Original subtitles

GLENN VILLENEUVE: Caribou are one of the most important animals to me

up in this country.

Most years, about half the meat I eat is caribou.

I've been seeing caribou down in this country earlier in recent years,

and I'm wondering if there might be some around right now.

The biggest thing about caribou, you just can't count on them.

It's different every year.

Sometimes, there's not a single caribou in the country for months.

Knowledge of the animals you're hunting

is a big part of the equation.

It's important to understand animals and their behaviour.

(MAKING MOOSE CALL)

When I'm hunting moose in the fall,

I'll make a sound that a moose makes with my voice,

and that'll call the moose to me.

(MOOSE CALL)

That doesn't work with caribou.

This time of year, if there's caribou around, I can't call a caribou to me.

I'm going to try and sneak up on the caribou.

Approach him silently.

So I'm looking for signs of caribou.

I'm listening for caribou.

Looking for tracks in the snow.

You got to know the animal you're after.

You got to understand it,

and you got to tailor your approach to that animal.

A lot of times caribou will travel up kinda high on this ridge.

So I'm heading up here, see if I can find any tracks,

see if I can possibly find any caribou.

Snow is good for tracking.

If any caribou came through, I should be able to intercept their tracks.

Look at this, something went through here.

What is this?

This is no caribou track.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

See this? The whole body's dragging in the snow.

See these lines?

Those are the marks of quills.

That's a porcupine track, but I gotta know which way he's going

if I wanna catch up with him.

Porcupines are good eating.

Just by feeling the track with my bare hand,

I can feel the details of the paw print.

I can feel the bed of the track,

which way it's angled.

Toes are always gonna be lower than the heel when they're travelling in snow.

Yeah.

That porcupine's headed this way.

I'm going to try and catch up with it.

I never know what I'm gonna find.

I have to take advantage of the opportunity.

I'm thinking mostly about caribou,

but I never know what I'm gonna find.

Whatever I find, that I can take advantage of, I take advantage of it.

I'm an opportunistic hunter.

If I hustle, I should be able to catch up with it.

This is a pretty fresh track right here.

It is very hungry country. There aren't that many animals around.

I have to take advantage of whatever I can find.

CHIP HAILSTONE: If you're not prepared, you're not gonna score.

If you're not prepared, you're probably not gonna survive it.

Hey, puppy, puppy.

Today we're having a blizzard.

It's the first one of the year.

We have real thin ice and this isn't doing our ice any good.

The ice isn't gonna thicken with this crap on top, and it's really warm out.

But it's really windy, too, and it's really wet.

I need to get me a pole that I can make into a handle for an ice chisel.

Call 'em a "tuk" up here.

Ice is going to thicken.

It's just not happening right now.

And I'm gonna need that ice chisel.

I'm gonna need to go along and test the ice as I go.

I'm also gonna need a way to make a hole through the ice,

and really efficient way of doing it is with an Eskimo tuk.

It's got a nice weight to it.

It's a little heavier than I want,

but it's gonna lose weight when I skin it.

Since it's freeze-up, and it's stormy and nobody's going anywhere,

it's the time of year to sit down and get your tools made.

And here in the land of ice and snow, this is the tool for me.

If you want to get to fish, you got to knock a hole in the ice.

If I want to knock a hole in the ice, I need to have myself a tuk.

I'm stripping off the bark right now.

I'm gonna take off the lumps, bumps, the slivers, and the knots.

We're going to dark winter. We have thin ice.

We have limited daylight.

And it's time to prepare ourselves for when the sunshine comes back,

but the deep cold is here.

Not going on any ice until I can have a look at how thick it is.

This right here, not only will it be the thing that I would use crossing the ice,

tuk -ing ahead of me, but should I break through,

I have a stick I can put sideways in my hole

and use to get myself out with.

NARRATOR: For the Hailstones,

Arctic waterways provide vital transportation and fish for consumption.

But they can be extremely dangerous.

(ICE CREAKING)

And a misstep on thin ice could be fatal.

If you live out in the country like we do,

you end up using one of these quite a bit,

and they don't make them in stores.

They make cheap imitations, but nobody makes a good one.

And if you want the best, you just do it yourself.

