By Chris Avena
Martha Tansy is a woman of many talents. She is an Army veteran, a sharp shooter, a television personality, an off-road racer and the designated hunter for the indigenous Athabascan people who live in her Alaskan village. Martha lives a life in progress. To her, every day is a learning experience. She uses those lessons, her life experience, her talents and her over-abundance of compassion to help others in need that she might come across in her travels. Martha has a warrior’s spirit and walks without fear in the Alaskan wilderness where danger might be lurking just around the next trailhead. Alaska truly is the last frontier. It is her home and she is thriving.
Chris
Martha, you have a really storied history. You were in the military for five years. What did you do in the military?
Martha
I made my way up to the Army’s Vehicle Recovery Team, which means went out and did a lot of recoveries, whether people are struck or broken down. I was a mechanic that I was a very specialized in.
So, your mechanic training really helped you later on in life.
Yes, everything I do revolves around being in the woods. Being able to fix equipment while you are out in the woods was really important to me. Even as a child I was trying to figure out how to work on cars to get us back home when we had broken down. That's kind of the goal when you want to go home, you want to be able to get home.
After your time in the service, did you work in a pit crew, and you raced off road?
Yes. So, I actually got into that, because I was breaking my trucks all the time while going off road. There was a shop locally where I lived in Alaska and they were able to help me fix my trucks and taught me quite a bit about field recovery and how to prevent issues from happening in the first place. But then in exchange, they had me working on their race cars and that's how I kind of got into the building race cars. There is a NASCAR sanction track there in Alaska, and they were doing really well, but the cars that they were putting out of their shop. I got to learn a lot about high performance, setting up cars and then of course, when track day came, they put me and all sorts of really fun racecars.
So, that helped you with your military training.
I was trying to figure out where I was going to go in life. When I was in high school, I was already working on cars and building trucks and it just seemed like a good fit to go and be a mechanic in the military because I do have a passion to be in the woods and I love helping people. I love being a part of a team and accomplishing really big, hard mission. So, the military sounds like a great place for us.
You became the best you could be.
I did, I had a lot of fun. Going to training and then just being in the military was actually a blessing. I love the service that I did with them.
Is that where you learned how to become a sharp shooter?
I did. Growing up Alaska, there shooting everywhere. We had a shooting range in our back-yard. So, shooting is pretty common in Alaska. But I learned very specific ways to advance my shooting skills in the military. I love being the best that I can be. The military gave me training on how to do exactly that in regards to marksmanship.
It seems that everything you've learned throughout your life really brought you to where you are today. You grew up in Alaska, which I'm sure was not easy to grow up in Alaska, but you still maintain that lifestyle.
Oh, yeah. My passion to be in the woods is so strong. My daughter and I both share that passion and we also love helping people. So, we took both of those things and apply them to our life. We love building big trucks and going out and doing really cool things. But at the end of the day, we are doing all that so that we can spend more time in the woods. The biggest thing that we're doing now is hunting big game in Alaska and then bringing that meat back and giving it away to people in need. It takes up pretty much all of our life. It is all centered around that ministry. But another thing that is a sidekick of that is helping people in the woods. We come across people all the time, that are broken down, that are stuck or lost. some have had equipment that they tried to get through a river and it all got washed away and now they have no equipment. They are stranded. We come across people all the time. We just have a big heart for them and want to share God's love through us to them in that way. We do love hunting we love to bring back meat and give that away. But the end of the day, helping people is important. So, we will stop our hunt. Anytime to go and help a brother or sister in need that we see.
When you going through the woods does your halo ever get in the way, because you seem like a guardian angel.
I love working as a team. So, even if my meeting strangers, I still enjoy interacting with them and working together to help them with whatever resources and knowledge we have. Sometimes it goes the other way around and I get myself in a pickle too. I really appreciate being able to work with people and meet new people. It's so much fun. Sometimes we meet people out in the middle of nowhere. But there's a need. So, we take care of the need. But in the process, I have a lifelong friend.
So, what's the population where you live? Obviously not very populated.
No, where I live is kind of outside of a town. I live in the Hatteras Pass area. But I can get to town fairly easy. If I need something.
Within an hour's drive.
Yes, Anchorage is a little-ways away. We can get things from there. But when we are out in the woods, which is where we spend most of our time, it could be days before we could get to a village or to get any type of resources.
So, hunting for a lifestyle is part of your sustainability, which you are doing for you and your family. But you also do it for the town. Now, tell us a little bit about that, how did that come about, and how they chose you to be the provider of the village?
