Hello, From the Pleistocene
Everything about the animals appears prehistoric: Stocky with humped shoulders and long, wooly hair; blunt, white-muzzled faces framed by distinctive upturned, ivory-colored horns. They resemble the subjects of primal cave-wall etchings. The creatures scattered before me, though – a herd of 30 animals – are far from petroglyphic. These are muskoxen, and their presence marks the intersection of high-Arctic life and early Holocene art.
Muskoxen can appear docile, but will not hesitate to charge if they feel threatened. Those charges can be deadly; a Nome resident was attacked and killed by a muskox in 2022.
I was on the road from Nome to Teller early last June with wildlife photographer Gary Kramer of Willows, California, when we first encountered them. Kramer spotted a lone bull feeding in a bar ditch just off the roadside. A hasty effort to gather photos resulted in the bull shaking its head violently, then snorting and lunging in a bluff charge.
The lesson was obvious: Always give muskoxen ample space; say, at least 100 yards as suggested by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. We retreated to the road and the safety of our rented Jeep. A better, safer plan was needed.
Muskoxen can appear cumbersome and docile, but are surprising agile and will charge if closely approached. That can be a big deal considering mature bulls may stand 5 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh 600 to 800 pounds. A Nome resident who tried to shoo a small herd away from his dog kennel was attacked and killed by a muskox in 2022.
During their heyday at the close of the Last Glacial Period, about 11,500 years ago, muskoxen ranged across northern Europe, Asia, Greenland and present-day northern Alaska and Canada. In the 1800s, however, that range shrank radically. The animals vanished from Europe and Asia by the mid-1800s. And by 1920, the last of the shaggy beasts disappeared in Alaska, leaving the world’s population to remain only in east Greenland and Arctic Canada.
Overhunting likely had much to do with muskoxen reductions and extirpations, according to a story in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s online periodical, Alaska Fish & Wildlife News.
“They are so easy to hunt, you can walk right up to them and kill them,” Claudia Ihl told AFWN.
A biology professor at the University of Alaska’s Northwest Campus in Nome, Ihl continued, “When people colonized the Arctic, (muskox) might have been one of the first animals to be hunted out.”
Concern over extinction led to efforts to restore populations in Alaska. Thirty-four muskoxen were captured in East Greenland in 1930 and transported to Fairbanks. The animals were later released onto Nunivak Island in the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast. According the Department of Fish and Game, “The muskoxen thrived there and, by 1968, the herd had grown to 750 animals. Muskox from the Nunivak herd were later translocated to establish new herds on the Seward Peninsula, on Cape Thompson and Nelson Islands, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and on Wrangel Island and the Taimyr Peninsula in Russia. By 2000, almost 4,000 muskoxen existed in Alaska.”
In Alaska today, muskoxen are found on Nunivak and Nelson islands and the mainland from the Seward Peninsula and Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, east to Prudhoe Bay and the Canadian border.
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“In Alaska today, muskoxen are found on Nunivak and Nelson islands and the mainland from the Seward Peninsula and Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, east to Prudhoe Bay and the Canadian border.”
Back on the road system outside of Nome, Kramer and I chose not to press our luck with that initial, agitated bull. Instead, we fired up the Jeep and traveled on. Within a couple of miles, near the base of Anvil Mountain, we encountered more muskoxen. This time it was a herd of perhaps 30 cows and their days-old calves. These animals showed no aggression. To the contrary, they were rather shy. If approached within 200 yards, the cows and calves simply rumbled off into the tundra hills.
Luckily, I was able to walk under the cover of a draw and waist-high willows to within 700mm lens range of several feeding cows and calves. Initially unaware of my presence, the muskox cows browsed on willows while the youngsters frolicked or ducked their heads under their mothers’ furry bellies to nurse.
Shortly after being spotted, I shot the image below with my Canon R5 with 500mm f/4 lens and 1.4X extender at 1/640, ISO 6400. Once I pressed the shutter, the cow turned with her calf at heel, and trotted off. Eventually, all the animals eased out of camera range into their treeless Arctic backdrop and the horizon once dominated by great, furry elephants.
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A young muskox calf of the year bawls as its mother looks on in this image taken last spring in northwestern Alaska.
