4 Day Fishing + Hunting Catch & Cook in an Inuit Village (Best Ice Fishing in the World)

Luke here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel. I'm here with my son Tom, my nephew Ransom, and we're 25 miles north of the Arctic Circle. And we're catching massive sea fish through the ocean ice and hunting ptarmigan. We're cooking up good food and having an awesome time. All right guys, welcome to Kotzebue. We're here on the shores of the Chukchi Sea. So that's the Chukchi Sea. It's all frozen over right now. And we're going to be here in Kotzebue for the next three days. You excited? Yeah. I'm excited. It's about 20 degrees right now. Supposed to get down around zero tonight, but it is lovely. No wind. Kotzebue is an Inupiaq village. See a lot of the signs are in English and in Inupiaq. Kotzebue is like a lot of communities here in Alaska. The only way to get here is by air. There's no roads in and out of town. The nearest road system is over 700 miles to the east. So all the communities here are joined by snow machine trails and get there by boats and bush planes. It's actually a pretty arid climate here, so they don't get a lot of snow. All these big piles of snow are from snow drifts. The wind blows frequently. It comes in from the Chukchi Sea and piles up and buries these houses. Look at this. You guys ready? Stop by the grocery store here and get some supplies. Oh yeah, that's a proper size canister tank. Got shelf life box milk. Because everything's got to be flown in, it's a little bit more expensive here. This box of cereal was about $10. That thing of bacon is $29. $10 for a thing of cheese and hot dog. $8.39 for a dozen eggs. That's not too bad. Yeah, we're gonna get cherry glazed burgers. Sorry, Tom. Okay, what's up? This is a jalapeno cheddar burger. Nice. We got food for tomorrow morning and some supplies. I think it's time to go get our fishing gear. All right, I'm just gonna grab a quick snack, grab our fishing gear, and we're gonna get out and go find some fish. Time to assemble the fishing gear. Everybody ready? That right there is a sea fish. We're just about 100 yards offshore from town and you can see there's just piles and piles of sea fish guts. There's an old story about the village of Kotzebue that once it was starving to death because they couldn't find the caribou and the elders of the village made a deal with the ravens that if they would show them where the caribou went, they would leave their guts out on the ice for the ravens to feast. And so the ravens showed them where the caribou were and the people were saved and they leave their guts out on the ice for the ravens to eat. I see a group of ice fishermen down there. We're gonna go stop in and see how things are going. Oh, looks like you're doing good there. Nice fish. No, it looks like the action's not super hot, but they're catching a fish here and there. That is a gorgeous ulu knife. All those ulu knives are gorgeous. Yeah, nice beautiful place. Yeah, this is my oldest son Tommy. Hi, this is my nephew Ransom. Hi Ransom, my name is Ada and your name is Luke. Would you care if I grabbed a chin off of one of these heads here? We don't have any chins for bait. There's a fresh bait right there. Yeah, you could use my ulu if you want to. Oh yeah, I would love that. There you go, fresh sea fish chin. It's the best bait for sea fish. Nice and tough too, so it doesn't come off. They can't steal it from you. No, they won't. Not even water. Well, this ice is thicker than my auger can reach. Looks like we gotta go find some old holes. We're just gonna punch through these old holes. Got a little copper spoon with a piece of sea fish chin. Let's dig it just like that. Here you go, reel it in. Oh, you got a sea fish. Don't grab up there. Oh, you had one, Tom. Yeah, is that exciting, Tom? Yeah, go, go, go, drop it back in. Drop back in. Oh, got something, got something. Oh, it's a sculpin. He liked my sea fish chin. There you go, look at all the spines on him. Looks like he's got little devil horns. Look at that. All right, bye. Oh, all three barbs, he wanted that. Hey, it's fun. All the kids just got out of school and there's all these families and kids out fishing for sea fish on the ice. It's a long tradition here in Kotzebue. The sea fish come in shallow in the springtime from about the first week of April and they're the first big food source that becomes available in the year, so it's your first opportunity to fill the freezer full of fresh fish. That is a nice fish, look at that. Check that out. That is a beautiful Alaskan sea fish. They call them the tarpon of the north. When you catch them in the