When I first started hunting, it was a challenge to get the first animal down. It can be difficult. So, I got my first animal down and traditionally what we do is we give that first animal way and so I did that, and I felt really good about doing that. Even though it's hard work to get that first one. But it felt good to give that away and then I got my next animal and I really enjoyed giving that one away. So, I gave about 80% of that one away. Of-course I had to make sure that my daughter and I had enough food. But we had a lot to share. So, the next year, I got three animals, so I gave that meat away. Next year I was able to get four animals. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and to the point where one year we got 13 animals and it was amazing how our dependence on God was shining through in that situation because people thought I was crazy, because I am a small person. They worried about my safety, going out in the middle of woods and at that time, my daughter Ellie was very young. She was about four years old at the time. The people of the village would worry about the what if’s that could happen. What if you break down? What if you don't get any meat? You have these people depending on you now because it's been many years that you have been providing and people are so used to getting the meat for them and what happens if you don't get anything? I heard a lot of negativities – the “what if’s” and I had that going on in my own head as well but I remember just sitting in a church and they were talking about what it looks like to rely on God and at that time, I was a fairly new Christian and I thought, well, I don't really understand how that looks like. Yes, I pray and I ask God for guidance and stuff, but I didn't understand it. But once I got into being the designated Hunter and having people rely on me, I thought, oh my gosh, now I kind of need God. Big time. This is really hard and I don't know how I'm going to accomplish this, as I'm turning it over to God is a big deal with hunting. I just figured that I'm going to go out and work really, really hard. Nothing has ever been given to me, ever. So, I work really, really hard. But I have God right there with me and I felt at peace going into the woods knowing okay, I'm just going to wake up in the dark. work extremely hard to be as nice as I can to people that I come across, other hunters especially. Which sometimes doesn't happen in the woods. Sometimes hunters are not very nice to other hunters and I don't want to go down that route. I want to be kind and build these friendships with other people that do the same thing as me.
Hunters are our own worst enemy.
God, please help me build those relationships. Please keep my heart open to how I can help them and to get any guidance I received and make sure that my heart is open to that. So, having that there and then just being okay with any outcome. I want to work hard and I'm okay if I get 1 animal, 0 animals, 10 animals.
Okay, so you would basically pack Elli up in a little back pack, strap her in and off you would go.
Exactly, I had car seat and I would have her all padded when we go off road when she was really little. When we at different locations I would put her on my back and I actually have really bad knees now from carrying a child, backpacks and everything else and then meat out to.
And your home schooling your daughter too. So, you're teaching her about education and she's getting a second education out in the wild.
Oh, yeah. She is an amazing outdoors woman.
I heard that she shot her first caribou with six years old.
Her birthday is right on edge. It happens during hunting season. So, she goes into a hunting season at a certain age and exits hunting season at another age and that was a little while ago. But I do remember being around six or seven. Yeah, and she was just so tiny and the terminology that I used with her is to explain about hunting is totally different than what I would use with an adult. For example, how would you describe the crosshairs and that sort of thing, it's just such a cute experience. She was supposed to wait until the caribou got closer to around 100 yards and I was ranging it at 300 yards, and she shot on it and then went down. I was like, oh my gosh, this was easy. She's was apologizing because she didn’t wait. I'm like, no, you are good.
Perfect. Sometimes the less you know, the better off you are. Now moving forward. Now you're working with this ministry to feed your village. How do you get all these tags? People just come in and give you their tags? Do they put in orders? Can I get some caribou? Maybe a moose?
I have everything organize. Some of the elders are very specific. They love the ribs. You call me when you're coming back into cell service, I will meet you right to your house. I do put them aside and some of the elders love the heart, you know and so I didn't have special orders but I do try to help them get what they really, really like because I think that it's important, you know.
On an average and average year, how many animals do you dispatch for this village?
So, we try to do about half a dozen to a dozen. That's what we shoot for. Some years, a little less, some years more. But that's manageable for us. Just getting one animal down and out. It's a lot of work.
This is not like you're hunting in a rural area like upstate New York or some parts of Indiana. You're in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, I was doing some math and the area that we hunt in is the size of Kansas. You can imagine hunting in Kansas and there is nothing there. That is what we are dealing with. Just to get to a road system is challenging and then on a road system starts to take a day to get to where we are and where the people are, where that meat can go. A lot of times, we will set up a base camp in the woods and then we will operate out of that. Then once we get the animal down, we have freezers with us that are solar. That's how we operate our freezers. We've got something like on a deuce and a half that I have and that's what we did this last year. It worked great. So, we butcher them, and then we package them and put them in my freezer and then we take those to the trailhead, and then a volunteer will pick up that meet at a trailhead and either distributed if there's an immediate need or put it in the freezers and then we just keep doing that all year. So, we'll head back to into our base camp and just keep hunting and then once we get enough meat, we will do another shipment.
