The advertising manager at the student newspaper here got stuck in the bush two weeks ago and killed a moose to survive. She ate its heart.

Traveling in a swamp buggy of some sort, she and her male companion got stuck in the mud – a frequent occurrence when the ground is still thawed. In the pictures I saw, there was a bull moose hanging from its legs, skinned and opened wide. Alaska has a no waste law, so the whole thing eventually came home, but the meal of that evening was in fact the circulatory center of that majestic beast – the heart.

Don’t cringe, the hunting and fishing in this state is supposed to be second to none. The likelihood that you will be out in the bush and need, in fact, to hunt and fish for survival is also second to none. There are many isolated spots in Alaska, and I’m not talking isolated like trying to find Chenoweth or the yellow lot. I’m talking about having a state capital that you can’t drive to (Juneau is only accessible by ferry or plane).

Villages dot the vast expanse of the largest united state. Most are built on rivers or the coast (hint, commercial fishing is a huge industry). These villages are visited on a schedule dictated by weather and only by plane or snowmobile. Barrow, the northernmost town of 4,500, is visited every August to stock up the supplies for the next twelve months.

Then, there are the villages on the Aleutian Islands – the long stretch of islands heading towards Siberia. I met a woman this past week, while reporting on a story on these native villages, that was stuck on one of these islands for one week longer than she planned because the mail flight couldn’t fight the wind and weather.

So when I heard the story of the heartless moose I was not shocked.

Nor was I shocked when I overheard the discussion in my 1 p.m. logic class about a morning hunt, one that was squeeze in between 9:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. It ended in two mountain sheep destined for a large freezer. That was a true test of time management, and also quite typical of the sportsmen here who do hunt or fish. And that is most everyone.

Natives, such as the Aleuts, Upiks, Eskimos and other tribes that still exist and live off the land, have subsistence laws that allow the killing of seals, polar bears, moose, caribou and other game. It is hardly game and every bit of every animal gets used. And it appears, though numbers are depleting over time, that there is plenty of game.

For instance, if I had the hunting inclination, there are often moose outside the dorms here. They roam onto campus, and as long as they aren’t in heat, they won’t trample you. There are beaver dams behind my university apartment and a stuffed cougar in the nearest dive bar. All right, so someone already got that cougar, but you get the point