The Hunter's Alaska

by Roy F. Chandler

  Things are better now, but I find it hard to accept standing in the path of a migration as fair chase hunting. Many explain their conduct by stating flat out that they are not sport hunting. They are taking their winter meat. It is food they are after, they say, not sport. It is legal hunting, and it is not a game for them.

  They have a point. As a consumer of overly expensive domestic meat I can comprehend their wish to kill in the most certain way, and if such shooting was too tough on the herds, the Game Department would outlaw it. Still … I would be less dissatisfied if all those "meat hunters" did not take so many mighty bulls and did not display their magnificent antlers so proudly. As meat hunters they must know the younger animals are the most tender.

  After you shoot 'em you have to move 'em. The tractor does it best. Here a guide and his hunter (with the trophy) do it the hard way.

  Guide Johnny Rhyshek (L) w/.375 H&H Magnum Hunter: Brian Roth, .300 Weatherby.

  Caribou are found all over Alaska, except along the southern panhandle, on the Kenai Peninsula, and on Kodiak and Afognak islands.

  Alaskan caribou have been divided into 13 distinct herds. Most migrate, but some small groups do not.

  The scientific name applied to these more than half a million animals is "Rangifer Arcticus." Most hunters know them as Barren Ground Caribou.

  The caribou is really a reindeer, but as far as I know, none have shiny noses or are named Rudolph, much less Dancer and Prancer.

  When they walk, caribou involuntarily make clicking noises with the bones in their ankles. The sound can be heard for a reasonable distance.

  In the winter, the caribou subsist almost entirely on caribou moss. It has often been claimed that the antler shovel over a caribou's nose is there to brush aside snow to get at the moss. This old tale should be put to rest as the caribou sheds its antlers and spends the winter shorn of its crowning glory.

  Until modem times, caribou hides were favored sleeping robes. The insulating properties of caribou fur are superior. However, caribou hides do not make the best leather. Caribou are often infested with warbles larvae which leave the leather scarred and pocked. If you wish to keep a caribou hide, leave the hair on.

  Because of its super insulating properties, it is especially important to get the hide off a downed caribou as quickly as practical. Even opening and cleaning out a caribou from gullet to tail is not enough. With his hide on, body heat diffuses too slowly. Skin your trophy immediately.

  There are grand old arctic survival tales about stranded hunters who survived blizzards and killing cold by crawling within downed moose body cavities. Not a bad idea, but I would pick a caribou. He would stay warmer.

  This is caribou country. A non-migrating herd lives within the rolling hills most of the year. The herd usually numbers about two hundred head, and a number of excellent racks appear each year.

  Andy J. Mefford, on the left, is using a .270 Winchester the author built for him. The author, second from left, has his trusty .300 Weatherby. Jerry's rifle is hidden, and Art has slung his 30/06. We lean against a sled that Art was trying out for bringing in heavy loads behind his tractor. The system worked, but it was very hard on the ground cover and left a huge ripped-up path behind us. We dumped the sled as soon as the hunt was over.

  I hope that readers enjoy these old photographs (and the captions that go along). I believe that each tells something about hunting in those long past seasons, and about those of us who went out for the great animals. Of course, to me, the memories are honey and grow sweeter each year.

  New photos are usually of better quality, of course, and a severe problem in assembling material for a book like this, is that back in earlier times few of us carried a camera, and even fewer hung onto their pictures for these many years. When asked, the old timers say, "Sure, I've got some pictures put away somewhere, I'll see if I can find them." They rarely do.

  This book is about hunting, and if beautiful photos are all that is desired, you can turn on the TV and be educated (along with incredibly detailed and colorful pictures) by some young guy who hasn't lived long enough to understand much of what he is exclaiming over—as modified by some production experts who know even less—and edited by another expert who has never shot anything and who feels uncomfortable off pavement My sentiments on most hunting TV have just been revealed.