This is the time of year, while the ice is thin, to make my ice chisel.

So when it gets thick here in a couple days, I can go put this baby to use.

This needs to be done before I can go out on the ice.

If I don't have this to test the ice,

then I won't know what I'm walking on,

and I'm taking a big chance.

I'm just about done here.

This is what I'll use as I walk ahead of me,

to see if this'll plunge to the ice ahead of me.

If this will go through the ice, I'll go through the ice.

If this doesn't go through the ice after a good hefty thump,

then it's safe ice to walk on.

And you can't buy this in a store.

No, it's something you just gotta make yourself if you want to have the best.

And, uh, if I don't have much, I might as well have the best.

JESSIE HOLMES: It's in your best interest to not underestimate

the dangers out here.

(DOGS BARKING AND HOWLING)

Zeus, Thor, you want to go haul some wood?

Getting my dogs watered here and then I'm gonna go get my harnesses and lines set up.

Take the dogs out on a run, out in the flats.

Finally, winter's setting in. We're having ideal conditions with a nice snow pack.

So I'll be conditioning my dog team while I'm going out with a purpose,

and I need to get some wood around here because it's starting to run slim

on the immediate amount of wood that I've had stocked up.

Your safe haven is the woodpile for living up here in the winter.

Got to have wood to make warm food for the dogs and to warm my cabin

so I can have a safe place to come home to.

Wood's a huge commodity to me out here.

We're not talking like a little pile of wood.

I need, like, stacks of wood.

Yeah, these dogs love to run,

so when you get to hooking them up,

they get all crazy and excited. Whoa!

These dogs ain't gonna wait around no longer. They're ready to go.

I love to hear the dogs barking and screaming and howling.

That means they're ready to go. They're feeling good.

You ready guys? Whoo!

I build on that attitude.

All right! Straight ahead.

So it's time to get to work now.

SUE AIKENS: The level of comfort I enjoy in my life

is absolutely directly related to how hard I've worked to attain it.

What I'm working on here, these are my solar panels.

And now that the sunshine has come back, what I can do now, is get up here,

start clearing it off and I expose these solar cells.

(PTARMIGANS SQUAWKING)

Right over there.

I got ptarmigans.

What I want to do, is before they make me,

I want to get down, get my binos, get my rifle,

and take the opportunity to maybe get some fresh meat.

It'd be nice to be able to shoot the gun and get my own dinner.

In my own backyard, on my own terms.

Ptarmigan, it's one of the only food sources out here for a lot of the year.

For being one of the dumbest birds on the planet,

they get away from me all the freaking time.

Good Lord, they're all over the place.

I'm seeing maybe 500 ptarmigan or so.

But they're spread out a little on the far side.

Might be a case of my eyes are bigger than my stomach

and certainly bigger than my talent with a .22 open sights.

Still 100, 120 yards that direction.

Looking this way.

Can I physically get close enough to maybe take a shot?

It's a roll of the dice, man.

They're a little on the far side,

but it wouldn't be me if I didn't try.

There's one.

I can see some on the bank.

Problem is I got the sun in my eyes.

Tends to blind you from what you're aiming at.

You want to be a little off of that.

It's a long freakin'-ass shot, man.

(GUNSHOT)

Fucking bloody hell.

I missed.

See my little foxy.

I didn't realise he had come along for the ride.

The last thing I want to do is shoot my little foxy friend.

To me, it's no different than knowing you have people out that direction.

Those are my homies.

So I've got to be very careful.

Foxy's moved way over there and he's pointing.

So that means the birds are down there.

He'll point, just like a pointing dog would.

It's a pretty cool hunting partner.

It's a long-ass shot. They're way the hell out there.

(GUNSHOT)

(GUNSHOT)

Nope.

Got one more left.

I've only got one bullet left that I brought with me.

Right there.

Oh, really?

Slinky forgot to read the game plan, man.

(LAUGHS) He's... He's down there pushing them that way.

What are you doing, dummy?

My little hunting partner got a little excited.

What do they call that? Buck fever?

He got a little fox fever.

And he pushed 'em a little early and in the wrong direction.

With where they're at,

the amount of energy I'm gonna expend trying to get close,

trying to get close... Nah.

