My Hunting Stories
It looks like I’m not going to make it on a brown bear hunt this spring. Two of my bear hunting partners, Jared and Nate, just welcomed two new precious additions to our family, three month old Macy and two month old Wesley and, Nathan, who is in college, is just finishing up his spring semester, so they are unable to go. In my last story I forecasted a spring brown bear hunt but naturally all of these wonderful changes take precedence. As we all know the only constant in life is change
This short story is mainly for all of you “old guys,” who like me are considered vintage or just over the hill. I prefer to call us wise and experienced. I will be turning 80 this year and I am hoping to spend my birthday with family members in the majestic rugged Alaska mountains that I love so much, chasing those beautiful Dall rams. I have a few other hunts I hope to go on this year, like a spring black bear, a family caribou hunt, a whitetail deer hunt in Illinois with my good friend Matt Caldwell and a mountain goat hunt if a family member gets drawn! God has blessed me with great health for which I thank him every day. The cold hard truth is I’m just not as good as I once was as a mountain hunter. Climbing those mountains is a young man’s game but I plan to do it as long as I can. That’s the part about not letting the old man in.
Congratulations to AAA Alaskan Outfitters and my former partner and longtime friend Brent Jones for taking APHA’s SCI “Top” two awards for brown bears in 2023 and to guide Troy Kitchel for guiding brown bear hunter, Lance LeFleur, on the animal that won APHA’s 2023 Outstanding Animal Award. This first place giant had a 30 6/16” skull! After all these years, AAA continues to take bears of this quality.
Of all the animals that we have to hunt in Alaska moose is my least favorite. I harvested my first and last moose back in September 1967. It was my first fly-in hunt. I was a young 23-year-old G.I. up for any hunting adventure and it was truly an adventure. My friend Gary Wadkins and I harvested two moose and three caribou. Lots of packing! At the time it was no big deal but as I grew older, I found out that packing moose quarters in swamp country was the norm and it wasn’t my favorite activity. When I became a hunting guide, packing out moose was nothing but hard work for me and the packers. In addition, hauling out the heavy loads from marginal strips with the “Super Cub” was some of my most dangerous trips. That being said, I wouldn’t have missed being with my grandkids when they took their first moose for anything. Always, fun and excitement! On the family hunt this year my grandson-in-law, Nate Johnson, harvested his first moose. He never hunted growing up so this was a big deal.
As I get older, I find myself constantly thinking about the good ol’ days, especially my early hunts. I have had many wonderful hunting experiences.
A few days ago, after having breakfast with my young friend Isaac Landecker (check out his YouTube channel for some great videos), he invited me over to his place to see his trophies. He really has some impressive animals. Two amazing B&C moose and some great rams, a 40”, a 39 ½” and one beautiful little tight curled guy that’s broomed close to the second year on both horns and still over full curl. Next to his latest, a 39 ½” with 14” bases, it looks like a miniature but what a beautiful ram. I asked him if he had seen the first sheep that I guided on which was a 38 ¼” curl and a quarter ram that has that shape. He had previously looked at my sheep photos on my blog but wasn’t familiar with that one. When I got home, I looked on my blog in sheep photos and in all my stories and it wasn’t there. I asked my wife if she remembered that story about guiding in the Brooks and she said no. I could have sworn I had written that one. It should have been posted right after the “I Can Do This” story, my first story about my first guiding season. The problem was back when I first started the blog, I was randomly posting old hunting stories intermixed with guide hunting stories. The following story is a very important part of my guide history, hope you enjoy.
The other morning, I was awakened from what I consider a nightmare. I was dreaming that I was mountain goat hunting and was climbing up a chute to get above the cliffs and rocks were falling all around me. I felt like I was going to die any moment. To protect my head, I had the top of my pack pressed hard against the rocks of the chute that I was climbing in. In real life this has happened to me more than once while hunting both sheep and goat. I have had D rings knocked off of my pack frame from fast moving rocks. I still have a small rock fragment imbedded in the handgrip of my little Bear Kodiak Magnum recurve bow that was knocked out of my hand by a wild spinning rock in one of those rock slides. In the areas where I have hunted, this has happened to me more times while hunting goats. That brings up a good question, which is the most dangerous hunting sheep or mountain goats? In my personal experience mountain goat hunting wins hands down!
There have been many changes in the hunting world over the past 50 years or so, especially in Alaska. Some good and some not so good. I arrived in Anchorage in February 1965 and bought my first resident hunting license in February 1966. It cost $7. I could harvest 1 polar bear, 1 brown bear, 3 black bears, 1 Dall sheep, 2 mountain goats, 1 moose, 3 caribou and 5 black tailed deer each year. No drawings and no tags just general open hunting seasons. The hunting regulations booklet was about 4 x 5 inches in size with about 50 pages. In 1982 it expanded to a 5 ¼ x 8 ¼ booklet with 80 pages. Today it is an 8 x 10 booklet with 144 pages. That’s a lot of regulations.
I finally got to do a hunt this year. It was our annual family hunt which has now turned out to be a moose hunt. I personally would prefer a caribou/moose hunt but the area where we have been hunting is closed for caribou.
It’s been almost a year since I wrote my last story and I have received comments from a few subscribers asking when I was going to write another one. My current plan is to only write one after a new hunt. However, at my age I’m just not hunting very often. I spend most of my time reminiscing about all of my old hunts especially when I get to talk to someone who has just returned from a hunt. I love hearing the details and always wonder if I could handle another tough hunt. I always believe I can but could I really. When I think back to some of the bad ones with long hard packs, I know more than likely I couldn’t do it. I still do fine with a 40-to-50-pound load, which is what I call a day pack, but every year even that seems to be more difficult.