What about predators?
Oh my gosh, bears are everywhere.
Yeah, and they're not small bears.
They want a free meal and we have a lot of free meat in the camp. So, that's another reason why I like to process the meat and get them in freezers and get them out. You know, Chris, we don't have any heat issues or bugs. But then we also don't have a base station going on in camp, where we have six animals six Moose Hagen, that's a lot of smelling.
What do you do when a brown bear or grizzly come in, there's really not much you can do except shoot them?
Elli has no problem hunting for meat when it comes to bears. I don't particularly like, if they're in our area threatening us, especially if we hear what's going on in our valleys and sometimes, I'll talk to hunters and there will be a problem bear. They are not afraid of anything. So, usually, we'll take care of those animals and then we just bring the meat back out, just like we would do with other animals
What do you do with the skins?
When I first started hunting, my first animal, it was really special and I wanted to keep that hide and I was trying to work with elders on how to tan the skin in the traditional ways. I knew little bits and pieces, but I didn't know the start to finish because it's not really done anymore and I didn't know this research and I wanted to find out every little piece and there, it's just not it wasn't out there at the time, right? I couldn't find it. So, I start experimenting and getting a lot of animals helps with the experimental process.
Trial and error. It is the best way to learn.
Yeah, and most hunters don't bring the hides out with them anyway, so I was on not only getting the hide that we were harvesting, but also, random hides that we find all over, especially in a caribou herds. If there is a herd, it is nice and easy all in one spot and the brains are right there usually to it's not required to bring the antlers out on a caribou. Like, like Moose, you have to prove that it's a certain size, make sure it's legal. Caribou is the same way, not times are smaller. So, a hunter on a four-wheeler is not going to take the weight and space of the antler set if they are not going to use it. So, they're around in one area where the herd was to CZ, to kind of take an axe, pop them, open them up and take the brains out and then take the height out and then once we get home, then with our tanning now, so we do traditional brain tanning.
What do you mean brain tanning?
So, we get to hide and there's multiple ways to do it. There's a dry method where you'd scrape them when they're dry like a rawhide and just scrape off the flash and you scrape off the hair and epidermis, which is like the tough outer layer and then you can take brains but the brains on that rawhides and saw to become like...
A kind of like salting in and using chemicals.
Yes, kind of like salting and chemicals. But we don't have any chemicals, which is how the braids and that's it. So, that's the dry method. The wet method is you'd lay the height over a beam and it's wet and you have a metal bar scraper and most people can kind of visualize that they think of like old trappers. We just scrape off the flesh side and scrape off the green side. So, from there, then we just take the brains like put it in a blender, and so fairly modern. It makes us really thick liquid and I put it on the hide and after it gets really absorbed, kind of ring it out. Once that the oils from the brains get into the hide. It's really flexible. Okay, so then we soften it, which means we're just moving it while it's drying and then once it's dry, you have a beautiful soft material that you can use for clothing. It's breathable. You can use it for footwear.
And you make all of this.
Oh yeah, we make our own mittens and boots and hats.
How is a beautiful woman like you still single?
I think it's because I spend so much time in the woods by myself, doing our own thing. Because I'm not in town at the bars hopping around. It's funny because we also do bark tanning, which is really fun. So, the leather here on your notepad. It's more of a like a wallet or a belt. It's more heavy duty. So, the soles of a moccasin if you wanted to use them long term, you would use that kind of tanning process for us bark tanning, which is literally fired like from plant materials, the leaves and bark when you get the tannins out of them and you can tan it that way.
Are you still doing off road racing?
Well, due to COVID everything got rocky. So, I was racing up until that point and then all races stopped. Oh my gosh, wow. We're just going to be able to be in the woods because I was kind of splitting up my life between being in the woods and traveling the world racing. So, it kind of went and died really, I mean, nothing was going on during COVID and every opportunity to see it as a blessing. Wow Elli, you know, we get to just be in the woods all the time, like the whole year. We really don't have to come back and you know, it was really scary with COVID, we both have immune issues. So, we don't really want to be around large groups of people. So, when COVID was going on, really the best place was in the woods for us.
