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Ox Hunting
By: Bryce M. Towsley
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 “Damn,”
I grunted though frozen lips as I rolled out of the sled with
as much grace as a gut-shot hippo, “what a ride!”
Fred Webb grinned at my attempts to stand up and said with his
trademark bluntness, “I’ll guarantee that anybody
who says that spring musk ox hunting is easy has never done
it. This ain’t a hunt for wimps.”
True enough, but I have always believed that anything that’s
worth a damn should extract a price. As Hemingway said, it’s
the pain we pay to make it real. The best hunts will also deposit
something lasting and permanent into your soul. It’s like
a friend said after hunting Africa, “I knew it would be
exciting, but I didn’t understand it would change my life.”
There are few hunts in the world with that effect and from what
I experienced in the previous week, spring musk ox is one.
Most hunters, including me, fear the cold when they first start
thinking about booking a spring musk ox hunt. I am a northern
latitudes kind of guy and I live with long, cold winters and
deep snow. I am also usually a “jump in with both feet”
kind of guy, willing to try anything once. But, I’ll admit
that for the first time in many years I had doubts. There is
something about the thought of venturing north of the Arctic
Circle in late winter with nothing but a small tent for shelter
that can be terrifying for anybody.
The land is vast, windswept and as barren as any place on earth,
or probably Mars for that matter, and my apprehension was compounded
when it was thrust upon me really before I was ready. It took
me two days of travel to reach the tiny, frozen town of Kugluktuk,
Nunavut. I stepped off the plane, sleep deprived and a little
disoriented, and less than an hour later I was in a sled piled
high with gear and headed across the frozen sea. By the time
we stopped to make camp, even Kugluktuk was a distant memory
with more than fifty miles of snow-covered empty between us.
 After
making camp on Eviaginak Lake, a couple of the Inuit guides
started chopping a hole in the ice in front of the tents so
they could go fishing. They were down a measured six and one
half feet into the ice before they hit water. Had Toto been
there, I would have felt compelled to comment that we were not
in Kansas anymore.
When I did comment on how much work it was just to go fishing,
one of the guides laughed and said, “You should have been
on the last hunt! That lake wasn’t as protected as this
one and the ice was even thicker. The first two holes we chopped
hit dirt instead of water because the lake had frozen all the
way to the bottom.” With the easy-going attitude that
the Inuit have he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “the
third time we tried, we found water, but no fish.” I couldn’t
help but think of the old song, “don’t worry –
be happy.” If there is one single phrase that would sum
up our guides outlook on life, that song was it.
My guide was a small Eskimo in his sixties named Charlie Bolt
who spoke broken English with a unique syntax that I loved hearing.
Charlie was one of those rare people I liked almost instantly.
He has a great sense of humor and a comic’s flair for
timing. One night we were in the tent talking in the soft glow
of the candlelight. He was telling me about his years of trapping
and hunting in the Arctic. Charlie often talks in “lists”
and when I asked about what animals he had hunted and trapped
he responded with a long list that he ran through with a slow,
deliberate, cadence. I later asked about eating the animals
and he said that yes at one time or another he had eaten them
all. Then he started with another list, “I eat caribou,
seal, musk ox, wolf, polar bear, wolverine; and on and on until
if he missed an Arctic critter not extinct I didn’t notice.
When the list ran out, he stopped. So, I asked the obvious question,
“How do they taste?”
“Well, wolf is for sure not my favorite.”
“What is your favorite?”
 Charlie
turned to me so the candlelight was shining on his wrinkled
face and reflecting in his eyes as he turned his them up to
the heavens above the tent. He pondered the question for a long
time before speaking and I was starting to think he had fallen
asleep. Then he slowly rubbed his wispy chin whiskers and with
a sardonic grin said, “I really like chicken.”
Charlie and I shared a small, floorless, double-wall tent. He
tossed some caribou hides on the ice and that was enough for
him. On my side he also added a three inch foam pad. I travel
a lot and most years I only sleep in my own bed about half the
nights, if I am lucky. I have slept in literally thousands of
beds over the years and I don’t remember one that was
as comfortable as the sack in that fringed tent.
