Welcome!
This is jackulcer.com – A Gateway to Better Life
EXPERIENCE THE SECRET WORLD OF JACK ULCER – THE CARIBOU RUNNER
“In approximately 120 years, every one of us alive today will be replaced by a new set of people. Someone else with a new set of dreams, new set of challenges and new set of hopes will walk the same streets we walk today and occupy the same places we are right now at this moment. Our accomplishments may live on for a brief moment, but no one will remember our arguments, shortcomings, winnings or failures. No one will remember who we loved, who we despised, who succeeded or who failed. Once we realize this, we can start respecting the history and future of our great planet and the idea that our short lives are just tiny drops in something much bigger. Something amazing. So truly my friends, there is no justification for complacency, arrogance or disrespect of nature or our fellow people.”
– Jack Ulcer –
“Look around you. Everything you see comes directly or indirectly from nature. Your computer, your car and your TV are all products made from the materials provided by this planet. Walk in a forest, desert or in any other landscape and cherish the fact that these places are the source of everything we have, everything. Without nature we have nothing. No economy, no homes, no family. It is therefore ironic that we delay protecting nature because it hurts our economy, even though there would be no economy without nature in the first place”.
– Jack Ulcer –
Who is Jack Ulcer?
Jack Ulcer is a 1960-born adventurer, outdoors specialist, risk-taker and a self-proclaimed smart ass. He is a man who has crossed all the world’s continents by foot, solo-sailed around the globe with a homemade draft and wrestled a slightly handicapped 1,500-pound Kodiak bear in Alaska. Jack has stared down a great white shark, run with caribou, hypnotized a wild Siberian tiger and become close friends with a giant catfish in Amazon delta.
Put Jack in the most scorching desert or the deepest jungle and you can rest assured; Jack will be at ease and will never fail to impress with his survival skills. This man is made of pure steel and the few people who know him (some of them are medical doctors), believe that Jack is “closer to a wild animal” than any other man they have met or heard of. A comment made by Jack’s late friend, Mr. Koukourakis of Greece, says is all: “Jack Ulcer is simply amazing, and when I say amazing, I mean many things”.
Jack’s Key to Good Life
Jack is a wise and experienced man and can help his readers with their everyday questions and problems. Jack’s nature studies and knowledge of our planet have helped him to understand the value of life and to realize the preciousness of the limited time we have here before the next set of humans and animals occupy the planet. Jack believes that we can live better lives by concentrating on the issues that really matter, and avoid wasting our energy on insignificant incidents. Let’s just say that Jack does not argue about a spilled glass of beer. Jack does not waste life, he lives it.
Because of many requests, Jack has started providing the core of his everyday philosophy on this site. By following Jack’s “Key to Good Life”, the readers may be able to find the correct tools needed to rise above their everyday problems and truly make their lives worth living for. Keep coming back and you can start learning from Jack Ulcer, the Caribou Runner.
Jack’s Greatest Adventures and Accomplishments
The Alaska Caribou Migration
Maybe the greatest adventure of Jack so far is the 2007 Porcupine caribou migration, which he joined as a fully accepted member of the caribou herd. Jack is without any doubt the only man on the planet who has completed the entire 800-mile long migration route that runs from the coastal plains of Alaska to the boreal forests and valleys of the Brooks Range. Here is a summary of Jack’s amazing story:
Preparation for the 2007 Caribou Migration
Excerpt from the notes of Jack Ulcer, September 2007
“I wanted to join the caribou migration simply because it has never been done before. I wanted to be the first man to live and breathe with the caribou and experience the dangers and challenges these great beasts face every year during the great migration. I also thought that the caribou might appreciate a helping hand when fending off the wolves and grizzly bears that so often harass these peaceful creatures when they travel across the wilderness owned by these powerful carnivores. The caribou just want to peacefully pass through the land of wolves and bears and along the way maybe eat some of the evergreen low-bush cranberry shrub that so plentifully grows in these virgin lands.
When preparing for the migration I immediately realized that joining the herd would be no easy task. Caribou are smart animals and they surely notice if an outsider tries to join the herd, especially if this outsider looks like Jack Ulcer. I knew that I needed to prepare carefully, or risk death or serious injury if exposed.
