Trapping

Weekly Panoramic

We are finally getting some snow. We got about 8 inches yesterday and another 4 today. Blizzard warnings until Friday. The wind was gusting out of the south bringing in warm air full of heavy wet snow. When we arrived at the school the south facing sides of our bodies were caked with snow. It is funny how you get used to the temperatures so quickly. Lately the temps have been around zero. Yesterday morning when we walked to school it was about 30. I was sweating my butt off by the time we got to school.

Moon Over Mountains

One of the activities that was part of Inupiaq Days was Caribou cutting. Kyle and I got the hides. He wanted to tan them to try to make some leather things. I went to the school to help him stretch and scrape the hair off the hides. We wasted a lot of time trying to scrape the hides when they were still green. After the hides had dried some the hair came off the hides pretty easily. The hair is incredibly dense. It makes sense because the caribou need that protection to withstand -40 F temps.

Stretched Caribou Hide

I shot a fox last Friday night when we were checking the trapline. We were on our way back and Kyle saw the fox walking about 50 yards away on the far side of the river. It was nearly dark and really hard to pick up the fox in the sights. I sighted in and fired away. It dropped on the spot. I hit it high up on its neck right behind its head. I came to the conclusion that it was a fairly lucky shot. We finally got something on the trapline. It was a white weasel. We got it in one of our fox sets with a 280 conibear. I think it managed to trip the trigger because it was trying to drag out large chunk of caribou meat out of the hole. As of right now we have 3 pan trap sets for fox or wolf, a conibear set for anything that pokes it's head through, 2 weasel box sets, and 3 snares near 2 different fox dens.

Red Fox