Original subtitles

-[ominous music] -[Sue panting]

[Sue panting]

[deer honking]

[gun blasting]

[dramatic music]

[gun blasting]

[suspenseful music]

I nailed it.

I heard the thump, followed it up, and he went down,

and there he sits.

So, I've got some meat.

But I'm chasing the light too.

I am losing light now for the next several months.

The sun set on that caribou's life

and I'm ever grateful and my little heart to his.

But the sun's going down on winter here.

And that's some serious stuff.

Had I not gotten this bad boy today,

I'd be hunting with a flashlight strapped to my gun.

It's no fun being out here not having any good meat.

So I'm gonna start skinning and gathering the meat,

and setting it aside, toss it in Little Red,

and getting out of here.

[ominous music]

[Narrator] The Arctic will soon be overtaken

by a cruel darkness that will last for several weeks.

After harvesting a caribou,

Sue Aikens must butcher the animal

and take the meat back to the safety of Kavik

before the sun disappears and dark winter begins.

You know, I've got to get this job done.

The predators are out there and they're gonna smell it,

they're gonna notice it.

If I take too long, they're gonna circle my waggon.

And I'll be on the menu.

Rules of the game,

when you take something like this to preserve life,

you do not keep anything for trophy value.

You're gathering meat.

Hide has to stay, rack has to stay.

But this wind is gonna blow all this blood scent this way

and the wolves are gonna smell it.

The bears that haven't denned up yet are gonna smell it.

I'm close to camp.

Probably, I'm gonna start putting up

some of my game cams now.

I wanna see what's in my area.

Darkness is upon me now,

and it's like the underworld takes over.

The predators take the upper paw.

They have control of the Arctic.

The brutal side of nature takes charge.

[tense music]

[vehicle whirring]

The hell is that?

[dramatic music]

What I see up ahead of me is a wolverine.

And a wolverine can take on a bear.

They are apex predators.

I definitely see one wolverine out that way.

The darker it gets, the nastier it gets.

That's when they shine.

They are designed to be at their best

when the weather's at its worst.

And this is just the beginning of the worst.

Let's see.

This is his paw print.

He is a big male.

[snow crunching]

Man, they're just destroying it as quick as they can.

And I know that male is...

He didn't run off. He's just hunkering.

They've got no problems waiting and waiting and waiting.

And that's what makes 'em top predators.

I'll make him a bargain.

You stay out here, I'll let you have it.

You step onto my premises, all bets are off,

I'll lock and load, and we'll dance.

They have the patience of a saint

and the constitution of the devil himself.

[suspenseful music]

I like just the different seasons.

Nothing's ever the same. It's always changing.

There's always a challenge to it all.

There's always a comfort to it all.

[ominous music]

[vehicle whirring]

This is a time of year

where the Tiktaalik are kind of going by,

so we have a chance of catching one or two.

They're usually a pretty big fish, so. It's worth doing.

We get a couple hours of sun

about an inch above the horizon.

Then we've got another hour of dusk.

Then we're back to black.

But that's all right. We just do stuff in the dark.

This time of the year, the sun barely comes up.

It's always dark. I was raised up here.

I'm used to the dark, and we just carry on.

There's a spot across the river where there's a lake

and it has a slough that comes out into our main river.

That's usually the target place where we go put our traps

or we go jig for any kinds of fish under the ice.

[Chip] Yank out the auger and drill holes.

[dramatic music]

It's a time of year where it's cold right now,

which is really good, it's making our ice thick and safe.

[drill whirring]

I've seen people for the last 30 years

having success right over here at the mouth of this creek,

so I fish here too.

That's when you let traps do your hunting for you

'cause you can't see anything.

The day is pitch-dark.

My idea of fishing is to catch lots,

so I'll put lots of holes in the ice.

[Agnes] That was quick.

[Chip] It's an auger for you.

[Agnes] How many holes?

-Eight. -Eight.

I got eight to leave behind and two jiggers to take home.

We can just bait 'em up with whitefish right now.

Now that the river's frozen,

we're all able to go across it and travel.

First thing I like to do is go fishing.

I am making bait out of a whitefish.

