Alaska

Chapter 1, The beginning

The sun was about 10 mins from peaking over the horizon when we got on our snowmobiles and started on the the 30 minute ride out to our favorite place to hunt. When we got there it was just like I remembered it. We hunted out of tree stands. Mine was about 20 feet in the air and had a perfect view of a wide open field with a river that ran through it. Mac went to his stand that was only about 10 feet off the ground, but had the perfect view of the ridge that ran off the mountain.

As expected it was only a couple of hours until we saw the first elk. It was a smaller one so we passed on the shot. Within a matter of minutes a beautiful elk came in point of view for us both. Me knowing his gun couldn't make the shot going against the wind, slowly signaled to him that I was going to take the shot. As if it was as natural as brushing my teeth, I raised the gun to my face, got my cross hairs just above its chest, took my rifle off of safety, took a deep breath and at the end of exhaling, squeezed the trigger. Right away we saw the beast drop. I put my gun on safe, climbed down the tree on started the walk to the elk.

Mac and I got there at about the same time, and immediately started to gut it. We were so focused that we had not noticed what had seen us first. As soon as they smelled the blood from the elk the wolves came in like lighting. About ten of them in all, as mean as can be. Mac quickly drew his pistol and shot at the biggest wolf hoping it would scare him off, but it only made them more mad. I quickly did the same, but used my rifle. The sound of the canon like percussion from the massive round quickly scared them off.

We watched them through our scoped to make sure they were not coming back. As they entered the woods, we saw the strangest thing we have seen while hunting. It looked to be three men with assault rifles. That was not what was scaring us though. It was the fact that they had been staring back at us, and one of them had his sights on Mac. My heart was was pounding, a second felt like an hour, the whole world seemed to slow down when I heard the shot. I could hardly turn to looked at Mac, but when I did, I bursted out in tears.

It was as if God had forced the bullet down. As soon as the bullet hit the lifeless elk we ran for our snowmobiles. We did not know why they shot at us, or what we were supposed to do. All we knew was we had to move fast. Mac was almost in tears as we ran to our snowmobiles. It was almost as the men had known where we were going, right as I got to mine they took aim and fired, but not at me. It was a direct hit on my snowmobile and the engine was dead. Fractically I did the only thing I could think of, aim my rifle back at them and start shooting. After about 30 seconds of back and forth shooting Mac came racing to me and told me to get on. The only problem about getting away was the only way to go was to the lake. It barely had enough ice on it to hold a small child much less a snowmobile and two boys. But it was the only option, so we did what we had to do.

It was like I had just woken up from a dream when we fell through. Everything seemed more clear, I was more awake. I had my pistol on my side and my rifle around my back. Mac was the same but was extremely frantic in the moment. We were both about to surface when bullets came flying through the water. I signaled to Mac to swim farther down into the water and to try to relax. After about 10 seconds the bullets stopped. Instead of going up on the same place we swam about 20 yards the other direction and broke through the ice with our rifles. We were lucky they didn't see us as we slowly crept out of the water. It gave me a better chance to see what they looked like. One was tall with a full beard and a scarred lip, another was smaller but had short black hair, and was missing a finger on his right hand, the last one was a short and chubby man who seemed to be giving the orders. After we slowly made our way to the shore, both Mac and I were shaking vigorously from the cold water. The main thing on our minds was to start a fire and fast. Luckily we always pack an emergency bag just in case our snowmobiles where to break down. They had extra clothing, flares, food, knifes, and most importantly matches. Most people would think that if you just fell into a freezing cold like that you would keep all your stuff on and just sit right by the fire. Those people are wrong, we stripped all of our stuff off and started doing pushups in the snow. It has always been something our parents told us to do if we ever fell through the ice, it helps get blood get moving so your heart doesn't stop. After a few minutes of that and having the fire going we were dry and warm. The next thing to do was figure out how we would get home. We were a little over 20 miles from home. In a normal place this would be fine, there has to be someone closer than that, nope.