  Made from modern materials, this huge pack in the photo above is not as heavy as might be assumed, but I never carried anything that large—excepting a dead animal. This is a good pack, however. It has wide straps that will be easy on the shoulders and not cut in, and there are uprights over which to hook a rifle sling.

  Jack McMillin has always been an equipment freak. In 2000, he and I rode our Harleys from Fairbanks to Maryland and Jack had enough stuff hung on his motorcycle to begin a homestead.

  On the way, he bought another pair of boots—which made three pair to carry.

  Jack is an experienced hunter who was going after caribou and grizzly on this hunt. (He got a fine bear with the .375 H&H Magnum he is carrying.)

  As this is written, Jack is the oldest, active duty law enforcement sniper in the United States. He teaches the subject at Blackwater USA, and he mentions how his years of hunting big game have enhanced his understanding of stalking and silent approaches.

  Native Alaskans are not trophy hunters. The animals they shoot are most often young and tender—for eating. The native people of Alaska hunt for subsistence, and they can legally shoot just about anything in any quantities they desire almost any time.

  Many trophy hunters and nonnative Alaskan residents have problems with that program. Most complaints lie in that much of the game shot is fed to dogs (sled dogs), and that natives often do not appear to be the environmentalists pictured on TV.

  A classic case that gained public attention some years ago involved a native who shot more than twenty caribou, got drunk and let them spoil, then went out and shot twenty plus more—to feed his dogs.

  The author bears down on a shot. The caribou never had a chance—maybe.

  Note the binoculars slung out of the way. I probably did that to make the photo more dramatic.

  The Mag-Na-Port recoil-reducing slot just below the front sight can be seen. There is a matching slot on the other side of the barrel. Gases are propelled upward and away at an angle of about thirty degrees from the vertical. The modification reduces kick appreciably and the gases are not blown sideward into other people or into the ground encouraging dust and debris. This Springfield action was always chambered for big cartridges. As the barrel has an integral ramp on it, the caliber could be either a .375 or a .458 in this picture.

  Art Troup, Alaskan hunting companion and foreword writer for this and about forty other Roy Chandler books, contemplates a strip of barbed wire that nearly tripped him. The wire was found so far into the timber on the Kenai that one could believe that no human had ever set foot there. One strand going nowhere. Inexplicable.

  25 - Wolves

  This is a book about big game hunting, and the wolf may not really belong in it. Most hunters do not list wolves among Alaska's great game animals. However, it is also difficult to think of wolves as small game or varmints. They are too big, too cunning and too numerous to ignore.

  Those who have not seen wolves in the wild probably need a mental adjustment to visualize wolves as they really are. Imagining a large dog does not quite make it. Mature wolves may run to 150 pounds in weight. Their coloration may include nearly any combination of colors. Gray and brown seem most common. A wolf tends to be more narrow in the chest than a dog. His jaws are more developed, and his knees appear slightly knocked rather than bowed, as a dog's do. Even the most expert admit, however, that a wolf hide cannot usually be identified from a dog's of the right breed. A very big dog hide can look like an average wolf's.

  These days, wolf hunting is limited. As sometimes happens with an animal species, wolves caught the public eye and public sympathy. Bounties were taken off wolves' decades
ago, and that alone cut down on serious wolf hunting.

  I can remember when Leroy Shebal and some others used to fly out of Fairbanks to hunt wolves on the open tundra. The technique was to fly low, force the wolf to run or cower, then blast him with a shotgun as the plane went by. Later, you landed and skinned out the carcass.

  That all sounds a lot easier than it really was. You cannot land everywhere. Unseen lumps and hollows can wreck a light plane in an instant, and in bitter weather there was hard work with your hands freezing. On the other hand, Leroy used to take about one hundred wolves in a two week period. With the bounty at fifty dollars a wolf, the hunters not only had exciting shooting, they made a year's income in fourteen days.

  Fierce looking devil isn't he? Do not fear, this wolf is now a mount in the University of Alaska at Fairbanks museum, and has been since the 1960s.