Right now, I just wanna be able to leave those

down in the water and be able to leave

and maybe come back in a couple hours

and check out what I leave behind, you know.

See if there's anything on 'em.

[Agnes] There should be all kinds of fish under there.

Hopefully there will be a lot enough for dinner.

Even just a little taste is good.

[dramatic music]

What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger.

Good practise, get knocked down,

get right back up again and get back to work.

[tense music]

Chee, chee, chee. Chee, chee.

[dogs barking]

Just got the dogs out for a good run.

We're about to start working on my cabin.

It's kind of been getting put off a long time.

Had a lot of other stuff on the plate

but the tent's kind of becoming undesirable to live in

and winter has extremely set in here.

Winter's long but the daylight's short.

And it's been some 20, 25 below temperatures

and now the temperatures are really starting to drop.

Nothing like some deep cold to get some urgency.

Started this cabin before the snow started flying.

I've got everything sealed in.

I got a solid roof on it, solid foundation, solid walls.

But what I need to do right now is get the roof insulated.

The daylight's about to be gone.

Limited daylight is about four hours.

If I work four hours a day, nothing's gonna get done.

So, I mean, I could be cutting wood at 3:00 in the morning.

Running dogs 3:00 in the morning.

Building the cabin at 3:00 in the morning.

Whatever it takes.

[saw whirring]

You're getting this cabin built just in time.

The cold's really starting to move in here.

[saw whirring]

Got the first sheet cut here.

This is one of those things it would be real nice

to have a second hand with

but this is where years of handling plywood

comes into play.

This is gonna be the part that's not very fun.

[tense music continues]

[nail gun clunks]

Whew. Thank God I got some purchase on that one.

-[nail gun clunks] -[gentle music]

Whenever I was 20 years old, living in a tent,

all winter was nothing.

But I'm not 20 years old anymore.

I don't recover, I don't bounce back as quick.

A person needs to feel human.

They need a place to have their own. Be dry, be warm.

Keep all their most important things out of the weather.

[nail gun clunking]

Feels good to get some momentum back into this project.

The hardest thing is to get going sometimes.

If you're gonna be efficient and effective out here,

you had to figure out ways

of killing two birds with one stone.

You gotta think multidimensional.

Okay. I got most of my plywood up on the ceiling.

This area I need to leave open

'cause I'm gonna start setting my stove up here.

This is kind of the exciting part.

[hammer thudding]

I'm really looking forward

to getting this wood stove in here

'cause then I can get myself a source of heat.

I mean, I've been living in a tent all winter.

I'm out here working in the cold all night

because I wanna get this done.

Get this cabin good enough

that I can start moving my stuff in it tonight.

[suspenseful music]

[gentle music]

[Ricko] A lot of people think of dark as nighttime,

but out here in Alaska, it's dark like 21 hours a day, so.

As long as I'm ready, I can capitalise on it.

[ominous music]

I want these gas lamps

to set up a nice, safe work environment.

Got a bunch of rope here.

The rope is key to getting that first pull under the ice.

[Narrator] For Ricko Dewilde,

harvesting food this time of the year is crucial.

He will travel to a nearby river

to try his hand at ice fishing.

If he's to survive dark winter,

he must rely on the knowledge he's gained

from a lifetime in the Huslia wild.

Out here, we have about three to 3 1/2 hours of daylight,

and that's it.

It's the middle of the day right now,

4:00 in the afternoon but it's pitch-black.

If you can't work in the dark,

you can't survive out here, so.

I'm gonna get out here and look for a nice spot

to put a fishnet in near the ice, get in some work,

and hopefully bring home some fish.

I got all my supplies in the toboggan, tied down.

So I'm ready to go get this net in.

[suspenseful music]

When I dream, I dream about my childhood a lot.

When I'm driving through the area,

all those dreams just come flooding back to me.

I'm going through trails where I used to run through

and play in and hang out with my late brothers

and late sisters that passed on,

it's like all that just comes back to me.

It's really emotional for me when I go through this area.

I just have tremendous respect for the siblings I lost,

very surreal feeling.

It's like I'm driving through a dream.

What I'm looking at as I'm driving up,

I'm seeing these mink trails

and that always means open water.

So when I see something like this,

I've gotta be real careful.