Ptarmigan are the gift that keep on giving.

They'll be at my front door if I just wait.

(CHUCKLING)

We were hunting buddies. You left me behind!

(LAUGHING)

Sometimes we're unsuccessful,

but it feels awful damn special being able to share a morning...

Morning hunt with a fox.

Time to be getting back to my chores.

CHIP: If I had a choice between Sunday Night Football over this,

this is what you'll see me doing.

Storm died out pretty well, huh?

-Yeah. -We've still got some more snow coming,

but it's just, no more wind and no more streaks.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

CHIP: Oh, the game plan right now

is to go down and go knock some holes in the ice.

I'm gonna go to a shallow place.

The ice is very thin. We have a lot of snow on top of it.

I'm gonna go walk out there and test it with my ice chisel.

I'm just gonna walk out there myself

into places that are real shallow,

so should I go through, I probably won't go past my waist.

(AGNES AND KIDS CHEERING)

But also, there'll be Tiktaalik going along those shallow places, too.

It's something we look forward to this time of year.

I like to eat a few of them things.

Got two inches of ice here at least.

Today, we're just looking for where the shallow gets deep

so we can start setting our traps.

Okay, up high.

Right there.

I'm gonna need willows that are as tall as you, dear.

I'll knock some more holes and widen this one up first.

Last year, at this time, the ice was much thicker.

I was more confident to take my kids on it.

Let them knock some holes.

But at this time of year, when the ice isn't thick,

I'm staying close to shore.

Close to where the shallow is.

AGNES: Looks like this is a good one.

This time of the year, we've eaten a lot of caribou,

we've eaten a lot of whitefish.

It's always good to try different kind of fish,

so Tiktaalik this time of the year is pretty good.

CHIP: Sent that into the mud.

There.

You got another one?

In this culture, fresh food is always in demand.

We never really stop fishing or gathering.

This year is quite a bit different.

The river froze much later.

What we're basically doing is adapting to that.

It's all right, you know. This is what we gotta do.

You know, you look at a problem, then you look for solutions.

The problem has been the late ice.

This here is our solution.

You got anything you need me to carry?

Huh? I just got my bag. It's empty now. No fishtails or nothing.

CHIP: At least these suckers will be fishing for us while we're at home, huh?

AGNES: Yeah.

JESSIE: I'm not trying to just survive out here, I'm trying to thrive out here.

And it's more about smoothing it

than roughing it for me.

(DOGS BARKING AND HOWLING)

All right, straight ahead!

Out in the woods, there's big lakes.

Out there, there's a lot of dry firewood.

Straight ahead. Haw, haw, haw, haw!

(DOGS HOWLING)

Doesn't make sense for me to buy firewood.

Whenever there's firewood out there, I got these dogs to haul it.

I'm not sure what I'll encounter out there.

There's a been a lot of snow, it hasn't been very cold.

You don't really know what's underneath the snow.

Hike.

Hike!

Get up, get up, get up, get out of there, get up, come on.

Go, come on, go, straight ahead, straight ahead.

Straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead.

Gee, gee!

Gee! Hup!

It's breaking through the whole way across,

and I just try to keep moving once I hit thin ice.

Which is an essential skill as a musher.

The minute you slow down is when you're going to go right straight through.

You know, your team's going to get hurt

and you're gonna be stuck out in the middle of a lake, swimming through it.

There you go. Straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead, gentlemen.

Good, gee, gee, gee. Easy now.

I see some bigger trees back there.

Hope they're dry.

Ho, ho, ho.

Stay, stay.

Please stay.

This looks like a good spot to stop.

-Good boys. -(DOGS WHINING)

This is nice and kind of good, dry ground.

It looks like it's out of those deep lakes,

and don't have to deal with that no more.

This is nice dry wood.

Can hear it.

(STARTING CHAINSAW)

(CHAINSAW BUZZING)

This will burn nice and be light to haul back.

My goal will to always be to have a cord of wood outside of my cabin.

'Cause every morning, you wake up, firewood's going in the stove.

To keep it going every night when you go to bed,

you got to load it up, so that the cabin stays warm and dry.

