A Hunter’s Passion For Foxes And Friends

The following appears in the March issue of Alaska Sporting Journal:

BY SCOTT HAUGEN

”You better move up there now while you’re single, because no woman would ever follow you to the Arctic!” Four months after Tiffany said these words to me, we were engaged, and seven months after that we were married and living in Alaska’s high Arctic. That was 34 years ago, and yes, we’re still happily married.

For me, ever since I was a boy I wanted to live in the Alaskan Arctic. I wanted to learn how to hunt and trap from the indigenous Iñupiat people, who are among the toughest souls on Earth. I simply wanted to experience wildlife in one of the harshest habitats on the planet.

I started running my own trapline while in fourth grade in 1974 near my boyhood home in Oregon. Predators intrigued me then and still do, no matter where in the world they roam. Whether trapping or calling predators, cats and canines have always been the most compelling to me.

But one of these critters always stood out as the most interesting of all. Yes, I trapped and hunted wolves in Alaska, and that was fun, but it was the white fox of the Far North that really piqued my curiosity. Going through seasonal color phases, it was the pure white, winter pelage of the Arctic fox that enthralled me, and it’s what started my love of pursuing fox in Alaska more than three decades ago.

WHITE FOX

I began learning the ways of the white fox as our first winter closed in on Point Lay, then home to less than 100 people. Jobs as school teachers took Tiffany and I there; I was the only high school teacher, she taught third to eighth grade. We taught every subject and did our nine months’ worth of grocery shopping at once when passing through Anchorage. There was no store in Point Lay, which is on the Chuckchi Sea, at the time.

We had one TV channel, RATNET (Rural Alaska Television Network), no flush toilets and the internet had yet to be developed. Life was good. How good? One winter we went 199 consecutive days where the temperature never got above zero. Add two months of near total darkness to that and hunting and trapping in these conditions becomes a challenge. I quickly learned that when calling Arctic fox in subzero conditions, diaphragm calls were the way to go, as they didn’t freeze.

One winter I monitored a walrus carcass on the beach for three months before the snow fox finally found it. Setting up against the jumbled pack ice in the cold daylight late one February day, 150 yards from the carcass with not a breath of wind, I was surprised how far my sounds carried.

Alleyways had been created by the folding of the pack ice, and it was those corridors I targeted when calling. I was shocked when the first white fox appeared from seemingly nowhere after only two minutes of calling. A shot with a .22 found the mark.

Over the next few days I took 11 Arctic fox near that carcass before a polar bear took over. Once the bones were scattered across the frozen ocean – and mostly consumed – the white fox moved on. I had my best calling near food sources like that.

Even as they approached a call, the polar fox continually moved about, always fidgeting and looking. But hunger and curiosity routinely got the best of them.

One midwinter day I was using a flashlight to track those coming to my call. One white fox was so jumpy I couldn’t get a shot. I wished I had my shotgun. When the fox busted me it sprinted down a gully of snow, the same one I had walked in on.

As I approached my snowmachine to head to another place, the little fox wouldn’t leave it. I couldn’t get a shot, and the pure white fox crawled in and burrowed between the track of the snowmachine and the seat as I walked closer. I had to start the machine to get the darn fox out of there, and when it bolted I was ready. I dropped it with a string of shots from my semiauto .22.

Twenty degrees below zero was my typical cutoff point for venturing out, but on calm days, which were rare in the Arctic, minus 30 degrees felt tolerable. Still, you had to closely watch the flat horizon for storms because they could materialize in seconds and be on you in minutes. More than once I set out under calm conditions, only to be consumed by temperatures in excess of minus 50. At that point, survival becomes the priority, not hunting.

One time I got stuck in a storm when winds gusted over 70 mph and temperatures plummeted to 62 below zero with the windchill. I had to turn my sled on its side and take shelter behind it. The rising moisture from my breath beneath my down facemask would collect on my eyelashes, freezing my eyes shut. I wasn’t sure I’d survive that night, but after a few hours the storm let up. I made it home with only minor frostbite on my hands and face.

REDS, SILVERS AND MORE

In 1993, Tiffany and I moved to Anaktuvuk Pass, in the heart of the Brooks Range, where we continued teaching. The Iñupiat village of about 300 people at the time was the last settlement to become established in all of North America. Many of the elders shared stories of seeing their first airplane, meeting the first white man, and of people starving because the caribou didn’t migrate through in some years. They were a nomadic people, following caribou through the Brooks Range, some of the most rugged terrain I’ve set foot in anywhere in the world.

