Wild Roots and Northern Lives: Erik Salitan and His Family in the Alaskan Bush

A compact portrait

Biography in brief

Erik Salitan is a figure who lives close to a single, stark truth: the land shapes the person. Moving from the Lower 48 into the remote reaches of Alaska, he carved a life around guiding, hunting, and the austere rhythms of subsistence living. He became a registered guide-outfitter in 2008 and later operated an outfitting business under the banner Bushwhack Alaska, running hunts and fishing expeditions across multiple regions of the state.

On camera, Erik’s presence is earthy and unvarnished — a person more defined by tasks than headlines. Off camera, that same practical persona translated into years working as a wilderness guide, a seasonal operator in several Alaskan regions, and a husband and father raising a family in a landscape that rewards self-reliance.

Family and household life

The Salitan household centers on Erik and his wife, Martha Mae, who also appeared as a cast member alongside him on Life Below Zero. Their partnership is both domestic and professional: they have worked together in the bush, run guiding enterprises, and appeared together in interviews and on-screen segments. Public mentions indicate they have at least one child, a son reported as Lucas, born around 2010. This family unit has often been portrayed as emblematic of modern subsistence life — raising a child, running a business, and threading together the demands of remote living.

Family life, as observed in public appearances and episode clips, is practical rather than performative. Meals, seasons, school options, and hunting cycles — these are the calendar of parenting in such a place. The Salitans’ life reads like a long, steady sentence written in the language of weather and work.

Career highlights and professional footprint

Erik’s professional life is defined by three overlapping roles: guide, outfitter, and occasional television personality. Key career touchstones include:

• 2008 — Earned a registered guide-outfitter license (a formal credential that shapes who can conduct guided hunts in Alaska).
• Bushwhack Alaska — Operator/owner of a guiding and outfitting enterprise offering big-game hunts and fishing trips in several regions.
• Television — Original cast member of Life Below Zero, appearing on episodes beginning in the early 2010s and attracting attention to his remote way of life.

A guide’s job sits at the intersection of logistics, safety, and wilderness skill: planning trips, navigating weather, managing clients, and making choices that can have life-or-death consequences in remote areas. That complexity is part of what made Erik a natural fit for a reality series — there are immediate stakes every season, and the camera simply records decisions already made.

Public records and professional accountability

Public administrative records place a spotlight on the tradeoffs of an outfitter’s life. An incident in August 2012 involving a sheep hunt later became the subject of regulatory attention. That matter, along with other counts raised by oversight authorities, culminated in a multi-day administrative hearing held in March 2016. Outcomes from that proceeding included formal discipline for certain findings and dismissal of other counts.

Numbers and dates from that sequence are important because they represent concrete, documented events in a professional timeline: incidents occurred in 2012 and through 2014, and a corrective hearing took place March 23–25, 2016. For a small-business operator in a high-stakes field, regulatory decisions are part of the public ledger — the record of how practice matched expectations, and where adjustments were mandated.

Media presence and public perception

Erik’s visibility rose thanks to reality TV and a string of interviews and online videos. His on-screen persona — practical, blunt, and devoted to subsistence methods — resonated with an audience intrigued by extreme living. After several seasons, the couple stepped back from regular on-camera appearances; in the years since, fans and online creators have produced “where are they now?” pieces, podcast interviews have revisited their story, and outfitters’ directories have continued to list their guiding services.

Social and video attention frames the Salitans as both characters in a TV narrative and as working guides; those two identities coexist. When a person wears both hats, perception becomes layered: viewers see the edited episodes, clients see the operator’s booking history, and both groups form impressions that travel faster than the seasons.

Timeline (selected public milestones)

Practical picture: numbers and notes

• License year: 2008 — a formal milestone that opened commercial guiding opportunities.
• Hearing duration: 3 days (March 23–25, 2016) — public administrative process with documented findings.
• Childbirth (reported): c. 2010 — single reported son, cited as part of family profiles.
• TV window: roughly 2013–2016 for regular on-screen presence.

The texture of living on the edge

Erik Salitan’s story is not a plot so much as a braided rope: threads of family, business, public exposure, and regulatory scrutiny woven together by geography. The Alaskan bush is both stage and judge; it rewards competence and punishes error, and its seasons measure success in meat, shelter, and customer safety. For the Salitans, the land is a literal and figurative employer — it shapes income, identity, parenting, and public persona.

A single scene captures the tension: a guide weighing the weather against the client’s expectations, a camera rolling, a child’s future folded into decisions made by adults who understand that the map contains both bounty and boundary lines. The result is an archetype of modern frontier life: an entrepreneurial subsistence, a family raised with sleds and seasons, and a public record that contains both achievements and hard lessons.