  I used my Cessna 170 for hunting wolves, but I never enjoyed it much. I liked the tight flying, but not the hairy landings. I did not enjoy killing animals with the methods we were using. I did it for the money.

  I took off the right-hand door and turned the right-hand seat of the Cessna around so that the man shooting rode backwards. I located a wolf, chased it into an area where I could reach it after landing, swept down right on top of the animal, and as he cringed and we zipped over him, the gunner blew him away with a load of buckshot.

  When learning, the shooting was tricky. You had to hold way behind the wolf to counter the plane's speed. Usually, the wolf was shot while cowering, but a running animal made the shooting that much more uncertain.

  You could imagine wounded animals crawling around down there suffering and unable to get away, requiring a second or even a third pass.

  If you do, you are right. Hunting wolves for bounty with an airplane was a mean business, but at $50.00 each, killing a wolf was very profitable, and you kept the hide with one ear removed. Tanning back in those days cost about $8.00 a hide. I could later sell the furs to tourists for about $20.00 each. In an era when a year's work in Alaska might bring in $5,000.00, wolf hunting brought in serious money.

  Gordon Haber is the most knowledgeable wolf expert I have ever met. Gordon works out of Mount McKinley Park (now Denali Park) and I first met him back in the late sixties and, more often, in the early seventies. He has studied the park's wolves for at least forty years that I know about. Haber's conclusions on the life styles of wolves were once controversial. Now, most experts agree with his findings.

  Gordon has never claimed that his data were applicable to all wolf packs, just to those he studies in Denali. It turned out, however, that most of what he noted did hold for most wolves in North America.

  Talking with Gordon is an experience to remember, and his studies are filled with information that often conflicts with our traditional images of wolves. Hunters and trappers often misinterpret Haber's statements because they seem not to agree with their own observations and ideas. I must add that Gordon Haber is not pro-hunting. He is an academic who is interested in wolves. It is virtually unheard of for a North American wolf to attack a human being. All of those stories you have read and heard about (where the wolf-encircled trapper holds a huge wolf pack at bay with his small campfire and clubbed rifle with wolf carcasses dotting the surrounding snow) are imaginative but highly inaccurate.

  When times are hungry, a wolf pack breaks into smaller groups to range farther in an attempt to find something to eat. They do not band together because the starving would be quicker that way. A wolf pack will normally number about seven animals. Plagued by hunger, wolves may even hunt in pairs or trios.

  A wolf pack may temporarily increase in size, perhaps into the twenty animal range, but that only holds until pups break away to create their own packs, or until the food supply gets short. Such large packs are rare.

  An additional point that should be mentioned is that the famous paintings from Russia of wolves in hot pursuit of a troika sled shows wolves after the horses, not the humans.

  With man's love for the wolf's cousin, the common dog, and our insistence that the dog is man's best friend, I have often wondered at our apparently inherent fear of wolves. Traditional children's tales such as "The Three Little Pigs" and "Little Red Ridinghood" start many believing that wolves cannot wait to sink their fangs into our tasty bodies, but if we avoid the wolf as diligently as he avoids us we will see very little of him.

  Even the great illustrator, N. C. Wyeth contributed to the bad wolf image when he painted his famous The Fight in the Peaks for Scribner Magazine in 1917.

  Wyeth later brought the idea home to Alaska with a painting for the Cream of Wheat Company titled simply ALASKA.

  On a Jarvis Creek moose hunt we were all standing around glassing for game. Our rifles were stacked inside the tractor. One of the group said, "Hey, Art, look at the big dog." Art looked and let out a bellow, "Shoot, you damned fool, that's a wolf!" The fifty-dollar bounty of the time elicited such a response.

  Everybody dove for a gun. The guy who saw the wolf first hauled out a pistol and let go.

  That is one (1)wolf pelt being held by a young lady from Fairbanks. Wolves can be very large.