Our heat came from a two-burner Coleman cooking stove. Even
with both burners running wide open it would never have the
tent approaching anything I would call warm. But, with the outside
temperature at thirty below zero, it would warm the tent to
plus twenty, which, in contrast, felt damn near balmy.
One evening as we lay in the tent sipping tea, he told me about
a fur hunting trip years before that went bad. Charlie had been
following wolf tracks for miles on his snowmobile before the
rising wind blew them over and he had to stop. He turned to
follow his own tracks back, but the same wind had obliterated
them as well. The windblown snow created a whiteout which hid
all the landmarks and even the sun. Charlie kept going through
the bitter cold until his machine ran out of gas. Then he picked
up his rifle and started walking.
You must remember, this was north of the Arctic Circle, one
of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth and it was
in January, the coldest time of the year. The average American
wouldn’t have lasted the night.
Charlie survived by walking all day and then burrowing into
the snow at night. Ten days later, some friends found him and
took him home. “My wife,” he said, “She was
plenty mad at me when I get back.”
When most musk ox hunters return home, they don’t have
stories of being lost above the Arctic Circle for days. What
they talk about is the sled ride. For a hunter, these long wooden
sleds are our home, our lifeline, our transportation and the
focus of our world. The sled becomes the center of a musk ox
hunter’s universe and for long hours of each day it is
the only thing that matters.
 With
16 foot long runners, every bump and dip is magnified. If the
front moves, the back follows with 16 feet of “whiplash”
to power it. Riding in the back is like being tied to a teeter-totter
with a giant, hyperactive kid swinging the other end. Surviving
it is what makes musk ox hunting an adventure. Fred Webb knows
that and it was sleds more than the cold he was alluding to
when he said that musk ox hunting wasn’t a sport for wimps.
This barren, snow covered terrain messes with your perception
and a couple of hours into the first day of hunting I was sure
that the black critter running across the windswept tundra was
my first look at a musk ox. I dug my Leupold binoculars out
of their warm and comfortable womb inside my coat and they revealed
a wolverine. Feeling a little foolish about mistaking a 50 pound
weasel for a 600 pound bovine, I kept my observations to myself.
Later in the morning we found a herd of musk ox and I got my
first look at one of the most magnificently adapted animals
on earth. There were two bulls in the herd. One was still young
and the other had a broken horn, so we watched them until we
grew cold, and then moved on to look for bigger and more complete
bulls.
The musk ox is a throwback and it’s said that they once
shared the land with mammoths and mastodons. The big guys couldn’t
hack it, but the musk ox is doing fine. He is a survivor that
has adapted and thrived in this harsh environment. Their hair
can be up to 24-inches long and it hangs like a sheet over their
body, sometimes hiding their short legs. Under the hair is a
thick, soft undercoat that the Eskimos call qiviut. They even
have hair on their nose to help ward off the cold. This all
allows the musk ox to survive the brutal cold and howling winds
of winter in the Arctic.
Both male and female musk ox have a hump on their shoulders.
They also both have horns that sweep down and out and then curve
up again. The male’s horns will grow together to form
a helmet-like boss on the head, and they resemble the horns
of the African Cape buffalo. Musk ox once ranged as far south
as Ohio, but today are found only in remote Arctic regions.
 They
are an almost perfect example of how animals can adapt to their
environment for survival. But, that adaptation is for survival
against terrible weather and wolves, not humans and their tool
using abilities. Musk ox have short legs and stout bodies that
are made to endure cold, not to run from danger. So, they form
a circle and face the enemy. When the predator approaches, a
bull or dominant cow may step forward to meet the challenge.
If the predator makes it past this musk ox, the circle of musk
ox behind still form a barrier preventing them from reaching
the young they are protecting. This “two-tiered”
approach is very effective against four legged predators. But
man brought spears, bows and finally guns. They all were very
effective against the musk ox’s defenses. As a result,
musk ox was once hunted almost to extinction by Arctic explorers
and the natives. However, due to farsighted conservation efforts,
the musk ox population today is healthy across the North Country
and can easily sustain the sport hunting industry that is so
important to the Inuit economy.
