INTERVIEW: Ricko DeWilde hunts a moose, then jumps on call with Hollywood Soapbox

Photo: Life Below Zero features the traditional hunting practices of Ricko DeWilde. Photo courtesy of BBC Worldwide / John Griber / Provided by Nat Geo with permission.

---

Ricko DeWilde, one of the stars of National Geographic’s reality series Life Below Zero, clearly lives a life worth documenting. His heritage is Alaskan Athabaskan, and he has learned many traditions from his relatives and fellow community members. On the series, he not only showcases and explains these traditional practices but also passes them down to the next generation: his children.

When Hollywood Soapbox caught up with him recently, DeWilde was having a busy day. He was calling from a small village of 300 or so residents approximately 100 miles down river from the family cabin that audience members see on the show. He had been out moose hunting with his uncle, and they had taken the animal. As soon as he was done with the interview, he was heading back to the carcass.

“My uncle is 80 something,” DeWilde said in a recent phone interview. “We just got one today back in the lake, so after this call I’ve got to load a four-wheeler on my boat … and we’re going to bring it up river. And then I’ll go back to the lake and then paddle across with a canoe and process the moose, put it in the canoe piece by piece, bring it to the four-wheeler, to the boat, and from the boat to the boat landing outside of the village and then onto a truck and then up into this smokehouse outside of the house. What we’re doing right now is getting meat for the winter.”

If there were any doubters that DeWilde was somehow faking it for the camera, the above anecdote should be evidence enough of his credentials. He’s the real deal.

[Read Hollywood Soapbox’s interviews with Sue Aikens.]

With Sue Aikens and others on the hit show, the cast members of Life Below Zero have become celebrities who symbolize the many different aspects of the human spirit. For DeWilde, each week he has the chance to educate the viewer on the traditions of the Alaskan Athabaskans. It’s one of the reasons why he says “yes” almost immediately when Nat Geo comes knocking every year.

“I’m ready to go usually,” DeWilde said. “I haven’t had a time when I wasn’t ready. I always say ‘yes.’ Actually I’m ready to go right now because it’s moose hunting, a perfect time with no bugs. I wish we could do more right now because it’s such a perfect time, but we’re kind of done.”

That moose he took was a bull; he and the locals try to stay away from the cows out there because it can hurt the overall population. When he takes one of these large ungulates (hoofed creatures), every last piece of the moose is used.

“We take everything back, all of the meat,” he said. “We use the bones for soup. A lot of people tan hides, so I’ll probably be bringing the hide back for sure. There’s a lot of stuff like the heart, the kidneys, the stomach, the liver, the tongue. Moosehead soup is like a delicacy. We cut some of the meat off the head. There’s some fat behind the eyeball. We take the eyeball out. We get the fat back there. We eat the same we did traditionally. It’s just that we might not use bow and arrows anymore. Basically hunting in the same areas as our ancestors and processing it and eating everything just like our ancestors did.”

One can sense when watching Life Below Zero (and certainly after talking with him for this interview) that DeWilde is serious about tradition and learning from his elders. “It’s very important, especially teaching it to the younger generation because it’s basically tools of survival and kept our people alive for thousands of years,” he said. “It’s passed-on knowledge a lot of the stuff we’re doing, and I’m hunting with my uncle, who is like 80 years old. And he’s showing me where to go, and he learned that from his dad. And his dad learned that from his dad, so it goes way back.”

DeWilde remembered one lesson from that morning of hunting. When he was approaching the bull moose, his uncle told him that the beaver in the nearby pond could give up their position. If the beaver slapped its tail because DeWilde was making noise, then the moose would know something was up.

“It’s a lot of little things going on, a lot of variables out here that you have to work with,” he said. “It’s important that I keep learning it and teaching it, too. You see Doomsday Preppers and people are planning for the end of the world, and they’re trying to stock up all the food and hoard it and stand there with a gun. To me, it’s a terrible sense of mind to be in. The way we do it is we pass on our knowledge.”

He added: “We have everything here, and we have the knowledge and the tools of survival. We have to pass it on, though, because you can’t learn this stuff overnight. We have to really honor our ancestors and have a lot of respect for our elders because this is where that knowledge is coming from. It’s from way back. It’s a whole belief system, too, how to not disrespect animals, how to not waste meat because an animal provided something for you. … That’s how it feels when you’re out there in the woods. If you’re not working with nature and working with the elders and your people, then you’re not having a good spirit like that. Then, you’re not going to eat good, or you might have trouble in the future. That’s why it’s kind of like a religion almost. Work with the land, work with the people, and it keeps food on the table generation after generation.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Life Below Zero, featuring Ricko DeWilde, airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on National Geographic. Click here for more information.