I'm gonna get my ice pick out and I'm gonna walk

and just poke everywhere I go so I don't pull up on it

because basically, if I go in the river here,

I'll lose my snow machine, I'll lose my life.

The current is flowing on this river.

There's a slough here that's keeping it open.

And this is what can kill you

out here in Alaska is the environment.

No matter how strong I feel like I am,

no matter how powerful my machine,

this river is 1,000 times stronger than me

and it'll take me in an instant.

[tense music]

Just gonna take my time. Poke away at this.

[ice crunching]

Gotta be real careful, make sure there's no soft spots

because I'm here to fish, not get fished out of this river.

I'll try right here for a fishnet.

Okay. I know it's safe.

I go walk back over where I went, get my snow machine,

and pull up with all my equipment.

The last time I put a fishnet under the ice,

I had my kids helping me

and today, I'm gonna be doing it by myself in the dark

so it's gonna be a lot harder.

I got to first shovel off all the spots

that I wanna cut holes in the ice at.

Then I gotta cut the holes in the ice,

get the ice chunks out of the holes,

thread a string underneath this ice by going hole-to-hole.

It's a lot of work to put this fishnet under the ice

this time of the year.

There's about two feet of ice, so.

Once the job is complete,

that's gonna be a big satisfaction for me.

What I wanna do is put up like three tripods,

hang some gas lamps so I'm not totally dependent

on my headlight.

They say duct tape is something everybody use,

but I think baling wire takes the cake out here in Alaska.

Can use it for so many different things.

I'd say right here looks good.

Come on, baby.

Oh, yeah. There we go.

[majestic music]

The reason I choose this location to fish

is it's the same place my late mom brought me

when I was a kid to fish.

And we got a lot of fish out here growing up.

As a kid growing up out here, we didn't have a money system.

So putting money in our hand wasn't like a form of maturity

or what you're striving for.

Being able to bring fish home was a big deal

when I was a kid.

If we're able to harvest something on the land,

that was kind of a rite of passage

to maturing in a good way out here, so.

Hopefully I'm gonna get this net under this ice

and bring some fish home.

Okay. Now that I got some light, it's time to go to work.

[suspenseful music]

[Jessie] My dogs come first.

Everything I do is about my dogs.

Living in a harsher environment

is just gonna bring out the best in me and the dogs.

[ominous music]

[metal clangs]

All right. That's approximately where the stove's gonna go.

I'm gonna gather up my stovepipe,

put my insulated stove jack in here.

Get some stovepipe in,

get a fire in this stove and get warm.

[Narrator] Jessie is finishing the interior of his cabin

so he can have shelter from the extreme cold of dark winter.

To provide his cabin with heat,

Jessie must get the stove working.

But installing the pipe through the cabin's roof

will be a daunting task in total darkness

and freezing conditions.

Time to get my insulated piece of pipe

to go through the roof, so I don't catch the roof on fire.

The main thing you gotta do

when you're putting your stovepipe through

is not screw up your roof.

You know, I went through a lot of trouble

to make sure this roof looks nice

around the top and on the bottom,

so all that has to be, you know, accurately done.

And there's a lot of safety issues.

You gotta have an insulated piece

to keep your roof from lighting on fire.

On top of that, I got to go get up on an icy snowy roof

at 30 below zero to put it all together.

All right. I got that in.

Head down, start putting the stovepipe together.

Happy to get off this damn roof in the dark.

It's slippery and icy.

[suspenseful music]

All right. That looks like that'll work.

It ain't the prettiest thing.

I got to do a little bit of trimming around there,

but that doesn't mean nothing to me.

I'm ready right now to put my stovepipe together,

put it through the roof, get a fire going in here.

Get this door closed in, I'll be holding heat.

I built this cabin from the ground up by myself, you know.

I've done every single aspect of it by myself

and that's just how it is out here, you know.

It's, I got to get it done.

You just can't think about, "Oh, today. Nine to five.

"Sun up to sundown."

You gotta say, "There's 24 hours in a day.

"How can I best use those?"

All right. Yeah.

Put one more piece together.

One last trip up on the roof.

[gentle music]

This is a big moment.

Three months of living in the tent out here.

