity, a storm coming in,

maybe driving the caribou closer.

It's an opportunity for me to fill up my freezer.

I've got a little bit in there now.

I need to fill it.

And I've got 290 days a year that I don't see anybody else.

So I need to make sure I have enough food to make it.

A couple hours till dinner,

might as well go be Super Sue in the process.

NARRATOR: Caribou can move around 30 miles per day.

Sue has to take advantage any time food wanders in range.

To me, anything God makes incredibly plentiful on the planet

probably isn't real high on the food chain.

Caribou tend to be really plentiful out here.

So they know that they don't want to be seen by the predators,

and they get in these little gullies, or walk in the thick willows.

(SUE SPEAKING)

(WHISPERING)

Goddamn, he's beautiful.

(COCKS RIFLE)

Fuck.

NARRATOR: With the brunt of winter a few weeks away,

Sue Aikens must begin storing meat for the freeze-up.

No easy task on the wide-open tundra.

(SIGHS) It's hard to judge distance.

Oh.

I don't know what's going on. I mean, yesterday the scope was good.

Today it's...

Either that, or I'm judging it way the fuck off.

I thought it was 300 yards,

but may be more.

I got one. He's down.

(EXHALES DEEPLY)

This is a nice one.

Big full body.

Mature bull.

I gotta go see about his twin brother now.

CHIP: I don't think people know who their next-door neighbour

is in a lot of places.

I think a lot of people live among a lot of other people, but they don't know anybody.

It's kinda weird.

(QUTAN WHISPERS INDISTINCTLY)

Good afternoon, Noorvik, this is the Hailstones

looking for an empty drum.

NARRATOR: As the winter months approach,

Chip and Agnes must prepare to be cut off from the rest of the world.

In this isolated community,

acquiring raw materials often means turning towards your neighbours.

If anybody got an old barrel they wanna trade off

that's got at least one good side?

I got caribou, I've got dried fish,

I got some muskrats, and I got a little bit of bear meat left.

Or berries.

I will trade any of them. I just need a drum.

Come on over to Hailstones if you got something.

I don't wanna hear about it, I wanna see it.

(CLICKS TONGUE) Out.

NARRATOR: The Hailstone's semi-nomadic lifestyle

requires heat at all times in winter.

Chip hopes to turn an oil drum into a portable wood stove for the sub-zero months ahead.

Something I can put wood into,

burn for a while in a temporary spot.

You know, where you'd put a tent.

And then lift it up and leave the mess behind,

leave all the ashes right there as we pack up and go.

Also makes it much lighter for my travels.

(DOG BARKS)

In my life I don't really deal with money much at all.

I don't go to the store

because up here you can skip the money part

and just go directly to trading things.

It's legal to barter caribou meat.

It's legal to barter fish. It's an old system, you know?

So I can use my caribou that I've caught out here,

and make it directly into something

that's more viable than the meat itself.

Hopefully they'll wanna trade,

and I'll end up with a steel drum.

And if that doesn't work,

then I'll have to get 50 or 60 bucks and go buy one.

(LAUGHS)

(ON WALKIE-TALKIE) Hailstone one, this is Chuck. Come back.

(CHUCKLES) All right.

Good afternoon, Chuck. How are you?

Hey, hey. Doing fine.

Heard you need a barrel.

I'm looking for a drum, all right.

I'm making a stove.

Sounds like a deal if you got some caribou meat.

I've got caribou for trade.

Bring it on over here and, uh, I'll let you take a pick.

I'll be rolling your way.

Sounds good. We'll see you here.

All right, Hailstone out.

(GROWLING)

CHIP: Barrels aren't easy to come by.

They're replenished every summer,

and if I'm gonna get any barrels, I get them now.

Most people have a new barrel for their stove oil,

and a lot of people have damaged ones, rusted ones, stuff like that.

So I can use the metal.

I can chop them up

and put them to good use. That's my plan.

Chuck is kicking it down the road.

I better go put on my boots.

(LAUGHS)

Oh, yeah.

What you got there?

-A hole? -Yep. There's a hole.

-CHIP: That'll work good, man. -Right on.

CHIP: Let's take it to the back

and you can check out the caribou meats.

You can pick basically anything you want.

There's backstraps up there, lots of fat.

