Perseverance - steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.


"Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again
If at first you don't succeed,
try, try, try again."



Success is rarely achieved without first embracing failure or at least the possibility of failure. In my book failure is always an option and success is never guaranteed no matter how hard you try. There is such a thing as impossible and there is no such thing as a hundred and ten percent.

In thinking back on some of what I consider my most memorable and meaningful successes, few have come without a substantial investment of time and effort and most have been at the end of a relatively long string of failures.

With greater investment comes greater reward and failing has taught me far more than succeeding ever has.

This will be a short story about perseverance and the rewards that can come from trying again.




To be continued...

Just a few days ago, a local pard regaled me with stories and pixels from his family's annual 'bou/bullwinkle season. He was born and raised in AK and his folks host their wandering son every year. They were blessed with the gifts of a very nice bull moose and 4 'bou. Similarly, I patiently await your excellent pixels & prose.

Chapter 1

Caribou are nomads of the north, Alaska's high plains drifters, monarchs of the mountains, and wanderers of the woodlands. Being a highly migratory species you can find caribou in just about every habitat in Alaska at some point throughout the year. Many herds travel hundreds if not thousands of miles from their traditional calving grounds to their preferred summer haunts in the high alpine, away from the bugs.





Much like many fish species though there is significant variation in the life cycle of caribou depending on the herd and/or the animals. It is not uncommon for significant herds to change their migration routes almost overnight and for no apparent reason whatsoever. Again much like anadromous fish, when they are "running" they can be abundant and when they aren't you might be convinced there is not a single caribou in Alaska. They can appear out of nowhere at nearly any time.






Though I've spent a lot of time in the places these animals call home and have been mingling with them now for years, this was the first time year I made trying to hunt one a priority and as the season approached my anticipation grew.

My wife and I welcomed our second child into the world in August and I knew my hunting time would be hard to come by this fall. I had already told my hunting partner that I may not be able to make it and to feel free to arrange other plans to preserve his preference for a longer trip in the prime season. In the back of my mind I was still hoping I'd be able to beg and plead a few days away to be able to roam the hills in search of both a memorable experience and good groceries.







As luck would have it my begging and pleading landed me two days to hunt for the opening weekend. The caribou tag I'd drawn was for a very popular road hunting area in the state, the Denali highway, and the state gives out nearly 15,000 tags for this area. The Denali can be an absolute mad house at times with scenes resembling Mad Max fury road on your average weekend. I had about as much interest in participating in that scene as I would have in getting my wisdom teeth yanked again. As such, I done a bit of homework on some lesser known areas in the unit and uncovered some rumors about small bands of more resident animals in a couple of areas that were relatively "inaccessible" by comparison. This was our plan A, head into a small sub-range of mountains and try and make the most of a small window of opportunity by going higher and farther than some of the competition may be willing to. That strategy has served me well in the past and I hope it would do so again.
















to be continued...

I am considering hunting with my water wings on for the Saturday opener...it's going to be a bit wet and windy out.

Fish on...

Todd

Nice premonition Todd. The next chapter includes a solid to-the-bone soaking.

I know it's beautiful and sunny in the pic...but it is Alaska, and it is fall

Fish on...

Todd

What Stam said.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

There is indeed something ineffable in sojourning remote landscapes and meeting those that reside therein. Perhaps it is the reflection in some "mirror darkly" of our own inner landscapes that patiently await such a visitation....

Because our faithful family Pit is on her last lap around the sun, I will likely not be able to make the annual pilgrimage to those high places where both solitude and elk are abundant. She has given us her best and we can only be as faithful to her end. Although she is deaf as a post and her aft end is equally hard of hearing to neural commands, my Love tells me that the old girl will oft try to go to the door to greet me when I get close to home. She just seems to know. Accordingly, I especially look forward to CG's elegant pixels and prose this fall. Thank you for the invitation to share in your journey.

I'm stoked to see the rest of this!

I have done fly-out caribou 2x, they are a great game animal.

Chapter 3 - A lesson in humility

“And this is what happened, and this is why the caribou and the wolf are one; for the caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf that keeps the caribou strong.”
-Farley Mowat


“All conservation of wilderness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.”
-Aldo Leopold





Hunting is a somewhat of a moral struggle for me. The value that wild places and wild things have in my life can't really be put into words or be defined in simple terms. How do you put a price on the essence of being, the meaning of life, and the things that have made you who you are? I abhor the thought of destroying something beautiful, but I do it just the same in the name of sustenance and meaningful experience. Like the wolf, the pursuit of wild game in wild places and the fruits of these labors keep me strong, but what do I have to offer in return? This love affair is certainly one-sided.