On the northern slopes of the Brooks Range, predators and prey were ubiquitous. Caribou herds numbering into the tens of thousands were common in the mid- 1990s. We’d often watch moose, grizzly bear and Dall sheep from our living room window. Grizzly bears were abundant, as were wolves, wolverine and lynx. Red fox and cross fox were around, but their numbers seemed to fluctuate. Arctic fox didn’t venture this far inland.

One winter I called in a cross fox that a local man shot. I also lured in a handful of red fox during the four years I was there, but they were fairly scattered compared to other places in Alaska.

For more than 30 years I’ve traveled throughout much of Alaska, hunting and fishing along the way. Southwest Alaska is my favorite place to target red fox, as they’re aggressive to the calls, always hungry and populations are solid.

While hunting brown bears during fall on the upper end of the Alaska Peninsula near the village of Egegik, red fox tracks littered the beaches. Every night it rained, and every morning there would be fresh tracks in the soft, sandy soil. Once I filled a brown bear tag, I had a few days to hunt waterfowl and call fox.
Setting up in creek beds at low tide using an electronic call was the ticket. Hungry, curious red fox would often dart right into the speaker, sometimes biting it, sometimes sitting inches from it while trying to figure out what it was. The fox in this area had never been hunted; that made me look good.

Last fall, I was calling red fox outside of Egegik, as well as Cold Bay, and the number of reds that responded to mouth calls continued to amaze me. The good old days of fox calling are alive and well in remote Alaska – no question. Nowadays, most of my calling for red fox is for photography purposes, not hunting them.

EVERYTHING’S BIGGER ON KODIAK

But the biggest red fox I ever hunted were on Kodiak Island. I’ve hunted the island multiple times for deer and sea ducks. Here, red fox are active well into December.

The first red fox I saw was roaming the beach late one November morning. It shimmered brilliant orange and red as it scampered from rock to rock, nose down, in search of seafood that had washed ashore. I was duck hunting and had nestled into a rocky point. Like many of us do when we see a predator, I pursed my lips and made long, high-pitched kissing sounds.

When the fox stopped and looked at me, I figured it would bolt the other way. Instead, it waltzed right up to me. The shot was easy, but what I’ll never forget is the size of that fox. Figuring it was just a fully prime dog, when I lifted it off the rocky beach, it was heavier than some coyotes I’d shot. No doubt, these seafood-eating predators live well, and they can amass the weight to an impressive degree.

While bowhunting deer on Kodiak Island one winter, I saw a red fox mousing in some tall, yellow beach grass. Moving into position, I set up and started calling. No matter how hard I tried, that fox wouldn’t leave its quarry. But when a gorgeous silver fox waltzed in, I could barely draw my bow, as I was shaking with so much excitement. When I was a kid, one of the first fox I trapped was a rare silver-phase red fox. Back then in my part of the Pacific Northwest, the odds of trapping one were something like 1:20,000. I’d only ever seen two other silver fox in the wild, but this Kodiak animal was the first I’d ever called in.

The sleek, black silver-tipped fox stepped behind a berm, and when it emerged, I was at full draw. Stopping the fox in its tracks with a high mouth squeak, the 15-yard shot found the mark. It was my first fox with a bow.

Cross fox, another color phase of the red fox, prevail in multiple areas I’ve hunted in Alaska. I called in a gorgeous male cross for a friend one time. It was the first one he’d ever shot, and he was so excited to make a ruff for his parka from the striking hide. There have been other cross fox encounters over the years, each leaving a lasting impression too.

CHASING THE BLUES

As a kid, the blue fox also intrigued me. This color phase of the Arctic fox was something I yearned to see, and while I’d hoped to bump into one of these unicorns while on the North Slope, I never did. I heard tales from the locals about seeing an occasional blue here and there, but not until I traveled to Saint Paul Island did I see my first.

I was huddled in the rocks on the eastern edge of the island while hunting king eiders during a storm when a blue fox wandered into the rocks behind me, leaving me speechless. I had no idea these fox were still around. The animal’s dark coloration stumped me when I first saw it. But when I got a better look at the pug-nosed, short-legged fox, there was no doubt it was an Arctic fox of a different color phase than what I’d seen in my years in the Far North. A loud whistle stopped the fox between some rocks, and the 12-gauge found the mark.

During my week on the island I saw a couple more blue fox, but shooting just one was plenty. I enjoyed watching them. Calling a fox in remote Alaska isn’t rocket science. For me, it’s simply fun. The unmatched beauty I’ve seen over the decades makes me forever grateful to have experienced many remote parts of Alaska, and for that I thank the animals, for they’re the reason I ventured north. ASJ

Editor’s note: For signed copies of Scott Haugen’s best-selling book, Hunting The Alaskan High Arctic, visit scotthaugen .com. Follow his adventures on Instagram and Facebook.