Back legs, front legs.

Wow, it looks all great.

Can I come back later and pick this one up here?

-CHIP: Yep. -All right.

CHIP: That'll be fine.

Go get a Honda, or a little bit of help or something.

-That's great. -You got a long way to go home. (LAUGHS)

Well, let's get this thing inside the yurt there, and...

-CHUCK: Yeah. -Just grab one end or the other.

CHIP: Figure out a way to get her cut.

CHUCK: All right. Sounds good.

-Thanks, Chuck. -Thank you.

ANDY: If you're not organised,

and if you don't have a vision,

and if you don't know how to plan and have good logistics,

you won't make it up here, I guarantee it.

ANDY: Very few people know how to get their food,

or how to take care of their basic needs in life,

which are food, shelter, and clothing.

If you don't have the ability to do those three things for yourself,

you're not very well prepared.

Putting up your meat out here is probably

the most important thing you can do for the year.

Caribou, bear, and moose are our primary source of protein.

So the best thing that could happen to me right now

would be to get a moose real quick.

NARRATOR: With sunset approaching,

Andy's hopes of finding the meat

he and Kate need to survive the winter are fading fast.

ANDY: These sloughs are really good hunting areas,

because they tend to be full of water

and very nutritious food for the moose.

Young bull just came out.

He's a little too far away for a clear shot.

Moose have great hearing,

so silence is absolutely necessary when you're stalking a moose.

(WHISPERS) It's really, really wet down there.

I'm hoping I can call him out of that wet body area,

'cause that'll be a pain in the butt to shoot him right there.

(MIMICS MOOSE CALL)

It's getting a little bit dark.

I've got a good clear shot at him, but he's in water.

I'd really rather not shoot him right now,

but I'm not gonna be able to wait too much longer.

(SPLASHES)

(SIGHS) I should've fucking waited a little longer.

This moose is gonna be a pain in the ass to get out.

He's three feet in the water

and 30 yards out into a slough,

but he's down, and that's good.

So I'm gonna head on back.

Get him butchered up tonight, and then try and get him outta here tomorrow.

Life is very physical when you live out in the bush,

and if you're not willing to put in the physical activity out here,

you're not gonna do very well out here in the long run.

(ANDY SPEAKING)

I'm gonna have to get a winch in here to get him out of that water.

So I'm gonna go back, get Kate,

and looks like got a long night ahead of us here.

CHIP: If somebody gives you something, you always give 'em something back.

No matter what.

There's always a return.

(DRILLING)

NARRATOR: Chip's recycling an old oil drum

to make a portable wood stove

he can use for warmth during the brutal cold months ahead.

There you go.

It's really important that you be able to do for yourself up here.

There's no point in me trying to earn money

to get myself a new stove when I could just make one.

So right here I've got my doorway.

You ain't got something, and you want it,

you gotta make it yourself or do without.

All the materials are coming right off this drum.

I'm folding the edges of the door so nobody gets cut when we're using this thing,

and so that when it's in my sled and I pack stuff,

it's not gonna slice my gear up.

This is no place to do things half-assed. Nope.

This piece I'm putting on right now is the door hatch.

So this'll let the door open and close.

It's stiff enough.

It'll stay up when you open the door... (WHOOSHES)

Or more like that.

Probably that way. Open up, close, latch.

Put your wood in.

Over here you got a big enough area for a frying pan.

Right there you got a big enough area for a coffee pot.

Right there, Grant stove.

And to think, I got a drum with a piece of caribou,

and now I have a stove,

and what sets this stove apart from others is,

you live in a tent and you plan on being mobile,

you don't wanna carry the ashes with you.

You wanna make everything as light as possible.

Possessions are a burden when you live out of a snow machine and a sled.

So when we're done, we take our pipes off.

We'll make 'em be able to fit inside of this.

We'll probably have three of 'em.

They'll fit inside there,

and then when we're done, and we're getting on,

we leave the ashes behind.

It's very light.

We'll put that in our sled.

ERIK: There's a lot of nonsense that goes around,

and people think these bears are cuddly creatures,

but out there in nature, you know,

they kill each other and they eat each other.

NARRATOR: Erik's going after one of Alaska's most challenging kills,

a mountain goat.