summertime, they jump out of the water. He's longer than the fishing rod. These ladies over showing me how it's done. That's a pile of fish. Don't fish next to these ladies if you have a lot of pride in your ability. Hey guys, what's your name? I'm Luke, this is Tommy. You got one? Yes, you do. Your first sea fish. What do you think? Is that cool? Why don't you go dump them right down there, bud? Nice to meet you. Yeah, the baby ones are big too. One thing you'll notice is that you'll never see anyone around here ice fishing with a fishing rod. Everyone uses a little bit of antler or a piece of wood and there's a reason for that. It's actually a lot easier with these massive fish. I got a caribou antler here. I'm going to go ahead and throw a jig on this thing and give it to Tommy. All right. Yeah, there we go. Congratulations. There we go. Another beautiful sea fish. Hold up your first sea fish there. Stick it right up in there. Don't chin there. You just twist it like this and it drops down and when you get one, just grab it with your glove. Oh, it's an Irish Lord. What you got? What you got? Oh, a flounder. Look at that little guy. Another beautiful sea fish. Oh, you got one? Well, not too bad for our first day. Look at that. Now for the hard part. Gotta take my gloves off and fillet him. Look at this. Look at all this bait fish in his belly. That's a tom cod. That's like a herring. Another tom cod. I got myself a cold boy and 2,300 pounds of fillets. I think it's time to call it for today. Our hotel freezer ain't gonna cut it when it comes to storing our fish, so we can go ahead and bury them here over at my friend's house. Oh my goodness. That's more than 30 pounds. All right. That should keep it safe from ravens and dogs and stuff. All right. Let's go get some pizza, shall we? All right. Thank you very much. No problem. Thank you. Not too bad, huh? It was really a nice day, but man, it kicks it out of you, doesn't it? We're gonna just have a low-key night here in the hotel, get lots of rest, because we have a busy day tomorrow. We'll see you in the morning. Well, good morning. Sun sets around 11.30 at night and gets up somewhere around 4.30 in the morning, so there is a lot of light. For breakfast, we've got cherry fritters and cereal. It's a beautiful day here in Kotzebue, and it is currently 4 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and we better put on sunscreen or we're gonna end up sunburned. Sunburn and frostbite. Oh, yeah. It's springtime in Alaska. All right. We're all dressed up. Now, we got to get out of here before we overheat. My feet are so hot. Oh, that feels better for now. Well, guys, this is the Arctic tundra, and we're gonna do a little bit of hunting. We're gonna try to shoot some tarragon, which is the Alaska state bird. It's a game bird, similar to a grouse or a wild chicken that turns white in the winter and brown in the summer, and we're gonna see if we can't find a white bird in all of this. Hey, Tom, do you want a chance to shoot the shotgun? Yeah. All right. Come here. A little bit. Tom, see that little snowbank right there? Yeah. I want you to shoot it. Okay. Pull the hammer back and fire when ready. Wow, that did hurt. That was awesome. See them? There's like 20 tarragon right up there. Why don't you get the 22 ready? If we're careful about it, we can plink a couple with the 22, and then when they take off, we can shoot them with the shotgun. Just take your time and be cool about it. I mean, there's no pressure. We miss it, we'll get some more, you know. See, watch how they're moving around. Yeah. So far, they're being pretty chill. Okay, they're stopping. They're starting to move away. Okay, now you got to take your shot. You're not going to get much closer than that. You're way high. There you go, Tom. Go check it out. That right there is a tarragon. Turn white in the winter and they turn brown in the summer. Delicious bird. You look there. See all the little tarragon tracks? Those are old tarragon tracks right there. Let's go see if we can find some fresh ones. All right, see him? Yeah, let's get closer. Get on the snow machine and get closer. Yeah, I see him. You see him right there? Ransom, you did it. Congratulations. There we go. My bag is going to smell like tarragon. There we go. Look it, there's just tarragon everywhere. One, two, three, at least 30 of them right there. So I'm learning a few things about hunting tarragon. They like to be around the willows on the sunny side of these hills, but they don't want to be in the really thick willows. That stuff is prime tarragon territory. That stuff's too thick. Oh, look, there's a moose