North to Wolf Country: My Life Among the Creatures of Alaska

James W. Brooks packed several lifetimes of adventure into his sixty-five years in Alaska - working as a fisherman, trapper, musher, miner, wartime flyer, bush pilot and whale biologist.

In a rich, beautifully written memoir, James W. Brooks recalls astonishing adventures of his youth when he lived off the land in the final days of the Territory of Alaska and later became a wildlife biologist and helped write and enforce fish and game laws for the new State of Alaska.

Literally, Brooks lived and worked among the creatures of Alaska, from the walrus and seal habitats of the Bering Sea to the commercial fisheries in the Panhandle, and from the vast waterfowl nesting grounds of the Southwest river deltas to the harsh Arctic home of the polar bear.

Brooks balanced politics and science in dealing with the battles over wildlife management including controversial aerial wolf hunting intended to conserve moose populations that feed many two-legged creatures of Alaska.

James W. Brooks left his boyhood home in Michigan and made his way to Alaska as a seventeen-year-old in 1940. Here he found a new world that offered occupations suited to an adventurous young man: fisherman, railroad worker, Caterpillar operator, trapper, musher, wartime flyer, walrus researcher, bush pilot, whale biologist. He led the Territory of Alaska's wildlife management program into the era of statehood and later served as commissioner of the state Department of Fish and Game. Brooks has published numerous scientific and popular articles on Alaska's living resources. He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from his alma mater, the University of Alaska, in 1989. James W. Brooks served as commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game from 1972-75 under Governors William Egan and Jay Hammond.