Just about to start ascending the mountain.

Looks like three goats came around the corner.

Four goats, five goats. That's a good omen.

I'm happy they showed themselves there,

'cause I was about to head around the other side of the mountain.

Might've saved me a couple miles walking.

I think I'm at about 700 foot above sea level right now,

and I think those goats are...

Are maybe another good 2,500-2,800 feet above me.

So that's probably a 2,800 or 3,000 foot peak.

Let's climb up.

We can count our steps and figure it out.

As we work our way up the valley here, you know,

you can see each of the little side drainages,

and there's a lot of places for animals to hide.

Holy shit.

A sow and two cubs coming down the valley towards us here, just dropping into the alders.

We're kind of wedged in between this canyon down here,

of fast-moving water...

And a sow and two cubs up there.

Sort of dangerous.

NARRATOR: Grizzly bears only produce up to eight cubs in a lifetime.

The mothers are highly protective and extremely aggressive.

ERIK: They're not that fun to play with

when you're out on a hillside by yourself.

I'd personally prefer to move along.

Let's get out of here.

Sow with two first-year cubs, they're a handful.

NARRATOR: Erik can't risk attracting the attention of the sow.

He'll have to take a safer path

to get to the goats he's after.

That's no good.

The goats can do it.

I don't know how far away we are from the goats,

but we're close enough now that the hunt's on.

(PANTING)

Breathing pretty hard,

busting alder coming up this mountain,

but getting excited now.

We're getting close.

I just hope there's a nice one in the bunch.

ANDY: Every year's a little bit different.

Some years you work your ass off,

some years you just skate right on through.

Just pull that over and put that on.

It can't fit.

ANDY: Well, stop eating lasagne, then.

(LAUGHS)

Bite me, mother-fucker.

How much more do I have to carry?

(GRUNTS)

(KATE SPEAKING)

ANDY: No shit. That's why I got a rifle.

There's a lot of bears around here.

There's always a chance that other predators,

black bear or grizzly, are gonna smell this and come in.

Building a fire will provide protection from wildlife

that might be coming in to steal our meat.

It's not going to blow up on you.

Whoa! (LAUGHS)

Okay. It's right there.

All right. Let's see if that works.

I'm going to get a chainsaw winch,

tie it up to a tree up on the bank,

and drag him out on to some dry ground to get this guy field dressed.

(CHAINSAW WHIRRING)

I'm not opposed to technology. I utilise it a lot.

I have a lot of tools and a lot of equipment here.

If you're going to work by yourself, you need aid.

This is probably one of the best tools you'll ever have

if you live out in the bush.

The reason why I still have a back is because of this tool.

(KATE SPEAKING)

ANDY: That job's done. Now comes the bloody part.

I can honestly say I've never done one like this.

KATE: I know.

Most important thing right now is to get these guts out of the moose

so it doesn't spoil the meat.

I'm taking the heart out right now.

KATE: It's a big liver.

ANDY: It's heavy.

There's just a lot of fat in this moose, which is great

'cause that's what you need in the wintertime up here, is fat.

Gut fat's the sweet fat.

(KATE SPEAKING)

Normally when I butcher a moose I completely skin them,

I take off the front shoulder, I take off the hindquarter,

and then the last thing I do is open him up.

I'm not used to just cutting the quarters

with the skin still on them and everything,

and so it's just doing it a little bit differently.

I'm doing it this way because it's late

and we just want to get this thing cooled down,

and we'll come back and deal with him when we're not tired.

Here's a kidney.

KATE: Do you want to put that in

-with the fat? -Yep.

KATE: Okay.

ANDY: The guts are out. That's the main thing.

He's cooling off, you can see all the steam rising off of him.

I think we'll just leave him like this for tonight

and we'll come back and deal with him in the light tomorrow,

when we can really see what we're doing.

SUE: In life, the minute you stop learning, you start dying.

Whole damn thing's a learning experience.

NARRATOR: At its best, Kavik River Camp is remote,

but in winter, it becomes a desolate outpost

where Sue relies almost entirely on the fruits of her fall labours.

With one caribou down,

she's got one last chance to double her precious reserves of fresh meat.

SUE: Walking in the water, my pants are about falling off.

It's really fucking hard to get across the tundra without being seen.