But also, if I get hurt or sick,

I need to be able to have a month's worth of wood.

I might come back freezing cold, wet.

I never know when I'm gonna come back here,

like, and I have to be prepared to get that cabin warm very fast.

You know, I don't have insurance.

So, my insurance is having wood, water and good food to eat,

and living a clean, simple lifestyle.

You know, when I do all this work to provide for myself up here,

it's a good feeling to be self-sufficient.

(CHAINSAW BUZZING)

And that's a good load of wood.

Daylight runs away from you

way quicker than you think it's going to, that's for sure.

To have a good stack of wood outside my door could really save my ass in bad conditions.

All right. Ready, gentlemen?

All right, straight ahead.

Gee, gee, gee. Straight ahead, gee, gee.

Good.

I'll just stay on the main trail.

No more adventures and count ourselves lucky that got a load of wood

and didn't get too wet.

CHIP: My kids have a real well-rounded life.

They can go off into the primitive,

and walk through the door back into the civilised.

-You ladies ready? -AGNES: Yep.

NARRATOR: Chip and Agnes have set trap lines

for the Tiktaalik fish in the shallows of the river.

With the ice not yet thick enough for long-distance travel,

catching fish in these local traps

would help build up the Hailstones' food supply for dark winter.

CHIP: Well, when we were out here last night, it was about two inches thick.

We've had a really cold spell last night and today.

AGNES: Minus 20. CHIP: Might make it a lot thicker.

Couple more days of minus 20 and we'll be able to ride on the ice.

CHIP: Well, these are set lines

and we call them traps around here

because they're actually hunting while we sleep and do other things.

AGNES: Come on, Tiktaalik.

Aw, no fish.

-Least the bait's still there. -Yep.

Got to put the bait back in the hole and try again.

CHIP: Back in the hole.

AGNES: Come on, fish.

-Look like you got the whole hook. -Darn.

CHIP: This doesn't weigh like nothing.

-Yep, no wonder. -Ah, no fish.

CHIP: I want to pick one up that's heavy.

AGNES: Darn, we got one more trap to check, and no fish.

They've only been out for a night. That's nothing.

There's never once been a day in my life

where I've thrown a rod or hook in and caught something every cast.

AGNES: Hopefully, this is the one!

Maybe it's got something. Maybe it don't.

Only one way to find out.

AGNES: Aw, come on, fish.

AGNES: Ugh.

CHIP: Oh, well. That's fishing.

This takes an hour out of our day,

and they've only been in there for what, 24 hours now?

-AGNES: Yep. -I bet you by tomorrow, if those two got robbed,

we just might end up having a couple more fish to try it again.

We'll go tell everybody, no Tiktaalik tonight.

GLENN: There's a lot of different ways to live on this earth.

There's seven billion people on this planet

and they're not all doing the same thing.

This is what I'm doing.

Porcupine spend a lot of time in trees.

NARRATOR: While on the hunt for caribou,

Glenn has discovered porcupine tracks.

Living in the sparse wilderness of the Brooks Range,

he must take advantage of any opportunity

for meat and protein that crosses his path.

GLENN: When they come down to the ground to travel,

sometimes they don't travel very far.

Look, the porcupine tracks, they went right up here.

It's not too far ahead. This is a fresh track.

Hey, look! There he is, right there. Right in that tree.

Porcupines, when they're getting chased,

they like to take to the trees.

I can't shoot him with this rifle though.

This thing would make porcupine soup out of that porcupine.

This is for shooting big animals like caribou and moose.

I don't have a smaller gun with me today.

I'm gonna have to cut the tree.

You get a little higher,

you got to think about which way I want to drop that tree.

If he goes over into that,

there's a real good chance he'll get away under that brush there,

I won't be able to get to him.

If I make the tree fall this way,

he'll be out in the open.

I got a much better chance of catching him.

I put a little notch here to help guide this tree down the way I want it to go.

There, I got the notch. That will direct the tree where I want it to go.

It's going!

There he goes!

(GROANS) Got him!

If a porcupine falls out of a tree and lands on your head,

that's what your head could look like.

Full of quills.

Porcupine are very good eating.

One of the tastier animals out here.

I'm a long way from home.