  It seemed as though wolves exploded out of every thicket. Later, we guessed there might have been seven of them, but at that instant I imagined dozens.

  The wolves must have been hunting in a sort of skirmish line, probably just trying to stir something up. I gather that they had not seen us until the firing broke out They surely panicked because some reversed their fields a few times before they got it all together and disappeared. The wolves still did best. When the gun smoke settled, our guy had an empty pistol but no wolves. None of the rest of us got a gun into action.

  The mark of the wolf. A paw print compared to a common cigarette pack.

  I took two wolves on Delta Creek one time. I was glassing an area for bear, and the two wolves came trotting by. I had time to judge the situation, get really settled into a good sitting position, and squeeze slowly. The first wolf probably never knew what happened. The bullet wiped him out at 150 yards. The second wolf turned and started straight away. A going away shot is not any harder than a standing still one. The target stays right in your sights. I held on the back of the wolfs neck and let the bullet drive into his spine. The wolf flipped over and skidded along the tundra, dead before it stopped moving. In those days, that was what we called a fast one hundred bucks.

  Paul Barclay with a wolf displayed from an airplane strut

  Hunters who take wolves in Alaska these days will probably encounter their trophies about as we did in the above stories. Without an airplane, a hunter who goes out particularly for wolves is more likely to have a long hunt than a successful one.

  Here is a hunt that happened this spring. My friend was in Alaska hunting bear with Ray Atkins, the Master Guide from Cantwell. A large wolf appeared—legal game—and my friend shot it. A nice trophy, but not the end of the story.

  It had snowed nearly four feet deep that week, and Gordon Haber's thoroughly-studied wolf pack left Denali National Park in search of caribou. Gordon asked the Park Service to tranquilize the pack that he had studied for forty years and transport them back inside because they would surely be shot. We should remember that the pack, and their generations before those now living, had seen thousands of humans and had never been threatened by a human. Humans were part of their environment and were nonthreatening—they thought.

  The Park Service refused to tranquilize the wolves, indicating that they were not concerned with individual wolves, only with how many wolves there were in the park (usually seventy or more).

  They were dead wrong, of course, and my friend killed the Alpha male (the pack leader). The Alpha female was trapped and shot, and it is doubtful that, although old enough to survive, the pups will find their way back into the park's safety.

  Those wolves were not the normal wild animals one would expect, and I think the Park Service performed a disservice in allowing them to be slaughtered. It als
o ended Gordon Haber's extremely valuable lifelong research, and that should have been avoided. (That from a hunter/writer who is not a wolf-lover.)

  Wolf packs have always followed the caribou herds. A wolf may range twenty miles a day hunting caribou, and a wolf is capable of traveling thirty miles a day—day after day. For that reason airplane hunters usually followed the caribou.

  Caribou start their northern migration in April. Like the wolves, they cover a comparable twenty miles each day while feeding on lichens and mosses.

  Caribou calves are born in June with the size of the calf crop depending a lot on the severity of the past winter. The wolves are on hand for all of this.

  Wolves kill for sport as well as hunger. If they can, they pull down more than they need, and they often eat little of what they have killed. A wolf usually starts with a caribou's tongue and then eats the guts before he gets to the regular meat. When kills are made during starving times, wolves are known to stuff themselves until they are ill and can barely move.

  All wolves do not follow the caribou. Some wolves remain more or less in one area. I recall the winter of 1974 when wolves were coming into the city of Fairbanks and killing the dogs that were tied outside and had no chance at all. It happened again in 1977 and at least once during the 1980s.

  A study of wolves in Denali Park demonstrated that in the spring much of a wolf s diet consisted of winter-killed animals, meaning moose and perhaps caribou that died of natural or cold weather causes.

  Moose and wolves are usually in close balance. Eliminate the moose and the wolves go elsewhere—if there is an elsewhere. Most available Alaskan wolf habitat is already occupied without room for more wolves.