The Hunter's Alaska

by Roy F. Chandler

  The nonresident hunter need not overly concern himself with Alaska's size or climatic extremes. His hunt is carried out within a few square miles and usually under the direction of a knowledgeable resident guide. Additionally, most hunting is accomplished during relatively tolerable seasons of the year, and nature's worst at those times is rarely more than physical discomfort or poor hunting, not danger to life or limb.

  Perhaps ninety percent of Alaskan hunting is done in the Southeast quarter of Alaska. Excellent guides do fly hunters to more remote areas including, of course the Brooks Range. It could be said, however, that the preponderance of big game lives where the weather is least severe, and our hunters mostly follow that game.

  A quick rundown of likely and preferred game areas follows:

  Caribou: South of the Alaskan Highway, also in the north as near to Anaktuvuk Pass as the law allows.

  Dall Sheep: The best animals are in the Chugach, Talkeetna, and Wrangell mountains. The Alaska Range has herds of sheep. The Brooks Range has fine sheep, but they tend to be smaller with tighter curls.

  Mountain Goats: Along the coast between Ketchikan and Valdez in September.

  Moose: Biggest are on the Kenai Peninsula, equaled on the Alaskan Peninsula, and followed by the Copper River. Not as large racks on the Tanana flats. September and October are prime.

  Brown Bear: Kodiak Island and the Alaskan Peninsula are traditional. Also along the Southeast coast to Admiralty Island. September and October are best April-May are second best.

  Grizzly Bear: The Alaska Range is best. Find smaller bears in the Brooks Range and on the North Slope.

  Deer: Kodiak Island and the islands of the Alaskan panhandle.

  Black Bear: All over Alaska

  There are game animals that come under special headings.

  Elk: Have been imported and thrive on Afognak Island, just off the tip of Kodiak Island. (Why a lower forty-eight hunter would journey to Alaska to hunt an elk escapes me.)

  Bison: Long introduced to Alaska, and there are two herds open to special lottery hunting. Again, this hunter hesitates to place the American buffalo in a sporting trophy class. My experience with bison shows them stupidly unafraid, much like Ernie's milk cows. But, Big Delta has the best herd—if you can get a permit.

  Walrus: Hunting walrus also makes me uncomfortable. It should not. There are now more (far more) than are needed or desirable, and shooting those huge but hapless animals by non-residents will never become popular enough to endanger. Saint Lawrence Island is the place to go.

  Polar Bear: Rigidly controlled by international agreement, but Kotzebue is best. Polar bears live on the ice. February is the right time. Bring your mittens!

  Wolves: Very difficult to say. Trapping wolves is one thing, hunting them is quite another. Since airplane hunting has been limited, fewer wolves have been taken. Regulations shift with the popularity of the wolves or the desire to have more moose or caribou.

  Musk Oxen: This will be the only mention of the Musk Ox. The so-called "Bearded One" is a valiant but not aggressive animal. He is surprisingly small. Although a big bull could go as high as 800 pounds, more are 350 pounds. As there are only about ten thousand of these animals in existence, any hunting is, rightfully, carefully controlled.

  A game-filled valley in the Chugach Mountains

  It is a mistake to think of Alaska as a vast treasure land of big game. In reality, when compared with our more accessible and populous states, Alaskan big game is sparse.

  Although Alaska does boast some 586,000 square miles, those miles are virtually empty of human presence, and much of the land will support only wide ranging game that browses or grazes and keeps moving around.

  While a grizzly may be encountered on the vast tundra flats, there really are not significant numbers out there, and most of that land lies empty except when the caribou feed across it.

  This is not to say that the land could support more game. Without nitpicking a few selected spots, it could not. Nature's balance is delicately poised in Alaska. The arctic does not tolerate undo meddling, or things will go to pot swiftly. You simply cannot put in more animals without some others suffering. Exceptions to this rule might be the elk placed on islands such as Afognak, or the reasonable and intelligently culled herd of bison around Big Delta. Those buffalo do not seriously compete. The buffalo is a grazer in moose country (moose mostly browse) and the Big Delta buffalo do not migrate long distances as did the mighty western America herds. Those are, so far, well-conceived experiments that are working.

  Because of relatively few hunters, past hunting seasons in Alaska have been long. Thirty-five or so years ago we hunted bear for nine months of the year. We hunted caribou for seven months, and even moose were legally taken for three months. Such seasons in our lower forty-eight would have eliminated the game—too many people hunting down there.