Making every sacrifice I could to make this happen.

This got put on the backburner for a long time

but, man, I am excited to get this done.

All right. I got this piece in.

Go get a fire started.

[fire whooshing]

Got a real nice fire going in here.

Gonna kick me out some heat.

At least I'm not gonna have to work

with frozen hands so much anymore.

I can warm up here.

Oh, that feels so good.

All this plywood up is starting to look like a home in here.

I just need a door

and I'll be able to hold this heat and start moving in.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

[tense music]

[Chip] We take our kids along with us out in the country.

They don't just get stuck in the school frame of mind

and told what we do, they participate.

[ominous music]

These holes are freezing fast

between the time that we've left and got back here.

[Agnes] Uh-huh.

[Chip] They probably froze a good couple inches.

[Agnes] Yup.

That one has no fish.

[Narrator] The Hailstones have travelled

to a nearby frozen river to fish under the ice.

They're hoping to catch Tiktaalik ,

a vital food source that's available

while they are unable to pursue other game

in the deadly night of dark winter.

[Chip] Yup. Hasn't touched it.

[Agnes] No fish. One more hole.

-Where? -Behind you.

My lucky fishing hole.

[suspenseful music]

This time of the year, when you can't catch caribou,

or ptarmigan, or rabbits, or stuff like that,

you can always turn to fishing.

-What is it? -Woo!

There's a fish under here!

Oh, it's a Tiktaalik .

-Tiktaalik . -Wow. Right on.

[vehicle engine revving]

[Chip] That's Idi-bitty.

[Agnes] I hear Wade Kelly.

Hi, grandson!

[Iriqtaq] We're just out for a ride.

They said you guys were down here

so we thought we'd go say hi.

[Wade] You got a big fish?

[Chip] I got a big fish.

-Ah! -Don't fall in the hole.

[Wade] Oh.

He's pretty much into everything.

Typical three-year-old boy, likes to help a lot.

As long as you explain something to him

and show him how to do it, he really gets the hang of it.

-That was- -I got it.

Where are you going?

You can't just run, there's holes all over.

[Wade] I'm going to my mom.

[Agnes] Watch your step.

[Iriqtaq] Yes. Be careful when you walk with that.

-Be careful. -Yeah. It's sharp.

It's got a hook.

[Wade] That fish never swim away.

[Chip] No, it's just a baitfish. Come on.

Let's put it back in the water.

[Wade] Yeah. I'll do it myself.

[Chip] I got it.

[Wade] That will be better.

[Chip] I've got it.

[Wade] Want to, I want to, please.

Oh.

Damn, Wade.

-[suspenseful music] -[Wade groans]

Well, I guess you're going home, Wade.

Well, the little guy stuck his foot in a hole.

I mean, it's only like six inches around,

so the whole boy wasn't going down that hole for damn sure.

You go warm-up, now.

-Yeah. -Go dry your stuff off, bud.

[Iriqtaq] You're cold already?

[Wade] Yeah.

It's a good thing that was a small hole

because if it weren't, he could have fall through

and never know where he could have gone.

He could have been fish bait himself.

[vehicle engine revving]

[Chip] Poor little guy,

first time I ever see somebody do that.

Boom, slide his foot right in

just like he did the splits almost.

[Agnes] [chuckles] Yeah. Scare you?

Ah, yeah, a little bit.

But I grabbed him fast, so it was all right.

I'm glad he had another little fishing experience.

-It's good. -[laughs] Yeah.

Yeah. He won't forget that.

I was happy he got to see the Tiktaalik I pulled out.

You can see that's gonna be

another generation of fishing there.

I'm still gonna make him hunt though. [laughs]

Yup.

[suspenseful music]

[Sue] Learn your enemy.

Learn what they do, and then not use it against them,

but use it with them.

-[tense music] -[snow crunching]

Green eyes good, yellow eyes bad, so.

I'm looking right down here on predator row.

[Narrator] After seeing a wolverine in Kavik,

Sue is braving the tundra to set game cameras

that will monitor threats to her camp.

But shrouded by darkness,

she must be ready to protect herself from predators

at any moment, and at all costs.

I am by myself.

Darkness has fallen.