I'm not gonna bring him back whole.

I got to butcher him right here,

and it's getting dark, so I better get on it.

I'm gonna start by skinning this porcupine.

Get the skin off without getting any quills in me and I'll be happy.

Look at that fat.

Fat's hard to find out here.

A lot of animals out in this country are real lean.

It's hard to get enough fat off the land a lot of times.

But porcupines are one good source of fat.

This will be tasty.

Cut the head off. Here we go.

There.

Cut the hide off, didn't get any quills in me.

Now I just got to get the guts out.

It's interesting how one thing leads to the next out here.

So often the case, I'll head out thinking that I'm looking for one thing,

but along the way, I find something else.

Can't be too choosy and I really like eating porcupine,

so I'm real happy even though I didn't find any caribou today.

That's the way it goes. It keeps life interesting.

Time to get back to camp.

Go home and cook up some porcupine.

JESSIE: My story's just different.

I'm just a purist, I really like it simple.

(DOGS HOWLING AND BARKING)

(JESSIE SPEAKING)

NARRATOR: In order to avoid a catastrophic fall through the ice,

Jessie and his dogs were forced to push his sled to the limit.

Making repairs before the onslaught of winter is crucial.

JESSIE: The sled that I'm hauling wood here in,

handlebar's completely broken off of now.

Just not a strong side structure.

But very good runners,

so that's why I wanna take a little time here and rebuild this.

I just have to go look around, scavenge stuff out of my sled graveyard,

and do what I can do to get this thing going down and hauling some wood better.

So I'm gonna leave this back stanchion.

This is what we call a stanchion, right here.

This is the upright part of the sled and there's three, four,

depends on the design of the sled.

But I'm gonna remove these stanchions

because they're not that great a wood, and they're breaking.

You can see right here, that's broke already.

And I need to haul a lot of stuff in this,

so I need to rebuild this to where it's gonna hold my load well.

Not flex so much.

Winter is just beginning for me and the work's just starting,

so this is just the next project on my list,

which is followed by a hundred projects.

But I learnt how to fix sleds because I don't have a lot of money

to buy things that are new and built.

So I've got myself two sturdy stanchions added to this.

I'm gonna try to put some sides on it that are out of plywood.

Everything out here, it's rough on things,

and you have to constantly maintain things

and be able to fix them yourself.

Brr!

I'm trying to get done before it gets dark.

Finish it up.

Yeah, that's making it nice and stable.

It's gonna be great for hauling wood.

A lot better than it was before,

and it already was hauling a lot of wood.

Now I just got to bring it inside,

thaw it out, and get ready for tomorrow.

SUE: This is not a lifestyle you just wander into.

It is a committed decision to excel and overachieve.

What I'm doing now is I have two coolers in there

and I want to start refilling them with snow so that they melt.

There's always chores to do.

When you're living remote and you're in this kind of a climate,

things have to get done.

There's nobody here but me to do 'em.

This is not the densest snow, so I'm not gonna get a lot of water value out of it.

(PTARMIGANS SQUAWKING)

I'm listening. There it is.

I got ptarmigans.

I got ptarmigans here and there.

This is an important chore, but that's getting fresh meat.

So this is gonna go back and wait

and I'm gonna get ready and see if I can't nail me a ptarmigan.

Anytime you're doing a chore and the opportunity presents itself,

I've got to try.

(PTARMIGANS SQUAWKING)

(WHISPERING) See, they laugh at you.

I've got exactly one, two, three bullets left for this rifle for birds.

I'm gonna try to, very quietly, as I can on the snow,

choose my path

and get close enough to try and shoot him.

I've got three chances. Let's hope I get him.

I think I might be S-O...

Little late to the party, aren't you?

You're supposed to be helping me.

Oh, I think he spotted him.

(PTARMIGAN SQUAWKING)

Damn, he's going too far.

(GUNSHOT)

Get him.

(PTARMIGAN SQUAWKING)

Go get him!

Now Slinky is there, the bird is there.

I may be able to get a little closer.

But I've only got two bullets left.

(GUNSHOT)

(PTARMIGAN SQUAWKING)

(GUNSHOT)

Nope.

(SIGHS) That's it.