On one hand the thought of doing damage to things that mean the world to me is unthinkable. On the other hand, I believe one of the most pure forms of human existence is a subsistence lifestyle, living off of the land around you and the wild creatures that inhabit it. Don't get me wrong, I'm no purist, but knowing where my food comes from and providing for my family is a big part of what drives my desire to "harvest." I do enjoy a good adventure now and then, which is certainly part of the draw as well.

So off for an adventure with the hope of harvesting we went. Bags packed the night before and on the road at the end of a long work day, our plan was to make it to a decent camping spot near treeline before dark and do a bit of glassing to pick out an objective for an o'dark thirty wake up the next morning, opening day.

The weather forecast was marginal at best. Getting wet wasn't the biggest concern but rather not being able to see through clouds in the high country was. From the trailhead we rambled a handful of miles until the wheeler trail ran out at treeline and we pitched tents. With less than an hour of light left I was keen to get some glass on the land to see if we had any hairy neighbors that might make for a good morning objective.






Before I could get the scope setup I picked up a small band of caribou on a distant ridge some 5-6 miles away. Being new territory with a lot of unknowns it was really exciting to know that we were in the game right out of the gates. The first animal I saw through my binoculars was a magnificent bull, perhaps one of the finest I'd seen. Even from this distance I could tell he was huge. He was some distance from the rest of the small herd, which appeared to be made up of a handful of small to medium sized bulls and cows perhaps numbering 12 in total.

After canvasing the rest of the terrain around and above our camp nothing else of interest jumped out at us and these animals had our primary focus. Their location though was a bit of a conundrum. To get to where they were we’d had to descend a few thousand feet, cross a drainage of unknown size or depth, and in doing so re-enter the dreaded “green zone,” that is the alder and Devils Club choked bushwacking nightmare below treeline.

As the last of the light faded on the land we formed a plan. Wake up, wander up the hill for a while to see if we would find something closer and easier, if we couldn’t, we’d make a play on the small herd we hoped would still be there in the morning.







As I tried to force myself to sleep I couldn’t shake the vision of that big bull silhouetted against the distant skyline. I wasn’t hunting antlers by any means and I fully intended to shoot the first bull that I happened across if I was lucky enough to stumble into one. This bull was a special animal though, and he haunted the few dreams I had that fitful and relatively restless night.

Dawn broke gray. The cloud ceiling was above the hilltops but not by much. There was an ominous energy in the air. Up well before light we brewed up and choked down lukewarm crappy trail food before setting off up the hill at first light. Only a mile or two from camp it became clear that things were not improving on the weather front. Wind picked up, clouds came down, and soon the sideways rain was forcing itself into every weakness in our layering systems.

Lenses fogged, fingers numbed and there wasn’t really any question about whether continuing up was a good idea. We were inside the ping pong ball and we weren’t going to find more animals unless we happened to trip across them.

The caribou we’d seen across the valley had still been visible in the morning, but by now we were just as likely to see Russia from the ridge we were on as we were the small herd a few miles away. At least we knew where they were and generally how to get there.

With some reluctance we started scrubbing elevation towards the creek a few thousand feet below. Before too long we re-entered the green zone and it was bad, perhaps as bad as I have encountered. It took 3 hours to cover a quarter of a mile pushing our way down hill to the creek through jungle so dense that at times my feet weren’t touching the ground as I thrashed and cursed for every inch of progress. Thoroughly soaked to the bone with streams of water coursing down my body and filling up my boots we reached the creek. It was wadeable, but barely. On the other side we faced the same 2,000 feet of steep bush bashing but in the opposite direction, up this time, to get back out of the green zone and into the open where travel would ease and allow us to maneuver towards our objectives.





It was soul-searching time. Could we do this? Yes. At least that was my perspective. But what would it cost? We were working towards spent and the hard part was yet to come. Getting through the terrain that we had already was brutal and we had empty packs. Making our way back through this stuff with full loads and antlers catching every twig and branch along the way seemed horrific at best. I estimated that it would take three days to move two animals back to our camp from where we were likely to find them, and we didn’t have that time even if time was the limiting factor.



So at the bottom of the valley, drenched and dejected I threw in the towel. I tucked my tail and turned it towards where we had come from with the sour taste of failure in my mouth. Was it the right call? I knew it was possible, but it certainly wasn’t practical. Is this just me getting old and soft or is my gut saving me from biting off more than I can chew? I’ve never liked the feeling of doubt and uncertainly and I was drenched in it as much as I was the rain that seemed to be getting heavier by the minute.