When darkness hits, the predators have the upper hand

and the tables are turned.

In a city, you're gonna throw up a fence

and put up a keep out sign.

I can't do that but I can go walk the boundary

and set up a camera, see who's running around.

You know, it's not all about,

"Oh, no. I'm gonna die, it's a predator." [sniffs]

It's also about, "Oh, no. Something else needs to die

"'cause I need to survive."

Whew!

We have a wolverine somewhere.

[suspenseful music]

Wolverine is part of the Mustelidae family, weasel family.

And they have a very strong odour

and I just got a big-ass woof of wolverine scent.

I'm seeing a lot of track.

So, I think somewhere up in here, get a camera set up.

A wolverine kind of drags their back legs a little bit.

A little bit longer track,

they have a heel and they undulate.

All right.

So it is set.

And then I don't need to be here

to get caught by the animal.

I need the camera to catch the animal.

If the animal's here, he's on his home turf.

If he's at the Twinkie, he's at mine.

You know, I have every right to defend my own turf.

But knowledge is power, man.

[gentle pensive music]

When I lose the light of the sun,

I get the light of the night.

The Northern Lights.

Anytime there's darkness,

this is what I have the potential to see.

As a child, one of the things I was very afraid of

and it's leaked into my adulthood is the dark.

But I always try to work on my fears,

and as a parent, if your child's afraid of the dark,

you get 'em a nightlight.

When I got to Alaska, Mother Nature gave it to me.

When it got dark and I got scared, the sky itself lit up.

You can't be afraid of the dark

when nature's lighting the way.

It's magic.

That not everybody gets to see.

And I feel incredibly grateful for it.

And it keeps me coming back for more.

[suspenseful music]

This Earth right here is a powerful planet.

If you don't respect it, it'll consume you.

There's no mercy for you.

[chainsaw whirring]

[tense music]

We live by the rivers out here and that's because of fish.

Fish is a huge staple of our diet out here,

and I'm gonna put a net in.

I'm hoping to get some whitefish and some pike.

There's a lot of tricks to this,

and if you do it wrong you could lose your net.

You could lose your life too if you get into a waterhole.

But it's really important that I'm able to do it

because that's number one staple out here is fish.

Woo!

Done with the chainsaw work.

[gentle pensive music]

[Narrator] Ricko is determined to harvest

a meal for himself by ice fishing.

After cutting through the ice, he will now set his fishnet,

a skill his family has used to survive in dark winter

for generations.

The hard work's done, but I'm got one more job to do

and that's basically get this pole, put it in this hole,

and string it across, and pull the pole out the other side.

Once I do that, I take the rope off

and I got a rope that strings from one end to the other.

Then I tie a net on one end of the rope,

and I pull that net under, tie it off,

and then my net's hanging under the ice.

Okay. I gotta tie this rope on.

Hopefully it don't come undone.

Okay. It's in the hole.

And what I want is for this pole to be in view down here.

I don't feel that pole, which is not a good thing.

[suspenseful music]

Could be hooked on some brush down there or something.

This water's kind of murky.

Oh, right there. I got it.

Now, what I'm gonna do is just feed it all the way across

to the next water hole.

I'm hoping to go straight across

but it's so hard to see where I'm going.

It's just easy for this pole

to be angled in a direction I don't understand.

Okay. Past that one.

[puffing] This is not as wide as the other one,

so this might be a tougher one.

It's hard to see at night too.

Fuck.

Nothing there.

[tense music]

So murky in there.

Okay. I got the string on this side.

There we go.

Just like that.

Okay. I got it.

Woo-hoo!

I'm so happy right now because there's a lot of work.

I was able to string this rope all the way across,

so the hard part is done.

Now I gotta string the net in, tie it off,

let it set overnight, and check it tomorrow.

[ominous music]

So tie it on, make sure it doesn't untie.

Paranoia gets the best of me sometimes.

Okay.

Let's get this net under the ice.

It's dark all the time out here,

so having that net sitting under the ice

while I'm doing other things is really important.

That's how we fish out here.

We're not big on fishing rods.

A lot of us don't even know

how to use a fishing rod properly out here.

We use fishnets.

We wanna set that net and forget it, and go do other chores.