And there they go.

Just piss-poor planning that I've got plenty of protection bullets,

but not a lot of hunting bullets. There's a big difference.

Come on, Slink.

This little bit of fun doesn't stop the fact that I got chores to do.

Come on, my little sled.

Yay.

This is really the first chore I started out with today,

but the last chore that I'm finishing.

I'm trying to get more snow in so I can make more water.

This frozen snow

is going to turn into water that I can drink, cook and clean myself with.

The ptarmigan that I almost got...

(CHUCKLING)

...would have fed me and given me personal energy and fuel.

Um, instead,

I got to work off a little bit of the extra booty.

The other thing I do like, it is pretty cold outside.

While I did not manage to get myself a ptarmigan,

this is my little version

of a little Sue cream.

All's I do is I take the snow,

put in a little bit of the milk,

a little bit of flavour,

and look at that.

I got strawberry snow cream.

As much as a person living in the city may want to live close to the store,

close to schools for their children,

close to a way to get to and from their jobs,

I'm doing the same thing.

I'm living close to my store called a ptarmigan,

near the river and the snow for my water

and open up the door, that sun beaking me in the eye sockets is gonna give me power.

There you go.

It's pretty friggin' awesome.

JESSIE: I don't think you can break the bond

between the dogs and the driver, if it's strong.

All right, I got my sled done now.

It's ready to haul some pretty good-sized loads of wood.

It's a lot better than it was before.

But now I got to put it to use here.

This is the wood that I got two days ago,

so I made it two days of cooking dog food and keeping my house warm.

So it's a beautiful day, it's warmed up a little bit,

so this is a perfect day to be doing this and working.

Try my new sled out.

I'm gonna bust a trail through there and come out with a load of wood,

and then I'll have a trail in there.

Hike!

All right, a gee and a holler and yippee-ta-yay,

out of the chute and on our way.

Good, straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead.

Gee!

Need to get a trail in there now with the snow the way it is

before it gets deeper and colder.

It's easier on the dogs to break this trail in now,

and I need to access this all winter if I run out of wood.

Whoa! Gee.

I see lots of wood.

One thing's for sure, you don't need outside motivation or anything

to get wood because it's an environmental motivation here.

It only gets colder in Alaska in the winter so, having the wood, man,

you're pretty motivated to get it.

This is called mapping out your winter.

You just got to be willing to go out and work for it.

Take advantage of when you're healthy and everything's going great

and put a big, large effort into getting some wood.

You never know what's gonna happen.

So this is just another day at the office for me.

Straight ahead. Hike, hike, hike, hike. Straight ahead.

Good way to warm up for the day.

I'll be nice and warmed up now after a few hours of splitting wood.

Good workout.

Good bunch of wood, good training on the dogs.

It's the simple things out here in life that matter.

That's why I work so hard doing this

is because the reward is out there for me.

The reason I live this lifestyle

is for the adventure and the joy of training the dogs out in the wilderness.

Now this cabin looks like an Alaskan cabin, you know?

With a good wood pile out in front of it.

CHIP: In this culture, fresh food is always in demand,

it's always what's going on.

So what we do is we hunt, and we fish, and we gather.

NARRATOR: With the ice thickening,

the Hailstones' window to harvest Tiktaalik in the shallows

is quickly coming to a close.

CHIP: Same old, same old.

(QUTAN SPEAKING)

CHIP: Because when we set these,

the middle of the river wasn't frozen.

So we set these on the ice we could stand on.

Now the whole river's frozen, we can go where the fish are, take these out.

AGNES: Aw, man! CHIP: That one's gone.

(AGNES SPEAKING)

CHIP: What's happening is the ice is getting thicker.

So the shallowness is progressing more and more

and pretty soon, it's gonna be frozen right down to that sandbar.

In two days, this ice has thickened at least four inches.

AGNES: Well, we ain't had a fish yet, we're just checking our traps,

so, um, hopefully, we'll catch a Tiktaalik soon.

We have a few more traps to go.

Come on, fish!

Aw, man!

Hopefully, we'll catch two fish.

We have two traps left.

Come on, Tiktaalik.

CHIP: There's something there.

