The Hunter's Alaska Read online

  Guides owned packhorses and had learned how to reach territories theretofore too far from civilization. A select few had track vehicles that could carry immense loads and seemed able to go anywhere. Bush pilots increased in numbers, and those talented flyers opened valleys and rivers never before hunted.

  Anchorage and Fairbanks had permanent taxidermy shops—Jonas Brothers (in both cities) was owned by and featured the three Klineberger brothers, Bert, Chris, and Gene, who racked up record trophies year after hunting year. The husband and wife team of Haines and Haines Taxidermy operated in Fairbanks. Gun shops and sporting goods stores were appearing in cities and a few larger villages. Game bags were huge and the seasons were long. In most areas, a resident's $7.00 hunting license allowed a brown or grizzly bear, a sheep, a goat, a bull moose and three caribou, and there was a lot of game to choose from. You got a fifty-dollar bounty for shooting a wolf. The times were increasingly good for both resident and visiting hunters.

  The best of hunting had arrived, and 1950 through 1960 was a hunting decade to remember.

  It did not all end in 1960, but becoming a state brought changes to all Alaska, including our hunting regulations, and a never before recognized wolf-loving crowd suddenly exploded into a powerful political force that influenced predator control—unfortunately, to moose, caribou and sheep detriment. Ill-conceived wolf hunting restrictions have had brutal consequences on other species that should have been foreseen by the many wolf appreciators.

  Over the decades, laws were passed requiring out-of-state hunters to use guides when hunting some of the great animals. That added expense, and the "looking over the hunter's shoulder" burden soured some mouths. Those and other restrictive regulations will never be rescinded or significantly eased. Non-resident hunters will always pay BIG for the privilege of hunting the Alaskan big four or five (depending on which animals you include).

  How expensive? The 2005 guided hunt price list for Alaska's big five will run about:

  Grizzly or Brown bear: 10 days, $9,000

  Moose: 7 days, $8,500

  Caribou: 5 days, $4,200

  Dall Sheep: 7 days, $8,300

  Goat: 7 days, $8,300

  Of course, that is not all. Today, a non-resident hunting license will cost:

  Bear (Grizzly or Brown): $500

  Moose: $400

  Caribou: $325

  Sheep or Mountain Goat: $425

  Free lunches are rare in Alaska.

  It would be natural to wonder how expensive it was for guided non-residents back in the 1950s when this author began. Here is a listing from that era.

  Grizzly or Brown: $500

  Moose: $200

  Caribou: $200

  Dall sheep: $500

  Goat: $300

  Prices from those special times can be even more startling. For example, you could purchase (legally from Jonas Brothers) an open-mouthed Grizzly rug for $225 or even a polar bear for about $420. The one-eared wolves we sold for $20 (probably to Jonas Brothers) could be bought from that firm, tanned and handsomely combed for about $55.

  We have to talk more than a little about professional guides because attempting to hunt Alaska without someone knowledgeable and experienced will most often prove frustrating and fruitless. Every mountain does not support game, and moose do not frequent every valley.

  At the above rates, time is precious in Alaskan hunting. The Alaskan wilderness can also be dangerous. Beyond the obvious menace of unpleasant bears, the unwary can improperly negotiate glaciers and rock slides, even muskeg. Arctic streams can be underestimated. Boulder fields can be tricky. Mountains may look alike, hunters become lost, and unexpected weather changes can sometimes prove deadly. The cheechako should hire the best guide he can find and be pleased to have him.

  In Alaskan hunting, stream fording is common. In the picture below, the author is shown crossing Ernestine Creek en route to our favorite goat hunting camp. To get into the high end of the canyon, where the goats live, a hunter is forced to ford the creek about twelve times. It is rough country. Only an utter idiot would attempt crossing without a "third leg." Usually the hunter would face downstream with his butt into the current, but I wanted the best light for the picture. The stream bottoms are rough and slick as snake spit. Cut a willow pole, poke it a step ahead, plant it firmly, move one leg forward, plant the foot solidly, and then move up the second foot. It takes time to stay dry. The water in Ernestine is straight off the glacier—cold! It is clouded with glacial silt and it runs very fast.

