Tyler and I have been living this lifestyle of trapping and living in the bush half the year for 15 years now and we continue to find opportunities to learn something new everywhere we turn. It’s been a great life and now we’re blessed to share everything with our kids, Sidney five and Blaze three.
It’s really important to us to raise our kids up in this lifestyle and we try our best to make the experience positive and motivating for them. When Sidney was one and I was pregnant with Blaze I took the opportunity to travel with Sidney in the dogsled. She was light and small so it was pretty easy to simply add her to the trail outfit. Since Blaze was born I got into the habit of staying at main camp with the kids and I have been ready to bust out and start getting out into the woods more. This was my breakout year as a mother.
It takes a lot of momentum as a mother to get out the door with two small children during the depths of an Arctic winter. All the same, we made a habit of doing it everyday. Sidney started homeschool this year and I told her that our daily meanderings were part of her P.E. The ruffed or willow grouse were thick this year and we saw flocks of the tasty birds nearly every time we went out walking. Blaze finally hit the stage where he can walk on the trails and keep a fairly pleasant pace. One evening during the caribou migration, we dressed the kids up and went hiking through the snow to see if we could spot one. Tyler had been seeing fresh tracks so we knew there was a good chance. I carried Blaze in a framepack and Sidney walked. Just as she was starting to feel her tired little legs, and wanted to quit, we egged her on and asked her to go just a little farther – we might see one yet! She agreed to keep going and just as we entered the next slough we ran into a small group and were rewarded with a nice young animal. Sidney was absolutely thrilled with the magical experience and empowered by her own fortitude. The kids proved to be our good luck charms through the season. If they were along in the woods, something exciting always seemed to happen. I would carry Blaze in the backpack and Sidney and Tyler would walk along and set marten traps on a slough going just a couple miles downriver out of main camp. We ended up catching nine marten on that little line with the kids. Tyler went far and wide rounding up the rest of our catch, but the kid line in that particular slough was a magnetic little honey hole. It feels like even the forces of nature have been working to reinforce our children to live life in the wilderness.
This winter we had a good population of rats on a lake where we have a line cabin and decided it was high time to learn how to catch a muskrat. Tyler convinced me to make the journey over there with the kids and see what we could learn. Packing up for the trip I tried my best not to overthink it. Kids don’t really need much – they need to stay warm, they need nourishing food and water, and they need to brush their teeth. I tried to just focus on those simple things. I knew we would be out on the lake all day trapping so we would need something handy to eat. The day before we left I made a big batch of monster cookies with oatmeal, peanut butter and chocolate chips and Tyler made a good-sized batch of moose dry meat. So lunches on the lake were cookies and dried moose and it satisfied everyone. We had the usual oatmeal for breakfast and I just brought some basic staples for dinner – rice, noodles, a little moose burger. We figured on supplementing our grub supply with muskrat meat. In the fall, I took time off sewing for profit and built Sidney and Blaze some cold weather gear. I made Sidney an all-fur parka, a special privilege of being the wife of a successful trapper, as there is always a bounty of varied skins to sew with. Both kids got new fur trappers hats of their choosing and even picked the shell material out on their own. I’m pretty sure Blaze has the only tie dye marten hat in town. For Blaze I made a pair of wolf fur pants. I oversized everything so they can grow into them for a few years to come. The arms of Sidney’s coat and Blaze’s pants are made from wolves that Patrick Vaulkenburg once caught – a nice way to keep memories alive. The first day we were out rattin’ it was -35 and thanks to the warm skins they wore, they were dressed well enough to enjoy it.
It was impossible to get a heavy outfit, two kids, and two adults over the 15 miles of rough trail to the lake cabin solely under the power of our seven dog team. So it was decided that Tyler would drive the dogs with the kids in the sled and I would follow with the snowmachine and loaded Siglund sled. I have just about zero snow machine experience and right before hooking up all the dogs Tyler paused to ask me if I was nervous to get the machine over there. I had chosen early on not to contemplate it at all because I didn’t want to worry myself over it. I knew it wasn’t goinsg to be easy and I’ve heard ‘the men folk’ talking about the trials it can present. Tyler pulled the snowhook on the dogteam and there was nothing left to do but follow. It was slow going and hard work and every time I even got one single cocky thought in my mind I would get caught on a tree or smacked in the face with a branch. Though in the end, I did manage to get the machine over to the lake and back to main camp with both the machine and myself in good condition.