The first thing was to create a decent caribou camouflage and the color I needed was clove-brown, in accordance with the color of caribou fur in the fall season. This might sound unbelievable, but the closest thing to caribou brown was my old Adidas tracksuit my dad gave me a long time ago for Christmas. The color was absolutely perfect, but there was a slight problem with the yellow stripes running on the sides of the suit. However, I solved the problem by painting the stripes over with a can of brown spray paint I got from a hardware store in Fort Yukon. The result was not perfect, but it ended up fooling the caribou.
In addition to the tracksuit, I organized some old caribou antlers, which I attached to an old motorcycle helmet I bought from a local hunter in Anchorage. I painted the helmet light brown, in order to increase the authenticity. The weight of this antler-helmet-combination however became a bit of a problem because the caribou antlers weighted around 10 pounds (they looked spectacular though), and the helmet added around 4 extra pounds. I decided to be a bit less ambitious and replaced the huge caribou bull antlers with a pair of domestic reindeer antlers and, in this way, got rid of some of the extra weight. The look and weight was pretty much perfect and it also helped a lot that I had trained my neck muscles for the past 2 years. The hard muscle training made me confident that I would be able to carry the weight of the helmet-antler-combination throughout the entire migration. There was, however, a disturbing comment made by a local fisherman who saw me in my full caribou camouflage. This storm-beaten man told me that I looked like a “pervert moose cut half with a chainsaw” and that the “caribou would kick the living s**t out of me”. I was calm and did not react to that comment, because I knew that Jack Ulcer would run with the caribou soon.
The next thing was to locate the starting point of the caribou migration, go hiding there and wait for the caribou to arrive. I managed to find the right location near Yukon-South by using old satellite pictures taken from the 2006 caribou migration. A local wildlife researcher, Malcolm Fields, organized these pictures for me (Malcolm, I still owe you one, man). The spot was the very same place where the caribou formed a large herd for the fall migration in 2006 and I was confident that the caribou would use the same starting point again. Caribou tend to be repetitive in their behavior, just like my uncle Remington who every spring goes to the same fishing lake to catch spawning pikes and drink some homemade corn liquor.
I went to the right spot the night before and dug a little hole in the ground with a shovel I had purchased from a small country shop back home. Digging the frozen tundra was hard work, but after about 5 hours I was finally in my hole, lying silent, absolutely silent. It sure was cold as hell and I could see clearly the vapor created by my breath lingering in the air. It reminded me of my foster father, Dr. Callahan, who used to smoke an old mahogany pipe on our front porch in Wyoming, and sing songs about the ladies he had met in various ports when he was a young sailor on a vessel carrying Amazonian timber from Porto Alegre to Western Europe and the U.S.
I should have been freezing in my hiding hole, but the thought of my father and the upcoming adventure kept me warm and I felt truly alive again. I also knew that I didn’t need an alarm clock to wake me up, because when the caribou arrive, you hear it. I mean you really hear it. And, if you don’t, you are dead.”
Crunch Time
“I woke up to the loud sound of thunder. Not a thunder bringing rain and wind, but a thunder created by thousands of caribou hoofs. The great herd was approaching from the east like a huge hairy beast. I made some simple calculations in my head and estimated that there must be at least 2,000 caribou in this herd, making it big enough for me to join without a high risk of exposure. I have to admit that there was a passing moment when I felt uneasy about the stamping power or the approaching caribou, but then I remembered: I am Jack Ulcer and Jack Ulcer will not be a human stamp on the permafrosted soil of the great state of Alaska. This realization gave me strength and just remembering who I was made me feel good, strong and confident. It was great to be alive, great to be Jack Ulcer, and I was ready to run with the caribou.
The next thing I needed to do was to physically join the herd and I knew this would be a critical moment, literally a moment of life and death. I knew that some of the smarter caribou would be skeptical of a new member, so I tried to look for younger and inexperienced members of the herd to join. And I needed to do it fast, or the herd would run me over and the life of Jack Ulcer would be over.