I'm just gonna have to keep going.

-(RIFLE CLICKS) -Are you fucking kidding me?

(RIFLE SHOT)

All right, little caribou.

Well, I got him.

Caribou number two, double trouble, nice boy.

Well, buddy.

There's something for you.

Thank you very much.

I collect little rocks that, to me, have a heart shape

because I don't think a life should ever be taken lightly.

That animal was alive and breathing and had a spirit and a lot of energy.

But this animal gave up its life so I can survive this winter.

And I'm saying, "Thank you, buddy. My heart to yours."

Now the hard work begins.

I'm just gonna quarter him up, get what I can.

I am proud of myself.

I mean, let's face it, I'm an overweight grandma

living 500 miles from anybody,

and at 50, I'm still doing a good job at feeding myself,

clothing myself, and maintaining a pretty decent attitude.

Well, time for me to get going on this dude.

It was a two-fer, and I'm awful wet and I'm awful cold.

It's getting late, so I gotta get this guy...

Gotta get this guy done.

These are some mature, full-bodied bulls.

You know, I'm gonna get

100, 120 pounds of meat off him.

So that's gonna cover me for a while.

I'll see how full my little freezie is,

get all the rest of it back down to the quad...

(ZIPS BAG)

And I'm a set chick for winter.

I don't see how you can get tired of all this vista.

I got mountains with snow, rivers with fish.

It's not a life for everybody, but I don't get tired.

I got a 360-degree TV.

CHIP: There's been a big shift, since the '90s especially.

Most of the younger ones that are graduating high school right now

aren't gonna live like this.

(DOGS BARKING)

I was able to take a leg of caribou and trade it for an old drum,

'cause I didn't want to ruin my good drums.

But I got a recyclable one and my friend got food.

The first time we want to stoke it and make the whole thing really hot

so we can get rid of any kind of stove oil or gasoline

that may be still sitting inside the steel.

It's kind of a way of cleaning it, cleaning it with fire.

We're gonna build this sucker really hot.

I'm gonna go in the house and go get some water,

and then I'm gonna get a tub,

I'm gonna get my traps that I have.

And we're gonna make sure this baby burns.

I'm heating water

so I can boil my new traps.

Last spring when I was done trapping for wolverine, foxes, lynx, and stuff,

I gave my oldest son my trap set.

My whole outfit.

Kinda look on the tops and see some of the oils coming off of them.

These all have a preservative on them to keep the steel from rusting

while they're in the shop, or in a store,

and the animals can smell that, so we boil it off.

Now we're seasoning the stove,

we'll season the traps.

They're gonna sit here for about half hour, 45 minutes,

we'll take them out, we'll rinse them.

Hey, baby.

Come here, check out what I'm doing. I'll show you something.

This is my new stove I made last night.

All new traps.

Not bad, huh?

But they got wax all over them

so we pour it off.

Now, without touching 'em, I'm gonna hang 'em up.

And you'll do me a favour?

Don't let nobody touch 'em.

Cause if they touch 'em, what's the animal gonna smell?

Gonna smell the person, ain't he?

And then they'll know it's a trap.

So...

Now that we got all the wax off,

we'll let them dry, let them rust up a little bit.

(GRUNTING)

(EXHALES DEEPLY)

There we go.

That was a load.

Let's go inside, huh?

You ready for dinner?

CHIP: Me, too.

ERIK: I still learn things every time I go out,

but the bottom line is, here in nature,

it's kill or be killed.

I saw four goats now.

I saw six earlier.

I assume the other ones are just over the edge.

They're still a long ways away and a big vertical climb.

We're here in Kodiak Island, sitting on the side of a mountain

in 40 mile-an-hour wind.

Sow and cubs feeding on the tundra down below us.

What can go wrong? Life is good.

I'm gonna bite my lip

and see if I can't grind out another thousand vertical feet.

Busting up through this almost impenetrable alder.

Alder's thick stuff.

Hard work climbing uphill through alder.

That's goat country, though.

We made it to the alpine.

Vegetation's really changed here.

Should be a little bit easier walking. Not busting brush.

Just keep on keeping on.

We've climbed more than two thirds of the way up.

It's been a good haul.

Just hoping the goats are still there when I get there.

There's a halfway decent one.

