Caribou-Alaska

Caribou Hind Quarter– Noatak.

One day in the early fall a knock came to the door.  My roommate, Eric, answered it and it was Michael.  A local Eskimo man in his very early twenties.  He asked if he could borrow $20 from each of us for gasoline to put in his four wheeler because the caribou were crossing down stream on the Noatak River.  He needed to get there.  I had loaned money before to villagers and seldom had it returned so I wasn’t to hep on the idea.  Eric on the other had, being just a little older than Michael, said he thought we would get the money back.  I came up with a better idea.  Since we had not bought any meat yet from Kotzebue (large village to the south right on the Arctic Circle) I said why don’t we take some caribou meat in exchange.  I thought we might be more likely to get some meat than cash.  How much meat Eric and I decided would be left up to Michael.  Two days went buy and no Michael, meat, or money.  I was already to chalk up another lesson learned.  Two more days passed.  Eric and I came back to our apartment at about the same time after school and there, leaning against our door was a hind quarter of a caribou.  The whole hind quarter.  I asked Eric how we went about skinning and cutting the meat from the bone and he was as lost as I was.  We did not have the right sort of knives and it seemed like it took hours de-boning the quarter section.  I am sure we left a lot on the bone.   We borrowed a meat grinder form the school to ground what we had cut into one pound bundles, and put all in the freezer feeling pretty smug about having enough meat to last the winter (along with some salmon given us.)   The only problem was that  I found out that I did not like caribou meat.  I had to mix many spices and seasonings before cooking and douse it a lot with catsup and other condiments to make it palatable.