The time ticked by with an alarming speed, but after I had waited about 10 long minutes, avoiding the killer hoofs of the front-running herd, I suddenly saw a group of younger males closing in slowly. I knew that this was my only chance; I had to make my move now or risk exposure. My muscles rigid, ready to spring into action, I rose up from my hole in the middle of the group and started to move along with it, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Some of the caribou noticed me and there was a short moment that made me think my cover was blown. I got a couple of really disturbing caribou looks, but I soon realized that the looks were more confused than suspicious. And because nothing happened, I figured that the caribou must have thought I was just a little banged up cousin, maybe attacked by a wolf or a bear, or just one ugly piece of caribou. Whatever happened in those critical seconds did not expose me. Jack Ulcer was part of the herd.”
October 2007
“I have now traveled 3 weeks with the caribou. The herd is moving approximately 10-15 miles per day and I am absolutely exhausted. Last night was the coldest night in my life and I was so hungry that I wanted to eat the caribou around me. Regardless of the long and hard diet-training of the past 2 years, I am sick and tired of being an herbivore and I am not getting used fast enough to the diet of lichens (aka reindeer moss), cranberry shrub, moss, grass, equisetum and all kinds of other things you don’t want to know of. The water is plentiful though, thanks to the small clean ponds and lakes along the migration route. I am surviving, but still not fully adapted to the harsh, though cool, life of the caribou.
Last night I used a small sleeping bag I had hidden under my caribou outfit. This was a bad idea, since some of the larger caribou started to make these strange noises, “crakakaa, crakakaa”, and I begun to feel uneasy and truly worried about becoming exposed and attacked. After about one hour of aggressive grunting, the caribou finally calmed down though, but I realized that I could not use the sleeping bag any more. There is obviously something about sleeping bags that caribou don’t like and I was facing a major dilemma: freeze to death or risk an attack by angry caribou bulls loaded with testosterone.
The solution arrived unexpectedly the next day. A large grizzly bear was shadowing the herd from a distance of approximately 1,000 feet, moving silently along the herd under the cover of a thick Black Spruce forest on the left side of the herd. Based on the nervousness of the caribou, the closeness of the bear posed a serious threat to all of us, me included. I also knew that carnivores normally attack wounded or small members of the herd and that realization made me extremely upset. I was about one half of the size of an adult caribou and my antlers were hanging on the side of my head, making me look like a wounded or truly sick individual. This would mean only one thing to a predator: easy prey. However, I soon noticed that the grizzly was not interested in me, but was getting closer and closer to a young female caribou on the far left side of the herd, and make no mistake, the 1,000-pound killing machine was getting ready to attack. The bear started to run full speed toward the female and I knew I had to do something before all the hell would break loose. And, the hell in this case would be a stampede so strong that Jack Ulcer, or any other living thing in the way of the herd for that matter, wouldn’t have a slightest chance of survival.
I was not thinking clearly and somehow arrived to a decision to confront the grizzly. I shouted as loudly as I could: “HEY BEAR”. Nothing. The bear was now getting very close to the female and would soon reach striking distance. I shouted even louder, this time, “HEY MR. BEAR”. The bear suddenly stopped on his feet and turned to me. I felt a terrible chill running through my bones as the great killing machine and Jack Ulcer looked at each other for a few seconds, trying to figure out our next moves. I was thinking about running away, but I knew that I could not match the speed of a grizzly and, more importantly, I would lose my face in front of the caribou herd witnessing the unfolding true-life drama. The grizzly was probably thinking about whether I was big enough lunch to waste a run. This was a situation where I wanted to prepare myself for the worst and thus gave my mental farewells to my friends and relatives. I guess Jack Ulcer was prepared – but not ready – to die.
What happened next, I am not completely sure, but I remember the bear and I starting to run straight toward each other, like in a game of chicken in which two drivers drive toward each other on a collision course. I had the same dilemma on my hands as the players in the game: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash. Thus, I was running like a mad man, which I was, and tried to position my antlers and the helmet in a way that they would protect my body from the sharp teeth and claws of the bear as much as possible. I also knew that I had crossed the point of no return and the 1,000-pound grizzly was about to hit me. He was not going to swerve and I was the 180-pound car competing against a 1,000-pound truck. Closer, closer, closer – impact. Silence.
