A small group of Alaskan college students participate in a hands-on class on hunting and food processing from the land.
NIKISKI, Alaska – Before sunrise on November 11, 10 students from Nikiski Middle and High School gathered with their teacher, Jesse Bjorkman, in this small community on the Kenai Peninsula to prepare for a hunt. moose.
Scattered into five vehicles, the group traveled about 15 km to the Nikiski Escape Route, a gravel road connecting Nikiski with the town of Kenai. As they slowly descended the snow-covered road, the students were able to observe from all sides, scanning the edge of the spruce forests for moose.
Within five minutes, they had spotted one, but continued after seeing a calf nearby. Ten minutes later, the students spot another moose, but leave after realizing it is on tribal land. Mr Bjorkman reminded the group that “even in a hunt if we don’t get an animal it is always a success”. But in less than 45 minutes, around 8:50 a.m., the group found a third moose, basking in a pile of snow under a spruce tree.
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When his middle school students gave him the green light, Mr. Bjorkman positioned himself and fired. It was a fatal blow to this approximately 950 pound moose. The students gasped at the sound of the gunshot, then laughed in excitement. The moose jumped up and rushed a few hundred feet further into the woods before falling into a clearing.
It was the first moose hunt for 12-year-old Rex Wittmer. He said finding the animal, killing it and stalking it was very exciting. “Being a valuable part of society is learning to do things that people did before you, which is to carry on the tradition,” he said. Hunting should not go away. It has been part of our culture for many years. I feel like coming here was a good opportunity to keep this tradition alive. “
Rex and Nikiski’s other students are part of their school’s outdoor exploration class, a class dedicated to teaching an expanded version of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s hunter education curriculum. They study basic hunting skills and protocols, wildlife ecology and habitat, and outdoor survival and safety, including Alaska-specific risks like drowning and avalanches. Bjorkman said students in the program, who choose whether or not to participate in moose hunting, learn firsthand where their food comes from.
After the momentum dropped, the students stayed behind as Mr. Bjorkman slowly walked towards the animal. As soon as he determined that the elk was dead, the teacher guided the students to the animal, asking them what to look for when following an animal.
The students, initially shy around the carcass, began to move closer, stroking the elk and examining its ears, long gray tongue, and horse face. At first the students watched Mr. Bjorkman pick up his knife and recount every move he made, but ended up putting on latex gloves and helping to skin the animal.
©Ash Adams
As the students helped remove the skin, steam escaped from the surface of the inner flesh as the fascia was exposed to freezing temperatures. In some years Mr. Bjorkman teaches his students how to tan the skin; this year it was left in the forest for other animals to use in their nests.
After the skin was removed, the students helped cut the limbs, which were placed in canvas bags and dragged out of the woods on sleds to a truck on the side of the road. Five adult volunteers donated their van, garage and strength to help the children take the animal apart and skin it.
Some students were more comfortable around the carcass than others, who shouted “Eww! “Or” Aww! During the most horrific parts of the dissection. But when Mr Bjorkman dug his arm deep into the body cavity to extract the still warm heart – considered exceptional meat – the students quietly passed the bloodied muscle to feel it before it was packed.
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Given Alaska’s vast distances and rugged topography, Bjorkman said it may be easier for a hunter to “leave the kids at home and not teach them.” But he created the classroom moose hunt “to be as close to the kids as possible” and to give them the opportunity to participate in the process. Showing students how to be good stewards of the land and responsible users of wildlife is “one of the most valuable lessons we can teach young people today,” he said. “If we can ensure that children enjoy nature and the world around them in a meaningful way, we hope that they will choose to do these outdoor activities rather than having problems,” said Mr. Bjorkman.
The Outdoor Exploration course began in 2013, when a school-wide schedule change gave teachers the ability to create more electives for students. Mr Bjorkman saw the opportunity to design a course incorporating what he had learned a year earlier at an outdoor leadership school at Safari Club International near Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
At this school, educators across the country are taught how to incorporate outdoor skills into the curriculum. While there, Mr. Bjorkman heard of schools in Colorado, Florida and other parts of the country where students hunted, camped, practiced archery and learned other outdoor skills, but “Maybe not to the extent that we do things here in Alaska, with educational moose hunting, where people pick up an animal and turn it into food from the field to the freezer.”
Dalana Barnett said it was important for her son, Zachary Barnett, to have this experience. “He was really excited – that’s all I’ve heard of in the last month,” Ms. Barnett said on the morning of the hunt. “If they’re old enough to go to middle school, then they’re old enough to go hunting. “
Rex’s mother Koleen Wittmer said moose hunting was an “amazing opportunity,” especially for families who don’t have the resources to try and hunt on their own. “You would be surprised how many children who have never been to hunting or fishing live here,” she said. “I think the show is so cool, because there are kids here who have never been able to do it in their lives. It’s so awesome because they go with someone who is safe and who teaches them. “
Mr Bjorkman, 37, said the class was a positive experience for the students, especially for those who have not done well in other school or extracurricular programs.
“About two-thirds of the class went hunting; the rest had other commitments, and no student or parent raised any objections, ”Bjorkman said. Everyone who had left had already eaten moose, and while warming themselves by the fire, many munched on moose meat sticks that their parents had packed for them.
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Emma Hornung, 12, said she wanted to join the hunt because she loves elk meat. His father is hunting, and has asked him to bring home the cup of his choice.
“I think if you ate moose and never had it before, it would be very difficult for most people to tell the difference between moose and beef,” Bjorkman said of the lean and sweet game meat. While most people may not think of moose as food, for many Alaskans and Canadians it is a crucial source of nutrition “because of how rich it is.” Moose are an important traditional food for many Alaska Natives, Native Americans, and First Nations people.
According to the Department of Fisheries and Game, about 7,000 of Alaska’s 175,000 moose are harvested each year and produce about three million pounds of meat. Moose are particularly abundant along the rivers of south central and interior Alaska. Like many big game species in Alaska, moose are protected and regulated, but there are enough of them that the state allows hunting, and the fall moose hunt is an annual ritual for thousands of Alaskans.
But moose weren’t always common on the Kenai Peninsula. When miners settled in the area in the 1870s, they altered the landscape with a series of forest fires that destroyed the habitat of the area’s abundant caribou population, but resulted in a rapid increase in the population. moose population. In 1910, the area became famous for its thousands of huge moose.
After a few hours of skinning, cutting and wrapping the moose, the students and volunteers brought the severed limbs back to Dylan Hooper, a teacher at Nikiski’s middle and high school who explains to the class that the meat should be hung for two days for her to be moved.
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When it came time to carve the meat, the students were guided through all the things they needed to know: how to sharpen a knife, how to hold it and slide it safely through the flesh, where to cut it, and how to cut fat and tendons from meat.
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The students share about 500 pounds of roasts, steaks, sausages. While processing the meat, the students talked about all the ways their families were cooking their freezers full of meat this winter. Kameron Bird, 13, had been eager to eat meat for months. As he said, “If you’ve never tasted elk steak, you have to. “
