ALASKA PRESENTS A PECULIAR dilemma: The wilderness makes it hard to get into the wilderness. In most of the United States, you can get almost anywhere by car. But in Alaska, cars are sometimes no more helpful than plug-in hair dryers. As Danny, who agreed to come with me, and I pondered ways to get into the Copper River buffalo country, we weighed the relative merits of bush planes, riverboats, walking, and even a cockamamie idea involving rappelling equipment.

In the end, we decided that a raft was our best bet for getting in and getting the meat and hide out (a bull can weigh 1,600 pounds). We had promised a load of meat to a couple of Danny's friends in Anchorage, Jeff Jessen, 34, and Matt Rafferty, 35, who just happened to co-own a 14-foot Sotar raft. Jeff is a hospital administrator who looks like a Russian hockey player—short, tough, with crooked front teeth. Matt works for the Alaska Conservation Foundation, an organization that coordinates the efforts of various Alaskan environmental groups. He's tall and lean and known for his cheery, unwavering optimism. Jeff and Matt spend so much time in the wilderness that they've become impervious to hardships and freak occurrences. They were primed for a buffalo hunt.

On a cold October morning, the four of us launched the raft into the Klutina River, a Copper tributary flowing beneath the Richardson Highway. Within minutes, the Klutina dumped us into the braided valley of the Copper. Our plan was to travel downstream to a network of ridges running north and south between the Dadina and Chetaslina rivers, two small Copper tributaries that drain glaciers in the Wrangell Mountains. A local bush pilot had suggested the area to me, because the buffalo use the ridges as migration corridors between their summer range in the high country and their winter range in the willow flats of the Copper Valley.

When we reached the Dadina River, almost immediately I saw the horizontal lines of buffalo paths cut into the hillsides like dirt rings in a bathtub, some wide enough to handle a full-size pickup. Tracks and buffalo chips were plastered every which way. "Damn, it looks like a herd of buffalo took laxatives and then had a hoedown up here," I said.

"Any minute now," said Matt, who suggested we set up camp and sit tight, "we'll be overrun by buffalo."

"Matt and I are in charge of being camp bitches," Jeff said to Danny and me. "Go get us some buffalo steaks while we get a fire going."

Danny and I climbed a mound of drift logs to get a better look around. We'd been sitting in slow drizzle long enough to be thoroughly soaked when four massive shapes lumbered across the face of a bluff about a mile away. The shapes were oblong and chocolate brown. I stared at the animals for several seconds before I could say, "Oh, my God! Buffalo!"

"Grab your packs, grab your knife—we're going up to butcher us a buffalo!" I yelled to Matt and Jeff. The four of us plowed into the alder thickets along the river. But after an hour of struggling, we'd gone about as far as you'd get if you decided to take a stroll through the halls of San Quentin. Even if we got to a buffalo, we'd never get the animal out of there. We retreated.

Over the next four days, again and again we had adventures like this: See buffalo way out there; head off on a wild chase through swampy tangles of alder and spruce; get there too late or not at all.

On the fifth morning, the moment I'd been dreading finally arrived: Matt, Jeff, and Danny all had to head back to work. We'd moved our camp down to the mouth of the Chetaslina. Jeff agreed to meet me there in five days.

"I'm sorry to say this, but I pity the hell out of you right now," Danny said as they shoved off. There were no illusions about what I was up against: too much ground, too many obstacles, subfreezing temperatures. I was only half joking when I waved goodbye and said, "It's been nice knowing y'all."