Yeah, fresh air, no people around animals can't carry it.
Yeah. So, there's no cell service, there's no internet, there's nothing. So, really the kind of forgot that COVID was going on. We would come back from the woods and the first gas station and village we come to we see masks, and we're like, what's going on? Oh, that's right, there's this COVID thing.
Did you gain weight during that period, because you are out in the woods, and you're getting all this great meat, and you're at home cooking, I would be like 30 pounds heavier.
Luckily, there's a lot of physical labor involved and we did a lot more tanning than we normally do and tanning is all physical labor. It's actually the opposite, I felt really good. Like, we were able to grow more vegetables in our garden, because we had more time, we got to have more chickens and so just more home life, farm life, that sort of thing and then more of being in the woods, and we were building. So, we were able to build a truck for Elli during that time too. We had amazing support from the automotive industry and outdoor industry to build her something that's fabulous. Her truck is way better than mine. After driving hers, I was like, man, I'm going to have to build a new truck for myself. For first rig, she's very blessed to have that day. But we couldn't have done it again, without the companies loving what we're doing and seeing the big picture. Yes, we love the truck and yes, we want to go operating because this is fun. But there's a bigger purpose than that is you really want to help people and companies stepped up and said that we will help you.
Who do you have as sponsor that help you do what you do?
When I think about it, I start crying. So, I'm going to try not to cry right now. But they just they have a passion for what we're doing and they want to step up and be right next to us. And, you know, we try to help them the best we can. Like, we didn't ask for all this publicity. But we can use it to help them, you know, get the word out about how amazing their products are, and use them and actually let people know like, hey, we're real people using this stuff. We're not actresses. We're real and I can tell you different times where I use the products where it benefited us and it can benefit you and it can save lives. So, yeah, with Elli’s truck build, Keystone Automotive is a great big group and they own many different companies underneath them. But they said, yeah, we love what you're doing, and we want to support you in any way and during the pandemic that was hard because we are in Alaska and there were all of those shipping problems, we have parts on the shelf problems. So, we were like, oh, we're going to build this and then like, oh, we don't have that part, we're going to have to do this and so I was getting parts all the time, overnight and it was so just blessed to have that. But we're getting them and then how to modify them to make them work for what we have. Because what we needed wasn't available at the time and so just constant change and constant adapting and overcoming and the companies were right there, like, maybe we could make this work what we send you this and they were very, very supportive.
So, without your background, you wouldn't have been able to figure it out and put it together and I guess when you have to, and you don't have any other choice, you figure it out.
Yeah, it was. So, it is nice to be able to be a welder and fabricator and be able to modify things like seemed like nothing on that project really was like, off the shelf easy because of the time constraint. We had to build it very quickly. Everything that we shipped within a week or two was whatever they could have on the shelf. I didn't have a lot of time, oh, I got a year. So, you know, whatever, whenever somebody comes available.
A year goes by really quick.
That would be nice to have that opportunity. But it wasn't it was people coming together and we just did what we could with what we had available. But yeah, like you're saying I would have not been able to do that, without all my training and welding and fabrication and filling trucks and race cars. Because race is the same way you're out in the woods and you have a race car breakdown or you need to build apart you know, you just have to use what you have to make it work and so, and the military same way, you know, we're out in the woods. So, they all kind of overlap and then be able to use training from each of them to go further and the other ones.
You travel with just like a Leatherman. Okay, I got that.
I do.
I can squeeze the bark from this tree.
I do some crazy box thinking and some people are like, what that is never going to work. I'm like, just give me a chance.
That's great. Alright. Well, I definitely appreciate your time. Where can we find you on social media and everywhere else?
So, I think it's super regional with social media. Just my name on Instagram, Martha Tansy, Facebook is Martha Tansy off road racing, hunting and we kind of got a new label to our ministry. It's called Spirit Led adventures. So, that's going to be what we're transitioning into, that will be our new kind of label to describe us and what we're doing within our ministry and of course, I'm not and then last year was season 11. So, we were on nine episodes there. year before that. We were in sixth episode. So, season 1011. You know, it was a really fun way to visually see all this stuff I've talked about in real life. So, that's been a really neat opportunity, because I go around the world telling people what I do, and they're like, yeah, all right. No, really like you can pull it up on your phone right now and watch exactly how I kind of loose up or exactly how I build trucks because we've got the you know, Ellie's truck. So, it's been really fun to have that opportunity to share that with people.
That's amazing. I appreciate you taking the time to speak to us today.
I think it was fun.