Back at camp we sulked in our tents, hoping for a break in the weather than never came.








And that was it. This limited window of opportunity was over for me. My one chance to hunt a caribou for the year had come and gone and I had failed. The sun had set on my hopes, or had it?



To be continued…

Per usual, great read! Congrats to you and the Mrs on the newborn.

Where is the rest of the story? C'mon man....

Ok Nick. Because you asked so nicely.

Chapter 4 – Redemption

One last cast, one more bend in the river, one more curve in the trail, one more ridge to cross before we camp. That little bit of extra effort has paid off now for me too many times to count. In many cases it’s not even a monumental feat but rather a few more steps just to peer around one more corner before the day is done. Last year on my first Dall Sheep hunt my partner and I crawled out of our sacks after a warm dinner on somewhat of a whim. We’d all but decided to call it a day but there was a little light left and we hadn’t seen into the next valley yet. From a vantage point a short stroll above our tent we picked out two sheep we were almost certain were rams. Too far away and too dark to be certain, we at least knew there was a possibility. Without that five minute walk at dusk we never would have seen these animals and the most memorable hunt of my life may never have panned out the way it did on the following day.

Perseverance doesn’t always have to be a herculean effort against all odds, it can take far more simple forms such as not quitting until the end, not giving up until the task is complete or until you are out of options, or not letting a moment slip by unproductively.
Back to the caribou.

After dragging our soggy sorry asses back home and re-entering the real world I wasn’t happy. When I look at things from the 30,000-foot level my life is good and I am blessed far beyond what I deserve. Still, I can’t help but be preoccupied with failure. I knew that with such a small window to hunt we would have had to not only get lucky to find some animals within range, but then everything would have had to have gone perfectly with the hunt, pack out, and return trip to the trailhead. My mindset should have been that failure was a lot more likely than success, but of course that isn’t usually the way hope and anticipation work. I’ve never been good at expectation management.





I couldn’t let it go and I had to try again. Even contemplating the notion riddled me with guilt. My wife, being the saint that she is, was wrangling two kids, one of whom was less than a month old while I worked and now asked for another two day window to go hunting. I was able to re-configure work and personal lives to come up with another day and a half of hunting. If we were doomed to fail for lack of time on the previous trip, this itinerary certainly wasn’t going to improve our odds, but it was better than nothing.

In the week since our first try I couldn’t stop thinking about the big bull, the monarch of the mountain. I refused to believe that there wasn’t a better way to get to where he was at. I spent quite a few hours poring over maps, googling the earth, and searching for anecdotal reports of access into the area from local knowledge. What I came up with was a few sketchy rumors at best about another rough trail system that lead into the southern end of this small group of mountains. The caribou that we had seen were at the far north end with a handful of miles separating the two zones, at least that’s what my best guess led me to believe. Though the hiking distance appeared to be longer there was one major difference, if we were able to access this terrain from the south, there would be no major drainage in our way and most of our travel should be well above the green zone. How steep was it? Were the animals still there? Does this trail even exist and if so where does it go?

With all of these unknowns and a healthy helping of doubt we cast off again, this time in the middle of the night hoping to find a trailhead at first light and start the uphill ramble. The weather had improved over the course of the week and it wasn’t raining, but there was a fairly thick layer of low elevation clouds obscuring everything around us. I hoped that with warming temps the clouds would dissipate, if they didn’t, we’d be back in the ping pong ball with nothing to see or hunt.

Somewhere not far from where I’d hoped a trail would materialize we found something that looked promising and we launched via 4-wheeler with a plan similar to the last one. Follow the trail until it runs out, drop our overnight gear and continue by foot. Things worked out far better than I hoped with the trail getting us very close to a ridge I picked out on maps that seemed to lead us up and over the top from south to north and to where we had seen the animals. The distances seemed quite manageable and the terrain, though steep, was totally doable from what I could see. The cloud layer was thinning by the minute and I couldn’t unpack and repack fast enough. I was pumped and determined not to waste a minute.

Soon enough tents were pitched, gear was stowed and we were trekking across open tundra towards the access ridge. The going was easy (by comparison) and the sun came over the horizon just as the terrain started to ramp up. The day was shaping up to be a perfect 10, but one huge nagging unknown hung in the air, would we find the animals. It had been a week since we’d last seen them and by now they could be in a different country. After an hour, maybe two we gained a low saddle in the ridge that offered a view down the other side towards the northern end of the escarpment. I’d been pushing the pace pretty fairly well thus far and had a few minutes to chill while my partner caught up. I had a seat on the ridge and started glassing the valley below for signs of life. Caribou. One lone, very large bull appeared about a mile away. It had to be him. He was by himself, giant, and not too far from where we had last seen him. What were the chances? I was jacked but he was a long way off with a lot of convoluted terrain between us. My partner caught up and I pointed the animal out. We agreed, it was the same bull. Redemption might be a possibility after all.