  All of Alaska, which remember is twice the size of Texas, has only about one million head of big game—that means all types. Texas has a herd of three million whitetail deer. California, which has only one fourth of Alaska's land area, boasts a mule deer population of one million, five hundred thousand animals. Obviously then, Alaska is not game crowded.

  Potentially more critical, however, is the inability of Alaskan animals to survive in close proximity to man. Obviously, if humans multiplied, the great bears would be quickly gone.

  When we hear reports of moose appearing in the streets of Anchorage we can lose perspective as to how quickly such animals could be shot out. The moose is about as difficult to locate as a milk cow and will always require enlightened protection.

  Sheep and goats will no doubt survive in their lofty perches, if properly protected by wise game management. (Which I am quick to add, is the case in Alaska.) But the caribou with their need to migrate could fail quickly. Fences and highways could reduce and finally stop such great migrations. The caribou's innate curiosity could by itself hasten the herd's demise. A caribou simply cannot resist taking a look and a sniff. Anything strange is caribou appealing. Exit the caribou!

  Alaska should never allow its wild animals to be reduced to token numbers, and in this author's eyes, it would be wiser to restrict human immigration to Alaska than to see the animals displaced by man's ticky tacky civilization.

  The photo below gives you a look at sheep country in the Brooks Range, far north of the Arctic Circle. That means it is August or early September. The big point is, look at what Gary is wearing—a T-shirt, and there is snow all around him. By dusk, the temperature will have dropped nearly to freezing, and the mornings will be very brisk, but midday can be, as we see it here, very nice.

  One might look at the sheer mountains and wonder what animal would be found living on such stark and forbidding terrain. Dall sheep is the best answer, and at times, the bears and wolves that hunt them. Hunting in such mountains can be extremely hard—in the physical exertion sense. Suppose that you glassed a marvelous ram on the peak behind the hunter, could you get there? If you could, would you try?

  3 - Some Background

  When I first jotted the notes now included, or during the intervening decades when I wrote magazine articles about Alaskan hunting and shooting, I reconstructed the format and content of Alaskan Hunter many times.

  Originally, I was primarily concerned with the weaponry and ballistic data involved in taking Alaskan big game. Later, I thought to create a massive tome that would be the absolutely definitive work on Alaskan hunting.

  Unfortunately, and predictably, the definitive volume promised to be not only a monumental undertaking but also a financial disaster that no publisher would attempt. My desire increased to provide hunters not familiar with Alaskan hunting with an informative and enjoyable volume that would be accurate in content, entertaining to read, and worth retaining as a reference.

  Alaskan Hunter did all of those things, but in 1995 I became dissatisfied with the limited distribution the book had received, and I wished to report on certain hunting details i
n stronger terms. Using most of Alaskan Hunter, plus new information and a new title, I produced Hunting Alaska. That volume satisfied the itch to upgrade—for another ten years. The Hunter's Alaska? Surely this will be my last effort.

  I fear that we who have been able to regularly stalk Alaskan game sometimes forget that to hunt the Great Land is the dream of most American big game hunters. To experience the Alaskan mountains, tundra, and the great trophy animals represents an ultimate hope for many "red hat" nimrods.

  But, Alaska is a long and expensive distance from the stomping grounds of most hunters, and in recent years the fees for guides and licenses have become increasingly brutalizing expenses that ever fewer can manage. So, the great majority of those who dream of hunting the Brooks Range, Alaskan Peninsula, Kodiak Island, or the vast reaches of the Alaska Range are destined to spend their days afield taking animals less exciting than the mighty brown bears or the gigantic moose.

  As one of the fortunate hunters who have been privileged to roam almost at will across the arctic wilderness, I have been able to hunt when I wished and explore to my heart's content. However, I am not wealthy with a secret gold mine deep in the headwaters of an unnamed glacial creek. Rather, I am a writer who lacks the driving energies and ambitions to discipline himself to spewing forth reams of profitable articles and books.

  As this book goes to print, I have somehow survived to be eighty years of age. Yeah, I am old, but I am not completely broken. Because I have lived so long, I have generated a lot of experience and opinion. I have also produced a tall stack of books. A long life allows those accomplishments.

  Unfortunately for my bank account, I would rather write a little and roam a lot. I still ride my Harley-Davidson to Sturgis and across our nation. Three years ago, I rode the Harley from Fairbanks to Maryland where I have a home.

