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Monday, September 24, 2012

Da Bears...

*Warning - photos of dead animals follow this message!

About a week ago I found out due to budget constraints and "blah, blah, blah," I was going to lose my job.  (You don't really hear much after, "I'm sorry to have to inform you that you're going to lose your job..." right?!)

Luckily, though, I was able to transfer into another position fairly quickly within the association.  Emergency averted.

After I found out about the reduction-in-force layoffs for this year, I was a bit down.  So my pal sent for me.  We spent the weekend laying around on her couch, eating great food (sort of, I had the flu!) and talking about life, in general.  Which was exactly what I needed.

Kotzebue
My "village"

My husband...well, when he is worried, or scared, or even if he's happy and calm and carefree, he goes hunting. 

He and a friend of his took off Saturday to camp up river, hoping for some caribou.  Since you can't fly and shoot in the same day, they set up camp and fiddled around with Kobuk the dog that night.  (No, we are NOT getting a new dog!)

Kobuk VS Bear
"I fought the dog and the dog won..."

The next day, they saw nothing except a huge brown bear walking around their camp.  Bear is better than nothing right?  So my husband shot it. 

And now we have a huge mo-fo bear hide in the freezer waiting to be tanned, and I hate bear meat.  But apparently it was pretty big for a bear (nine foot three inches, something like that) and pretty old (23 or 24 years old) so it was a good catch. 

Plus it always makes him feel better to shoot something and bring it home.  He totally reminds me of a kid bringing home a new frog or puppy or something.  "Look what I brought home honey!!"  Oh joy.  Bear. 

Deans Bear

Anyway, luckily some of his friends got a moose and gave us a front shoulder so he ground it up and made 30 bs of moose summer sausage (HOLY COW it is SO GOOD!).  Moose meat?  YES.  Bear meat?  No.  So I'm happy now.  Ground moose, ground caribou and a bear hide. 

I decided it would make a great garage door in the wintertime.  Either that or we will use it as a rug at camp this winter!  haha.

The joys of being an Eskimo.  Oh, and it snowed today too.

Have a great week.

P.S.  I didn't take these photos, either Dean or his friend Chad did.  :)  But they're pretty good!


6 comments:

Lisa said...

Wow, look at the size of that bear, awesome!!

Please send the snow down to the Mat-Su, I would love some this early!!

Matt, Kara, Hunter and Cavan said...

I am right there with you on the bear meat.

My husband broke his foot so we are completely missing hunting season, but were given a heap of moose and caribou for the freezer. I now have over 200lbs of meat in the freezer thanks to handouts! Yippeee!

Martijn Top said...

That's a big bear!
Maija? How does bear taste?

Brad said...

I've been lurking for sometime, but I thought it high time I said hello. I love reading your blog. I'm in Australia, so my life couldn't be any more different from yours if I tried, but I love seeing how you live and what you do. It's like I'm there with you! Also, I'd give anything to try caribou, or even bear, I'll trad you for some kangaroo? :)

Thanks for a great blog and please keep it up.

Nous Savons said...

I hope that bear meat didn't go to waste!

Anonymous said...

1717what about the bruise?