The Middle Fork of the Koyukuk
Stepping through the spongy vegetation, his boots found more spring and balance in the damp twigs and leaves than in the rigid, uneven knots of wood waiting to twist an ankle. The early spring air was crisp and felt so void of noise and pollution, as if one were underwater but did not need to hold his breath. Each step was taken with precision and with purpose. Niko’s eyes scanned his immediate surroundings looking for signs of their game.
Niko had been going on hunts with his father and uncle since he was six years old. He had learned how to be hidden, stealthy, one with his surroundings. He learned how to respect the wilderness and be one with it, a member of its organic community. When he started accompanying his patriarchs, he was only their scout, looking for signs, listening to the forest, geared up with his binoculars and a homemade knife. The knife had been crafted for him by his grandfather on his mother’s side, Sampson Nicholai. Its four-inch blade was forged from the spring steel of an old trapper’s big Number 9, and the handle was split from a heavy palm of dropped moose antler. It was the kind of knife that felt right at home in its worn, weather-darkened belt sheath, the leather stitched from the hide of the very same bull that had left its crown in the brush.
Niko’s father and uncle never spoke to each other during these hunts. They instilled in him that being one with each other was as important as being one with the land; it was the key to a successful hunt. They taught Niko to communicate with hand gestures, body movements, and their eyes. Their skill was very polished. Niko’s father had a solid foundation hunting with his father and brother in the Texas hill country as a boy, and the U.S. Marine Corps sharpened the rest across the eight years he served.
On this early morning, the three had set off on the first hunt of the season; they had been in the forest two hours before dawn. Niko, twelve now, already had most if not all the mechanics to run a hunt like this solo, but because of the size of the game, he could not yet ruck the meat back home, typically a two-hour hike without a warm, heavy load. This hunt was special, because his father, Tony, and his uncle, Jonas, let Niko lead, and took the scout’s role for themselves. Niko was armed with a Mathews V3 26″ compound bow, he carried a quiver loaded with four 5mm carbon arrows, each capped with a fixed 125-grain broadhead; the perfect weapon for either a caribou, a Sitka black-tail or a moose; if they were so lucky.
The hunting party had been trekking for close to three hours when Niko stopped and put his hand up in a fist, indicating a dead stop. He held it with one foot still raised, caught mid-step like a photograph. He then tapped the top of his head to signal the others: fresh sign. But it was not the sign they were after. It was a large pile of bear scat. As Niko lowered into a squat to inspect it, he brought his raised boot down in the same motion as the two men settling behind him, the three of them sinking as one. As he inspected it, he saw that the steam lifting from the pile was drifting away from them, ahead of them, and that was when he felt the chill of the role reversal, hunters into hunted. The wind had shifted, and whatever had left them this morning’s gift was very close, most likely aware of their presence. He read the track pressed into the wet ground: a very large brown bear. Not what he wanted to see. His mind went to his uncle’s favorite saying, “If it’s black, yell back; if it’s brown, get down; if it’s white, goodnight”; and this one was, without a doubt, a grizzly.
Niko signed it without a sound; his right hand rising up in the shape of a claw, then to his shoulder, fingers cupped into a raised hump. Grizzly. The one unmistakable tell, that shelf of muscle a brown bear carries and a black bear does not.
With the mossy ground beneath their boots quiet and damp, they had a slight advantage, temporarily limiting the bear’s defenses to its sense of smell alone. Even though a grizzly can smell ten times better than a shark can track blood in the water, an old woodsman’s trick was working in their favor: stay perfectly still and downwind, and a brown bear will often look right past you, trusting its legendary nose long before its eyes.
When Niko turned back to his father, Tony simply shifted his eyes to his immediate right, to a spot between himself and Uncle Jonas. Niko, still in a squat, slowly moved to position himself between his father and uncle in a loose V formation. Tony then looked at Jonas who extended his arm palm-up, and gave a slow, upward sweep of his hand, the signal to rise.
Before rising, Tony reached across his chest, smoothly releasing the retention strap to pull his Glock 20 10mm from its holster. Beside him, Uncle Jonas didn’t make a sound; he simply leaned his weight forward, let the sling slide down his shoulder, and brought his weathered Marlin .45-70 around his body into a low foregrip. Both weapons were ready before their boots even left the moss.
Even though Niko was twelve, he had his arrow nocked at a low ready. He had been on countless hunts with his dad and uncle, and had cut bear sign before, but this was different. He had never seen it this fresh at this time of year. In early spring the bears came out of the ground half-crazed with hunger, months of starvation making them their most unpredictable. Instead of looking for the bear, Niko watched how his father and uncle meticulously scanned the horizon, snagging on the shadows and downed trees. These would play tricks on you, especially before the sun had crested. They made you see things that were not there and conceal things that were. As they continued their surveillance, Jonas made a tick sound, ever so slight that it could have passed for a kinglet. Niko and his father locked their gaze on what Jonas was fixated on, and there it was. They saw it first: a black nose tipped up, and then they heard it, that massive set of lungs forcing air through a heavy snout, stealing the scent from the air. It was about thirty yards out in front of the hunting party, facing directly at them.
Once all pairs of eyes met contact, the sound of Niko’s own gulp, caught between the bear’s deep, rhythmic huffs, was deafening to him; and surely heard by his father and uncle. Then a calm hit. The greeting had been made. The bear stopped searching. It had found its prey now, the meal it had waited so patiently for.
Niko heard the roar first and slammed his eyes shut, the beast’s cry reverberating through him. Holding his bow, he had no way to cover his ears against it, a terrifying, deafening blast he knew he would never forget.
He flinched down onto one knee. Then the Glock started barking, and his eyes came open. His father was moving, stepping out and away from him, low and fast, crossing step over step in a tight circle, a wild, tribal yell tearing out of him as he put round after round into the bear. Each hit staggered the animal and pulled it another degree off its line, until it forgot the boy entirely and swung toward the noise and the motion, toward Tony. The slide locked back empty. Without breaking stride or breath, Tony dropped the spent magazine, seated a fresh one, and had the pistol up and firing again before the bear closed the ground he had bought.
And even at twelve, Niko understood exactly what his father was doing. Tony was making himself the loudest, largest thing in the clearing, dragging every ounce of the animal’s fury onto his own body and away from his son. And in pulling the bear around after him, he was turning its flank to the trees, laying its profile open for the man who could end it. His father was giving the bear to Jonas.
The grizzly’s side came clear, and the world came apart. Niko was rocked by the bellow of his uncle’s .45-70, the round punching into the bear’s left side just below the shoulder, dropping it like a puppet with its strings cut. The concussion of the rifle swept past him like a sudden gust of wind and forced his eyes shut for a split second.
When he looked up, he saw his father’s face looking back at him, wearing a raw mix of fear and pride. His father gave a tight nod, and Niko nodded back to show he was all right. Beside them, Uncle Jonas smoothly stroked the lever of his Marlin, chambering another round while keeping the smoking barrel locked dead on his target. Niko stood up slowly, his fingers brushing through the damp moss to gather his uncle’s spent brass casing. He held the warm metal tightly, knowing that these things, even spent, carried deep value, not in dollars, but in the heavy weight of survival.