It's cold. It's dark.

We got a lot of things to do out here.

Okay. The net's in.

I wanna tie it down below the surface of the ice,

so I'm just gonna tie it off here.

Wrap it around, right there.

I got the net strung out underneath the ice now.

I'm gonna turn these lamps off and head home.

Been a long day, hard work but it's worth it.

[dramatic music]

I'm obviously not in it for the comfort.

I'm in it for the experience.

And being out here,

this is the truest thing I've ever done for myself.

[tense music]

[tool scraping]

Getting my chain nice and sharpened up

before I cut out my door here,

that way I can have a nice clean cut.

I got a nice fire going now.

Get this door in and then I'll be able to keep this heat in

and I'll be able to move in.

It's been a battle living in the tent

for the last few months here, you know,

the last month, especially with the colder temperatures.

I mean, it's just difficult to live in a thin-walled tent.

Okay. I got my chainsaw sharpened.

Time to get my measurements, get this door in,

and then I'll be ready to move all my stuff in

and finally have a home out here in Brushkana.

[Narrator] To shield himself from dark winter's wrath,

Jessie is working to finish the interior of his new cabin.

He must now insert the front door to seal in the heat.

If he fails,

he'll be forced to spend another night in his tent,

unprotected from the freezing temperatures

of the long night.

Measure twice, cut once, you know?

This is the kind of thing

you want to go nice and smooth here.

37 1/2. 1/4 inch of play.

38 inches.

Okay. Take a look at this bottom.

[measure tape rattling]

82 1/4 and 38.

-[suspenseful music] -[generator whirring]

Beauty of building your own home

is that you get to custom design it the way you want to

and you think it out and picture it out, measure it out,

write it out, lay it out, and adjust it to your liking.

You don't just slap this door in there

and call it good, you know.

You have to build it a certain way.

You had to have a strong frame.

This cabin's gonna shrink.

The logs are gonna shrink and expand

as they settle in over the next couple years

and that can pinch your door.

You know, and this door needs to be in there perfect,

perfectly square.

Some gaps on each end of it that I'm gonna foam in

that are gonna allow it to have some cushion

whenever these logs start shifting.

-[dramatic music] -[chainsaw chugging]

[chainsaw whirring]

Ah, fuck!

Ah, there's a spike right there.

[tense music]

[chainsaw whirring]

I'm getting close to having my door in

but I miscalculated where some of the spikes were,

hitting them with a chainsaw,

so now I gotta cut them with a Sawzall.

There are certain challenges but you just keep

coming up with solutions for those challenges.

My fingers are burning.

But that's just what I gotta do to get this job done.

I'm beat. Been working all night.

It's getting close to 6:00 in the morning.

I'm gonna get this door in here, load this stove up,

go get my bed in here, and hang out with my dogs.

[gentle music]

This tent has done me really well,

but it's also a struggle to live in there

and it's been hard, you know.

And so, I'm really excited to make my life easier

so I can accomplish more.

[vehicle engine revving]

This tent has toughened me up

and moulded me more to this landscape, that's for sure.

I didn't come out here to live in a tent.

I come out here to make this my home

and for me to be successful out here,

I need a place to able to recuperate and rest

and keep all my most important things out of the weather.

You ready? Ready?

All right.

Moving out here at first, I ain't gonna lie,

it has kind of freaked me out, you know.

It freaked the dogs out.

It was all new and it's wild out here

and we didn't really have anything

but a hard road ahead of us.

It was always my dream to have my own cabin

and stop living in shacks and tents

and being transient and moving all over the place, you know?

Now I found my place.

This is it.

The nicest thing I've ever had in my life.

[Chip] Darkness never gets to me.

Neither does 24-hour sunlight.

Just part of being here.

[suspenseful music]

[stick pounding]

When fishing time comes,

we try all kinds of technique.

Chip has all those hooks, fishing bait he's setting under

and I'm at the very bottom where the current is.

I was hoping I'd catch a fish.

Oh, I got one!

I got one, I got one, I got one!

Woo!

[laughs] Oh, wow.

We caught a sheefish. It's real exciting.

It's nice to see there's more than one type of fish

this time of the year also.