AGNES: Oh, my goodness!

(LAUGHING) Look at that!

Wow! Yee, Tiktaalik!

Well, it took a few days, but we have one.

This is our fourth trap and we have one trap left to go.

CHIP: It's a dead one though. The dogs will eat it.

Dog got to eat.

Any fish that's dead in our net or on our line,

we just classify as dog food because our dogs have to eat.

It's kind of like finding a dead caribou.

You don't know what killed it, you don't eat it.

What we need is fresh meat, not dead on the line,

like, from drifting there or being sick or smogged out.

AGNES: Let's go check the other one.

Hopefully, the other one will be alive. Let's go see.

Right on, Qutan, thank you.

CHIP: For now, I'm really happy I got something for my dogs

to get them through the next couple days,

and we just keep on fishing.

-Here's another fish. -AGNES: Ooh!

-Another Tiktaalik! -CHIP: No, not alive.

Bummer.

We used this type of fishing because we couldn't cross the river.

But now the river's frozen solid and we can go anywhere.

We can go where the fish are and carry on.

You know what, kids? We had a really bad whitefish season

because of this late freeze-up.

And the dogs got to eat.

So when you get dead fish, you feed 'em to dogs.

If these fish were alive and squirming, we'd keep 'em for ourselves.

So, not all is lost.

So we should be happy that our dogs will eat good.

This is some of the best food there is for 'em.

This ice is so thick, it's frozen solid out there, we can travel now.

The time for doing this is over.

I made myself a new tuk, which is an ice chisel that we use to get through the ice.

Since we've been down here checking Tiktaalik traps

and using that chisel and opening up these holes every day,

we've been able to check the progress of the ice.

Now the ice is thick enough all the way across the river,

we can go to where the fish are instead of trying to bait the fish to where we are.

So I think fishing's gonna get better.

I'm pretty happy with this tuk and I'm gonna be using it a lot,

because it's an ice tool in the land of ice and snow.

-Shall we go home? -AGNES: Yep.

CHIP: The worst day of fishing is better than the best day at work.

We just keep on fishing.

GLENN: I've always got a lot more to do than I have time to.

Not necessarily just work that has to be done,

but things I want to see, things I want to learn about.

Didn't find any caribou out there, but I was lucky enough to get a porcupine.

I've eaten muskrats, I've eaten squirrels,

but if I'm gonna eat a rodent, there's nothing better than a porcupine.

Because of this. Fat!

Fat's hard to come by.

A lot of animals out here are really lean,

but this porcupine, as you can see,

he's got a good layer of fat on him.

Fat has more calories than protein or carbohydrates,

and you need a lot of calories to stay warm.

It takes energy.

That's why porcupine is a special food for me out here.

Look at that. I got a front leg, I got a back leg,

and plenty of fat to go with that meat.

That's what I'm having for dinner tonight, porcupine.

Everybody has to decide how they want to live,

where they want to get their food.

This is just the way I choose to do it, because I enjoy it.

I enjoy living out here, I enjoy the lifestyle.

I feel more connected to my surroundings.

I don't think this is for everybody.

But I think, unfortunately, there are a lot of people

that aren't doing what they love to do,

and that's too bad to let life go by

and not do what you really want to do.

If you really wanna do something, you ought to get out and do it.

This is what I want to do, so this is what I did.

I bet it's just about done.

Oh, yeah. That looks delicious!

Look at that porcupine. Mmm, does that smell good.

Look at that.

Full moon, what a night to eat out.

I eat mostly moose, and then caribou comes next,

but once in a while, I come across something like a porcupine,

get a little variety.

That's porcupine fat. It's good stuff.

Mmm. Mmm.

That's the best part right there.

It is a little sprucey.

He's been feeding on spruce bark lately.

Connects me to the forest around here.

The food tastes a little bit like the area.

You can't just go to the store up here and say,

"Hey, tonight I want to eat pork chops."

You got to go out and see what nature's got to offer you to eat.

Today it offered me porcupine.

A lot of times, I don't know what the day's gonna bring.

That's what makes life interesting.

You never know what today's gonna bring.

You never know exactly what you're gonna be eating for dinner either.

What a night.

It's beautiful out here.