NIKISKI, Alaska – Before the sun came up on Nov. 11, 10 students from Nikiski Middle & High School had gathered with their teacher, Jesse Bjorkman, in a parking lot at a gas station here in this small community on the Kenai Peninsula – to introduce themselves. to prepare for a moose hunt.
Spread over five vehicles, the group drove approximately 10 miles to the Nikiski Escape Route, a dirt road connecting Nikiski to the town of Kenai. The students strolled slowly along the snow-covered road, peering on either side of the cars, scanning the edge of the spruce forests for moose.
Within five minutes they had spotted one, but moved on after seeing a calf nearby. Ten minutes later, the students spotted another moose, but left after realizing it was on tribal land. Mr Bjorkman reminded the group that “even on a hunt, if we don’t get an animal, it’s still a success.” But within 45 minutes, around 8:50 a.m., the group found a third moose lounging in a snow pile under a spruce tree.
When his high school students gave him permission, Mr. Bjorkman aimed his rifle and fired one shot. It was a death blow to the cow moose weighing about 950 pounds. The students gasped at the sound of the gunshot, then giggled with excitement. The moose jumped and sprinted a few hundred feet deeper into the woods before falling into a clearing.
It was the first time moose hunted for Rex Wittmer, 12. He said finding the animal, shooting it and following the murder made his heart pound.
“Being a valuable part of society is learning to do things that people did before you — keeping the tradition going,” he said. “The hunt must not become extinct. It has been part of our culture for many, many years. I feel like coming out here was a good chance to keep that tradition alive.”
Rex and Nikiski’s other students are part of their school’s outdoor exploration class, a course devoted to teaching an expanded version of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s hunter education program. They study basic hunting skills and protocols, wildlife ecology and habitat, and outdoor living and safety — including Alaska-specific risks such as drowning and avalanches. Mr Bjorkman said students in the program, who choose whether to participate in the moose hunt, learn first-hand where their food comes from.
After the moose fell, the students were left behind as Mr. Bjorkman walked slowly toward the animal. As soon as he determined that the moose was dead, the teacher led the students to the prey and asked them what to look for when tracking an animal.
The students—shy around the carcass at first—came closer, petted the moose, and examined its ears, long gray tongue, and horse-like face. At first, the students watched as Mr. Bjorkman grabbed his knife and narrated every move he made, but eventually they donned latex gloves and helped skin the animal.
As the students helped the skin to retract, steam floated off the surface of the inner flesh as the fascia was exposed to freezing temperatures. Some years Mr. Bjorkman teaches his students how to tan the hide; this year it was left in the woods for other animals to use in their nests.
After the skin was removed, the students helped cut off the limbs, which were placed in canvas bags and dragged on sleds from the woods to a truck along the road. Five adult volunteers had offered their pickup trucks, garage space and power to help the children disassemble and eventually slaughter the animal.
Some students felt more comfortable with the carcass than others, who yelled, “Eww!” or “Aww!” during the more gruesome parts of the dissection. But when Mr. Bjorkman plunged his arm deep into the body cavity to pull out the still-hot heart—which is considered exceptional flesh—the students quietly gave each other the bloody muscle to feel before wrapping it.
Given Alaska’s vast distances and rugged topography, Mr. Bjorkman said it may be easier as a hunter to “leave the kids at home and teach them nothing.” But he created the moose hunt in the classroom “to be about the kids as much as possible,” and to give them a chance to be a part of the process, he said.
Showing students how to be good stewards of the earth and responsible users of natural resources is “one of the most valuable lessons we can teach young children today,” he said.
“If we can help kids enjoy nature and the world around them in a meaningful way, we hope they choose to do those outdoor activities instead of getting into trouble,” said Mr. bjorkman.
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The outdoor exploration class began in 2013, when a school-wide roster change gave teachers the opportunity to create more electives for students. Mr. Bjorkman saw an opportunity to devise a class in which he would incorporate what he had learned a year earlier at a Safari Club International outdoor leadership school near Jackson Hole, Wyo.
At that school, educators across the country learn how to incorporate outdoor skills into the curriculum. While there, Mr. Bjorkman learned of schools in Colorado, Florida, and other parts of the country where students learned hunting, camping, archery, and other outdoor skills — but “perhaps not to the extent that we do things here in Alaska, with the educational moose hunt, where people collect an animal and turn it into food from the field to the freezer,” he said.
Dalana Barnett said it was important for her son, Zachary Barnett, to have this experience. “He was very excited—that’s all I’ve heard for the past month,” Mrs. Barnett said on the morning of the hunt. “If they’re old enough to be in high school, they’ll be old enough to go hunting.”
Koleen Wittmer, Rex’s mother, said the moose hunt was a “great opportunity,” especially for families who don’t have the resources to hunt themselves.
“You’d be surprised how many kids live here who have never hunted or fished,” she said. “I think the exposure is so cool because there are kids here who have never been able to do this in their lives. It’s so cool because they go safe with someone who teaches them.”
Mr Bjorkman, 37, said the class was a positive experience for students, especially those who have not properly attended other academic or extracurricular programs.
“It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen with this one student who was cutting up a moose and making food for her family,” he said. “It’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely for a lot of people who may not have a connection to anything else.”
About two-thirds of the class went hunting; the rest had other obligations and no student or parent objected, Mr Bjorkman said. Everyone who went had eaten elk before, and as they warmed up by the fire, many ate from elk meat sticks their parents had packed for them.
Emma Hornung (12) said she wanted to join the hunt because she loves moose meat. Her father hunts and asked her to take home the chosen backpack.
“I think if you were eating moose and you had never eaten moose before, it would be very difficult for most people to tell the difference between elk and beef,” Mr Bjorkman said of the lean, mild meat of game.
While most people may not think of moose as food, for many Alaskans and Canadians it has been a vital source of nutrition “because of all the wealth it has,” he said. Elk are an important traditional food for many Alaska Native, Native American, and First Nations people.
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About 7,000 of Alaska’s estimated 175,000 elk are harvested annually, producing about three million pounds of meat, according to the Department of Fish and Game. Elk are especially abundant along rivers in south-central and inland Alaska. Like many Alaskan big game species, moose are protected and regulated, but they are plentiful enough for the state to allow hunting — and moose hunting in the fall 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 changed the landscape with a series of wildfires that destroyed the habitat of the area’s abundant caribou population but caused a rapid increase in the moose population. By 1910, the area had become famous for its thousands of huge elk.
After a few hours of skinning, cutting, and bagging the moose, the students and volunteers brought the severed limbs to the home of Dylan Hooper — a Nikiski Middle & High School teacher who teaches the extracurricular class with Mr. Bjorkman — for two days. hung up to tenderize the meat.
When it was time to start slaughtering, the students were given a tour of all the things they needed to know: how to sharpen a knife, how to hold it securely and slide it over the meat, where to cut, and how to use the fat and cut the tendons. the meat.
Some of the meat scraps were ground into dog food and the leg bones were donated to a woman who will use them to make elk stock for Alaska Native seniors at the nearby senior center.
The students divided about 500 pounds of roasts, steaks, sausage, bratwurst and hamburger. While processing the meat, the students talked about all the ways their families would cook their freezers full of meat this winter.
Kameron Bird, 13, looked forward to the months of eating meat. As he put it, “Moose steak, if you’ve never tried it, you should.”
