Stalking

Around 2012, a man named Oscar returned to his family's traditional native homelands along a remote tributary channel feeding into the Copper River near Chitina. While harvesting fireweed blossoms for an elder auntie a quarter-mile from their rural cabin, Oscar witnessed a large brown form performing a series of strange, vertical bouncing movements through a 6-foot tall grass slough 30 yards out. Armed with a .357 handgun and believing it was a maimed, trapped bear that posed a community safety risk, he returned to camp to recruit his elder uncle, who brought a 12-gauge shotgun.

Two years prior to 2022, newlyweds Josh and Bridget spent a week-long honeymoon clearing brush at a remote family cabin located just outside the boundaries of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. On their third night, under the dense canopy of land of the midnight sun twilight, a relentless owl hoot at an abnormal, highly repetitive cadence caught their attention. Suspecting a trapped bird, Josh armed himself with a .45 Auto pistol and took an 800-lumen flashlight to investigate the 30-yard cleared perimeter with Bridget.

In the early-to-mid 1990s, a Bristol Bay native named David spent weeks alone at his grandfather's (Uppa's) cabin situated on the West Channel of the Nushagak River near Keeper Cutoff, due west of Portage Creek. While constructing a log generator shed, David was pelted by pine cones and endured three consecutive nights of heavy thumping on the cabin roof, later clearing off large clumps of uprooted grass and soil with a dip-net pole under the assumption that his brother was playing a prank.

In the winter of 1987, an 11-to-13-year-old native youth named Joseph gained permission to drive his father's Arctic Cat Jag snowmachine, leading his two younger brothers (ages nine and seven) on a Yamaha Bravo 340 into the remote tundra islands west of Sophie's Landing along the Nushagak River. Armed with a heavy 8mm rifle and two .22s to harvest small game, the boys successfully dispatched a porcupine on an oblong island of black spruce trees. While processing the harvest, a dense, blinding winter sea fog rolled in rapidly off Bristol Bay.

Three winters prior to 2022, a small construction company owner named Clint treated three of his laborers to a week-long snowmachining vacation near Paxson and the Denali Highway after completing a major renovation project ahead of schedule. While riding near a remote mountain creek drainage feeding a lake just west of the Richardson Highway junction, an 800 RMK snowmachine slipped its track. Due to severe winds and lack of towing gear, the party piled snow over the chassis to stash it overnight.

While salmon fishing along a secluded bank of the Russian River on the Kenai Peninsula, a local angler named Brandon and his two out-of-state college friends noted a series of unusual disturbances across the water. While practicing his fly-casting loops, Brandon first spotted a patch of vibrant, chimpanzee-like red hair moving through the opposite brush line, which he initially joked was a fellow redhead angler.

An experienced interior wilderness trapper with twenty years on the Kuskokwim River drainage abruptly terminated his business after a terrifying multi-day encounter loop. While running his 10-mile oval line on a Skidoo Tundra snowmachine, he discovered several traps systematically sprung with zero target catches; strangely, the surrounding snowpack had been meticulously scrubbed with fresh spruce boughs to purposefully erase any track marks.

While managing a salmon subsistence set-net site on the Wood River drainage above Dillingham near the McClung River mouth, a man named Keith, his wife Danielle, and their three young children (ages twelve, nine, and five) were targeted by an unusually bold entity. While stacking gear and mending twine on the riverbank, Keith's 12-year-old daughter pointed out a 'man' inside the 12-foot shoreline willow brush who was actively waving and smiling at her. Keith investigated with a shotgun, firing a warning blast into the air to deter what he assumed was a routine bear.

During a winter backcountry snowmachining excursion, a group of four friends staged out of Trappers Creek to boondock through fresh, deep powder fields. Navigating individual routes using personal GPS trackers, George paused his 700 RMK snowmachine on a segment of packed ground to safely fill his engine with a spare gas can. While refueling, he noted an immense dark form executing high-speed maneuvers through a thick tree line several hundred yards back.

A couple named Isaac and Marcy, along with their yellow lab Jesse, reserved a remote day cabin near Lynx Lake within the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area between Big Lake and Willow. While hiking an un-frozen shoreline trail during the autumn season, a sudden, absolute silence dropped over the forest canopy, prompting Isaac to prudently turn the party back out of bear caution.

Three years prior to 2022, two finance professionals from São Paulo, Brazil, named Louis and Franco, embarked on a high-priced guided wolf and bear combo hunt on the outskirts of the Katmai Wildlife Refuge down on the Alaska Peninsula. Operating from a remote spike camp carefully hacked out inside a ten-foot radius of thick willow shrubs to shield from heavy winds, the hunters hiked up a treacherous switchback path onto an adjacent high mountain shelf to glass a major north-south river clearing.

In an on-site field interview conducted north of Willow along the Deception Creek trail system, a lifelong Alaskan outdoorsman named Ryan walked the channel researcher through a highly strategic, dual-creature stalking encounter. While tracking a game trail leading past a localized swamp clearing at dusk, Ryan's two highly trained dogs—Keen and Brutus—suddenly locked up with their hackles completely raised. A massive unseen presence began heavily pacing and paralleling Ryan's route through a dense thicket of tall willow and alder brush just 20 to 25 yards away.

Having lived on his remote wooded property between Wasilla and Willow for over thirty years, Jonathan was thoroughly accustomed to walking the trail to his cabin in pitch darkness. Carrying supplies back from a Costco run in Anchorage, he shouldered a bulky bundle of toilet paper and began walking toward his cabin armed with his trusted 10mm Glock. Halfway down the familiar path, the sound of heavy footsteps and breaking branches began pacing him thirty feet away in the thick brush.

Lifelong friends Spencer and Max first explored a remote, three-mile muskeg corridor near Denali National Park back in the 1970s, where they discovered a seemingly abandoned, fully stocked campsite and had their casual whistles and conversation eerily mimicked back by unseen shadows pacing them along a parallel ridge. Ten years later in the 1980s, the pair returned on a Honda three-wheeler, armed with shotguns and a .44 Magnum. Feeling choked by exhaust fumes, Spencer hopped off to walk the mossy trail on foot while Max throttled ahead around a bend.

Two years ago, Jesse and Monica were outfitting a newly built Caribou cabin kit on an isolated parcel along the outskirts of Fairbanks, working late into the evening to insulate the structure and install a wood stove before the bitter subarctic winter set in. As Jesse stood on the stove fitting pipe sections together, an intensely crisp, rhythmic clicking sound began echoing every few seconds. Thinking it might be a shifting weight clicking against something metal, the couple tried to brush it off until Monica spotted a dark shape lurking outside the cabin’s single 4x4 window.