Kotzebue has had refrigeration/freezer blues since forever......
I worked many an extra hour at Markair in Kotzebue in the 80 s, and the fish plants freezer or ice maker would quit and we’d get a slug to load into a few Herc’s worth of Salmon.
Then fishing went belly up for a lot of years and those freezers went unrepaierd, unused.
The money that could have been saved, and made .......the worst effect was that the WACH was at a peak 475,000 Caribou, with plenty for all, and non red could get 5 each, and they did, and came back again, untill they were restricted to 1 Caribou each, and Cabellas army stopped showing up by the jet load.
Arts and crafts sales plummeted and folks trying to make a summers worth of work into big money had to find other outlets for sales.
We used to make stuff and stop in Kotz on the way home and make twenty grand in 3 -4 days, and head upriver for our own meats.
There were two additional problems, one was that most locals had meat, and there was little opportunity to give any away, as well, inexperienced hunters having 5 animals on their hands was often overwhelming, so meat care wasn’t at its best and that, too made it hard to give away.
Around here, most carcasses are hung in the skin in the chilling fall, stored for later use in Winter, the skinned meats need further care and that’s when the clock starts ticking.
We don’t render Caribou fats, as they are lean, and the belly fats are sweet, so we save them for cooking. Besides, we have Seal oil, fish oils and Bear oil, each a condiment with a taste very different taste and in combo with different meats.
The fall Bulls eat very well, and a mature Bull picks and eats good moss, lichens and such with no mud or sticks, so we get the
Rumenets bag and boil it with contents inside, and that’s our “Bible” or to some, the book, as it’s a multi chamberd stomach that’s breaking cellulose down.
Good boiled with gut fat, toung, kidneys and liver as a first meal while the riguremortise leaves the meats of the carcass.
We make sausages from the innards, but they are delicate, we often use tougher seal intestines.
Education and a bit of competivness amongst fellow hunters usually have the young ones making better on mistakes, rumors of misuse or waste around someone usually gets chiding in a village and social pressure to do things right is overwhelming, but like any moral decisions, some [bleep] don’t have morals, no matter skin color.
Ona sad note, Minnie Grey was buried a couple weeks back.
Last edited by Caribou; 06/05/19.
