Visual Stories

Photos: Caribou hunting in Adak

ADAK -- Our rented pickup lurches through the tundra in the pre-dawn dark, three of us packed into the cab in a swirl of gas fumes, bullets rattling on the dashboard. A gust of wind had ripped our truck's hard-shell canopy off last night, shearing the steel attachment bolts, so our fourth member, Tim Treuer, huddles in the open truck bed with a 30-06 hunting rifle wedged between his legs. The weather is a gusty mess of half-frozen drizzle and piercingly cold wind: what meteorologists quaintly call "wintry mix" and Alaskans know as the perfect recipe for hypothermia.

Suddenly Tim bangs on the cab window, gesturing toward the hills: two caribou, alert, looking straight at us. We slam the brakes and tumble out of the truck, load guns and throw them over our shoulders, and race into the tundra. The caribou begin to trot, but we've closed just enough distance. Three shots rip the morning silence, and one of the animals drops. A half-hour later, we grab the field-dressed carcass by the legs and drag it to the truck, leaving a horde of rain-matted eagles to swoop in on the entrails. We hoist the caribou into the bed and cram into the cab, peeling off soaked gloves and hats, shivering in our down coats and mountaineering shells.

READ MORE: Hunting elusive caribou in remote 'birthplace of the winds'

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