right there. There's a bunch right there. They're right there in the kind of moderately thick willows. That'll do it. It's okay, buddy. I'm really glad I got to film that, you running and chasing. I think I cracked my elbow. Yeah, a little bit above it. It's like pretty nasty right there. But it is a sharp pain. I think I might have fractured it. If it still hurts tomorrow, it's probably a fracture. It goes away. It's probably a bruise. We are jumping off the machines. Like one of the crazy times I clipped it on something. We were chasing these tarragon, but man, it's so easy to get disoriented. Look at this. I think the road's that direction, but we're going to have to follow our tracks back to make sure. Luckily I got a GPS on me, but when you're chasing those birds, it's easy to get lost. There we go. Last bullet of the day. This went better than expected, but we burned up a lot of ammo. We're running low on space back here too. We've got tarragon bungee to the back. Time to pluck some tarragon and get them all cleaned up. I don't think they want us getting these in the hotel room. There's actually signs saying don't do that. Four, five. We got eight. Seven, eight. Hey, nice. See this one, his head's turning brown. Turn and face me. Hold your birds up. Instead of white meat, like a chicken. That's the crop. That's what the tarragon have been eating. It's all twigs. And that's why you always find them by the willows. Cutting birds in the Arctic, it's a little bit cold on the old fingers. All right, I'm going to ride with you, Tom. Nice chance to thaw out and wash my hands. Everything smells like ptarmigan. Hey Branson, do you want to use my knife or your knife for the peanut butter jelly sandwiches? Mine, use mine. Peanut butter jelly and ptarmigan. This is nutritious. Chicken. One ptarmigan nutella sandwich. Now that we've got some lunch in our belly, I think it's time to do some fishing. Now one thing that's important to remember, we're fishing in the ocean. This is saltwater. The shefish spend the winter in the ocean and then in the summer they go up into the rivers and spawn and they repeat that process each year. It's a nice knife sheath. Oh, it has the name on it, Ransom. Hey Ransom, is this your knife sheath? No. It says Ransom on it. Somebody left a knife sheath on the ice and it's got your name on it. It says Ransom. That's actually really cool. I did not bring a knife. I'd say leave it there and maybe somebody will come for it. Hey, a little Irish lord. Look at that. Oh yeah, another Irish lord. He's so cute. We can do this without him spying on me too badly. There we go. See all the wood they got stacked up? There's no trees growing around here. They have to go all the way across the bay up there to find trees to get firewood. So people bring in these huge logs and then you have to chop up all their firewood. Cutting and gathering firewood is a big deal around here. It takes a lot of time and fuel. Feels nice to not have tons of gear on, doesn't it? We got a reindeer stew here. You want to try some reindeer? You can grab a little piece of reindeer meat. It's good. I mean with the spoon, but yeah. Do you like it? Oh, that is a nice looking burger. Look at that. That is a nice little burger there. You like the mozzarella sticks? That was good, Tom. Well, we've had a great day, but I'll tell you what. My arm hurts so bad. I think I might have fractured my elbow. I actually went and called a doctor in Anchorage about it. I don't think I need to go to the ER or anything today, but I think I might have to go get it checked out when I return back to Anchorage. I want to see if it's swelling up. I can't see. I gotta go look at the mirror. It's not horrible, but it does look a little gross. No pain, no pain, no pain. We'll see tomorrow what my arm does, but it's getting late, so I'm going to put this camera down and see if we can't get to sleep with all the sunlight outside. Good morning. My arm still hurts, but it definitely feels better than it did yesterday night. Maybe I just bruised it and didn't fracture it. We've got a little snowstorm out today. I'm ready. All right, let's go brave the elements and get breakfast. I love how the guy's clearing the walkways in his t-shirt. Okay, out. You're out. Oh, that's definitely me, yeah. They've shortened the kids swing sets so they can swing above the snow now. For those of you who don't know, Kotzebue is the largest city here in northwest Alaska. Just slightly over 4,000 people live here in Kotzebue, and also if you want to go to some of the national parks here in northwest, Kotzebue is the hub you have to go to first. Kotzebue right