  The Alaskan professional hunter (a guide) is not the casual hire of prior times. Alaskan guides these days are equipped and experienced. Many of them have airplanes. They have passed difficult tests, and they have had to produce for their clients or they would be out of business. You can get a subscription to their excellent Alaska Professional Hunter Association Magazine by purchasing any one of the memberships available or by writing to The Alaska Professional Hunters Association, PO Box 240971, Anchorage, Alaska 99524 or www.alaskaprohunter.org. If you are seeking guidance or a guide for Alaskan hunting, the slick-papered magazine with its many descriptive ads and its astounding photographs will be money well spent.

  Actually, the most dramatic change in Alaskan hunting arrived virtually unremarked early in the magical 1950s, and its acceptance changed the face of hunting the vast wilderness areas for all time.

  Without being prompted, few would suspect that the dramatic increase in the popularity of big game hunting was, in large part due to the perfection and worldwide adoption of the telescopic hunting rifle sight.

  Suddenly, ordinary guys could hit what they aimed at. Older hunters with weakened vision could again shoot well. For the first time, big animals could be clearly seen and optically drawn into more certain hits. No struggling with sight alignment and sight picture, no having your front sight blade or bead cover half of the animal you were hunting. Shooting distances increased removing the need for more than a little skilled stalking. Now you could see clearly and often through brush or tall grass. Put the crosshair where you want and squeeze the trigger. That sounded easy to many a hunter who could not hit zilch with iron sights.

  Of course, telescopic sights of diverse qualities had been around for decades, but they all came together and into common use during the 1950s with clear waterproof lenses and strong mounts. In 1952, variable power scopes appeared, and within the next few years a hunter could purchase almost every variation of telescopic sight that is offered these many years later. Those sights helped lure countless hunters into successful big game hunting. Many came to Alaska.

  During that long past golden decade we had few restrictions, not too many hunters, astonishingly low licensing fees, lots of game, and ... well, it was just a great time to be hunting the Great Land. This author began in Alaska back then, and those years provided hunting never to be forgotten.

  Bitter facts are that hunters without access to aircraft are now struggling to find trophy moose and caribou where they can be harvested. And, as the marvelous decade of 1950 through 1960 is long past and virtually forgotten, what is this business about a coming Golden Era?

  Fortunately, professional guides have become well organized and are able to push forward their wishes, knowledge, and experience.

  Even more important, attitudes within Alaskan politics have shifted as never before. The current state governor is solidly pro-hunting and, unlike many before him, he has demonstrated the smarts, the will, and the ability to stand up to the well-funded and politically powerful Bambi crowd (both in the state and outside) who believe hunting to be a dastardly avocation no matter why the game is taken.

  A short aside can mention that Alaskan tourism is big business (a very big business), and travelers visiting the state wish to encounter bears, moose, and caribou. Empty mountains are available in many states, but Alaska's bear and moose sightings always seem special.

  Visitors returning to the lower forty-eight exclaim about the marvelous wilderness, but if they co
me upon a large wild animal, their cups floweth over—and they will describe and re-describe their thrilling encounter with anyone willing to listen.

  Big animals entrance all of us, and tourism has long feared that increased hunting would reduce tourists' chances of stumbling upon the "real Alaska'' of wild game animals. The fearful were and are wrong. New programs should immensely increase game herds while allowing more hunting with better trophies than has been possible for the last forty years. An explanation follows.

  No one is more interested in the prosperity of the game animals than the professionals whose livelihoods depend on animal abundance. If the big bears and the full curl rams become scarce, or if the moose and caribou prove hard to find, wallets thin and businesses fail. The pros want a lot of game available and legal to hunt. For the guides and outfitters, conserving and growing the game herds are essential. They are the best game stewards that will ever be found, and therein lie the sea changes that are just beginning.

  For decades, a management program entitled Low Density Dynamic Equilibrium has controlled Alaskan game hunting. That high sounding policy allows the animals to exist much as nature chooses. Most environmentalists prefer that kind of planning. Letting nature take its course sounds fair and perhaps sort of caring—but it is neither.

