Outdoors/Adventure

Whether you’re tracking animals or flying cross-country, you can learn a lot just by paying attention

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,” says songwriter Joni Mitchell. Me too.

On a recent flight from Chicago to Anchorage, I was able to look down through a broken cloud cover at the terrain below. We were high above the clouds. It looked as if I should be able to reach down and brush the thin fog aside to get a better view of the terrain below.

We were flying over the middle of Canada, one of the most remote areas in North America. There were a couple of stretches where there was no sign of human activity below for nearly an hour, and we were going 500 mph or a little faster. Granted, we were cruising six miles above the trees, and I likely missed a few things. However, when I could see, there were no roads or trails visible.

Somewhere — north and east of Whitehorse — we passed over a good-sized lake with many bays and islands, plus numerous creeks. “I bet that would be a great place for a trapline,” I thought. No sooner than I had that thought, a snaky trail appeared as a faint cut through the timber below.

For more than 10 minutes the 737 traveled over the trail as it coiled its way around swamps and paralleled tiny watercourses. The pesky clouds finally obscured my view, but the trail was still going.

Who was down there? Where was the closest town? What did the trapper catch? Since landing in Anchorage and returning home, I have tried to triangulate the exact location of that lone trapper. No concrete answers, but I am discovering this new guessing game from the sky is similar to tracking animals on the ground.

We seldom know if we are right, but we can make educated guesses based on what we see. Our time in the air coupled with aircraft speed and the published route put the trapper somewhere east of Mayo or Keno, Yukon Territory. The trapper is probably a single man, because there are not many women who head out on the trapline. He has a long line, thus he is unlikely to have a family at the home cabin.

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The country he is in lends itself to cats, wolves and marten, plus some water animals such as mink and otter. Those of you who trap might think this sounds like paradise.

Carrying this guessing game further, the area is about a degree of latitude south of Fairbanks, similar to Delta Junction. Fairly good daylight. The terrain is rolling hills and lakes. Cold. The average January low temperature in Mayo is minus-20, so I’d bet he doesn’t have a four-cycle engine in his snowmachine — although being Canadian, he calls it a skidoo.

The trapper doesn’t run dogs, because he is not on a major river to access enough fish to feed dogs, plus the trapline was far too long for dogs on a single day’s run and there were no visible cabin clearings in the 50-plus miles of line I tracked. He is a man in his late 30s or early 40s — old enough to have established a line, or to have worked somewhere long enough to afford to buy into good country.

We could go on with this guessing game, but at this point we are beginning to make conjectures on top of earlier suppositions.

There is a point I am making here. Whether we are trappers, hunters, fishermen or just people who enjoy being out doors, we should make an effort to look beyond what we can see with our eyes.

The trapper who is truly successful will learn much about his prey from a few hundred yards of tracks, and hunters who are consistently productive know much about the habits of their game. Information is gleaned from observation and tracks. Fishermen who always come home with big fish in their creel understand the feeding habits of their target species, even though they can't swim under the surface themselves.

People who depended on hunting, fishing and trapping for their survival would tell you the trail of an animal is a thread attached to the animal they seek. Pick up the thread carefully and you will find the animal still connected. Sort of like clouds. Brush them aside and see what you find.

John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family in Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and a two-time winner of the Yukon Quest.

John Schandelmeier

Outdoor opinion columnist John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest.

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