We needed a strategy. We were about a thousand feet above him and maybe a mile away. I watched him feed for 15 minutes and though he was meandering, it seemed like he was favoring an uphill trend. My first thought was to drop down from where we were at and come across at his level hoping for a 200-300 yard shot before he busted us. After watching him for a bit longer he continued his upwardly mobile path and I changed my mind. We had to stay high. Before we had the chance to close the gap he could out climb us to the point that we’d never catch up. Our only option was to top out on the peak we were currently climbing, run a long ridge around the top of a small valley and then hunt down to where he was working his way up on the other side. Unfortunately this meant losing sight of him for who knows how long, maybe forever.

With the plan settled we moved into beat feet mode, moving up through scree and talus just below the crest of the ridge. The view from the top of the peak was sweet but I didn’t want to pause long enough to enjoy it. The long ridge from the summit I hoped would continue around the head of the basin did just that, and minus a few steep bits of scrambling it was straight forward and relatively direct. We hustled as fast as our legs and lungs would allow us until we circled the basin and connected with the broad sloping ridge we had last seen the caribou at the foot of nearly two hours before. We dropped our gear and went into stealth mode, slowly picking our way down the sloping terrain with no idea what lay below us. Thirty minutes into this fairly slow movement I came to a rock outcropping that obstructed the view below. I asked my partner to hold and I crouched and slunk to the rocks until I could see over the edge. And there he was, 70 yards away and perfectly broadside. Be busted me immediately and I had no time to think. With scope covers open and a round in the chamber I raised my rifle, clicked the safety off and eased onto the trigger with my crosshairs moving more than I would have liked due to a pounding heart and heaving lungs. I won’t say I was entirely unprepared or caught off guard, but I was in a state of disbelief that after several miles and a few hours of not having seen him I popped out right on his nose.

My first round hit him high but he was down immediately and dead but didn’t yet know it. I added another one for good measure and he was done. My partner, having been a few paces behind me and looking at a bear in the opposite direction was beside himself. “What the hell just happened” he yelled, “did you kill the caribou, did you shoot at the bear? What happened?” In an instant he was at my spot and saw the animal and started freaking out. Being entirely consumed with what had just transpired I hadn’t paid much attention to anything but getting the killing done. He was huge, the biggest caribou I’d ever seen. As we picked our way down to him his size became apparent and I knew he was a special beast. He’d tumbled down into a small drainage and as we reached him the sun lit the place up and I took it as an omen. It seemed like a good time to smile, so that’s what I did.









The easy part was over and there was significant work to be done. We were 2-3 miles from camp and a couple of thousand feet above the valley floor with a lot of rugged traversing to get back to where we started. I won’t bore you with the details as I have rambled on long enough, but the work was pretty real. We carried our gear and the animal out Denali style, that is triple carrying loads. We’d move a third of the load half a mile ahead, come back for the 2nd third, and the return again for the final third, each load weighing 60-85lbs. And so we shuffled into the night. Finally back at camp as the sun crept low we were greeted with one of the finer sunsets behind Denali and the Alaska Range I have ever seen, a fitting end to a remarkable day.





But that wasn’t quite the end. My partner still had a tag to fill and we had a whole day of hunting left. It was extremely hard to pull our sore, blistered, and beaten bodies out of the fart sacks in the morning but we managed to do it, barely. About a mile from camp on the valley floor we jumped another decent bull and my partner managed to drop it with one shot while it was running at 230 yards. It was a pretty remarkable shot and another awesome animal. Compared to the day before the pack back to camp was cake and we were on the trail home in the early afternoon with ear to ear grins.

Thanks for writing that out, and all the pics. That's an incredible bull, and should easily make the book if you are into that sort of thing.

It's number 27 in the SCI book. Have to wait ten more days to see how it ranks for B&C. I'm not really into that sort of thing though...

I am into caribou and broccoli in the style of Asian broccoli beef. Just finished a large plate and it was delicious!

Once again........Outstanding!

Another great adventure that was a product of proper planning.

Hard not to love the intersection of good fortune and perseverance. Thank you again for the vicarious adventure. It was a soothing balm for likely forgoing a similar meeting with an elk a few weeks hence....

Well said Driftin and thanks for your thoughts and perspective as well. Wishing you good luck on your upcoming adventures and look forward to hearing about them!

I'll add a few more thoughts and photos here at some point.