I'm gonna stash my gear, take a much closer look at what I'm working with.

(WIND WHOOSHING)

Blowing really hard.

Pretty freaking dangerous on these real steep slopes here.

I'm gonna start heading down

'cause it's getting to be late in the afternoon

and it's blowing like heck and don't need to be up here

fooling around in the cliffs in the dark.

It's blowing so hard, when it gusts,

I gotta get down right against the ground

or I'll get knocked over.

Basically just got my butt kicked on the top of a mountain.

(RIFLE SHOT)

Watch out.

Don't let it hit you, dude.

There goes my goat.

One-shot kill.

Up here where it's blowing so hard,

and it's so cold, I want to get my rain gear on,

get some protection from this wind.

I am going to be here for a while butchering this goat.

I'm so pumped about this.

He's got really thick, thick fur.

You know, it's just a beautiful animal.

Absolutely beautiful animal.

I have to say this is the most extreme wind I've ever butchered anything.

There aren't goats in the part of Alaska where I live.

This is the first goat I've actually shot myself, personally.

This is a whole different experience.

Pretty awesome.

Taking the backstrap off here.

Tasty tender piece.

I took all of the edible meat of the goat here.

I am loading it up into this game bag.

I kept the meat on the bone,

which keeps it in much better condition.

Fortunate to get the goat here

in kind of a grassy area

where all the meat can stay relatively clean.

The wind is what I could describe as ridiculous.

Enough to make my pack to be 100 pounds with the meat

and the hide and the skull.

Now we gotta get back to camp in one piece.

NARRATOR: But getting off the mountain

could be more treacherous than the climb.

ERIK: You gotta be pretty careful when you're packing,

you know, anywhere in the 100-pound range.

It's pretty easy to twist an ankle or snap a leg

and it'd be a long crawl back to the salt.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

Working my way down the hill.

It's getting dark. It's starting to rain.

I'd rather be wet and have a goat

than be dry and not have a goat.

Been moving along in some pretty nasty weather.

Climbed a mountain, killed a goat.

It's been one hell of a day.

Not far away from a backstrap dinner.

ANDY: We have four months to prepare for winter here.

We have eight months of winter

and then you start all over again.

Moose hanging in the smokehouse

is reassurance that I'm ready for the winter.

KATE: Hey, pumpkins.

Da-da-da-da-da!

Andy got a moose last night,

which is great, so...

Andy's just working on

an invention to get this going.

ANDY: I came up with the idea of building an Andy-Boggan.

So I found an old toboggan,

welded up a couple of axles for it real quick,

put some wheelbarrow wheels under it.

(DOGS WHINING)

And I'm gonna take a couple dogs down there

and put them to work hauling this moose out for me.

KATE: Let's go get a moose!

(HOWLS)

ANDY: Come on, Tope.

Good girl.

NARRATOR: If Andy and Kate don't recover the meat soon,

predators are likely to steal the remains.

KATE: Last thing I want to see when we get there

is a big old grizzly mawing down on our moose, or a black bear.

ANDY: Straight ahead. Straight ahead.

-(DOG WHINES) -Good girl, Drachma.

Hey, you eat the gut stuff.

This other stuff is mine, and you get this stuff.

Right here, look, all this stuff is yours.

KATE: This is like a Fred Flintstone lunch. Yum, yum.

Everything looks good this morning.

It looks like the ravens got into a little, but not bad,

and everything feels really cold.

Hindquarters have probably the bulk of the big roasts and things like that.

This is what your food's supposed to look like.

(LAUGHS)

Attaboys, let's go. Up, up, up, up.

Attaboys.

We've got about a mile to haul this moose out,

so the idea is the dogs do the work

and I just have to walk along so I don't have to pack anything here.

Up, up, go.

Come on, let's go!

Attaboys, good dogs.

Up, up, up, straight ahead.

This is a pretty economical moose.

He's cost me one bullet,

a couple gallons of gas

and that's gonna be protein and meat for us for a whole year.

So the moose is in the boat, the dogs did their work.

The Andy-Boggan worked. So it's been a good day.

It's a long day. I'm pretty pooped.

But the hardest part's over, getting them out,

and all we have to do now is hang them up in the smokehouse

and we're set for the winter.