I regained consciousness, after which must have been approximately 20 minutes. I estimated the time based on the fact that I was not frozen to death, which does not take long in this part of the world. What actually woke me up was the familiar sound I had heard a few weeks earlier – thunder. The thunder this time was created by scores of caribou hoofs kicking the grizzly bear. I figured that the grizzly had also lost his consciousness in the impact and the caribou had run to my rescue when they saw the opportunity to reveal itself. I knew the bear had been unconscious much shorter time than me and there is no doubt that without the caribou rescue, Jack Ulcer would now be a piece of decomposed bear excrement somewhere near the U.S.-Canadian border.
I was very thankful to the caribou for the rescue, but soon started to feel sorry for the bear. I truly respect all living creatures and I knew that the bear was just doing what bears are supposed to be doing. I figured he should not be lynched just because he was doing his job. I also knew that kicking a bear in the gut is abnormal caribou behavior and should be discouraged as far as possible. My solution was to get the herd moving again and I decided to let out the scary caribou sound I had experienced before: “crakakaa, crakakaa”.
To my great surprise, the caribou responded to the call and I started to lead the herd away from the bear, yelling “crakakaa, crakakaa” as loudly as I could. The caribou joined in the chorus and I realized that Jack Ulcer was actually leading the caribou herd for a brief moment. It was an unforgettable feeling and, for a fraction of a moment, I actually thought that I am a caribou, not a man. This moment however lasted only until the dominant bull, which I later named “Johnny Niceface” pushed me aside. Regardless of my short-lived moment of glory, I knew that I had earned the respect of the herd and was sure my caribou life would be about to change for the better. I suppose it is same with us humans when we join a new group of people or a sports team etc. We need to crack a good joke or score a touchdown to earn the acceptance and respect of the team. The grizzly incident was my touchdown and the crowd was cheering. And, as a bonus, I had saved the life of Mr. Bear.
After this amazing day, the night fell quickly and the reality and the dangers of Alaskan cold hit me hard. I knew that I would die without my sleeping bag, but was hesitant to take it out. Last night was still clearly on my mind and I remembered the caribou being extremely agitated by the sleeping bag and it was thus highly likely that the bag would trigger a serious attack on me, or at least the caribou would kick (literally) me out of the herd and put an end to my migration.
However, soon after the herd had stopped for the night’s rest, I realized I would not need my sleeping bag tonight – something better was in store for me. Two large female caribou laid to rest near me and, by the way they looked at me, I knew that I was invited to use their warm bodies as a protection from the cold. Don’t get me wrong, this is a common practice when it gets really cold and caribou must stick together to keep warm. It is however also true that the warmth is not offered to just anyone and I knew that the bear encounter had been my key to the inner circles of the caribou. As a result, I now had the privilege to position myself in between two large caribou females and was happy to know that their large bodies would keep me from freezing tonight. And truly my friends, it was the warmest night of my life.”
- Jack Ulcer – The Caribou Diary
Rest of the Caribou Migration and other Amazing Adventures of Jack Ulcer
The 2007 caribou migration was long and hard and Jack encountered many other unbelievable adventures along the way. One of them happened early November, when Jack was only seconds away from death after being separated from the herd and surrounded by a hungry pack of wolves in the Valley of Seven Whispers. This story, The Tragedy of the Valley of Seven Whispers, can be found under the Adventure Cove section.
Jack is currently in South America, flying a camouflaged paraglider with the Andean Condor; the largest flying land bird in the Western Hemisphere. If the readers are interested in the Andean Condor adventure, it will be posted here along with Jack’s earlier adventures. Jack is also planning to join the 2010 wildebeest migration in Serengeti, Africa, and has been training for months to avoid the lethal Nile crocodile attacks that take place in the river crossings along the wildebeest migration route.
Respectfully,
Edward L.
Note: Jack is sort of a superhero and his escapades and adventures should not be taken too seriously. His teachings and thoughts however can help people to find a better life for real.