there. Kobuk Valley National Park is the most remote national park in the country right there. Check it out. They got a umiak boat. Put seal skin over it. Take it out whaling. Look at that kayak up there. That's cool. Tarragon, snowshoe hare, dolphin. That's the wolverine over there. Sour duck, eskimo potato, and seal flipper. Hey Tom, this city is like thousands of years old, so if you dig around in the summertime, you'll find this stuff buried around the city. This is for making the arrow shafts straight. They go and they run it up and down. When you come here in the summertime on the beach where we snow machine, the people will set that up and they'll dry their salmon right there on the beach. Oh, look at that. Regular unleaded is just under eight bucks. Now, I have a boy here who really wants to go hunting. Is that right, Tom? Yes. Try to do a little bit more target hunting and see if Tommy can't get a bird. I think it's time to load up and do some target practice. You got the vac one. See him? So this is where you got two of them and then up there. Tom, you're doing really good. I'm actually really impressed, bud. All right, let's hop on. It's gotten overcast and now it's really hard to see the contours of the snow and much harder to see a white ptarmigan. Are you getting hungry, Tom? Are you cold? All right, maybe we go back and get some lunch, okay? The guys out there are reeling in some seafish. Tommy, we might have to go catch some seafish after lunch. Eat quick, go out and try to catch some seafish, redeem ourselves from our ptarmigan hunt failure this morning. Here we go. No, that's pretty much it. Through it. Oh, there you go, Ransom. Yep, that's a big seafish right there. That is a long fish. You got a nice one? All right. You got it? Oh, I got it. I got it. Okay, that's a triple. Got Tom fighting one. Oh yeah, Ransom over here with one. My arm needs a break. Yeah, he snagged. That's why he couldn't get it in. That is a good one, Tom. Look at that. All right, there you go, Tom. You got another one, Tom? There we go. Oh, the fishing rods are more fun, but these work so much better. You get the fish in faster, you lose fewer of them. Oh, there we go. I got one too. There we go. Oh, they're just crazy. We've only been here about 30 minutes and I've maybe been able to fish for a total of three. I keep having to run over and film Tommy and take his fish off the hook. You got him? Can you pull this one out yourself? This is a great opportunity for you to learn how to do this. Grab the lure because then it's not stretchy. There you go. You got it. Just slide him on the ground. This guy's heavy. Yeah. Do you want to try unhooking him? Push it out. Push it. There you go. You got him out, bud. You got one over there? Yeah. You can understand why I say the antlers work way better, don't they? Yeah. I'll tell you what, guys, this is arguably the best ice fishing in North America. We've been fishing for 30, 40 minutes. We've got a pile of 20 pound fish and it's just right outside of town. A beautiful spring day. It's just wonderful. We've got plenty of fish, so Tom and Ransom are going to go get some Ziploc bags for me. There we go. 15 sea fish. Look at that. All in about 35, 40 minutes. That's ridiculous. If you want to do this haul, this haul has produced almost all of them. I should really stop and clean fish now. Nice. All right. This lovely lady over here just let me borrow her Ulu knife. This is a traditional knife here and it's actually an heirloom. I'm going to go ahead and fillet up my first sea fish with the Ulu knife. That was fun. I think I need a lot more practice with that. Thank you so much for letting me borrow that. All right. Well, that Ulu knife was way cooler than my fillet knife, but unfortunately I'm kind of slow and my fingers are getting numb, so I think I'm going to fall back on what I know. Tom, you got a sculpin over there? What? There was a bend in this rod. Yeah, it was a sculpin. You got another one, Tom? I kept running. Look at your drag just going and going. Go, go, go, go. And you're putting those rods through their paces. I don't know what we're doing with this fish, but I can tell you what, I'm not filleting it. I think I hooked a seal there. Get a reel, reel, reel. Oh, a fighter. Look at that. That's a nice one. No, he's good. He's in good shape. Tommy, that was a rodeo. Good job, bud. Tell you what, Tom, those whisker seeker ice fishing rods do a good job. Oh, look at that. Those little orange rods are made by Whisker Seeker. They're designed for fishing for catfish through the ice, but I love them. I mean, they've just got loads of strength to them. Me