Trapping rats for the first time in extreme cold proved to be a challenge. Tyler put a cable lead on the trap chains thinking to allow the trapped critters room to dive and drown. This proved to be a mistake in the cold weather. Every caught rat did as we hoped, dived and drowned, but the cable and chain froze to the side of the narrow tunnels that lead to and from the hut. It was a nightmare, carefully chiselling out the little dead animals without damaging the fur and then painstakingly rebuilding and insulating the damaged huts so we could set again. We also learned the hard way not to set the traps in the water, in that kind of cold, insulated huts or not, the traps froze down and Tyler ruined a half dozen good marten traps learning that lesson. The set has to be made above water, and the traps need to be bedded in dry rat duff to keep them operating well. Positioning is also important. Think like a rat and set it in the right spot and make sure it’s stable. They don’t like stepping on a wobbly trap. And if you think you’ve insulated the hut well-enough with shoveled snow, keep shovelling, you don’t want their holes freezing over because for one, then they can’t come up and get caught, and for another you want to take care not to freeze them out. They need these huts to make it through to break-up. We froze out a good number of huts, probably because they stopped using them once there was a caught rat in there, or because we just exposed them to too much cold air while trapping. We could have kept catching rats on the lake, but pulled our sets out of consideration for preserving the remainder of their working pushups. I’m not sure how critical it really is but they must build huts for a reason. We also learned that trapping rats in the cold, even with a longer February day on your side, is time consuming and considerable work. Tons of shovelling, chipping, walking, crouching, all with wet, cold hands and a steady north wind in your face. Tyler started out with big plans of trapping two lakes-, the one we did trap and another one a mile and half over a winding, bobbing, bumpy uphill portage trail. But with two young ones in tow he backed off that plan after the second day. It would have been fun to rack up the numbers – the other lake had over a hundred push ups – but it was better to scale down and keep it fun for us and the kids. In the end, we caught 23 rats, nice big ones, with good winter fur. That’ll make 5 muskrat hats with a left over. We ate the hindquarters and fed the rest to the dogs, so there was some good food in it for us and we learned a lot. We’ve got our method down for next season and the kids are hooked. As long as we’ve got rats it seems certain this trip will become an annual late-winter family tradition. And that’s what it’s all about. Going out to the trapline used to be about different things for us, but now it’s about our kids. It’s about family. Raising our children up in the woods is now our main focus. Living out there comes with its share of challenges. The logistics are a pain. The coming and going is stressful and expensive. The darkness and isolation can wear. It definitely lacks in the way of conveniences and social events. Sometimes we grumble privately and think fondly of taking it easy for a season and hanging back in town, but we can’t. Not now. Raising our kids in the bush, on the trapline, is our most important pursuit in life right now and we’re going to keep doing it as long as we can.
Our version of the first day of school picture!
I wrote this piece as an article for the Alaska Trapper Magazine and it appeared in the April issue. It was fun and felt like I was writing for close friends, which I was, in large part. At the end of July Tyler will be in Escanaba, Michigan for the NTA convention. I have been busy this first part of summer getting ready to send some things for him to sell for me while he’s down there at the convention. Tyler’s been busy building for Log Weavers again this summer. A fun friend came to visit us in June and we took her on a boat ride on the Yukon. My brother Brad got married mid-June and the kids and I were lucky enough to make it down to Minnesota to be at the wedding where they were flower girl and ring bearer. Our friend Charlie Jagow is getting married next weekend and the kids will be in his wedding, as well as Tyler being a groomsman. Life feels super sweet this summer. The garden is gorgeous. I’m feeling so grateful for the blessings right now. We have a few beaver pelts for sale if anyones interested. We also have tanned marten. I shot a grizzly bear this spring. We already have a tanned grizzly and I was able to get a “legal for sale” permit from Alaska Department of Fish and Game for the bear skin. If anyone out there knows anybody who might be interested please contact us at tyseldenfur@gmail.com
Hope to write again before trapping season. Thanks for reading!
-Ashley
Recent Comments