  Under LDDE, predators accomplish more than eighty-five percent of the annual harvest of moose and caribou—and those are violent deaths. Ten percent more fall from sicknesses. If the herds are to be maintained at current levels, that system allows only five percent to be taken by humans. Seems like a pittance, doesn't it? And it is!

  The Alaska state constitution requires that wildlife be managed as a sustained yield program, and that is good as a minimal standard. The current administration sees beyond that basic requirement, and despite ill-conceived pressures from tourism and the anti-hunting crowd, it has adopted a better standard. It is called Managing for Abundance, and this is the concept that is going to open the floodgates of good hunting.

  A simple explanation of Managing for Abundance follows.

  1. We want more moose and caribou available for hunting. We eat them, we mount them as trophies, and we like to see them.

  2. Predators take so many calves of both moose and caribou that a less than satisfactory percentage of those animals survive to maturity.

  3. Wolves and bears are the great game predators.

  4. We also want more bears to see and to hunt.

  5. Therefore, wolves must be radically thinned out to gain more shootable moose and caribou. (Explained and further justified in the Wolf chapter.)

  Complete number 5 and Presto! Available game increases, probably by hundreds of percents, and hunting leaps ahead.

  Of course, mature bulls with mighty racks will not instantly appear in every meadow, but they are coming. In Washington D.C. the administration and congress as a whole, as well as the Alaskan delegation in particular, are supportive of the long overdue Managing for Abundance concept and it will roll forward this year.

  The best of times are again on the horizon, and anyone wishing to hunt (or tour) in the great state should plan on encountering big heads with massive antlers. There will again be world records and of course astonishingly rewarding hunts for those who venture into the wilder country.

  In closing this section we should point out that Alaska is the sole remaining geographical area where American hunters can hunt genuinely wild game as it roams freely and unfettered—and in most cases entirely unused to encountering human beings. In the lower forty-eight, game farms are everywhere, and the trophy deer, antelope, and elk are rarely on our limited Public Lands. Hunters down there hunt on someone else's acreage, and they often have to pay for the privilege of shooting animals little wilder than domestic cows.

  How about Africa, that land of endless herds and gigantic trophies? There too, game farms are burgeoning. Let me describe a recent African hunt

  At stunning expense, my friend flew in and was provided with a rifle because it was far simpler to borrow or rent than to import his own beloved piece. He shot on a farm—a large farm, but still owned land with fences, and bag limits tightly controlled. He shot a zebra, and the unwanted guts etc. were dragged behind a range rover before hanging in a tree—bait for a lion, of course. As dark approached the "team" sat in the rover using a night vision device and examined whatever came to the bait. When an acceptable lion approached the hunter prepared himself, a six lamp light bar of a "skillion" watts was illuminated atop the rover, and the light-dazed lion was dropped at about thirty yards.

  In most places, we call that game shooting, not hunting.

  We do it a lot more fairly in Alaska.

  This is a thousand-word photograph from the 1970s. Mosquitoes had eaten me alive, and I was dead tired from bear hunting too many hours. The rifle has a bad scope mount (a see-under) and the stock sports a rollover comb. Yeah, I did the stock work! Dumb! This was a good Springfield action that I remodeled more than a few times. This time around, I think the cartridge was a .375 H&H Magnum, but too many rebuilds and too long ago to be sure.

  2 - Alaska

  With good reason, Alaska's ancient name was Great Land. Our forty-ninth state is great in land area, great in its immense rivers and towering mountain ranges, great in living costs, and great in hunting opportunities.

  Alaska is one-fifth the size of all other states combined. The sheer mass of the land is humbling. The state includes 586,000 square miles, which is more land area than Germany, Italy, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Switzerland combined.