and Rancid are sitting here packaging up fish and Tommy's just going to town on more she fish. Catch and release, though. We're done. It's like trying to button up my jeans. Oh, come on. Nope, that's not happening. I don't think that's a sculpin. It must be one desperate white fish. Is that possible? Look at this. Beautiful. All right, Tom, I think we're ready to wrap it up, bud. I think total we only fished for maybe an hour and we caught 26 fish. We ended up releasing a bunch, giving away a bunch. What an epic day. Look at this bag of fish we got. Will you open the door for Rancid? Oh, man, I think we got sunburned. I'm a little red. Oh, I feel it. Oh, I feel it on my lips. All right, I'm hungry. So we're going to go get some Chinese food. Almost every major village in Alaska has one Chinese restaurant. Oh, yeah. People here are so friendly. They just asked Tommy if he's ever tried sea fish and he's like, oh, so they're like, we'll cook some up for you. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. That tastes really good. Sea fish is a great thing. This will bring them back. Well, thank you. Those people are so nice. We just sat and chatted for a while. It's like everyone we've met here in Kotzebue is like that, just very friendly. Guys, you want to see something? See these rocks? These are solid jade. See this? This is solid jade right here. There's an entire mountain made out of jade not too far from here and the mine went bust and they left some of those boulders there full of jade. Now they use them to keep people from cutting through the parking lot. All right, we got some mushu pork and crab ragoon here. Never had mushu pork. It's like Chinese tacos. Oh, good morning. It is our last day here in Kotzebue and we are eating breakfast and packing up a healthy breakfast of s'more cereal. I'm not time to deliver some fish. How many fillets? I mean, we love fish. Those are some slabs. All right, you want some fish? Yeah, let's get you some fish. All right, there we go. There's another one. Thanks, Luke. That disappeared quickly. Oh, we were eating that lilikoi jam your mom gave us. Oh my goodness. Well, Jared, it's a pleasure, man. Hey, thanks a lot. Well, me and Becca just got rid of about 100 pounds of shefish and we still have a lot left over, which is a good thing because we have some friends coming over tomorrow and we're gonna be cooking them up some ptarmigan and shefish. You ready? Yeah. Well, I've got a couple recipes I'm gonna do with the shefish and I've got a couple recipes I'm gonna do with the ptarmigan. The first shefish recipe is I'm gonna make smoked shefish or shefish candy. It's a recipe you might have seen me do before. All right, we let that sit overnight. There you go. We got all the shefish in the smoker. We're gonna let that go for about six to eight hours. Oh, that's doing good. All right, time to get the ptarmigan. Okay, one ptarmigan. Six. So check it out. We've got the ptarmigan all washed and cleaned. You can see how dark red the meat is. That's really normal for wild meat. The white meat you see in domesticated chickens and pork, that's not natural. That's bred that way. This red meat will have a lot more flavor and will be a lot leaner. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna filet off these breasts and we're gonna cook those separate and then the rest of the carcass we're gonna use to make a stew. All right, we got the breast meat right there. Put some salt. Got some white vinegar here. The purpose of the vinegar is to draw out the gamey flavor a little bit. Some people really love that gamey flavor. My family does not. All right, I got the stockpot full of carcasses here and I'm gonna make stew out of this. Sprinkle a bit of salt on everything. Touch of this white vinegar on there. This is thyme, oregano, sage, and rosemary all mixed together. A little bit of ground mustard. A little bit of black pepper. We're gonna start boiling that. Got that meat cooked. We gotta pull out some of the meat. Check it out right here. This is the wishbone. So each of you grab an end and you pull it and when it breaks whoever's got the biggest piece gets their wish. The boiling process takes all the flavor out of the meat and so any of the good chunks you want to pull them out at the beginning of the process. So all this salvaged meat we want to set this aside. We're gonna add it back into the stew later on. Two hours later. All right, we got our ptarmigan stock here. Give it a little taste and see how the seasoning is. Man, it's pretty bang on. First things first, gonna dump in some tomatoes. Okay, there we go. We got some rosemary, sage, and