My Hunting Stories
By 1971, I had taken three sheep including my first 40 incher and was now on a mission to get a sheep with my Bear Kodiak Magnum recurve bow. My last two sheep hunts had been in the Chugach Mountains and I was still convinced that was the place to make it happen.
After our 1999 hunting season I attended the Alaska Professional Hunters Association’s annual meeting. Most of the professional Alaskan guides attend this meeting which includes a banquet. It’s a great time for guides to get together and discuss their past season and to work on guide related issues. While talking to some of my guide friends and acquaintances I mentioned that we had had a client that broke his leg twice and he still wanted to continue his hunt. A couple of them said, “Whoa, that’s a tough dude.” Then I would tell them it was an artificial leg and continue my story. The client’s name has been changed to protect his privacy. I will have to say that Al really had the desire and fortitude to hang in there. He was determined.
I’m posting a story written by one of my clients, John Bermen. The story was published in the Alaska Professional Hunters Magazine in March, 1989. This bear was and still is the largest bear that I have ever guided on. It was also the largest bear taken by a guided hunter in 1988 and received the first place award from Safari Club International, scoring 29 5/16 SCI points. I received a .270 Remington Model 700 mountain rifle from the FNAWS Association for guiding the hunter on “The Outstanding Animal of the Year” for 1988. That’s the rifle where I had the stock cut down for my wife.
What I find so aggravating about hunting for a 10’ bear is I hunted brown bear for myself eight different times and never killed a 10’ bear. Then Brent and I formed AAA Alaska Outfitters and I guided on a 10’+ brown bear the first three springs and the fall of ’89. Four 10 foot brown bears our first five years in business and I wasn’t hunting any differently than I did my last four personal hunts. I even hunted in AAA’s areas on two of my hunts. To this day I still don’t understand that. That being said, I hope you enjoy John’s story about a great bear.
After two years of hunting in Alaska I had taken two sheep, two goats, two caribou, a moose and a black bear. Not bad for a beginner. All I needed now was a grizzly or a brown bear. When I received my assignment to Alaska the only animal I knew I wanted to hunt was the grizzly. I had read in various books and magazines that the grizzly was mean and caution was paramount while hunting in Alaska because those bad boys were out to get you. However, after two years of hunting in numerous areas I hadn’t even seen one. In talking to many hunters, taxidermists and biologists I decided that I would rather have a big 8’ to 10’ brown bear than a mean 6’ to 8’ grizzly.
What Guides Never Wants To See!!
This is my thirty-second story and it has been a year since H.A.R.M. went on line. I am happy to say the response has been great, reaching over 770 cities and 92 countries. For you new subscribers, if you haven’t read some of my earlier stories you might want to go back and check them out. Some say the older ones are the best. I’ll let you be the judge of that. I have also added a Search Bar for the site which will allow you to check on story contents, individuals in the stories and more. As I’ve said before, if you enjoy the site please share it with your friends. Thank you for your support. It has been fun reminiscing about the old days. Now for my story.
Many bad things can happen when you are guiding around water, especially when you are guiding for large animals like moose or brown bear. Like most guide operations, AAA Alaskan Outfitters has had their share of bad endings. I know many of you have had similar incidents or know of someone who has. I thought you might get a kick out of seeing some pictures of those “bad endings.” This is not the total by any means but is a good representation of some we had to deal with. Some of the captions with the photos will explain how each situation was handled. These pictures may give you a good laugh or bring back memories you would just as soon forget.
First things first. In my last post I made a serious mistake. I stated that Eric Sjodin packed both moose after my two lazy packers gave up. Actually, Jeff Hamburg packed the first moose and Eric packed his client’s moose. Jeff had packed for AAA the two previous years and was now guiding his first client for us. The story has been corrected. Sorry Jeff and thanks again for always going the extra mile.
I truly love caribou hunting and have made some wonderful memories hunting with my friends. The caribou hunts in this article took place on the wild Alaska Peninsula. These are just a few highlights of those adventures.
Packers are an integral part of a guide operation. There would be five or six brutal days but worked in between would be easier days of camp chores. They also got to spend more time flying in the “super cub” with me, even if they were sitting back there on a moose quarter or a pack full of caribou meat. My guides might get to see a couple different camps in a season but most packers would make it to all the camps. I’m sure for most of those that had not flown in a small plane, it was quite an experience. Just because of their duties I spent more time with the packers. It was always surprising to me to see the comradery shown between the guides and packers since some of the packers would only be there one season. I have always been proud of AAA’s employees. Follow along and read some of the adventures of the “Packers”.
In my early years in Alaska I went on many mountain goat hunts. I think the main reason was I could do them on weekends since the hunting area was so close. I liked it because in Alaska it was very challenging. I have heard that goat hunting in some of the western states with the flat top mountains isn’t as challenging. They can drive on top of the mountains and hunt them from the top. That‘s not the case in Alaska. I can take a Topo map of an area that I haven’t hunted, that has a goat population and tell you where the goats are going to be because of the elevation lines. For goats, the steeper the better.
I would like to thank my good friend Chuck Berry for taking me on my first goat hunt and introducing me to a great area. After taking a few goats with my .300 I decided that hunting them with a bow would be the ultimate challenge. I used a Bear Kodiak Magnum 42# recurve bow with no sights and wooden arrows. Follow me on two of these hunts in “Bow Hunting the Mountain Goat.”
Back when I retired from the guide business in 2005, everyone kept asking me what I planned to do. Actually I wasn’t sure after working consistently since I was 15 years old. I was thinking now I would have time to hunt with my family. At the urging of my good friend, Marty Turnbow, I started volunteering at the Anchorage Downtown Soup Kitchen every Thursday. I joined the team who made the sandwiches. Since all men were on that team at the time, we were known as the Thursday Grandpas. In addition to making anywhere from 300 to 500 sandwiches, I made lifelong friends from this group of guys.
Vicki Martin, Volunteer and Program Coordinator, found out that I had cooked at my Otter Lake Hunting Camp and said she figured I could handle making soup for our clients and recruited me as Thursday’s cook. There is quite a difference between making meals for 15-20 hunting clients, guides and packers than making soup for 300 to 500 people in a day. My wife Karen joined me volunteering and helps me with the soup prep.
In addition to cooking, we help serve and do the cleanup. Serving in this ministry is a very humbling and heartwarming way for me to give back. The following article was written by Suzanna Caldwell for the Anchorage Daily News. It’s about how a road killed moose ended up feeding over 300 homeless people in our community.
I would like to wish all of my readers and subscribers a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2017 and to say thank you for your support. Hope you enjoy the article. Read the Story →
Deer aren’t animals that hunters in the “Lower 48” think of when they think of Alaska. For sure they weren’t the animals I was thinking of when I arrived back in the 60’S. I didn’t give them a thought until the early 2000’s, but after hunting them over the last ten years I find that hunting deer on Kodiak is a blast. Many thanks to Paul Chervenak and Dana Bertolini for getting me fired up over these little guys. Also to Rolan and Jo of Sea Hawk Air for the great flying service they have always provided over the last nine years. You can also go to my hunting video page and watch the deer hunting video for more detailed photos of the hunts. Follow along with me, my family and my friends on some special deer hunts.
