I stop dead.
It's a graveyard. Or a hospital ward where everyone is terminal.
A group of about twenty caribou is huddled here. But they don't look like Waldo. They don't look like the magnificent animals I've been tracking in my mind for three years.
These animals are ghosts. Their coats are patchy and dull, the fur rubbing off in clumps to reveal raw, irritated skin. Their ribs are visible through their winter coats, a biological impossibility for a healthy animal in January. They stand with their heads low, listless, barely acknowledging our presence.
"My god," I breathe, stepping closer. "What's wrong with them?"
"Starvation," Nash says quietly. "And disease. Probably brucellosis or chronic wasting."
I watch a calf try to nurse from a gaunt female. She kicks it away weakly, having nothing to give. The calf stumbles, its legs trembling, and sinks into the snow.
"But … why?" I look around the clearing. "There's lichen here. I see browse."
"Look closer at the browse," Nash says, pointing to the willows at the edge of the clearing.
I walk over. The branches have been stripped, but not just the tips. They've been chewed down to the thick, woody stems. The bark is gone as high as they can reach.
"Overgrazing," I say, the realization hitting me. "They've eaten everything." My hands are already reaching for my pack. I pull collection tubes and gather scat samples from three different spots at the edge of the clearing—disease documentation, the one thing I can do when I can't do anything else.
"Too many animals in too small a range," Nash confirms. "They didn't migrate. Maybe the snow was too deep, or they got hemmed in by predators, or they just made a bad choice. They stayed here, ate everything, and now they're starving."
He walks over to a young bull that has collapsed near a tree. The animal's breathing is shallow, a rattling sound in its chest. It doesn't even try to stand as Nash approaches.
"This is what 'natural' looks like, Aris," Nash says. He's not being cruel. There's no "I told you so" in his voice. Just a sad, heavy resignation. "City folks think nature is a Disney movie. They think if you leave animals alone, they live happy lives and die of old age in their sleep."
He gestures to the suffering animals. "Nature doesn't do old age. Nature does starvation, predation, and freezing to death. This herd? They're going to die slowly. It'll take weeks. The wolves will come eventually, but until then … they suffer."
I look at the dying bull. I look at the calf shivering in the snow.
I think of the deer head on the wall in Nash's cabin, the one I judged him for. I think of his story about his grandfather tracking that bull for three days, taking one clean shot, using every ounce of the meat.
A life is a life, he'd said.
But watching this, the equation shifts in my head.
"This is worse," I whisper.
"Yeah," Nash says. "It is."
He crouches beside the fallen bull, his hand resting gently on its neck. The animal flinches, then settles, too weak to fight.
"If this area had been managed," Nash says softly, "if a few of these animals had been harvested in the fall … there would be enough food for the rest. The population would match the carrying capacity of the land. The survivors would be strong."
My ecology textbooks talk about "carrying capacity" and "population dynamics." I've written papers on it. I've made graphs.
But a graph doesn't rattle when it breathes. A graph doesn't look at you with clouded, fearful eyes while it slowly freezes to death.
"Thaddeus talked about the balance," I say. "He hated hunting, but he understood the math. He just … he never wanted to look at the subtraction part of the equation."
"Subtraction is the only reason addition works out here," Nash says.
He stands up, knocking the snow off his knees. He looks at me, and his hazel eyes are searching.
"You asked me once how I could kill something I respect," he says. "I do it because I respect them enough to want them to be strong. I take one, so the herd survives. I take the old, the past-prime, so the calves have grass."
He looks back at the dying bull. "I don't enjoy the kill, Aris. Nobody with a heart does. But I'd rather be the reason an animal dies clean and quick than watch this happen."
