Gathering the meat
My previous pursuit of game was in New Jersey and New York where I occasionally searched for deer. I carried a license from both states and in New Jersey hunters were only allowed to use shotguns with buckshot or a slug. This is because there are so many hunters that these projectiles would not travel too far into populated areas. Hunting in New Jersey was relatively dangerous as hunters seemed to be over zealous. Hunting in New York was a bit different and rifles were allowed which I usually borrowed.
My group of hunters would typically travel about 2-3 hours into New York and overnighted in a rustic cabin deep in the woods. The best part of the experience for me was hiking in the woods all day long in endless search of a deer. Although I had only taken a shot at one once, I had wounded it and after tracking it for several miles, only to find another hunter claiming the success. My favorite thing to do along the trail was to find an apple tree and sit around and eat these luscious fruit until I fell asleep! The apples seemed to have a extraordinary taste in this situation. The reality of hunting in New Jersey and New York is that the deer were street wise. They knew about hunters and where possible avoided them. For example, deer would not usually walk through a field but rather walk around the perimeter of the field to minimize detection.
In Alaska, when I volunteered to be a photographer for a caribou hunt, I found that things were much different than my previous encounters. My dorm room buddies and I drove about 4 hours north of Fairbanks on the snow covered Taylor Highway until we found a herd of thousands of caribous. The pickup truck was then pulled over and while leaning on the hood of the vehicle, my two buddies shot 3 caribou each which coincided with the legal limits in Alaska at the time for those with a hunting license. The degree of marksmanship required was absolutely minimum as these animals were relatively close and they were just standing there. I equate it to shooting cows in the pasture. Although I thought that I would do some hunting in Alaska, I quickly realized that this is not hunting at all. It was simply gathering the meat for subsistence purposes. The caribou were not phased by humans and had no reason to try to avoid them. They were simply shot as they grazed. They were not stressed and the kill was quick. This is critical as the meat of a stressed animal is not good. I was asked to help drag the roughly 500 pound animals nearer to the vehicle where they were gutted and loaded into the back. We camped out that night under the stars and my sleeping bag was clearly not able to provide sufficient warmth in the near 20 degrees below zero. A mistake that I never repeated afterwards as I froze my ass off and shivered all night long.
Native American, Fairbanks, Alaska Circa 1971 Photo by Barry Epstein
Some of my dorm buddies also hunted for Moose which are considered very big game as they stand around 7 feet tall and weigh up to 1,500 pounds. I believe back then, Alaskan residents were allowed 1 moose per year for subsistence hunting. Moose are typically a driving hazard in Alaska as they like to use the plowed roads where possible rather than walk through deep snow and hitting one of these monsters can be lethal to all involved. One night at the dorm, there was a scurry of policemen running around outside and we didn’ t know what was going on. Apparently, a dorm resident was reported to to the police to be walking around campus wielding a cleaver and he was covered in blood. The police had cornered him only to reveal that he was just butchering a recently shot moose!
BARRY STEVEN EPSTEIN- PhotoAutobiography DRAFT 21 of 156