It's always nice to have fresh fish once in a while.

[Chip] Oh, the kids will love it.

Yeah.

Here comes a snow machine.

[Chip] It's a very close fishing hole.

We have the river right there,

so what usually happens is the kids coming down.

[Agnes] Well, hello there.

-Hello. -You're just in time

for our new friend, the sheefish.

-Sheefish, awesome. -Yeah.

[Chip] If you guys want,

I opened up all the traps I've got over here.

And you can jig with them, if you want. It's up to you.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

[dramatic majestic music]

[Agnes] It's real good to be able to rely on a river

for fresh food this time of the year.

And it's always just good to have your family around

so you can have a really good bonding.

We've been fishing so long.

The ones we aren't hooking at are freezing already.

It's like five o'clock right now.

It feels like dinner time.

We should just eat that while it's fresh.

[Agnes] Yup

So we ended up with one Tiktaalik and one sheefish.

[Chip] You guys are ready?

[Agnes] It's always nice to have fresh fish for dinner.

[tense music]

As the elders would say, everything has a spirit.

Everything took care of our people over thousands of years.

-[suspenseful music] -[wind whistling]

It's about 10 below out right now.

My net's been soaking for a while.

I wanna get these lamps lit.

Chop open the two holes, pull the net out,

and hopefully have some fish.

As long as the net hasn't frozen to the ice,

checking the net should be a lot easier than putting it in.

[gentle suspenseful music]

I got to pull this pole up.

[groaning] There's where it's tied off.

Just to free the net,

then I could pull it out the other side.

I gotta do it right away

before that net sinks down too much. [exhaling]

It's cold though.

Feels a little heavy, but I think my hopes are just heavy.

Yeah. I ain't seen nothing yet.

That don't look too promising.

Nothing.

No fish.

Kind of disappointing for all the work I did. [puffing]

[gentle music]

Just how it goes out here.

Nothing is promised.

It's not the first time I failed at putting the net in

and had to try again.

[fire crackling]

The hard work was getting my fishnet under the ice.

And now that I have the fishnet under the ice, can relax,

enjoy a little meal, warm up.

Muktuk is the fat and skin of the whale.

Whenever I eat muktuk, I don't get cold.

Natural body heat right here.

It might be what people call modern-day

but out here in rural Alaska, we still need stuff

that we depended on for thousands of years.

To me, it feels like a victory

just to be able to accomplish what I did today.

It's frozen dark cold Alaska,

but there's good food under the ice.

You try and you fail, you must try and try again.

Don't give up.

[ominous music]

Sometimes I'm the predator

and you betcha sometimes I'm the prey.

[gentle tense music]

I've got my game cams.

Brought them in a little bit ago.

I'm really interested to see this

'cause I saw the wolverine.

What have I got here?

I have got mister wolverine.

He's digging out at that carcass.

Oh, wow.

There's two of them.

The game cams paid off today.

It's exactly what I wanted to see.

These winter predators, boy, they wait for the dark.

They wait for the shadows 'cause that's when they shine.

And I'm just gonna extend my light a little bit

and say, "Mm-mm-mm. Not in Susie's zone here."

[suspenseful music]

I wanna set up my barrels and light up my property line.

I wanna light up camp and say, "Hey, Uh-uh.

"No trespassing."

I don't want them in camp.

[digger engine whirring]

This is a back portion of camp.

In the dead of winter, dark time,

it doesn't get checked as often.

I don't come back here for much as often.

So it's a popular area to kind of cut corners.

So I want this heavily-protected.

Come on.

There you go.

Stay lit.

And off to the next one.

Predators are a thing and they're on the upswing.

They're cyclical.

You'll have times where you have less predators, more game.

You get so much game,

then guess what, the predators have more to eat

and they're on the rise.

Right now, I got a lot of predators.

I got my barrels going.

I mean, it all really started out

with getting a late winter caribou.

Having to leave the carcass out there.

Sun went down into the dark time.

Wanting to protect myself, protect camp.

And this different.

This is saying, "Don't cross this line.

"I'll give you that mile, but I'm taking this inch.

"But you disrespect my inch and I'll take back my mile.

"I'm lighting up the night to save my inch.

"Come get it."