  Alaskan statistics are awesome. In the southern panhandle, Ketchikan experiences annual rainfall of 150 inches. The same area boasts over six million acres of timber. Giant bears live in those forests. Mendenhall Glacier has a snowfall in excess of 100 feet a year. In the center of the state, Mount McKinley soars over 20,000 feet and is the highest mountain on the North American continent

  The Alaskan brown bear is North America's largest land mammal. The Alaskan moose is the world's largest deer. Even the incredible yellow gold hordes that were washed and crushed from Alaskan soil are now dwarfed by black gold, as rich oil fields of northern Alaska deliver their shiploads. Vast oil reserves remain untapped within Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

  Even approaches to the forty-ninth state are awe-inspiring. The Alaskan Highway stretches nearly sixteen hundred miles from Dawson Creek in Canada's already remote Northern British Columbia. Driving the highway is an experience to remember. The Marine Highway, which is a luxury ferry from Washington to Alaska, meanders past fjords and bays that rival any in the world. (What other state has its capital unreachable by rail or automobile?) Even a plane passage to Alaska drones for nervous hours above snowcapped mountain ranges that stretch alarmingly hungry fingertips toward the sky traveler.

  Everything about Alaska seems determined to be either the biggest or the most numerous. In the right seasons, salmon run so thick in the streams there seems hardly room for the water. In their season, Alaskan mosquitoes excel in ferocity and numbers. Climbers on Mount McKinley report mosquitoes to 17,000 feet. One year at Wonder Lake I lay beneath a mosquito net so thick with mosquitoes that the sunlight was mostly blocked. Even with personal protection, they get in your food, coffee, and hair. Without screening and repellant, Alaskan mosquitoes can present survival problems.

  No, Alaska is not all good things. The winter cold striking to sixty degrees below can be lethal. The wildlife also demands respect. It too can do in the unwary. Man challenges the harsher forces of nature only at personal risk.

  Alaska continually offers a scent of danger, not imminent enough to cause fear, but a hint of risk that personally involves the Alaskan and adds the "touch of spice" that lends verve to living or hunting in the Great Land.

  The people of Alaska possess a unique élan. The state has almost continual earthquakes, and the biggest recorded in North America hit Anchorage in 1964. That quake wiped out the village of Valdez (where the oil pi
peline now ends) and a new town was constructed nearby. Alaskans face arctic rigors and dangers with an equanimity equaled only by their casual disregard for outrageous expenses. And, they spend with an abandon that often surpasses even their sometimes incomparably high salaries.

  Alaskans seem to sense a mysterious "about to be" affluence. Many seem to feel themselves always approaching some unidentified monumental prosperity. Although a family may reside in a decrepit trailer and subsist on salmon and beans, it almost certainly possesses the same expectations of impending good fortune savored by their most prosperous neighbors. Great expectations have been harbored in Alaskan breasts since gold rush days, and few real Alaskans doubt some personal mother lode will be somehow exposed.

  Alaska is a land for people who enjoy and rise to the challenge and rigor of the outdoors. It has little tolerance for the timid or the foolhardy.

  The arctic is rarely forgiving and can exact terrible penalties from those who fail to measure up.

  Of course, there are also the warm months. August in Alaska may be the finest climate in the world. Imagine days just warm enough to wear sleeves at morning and late evening. Imagine a sun that rises about four in the morning and stays up until eleven at night. Imagine cloudless skies and mild breezes with all things growing their strongest This author has traveled widely, but I have never found weather to approach Alaskan summer.

  Alaskans are controlled by their land. They rarely dominate it. The government notes, for example, that two thirds of all homesteading attempts failed, and there is a steady departure of hopefuls who could not adjust to the arctic wild. Perhaps in the cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks, where half of Alaska's population clusters, one can ignore the surrounding wilderness. There, man has insulated himself with civilization's niceties. But, that is not really Alaskan living. Out in the villages life is more real—more Alaskan, more exciting and, sometimes, just a touch hazardous.

  Yet, Alaska defies these casual descriptions. She is too large and too varied. The rain forests of the panhandle cannot be compared to North Slope tundra. Civilization touches rarely across Alaska's expanse, and excepting the haul road (the Dalton Highway) to the northern oil fields, only the southeast quarter of the state even has roads. Anchorage and Fairbanks are Alaska's only genuine cities. Juneau, Wasilla, Ketchikan, Sitka, Haines, Tok, and Valdez are large villages. Kotzebue, Nome, and Barrow are native and tourist trading attractions. Those and a few others pinpoints of civilization mark man's limited intrusion on mighty Alaska.