The Macomb Caribou Hunt:
A Broken Frame and Fresh Tracks

The drive up from Anchorage was long, but my mind was focused on one thing: the Macomb caribou herd. I was headed into a non-motorized zone just outside of Delta Junction, a place where the landscape is as rugged as the rules are strict. I rolled into the trailhead late and spent the night in my truck, right smack dab in the middle of the Delta bison ranges. It is a powerful, slightly unsettling feeling sleeping in a place where you know massive animals are moving through the dark just a few yards away, but I was ready to get after it.

The plan was a bicycle hunt. Load up the gear, pedal deep into the zone, and find the herd. The trail itself was a challenge from the very first foot. Because it is strictly non-motorized, the state had installed giant dirt humps every few hundred yards to deter any illegal vehicle traffic. It made for a grueling rhythm: pedaling hard, hitting a hump, lurching over it with the weight of the trailer pulling at my frame, and repeating. I was a few miles in, pushing through the physical grind, when I heard the sharp, metallic snap. The frame of my bike trailer had given way.

I came to a halt and just stared at it. If I had kept going, I still had several miles of those brutal humps and thick brush to navigate before I even reached the area where the caribou usually hang out. Even if I had managed to push the broken bike that far and actually found a bull, there was no way I was getting a few hundred pounds of meat back out with a shattered trailer. I was essentially dead in the water.

It had been an incredibly dry summer, with the ground baked hard and dusty for weeks, but a heavy rain had moved through just the night before. As I stood there processing the end of my hunt, I looked down at the fresh mud, and my heart dropped. There, pressed clearly into the wet earth from the night before, were the tracks of bear, coyote, and wolves. Check out the photo above! They were everywhere, and they were fresh. The realization hit me like a physical weight: I was miles in, completely alone, and the neighborhood was much more crowded than I had realized.

The fear was immediate and sharp. The brush on either side of the trail was at least shoulder height, sometimes taller, creating a dense green wall that made it impossible to see what might be looming just five feet away. I made the call right then to scrap the hunt and turn back. I had to walk the bike and the broken trailer out, and it was one of the most difficult, nerve-wracking treks of my life.

To keep from jumping at every rustle in the leaves, I started singing. I sang every song I could think of at the top of my lungs, my voice ringing out into the heavy, damp air to make sure I didn't stumble onto a grizzly or a wolf pack by surprise. It was a surreal scene—one hand gripped the handlebars of the bike, and the other was locked onto the grip of my pistol in my chest holster. I didn't let go of that gun for a single second. Every step was a battle between exhaustion and adrenaline, my eyes darting toward the thicket while my voice kept up the steady, desperate concert.

By the time I saw the silhouette of my truck, I was spent, but the universe wasn't done with me yet. On the long ride home, just as I was passing through Tok, I felt that familiar, sickening wobble in the steering wheel. I pulled over to find a flat tire on my truck. When I finally pulled the culprit out of the rubber, it wasn't a nail or a rock..it was the broken blade of a Bowie knife. It felt like the final exclamation point on a trip that was cursed from the start. Reaching Anchorage that night was a relief I can’t even describe. Luckily there was a tire shop open who could patch me up in Tok. The Macomb caribou were still out there, but I was just happy to be home in one piece.