We found tracks sometime close to mid-day, it’s hard to
say exactly when because in this monochromic world perceptions
become blurred and time ebbs and flows with a much different
rhythm than it does in our normal, cluttered and warm lives.
The tracks led to a bachelor herd containing half a dozen bulls.
Charlie and I stood back as the other hunters each took a turn
at stalking in close enough to shoot. By mid-afternoon each
of my three companions had a good bull quickly cooling in the
snow.
I could see that Charlie was not excited and in no hurry and
I took a clue from him. I watched and enjoyed the show, but
never loaded my rifle. Later he said, “Those are nice
musk ox for sure, but it’s good that you waited. Now,
I will find you a big one.” It’s notable that one
of those “nice musk ox” tied for the #18 ranking
in the Boone & Crockett record book.
That night a storm moved in and daylight arrived to white-out
conditions. At times visibility was measured in inches and hunting
was impossible. Restless, I paced from tent to tent. I tried
to read a book but couldn’t focus. I tried fishing, but
grew bored. So I paced.
I once saw a caged wolf in a Russian hunting camp that spent
each day pacing back and forth, relentless and unchanging, just
burning energy and yearning to be someplace else. All that day
and the following night, I understood how he felt.
I was outside and ready to go as soon as it was light enough
to see, but the snow and wind still made travel impossible.
Charlie kept looking to the west and saying it would clear soon
and a few hours after daybreak it did. Not completely, but enough.
The storm had caused the temperatures to plummet and my thermometer
registered 35 below zero Fahrenheit. The brutal wind was gusting
to 65 below zero.
 This
was the cold I had read about in all those Jack London novels
I had devoured as a kid. Now, finally, at last I was living
it, experiencing it and loving every minute. This was adventure,
this was the essence of musk ox hunting. This is why I came.
Around noon, (it always seemed to be around noon) Ron Elgok
found some musk ox tracks. But they headed into rock strewn
country where the snowmobiles couldn’t go without risking
incapacitating damage. We circled around and picked up the tracks
only to lose them again as they entered more rough terrain.
I suspect that these bulls were old enough to have survived
other hunters and that they understood the limitations of these
waddling, overstuffed bipeds and their noisy machines.
We made another big circle and we found not tracks, but musk
ox. My binoculars revealed a bachelor herd of seven bulls and
all big. Staying downwind, Charlie and I worked in closer. Walking
in the bulky Arctic gear was tough. But we just took it slow,
as seems to be the pace for most things in the high Arctic.
We were almost close enough for a shot when the bulls spooked
and ran in yet a new direction. We went back to the sled and
got on their tracks. We found them again a half-mile later,
still in the rocks. This time we able to move close enough for
a shot.
But I couldn’t shoot without risking the bullet passing
through the largest bull and killing an extra musk ox, so I
waited. What I expected to be a couple of minutes turned into
a life time or two. Great mountains erupted and then eroded
to flat plains; civilizations rose and fell, all in the time
it took for that bull to move. I had removed my right mitten
and wore only a thin liner glove on my shooting hand. The wind
found that chink in my armor and was pounding away at my fingers.
Millenniums later when the bull was clear, I pulled the trigger
and hoped my frozen finger wouldn’t crack and fall off
from the effort..
It was so cold that as soon as we rolled back the insulation
from the thick hide the meat would freeze and our knives were
cutting though ice crystals. I think that any time you take
an animal’s life it should mean something and that you
should pay a penance to earn that right. Working in that brutal
cold and wind to skin the bull and then packing the quarters
to the sled, extracted a higher price that usual. But it was
a debt that I felt I owed and one I was willing to pay.
In the morning we broke camp and pointed the snowmobiles toward
the town. When I climbed out of my sled a sadness came over
me because I knew what had been one of the best weeks of hunting
in my life was now just a memory.
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