thyme. We're just gonna bundle that up. Put that right there. We're gonna add back the ptarmigan meat. Take a little cornstarch and water. Mix it up. That'll thicken that stew up. There we go. Nice beautiful ptarmigan stew. Back burner this until dinner. Here, try the ptarmigan stew. Oh, that's really good. I'm gonna make a cranberry sauce to go with dinner and it's really easy. Just take these dried craisins, cover them in a little water and boil them. You're gonna pour them into a blender. Now if you want to make a Thanksgiving style cranberry sauce, just reduce this till it's the texture you want and there you go. I'm gonna make this a little special and add some blackberries to it. Just boil it until all the blackberries mush up and turn into jelly. What do you think of this sauce? Oh, that's really really good. I want to make sure my wife doesn't leave me for a younger man so I'm gonna go ahead and make homemade rolls with cheese inside to go with this meal. They are really amazing. Even when my looks fade, I have something to offer you. You know bread can be really complicated or it can be really simple. This is simple. Bread flour, yeast, water. That's it. All right, once the yeast gets all foamy and stuff then it's time to add a little more water. You want to add water just a little bit at a time until you get the right consistency. Give it a good mix. Now we just let it sit for about an hour and rise. All right, we're gonna knock the air out of this. You don't want to eat Okay, I got a little garlic powder. We'll just let these rise for another 45 minutes or until I feel like it and then we'll throw them in the oven. You got a Mickey Mouse one. Brown sugar and butter is the simplest fish recipe but it works good on salmon, halibut, whatever. So delicious. This is really good to do on a barbecue. All right, we're gonna make some couscous to go with all this. All right, we're just toasting the couscous and raisins right there. After you toast the couscous just add some water and salt. Couscous is looking done. All right, I'm gonna pull out the cast iron skillet here. We got garlic, thyme, rosemary, and sage. We're just gonna put that in the butter There we go. Pecorino Romano cheese. I got some smoked lake trout here. I'm gonna take the skin off. All right, there we go. Smoked lake trout carbonara. Hey guys, welcome. What's up? Hey, eventually. Nah. All right, here. I want this piece. Try a bit. Guys, you guys know what a big white fish that lives up above the arctic circle? Tastes really good. Yeah, come on in. All right guys, take a seat. Take a seat. It's dinner time. Get pants on Nathan. Well guys, I forgot that we've signed up to feed the volunteer missionaries from our church and it's good you came because we ended up having a lot more food than we expected. So have any of you guys ever checked a lot of boxes today? We got some basil couscous. We got biscuits with cheese in it. We've got a ptarmigan stew and put a little cilantro on there. We got the ptarmigan breasts and we've got this cranberry blackberry sauce. It goes with the breast and then we have a smoked lake trout carbonara over there. All right. Oh, pepper. I just got smoked a little bit of the sea fish there. What do you guys, what do you guys think about the ptarmigan? Tastes almost like deer. Yeah, yeah. It'd be tasting much more like deer and stuff like that. Very lean. The real test is whether Becca likes it. I don't usually like wild meat. Wild meat, weirds are out. But she really likes blackberries. I love the sauce. The vinegar really helped tone down the gamey flavor. Those little rolls are so good. All right, here, let me hand you that and I will swap you. There you go. You guys full? We filled you up good? Oh yeah. Excellent. What do you think of ptarmigan? Like it? No. Yeah, it's good. Sea fish? It's a good fish. It's a really good fish. You know, sea fish is a nice white meat. It's not as flaky as halibut, but it's kind of like cod, you know, I think maybe a little bit. Well guys, thanks for coming by. I appreciate it. That was fun, but I am so full. That was a lot of food. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. If you guys want to see more fishing, camping, and adventure videos from the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel, don't forget to click subscribe. We put out new videos every Saturday morning. All right guys, we'll see you next Saturday. If you like this video, don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this. And don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning. And hit that bell button so you'll get notifications. Thanks for watching.