  There are times when I wonder if I have been a writer that hunts or a hunter that writes. If I had to sacrifice one or the other, the decision would be painful, and my world would lose much of its flavor. To be able to live among the great animals of Alaska and then be privileged to write about them seems to this author/hunter a nearly utopian existence. (Harley riding gets in there somewhere as well.)

  I first hunted Alaska in 1956. At that time, I feared that I was too late and the great hunting was gone. I had been warned by countless articles hammered out by current writers.

  To the old sourdough with his memories of an empty land, the freedoms of yore were no doubt diminished. But, in 1956, I found a land brimming with game and glowing with a pristine purity that whispered special rhythms to my ears.

  Alaska sang of untrammeled barrens and unspoiled mountains. I heard the ripple of swift, icy streams and the rumble of moose belly. I listened to the roar of a great bear mixing with sharp winds funneling through deep gorges, distant wolves howled, and I knew I had found a land that fitted my visions of an outdoorsman's paradise.

  As a hunter I swarmed over the land. During my first year in Alaska I took prime examples of every game animal in the territory, except the polar bear which we did not hunt. I have never considered the musk ox a game animal and so do not hunt them either.

  As a writer, I began turning out magazine articles and even a Letter to the Editor of the Fairbanks News-Miner newspaper. If it had to do with hunting, I was somewhere in the middle of it. (More recently, I have written columns for The Accurate Rifle and Precision Shooting magazines.)

  During my cheechako year, I was fortunate to have the friendship of the man I call, "The Old Guide." Art Rausch is dead now. He was never a registered guide, but he was a true woodsman. He was a naturalist, a hunter, and an unusual human being, and above all things, he loved Alaska and its untamed wilderness.

  I doubt if Art Rausch owned a necktie. I like to think that he did not. If he had a sport coat or a pair of dress shoes, I never saw them. But, he had hunting clothes, guns, scopes, binoculars, and gear. He loaded his own ammunition. He had horses and later the finest track-vehicle arctic transportation I have ever seen. Together, we used all of his equipment

  We roamed freely, Art and I. He gave me the roots of knowledge about Alaska upon which I have built since that first day in the early fall of 1956 when I knocked on his wanigan door and said, "Hi, are you Art Rausch the hunter? Well, I'm Roy Chandler, and I'm going to be your friend."

  That is the way we met. Art gave me his friendship, and we spent days, weeks, and eventually years together looking at game, talking about hunting, shooting winter meat, and going together for the big trophies. Here is Art, my "Old Guide", in the late 1950s with his last Dall Ram. The rifle is a Model 70 Winchester in 30/06.

  I remember taking this photo so well that I can smell and taste the brisk air, the sweat, the stink of sheep, and the sound of soft wind coming off the high ridges.

  I can feel the texture of the ram's horns, and I can detect the excitement in our souls as we gloried in Art's success.

  The victorious big game hunter beside his trophy—is there a more trite but as beloved photo in all of hunting?

  The Old Guide suffered a heart attack while ice fishing and died on Christmas 1960. Even now, forty-five years later, I still miss his dry humor, his wisdom, and his companionship. In fact, sometimes on a fine warm afternoon, when I sit on one of the high spots from which we glassed game together, I hear him speak. Of course, I know it is my imagination, undoubtedly thought and memory patterns ingrained from a hundred repetitions of similar incidents. But, upon occasion, he has told me clearly where to look, and when I turned, there was the game, just as he said. Art Rausch was a grand companion to be with in the mountains. Much of what is written in this book came from Arthur Rausch's abundant knowledge. Here is an example of how good he was.

  For over a week we had been successfully hunting goats down along the Copper River. On the way back to Big Delta I mentioned that I would like to get a grizzly. Art said nothing for a while and then sketched with his finger in the dust on the dashboard. (No paved roads in those days!)

  "We'll go out the day after tomorrow. There's a place where the trees grow in two bunches with a dry streambed between them. The grizzly will be right in there. I'll go in above and make a lot of noise. The bear will come loping out the bottom. You stand right here, where this little trail bends, look him over good and, if he is prime, get him when he crosses the path. The range will be about 100 yards, and you'll have to shoot offhand over the brush."

  As scheduled, we went onto the flats along Ober Creek. Art went one way, and I took the stand he had described.

  The bear came out! He was loping just as Art had predicted. The grizzly was a big, brown boar, sleek from fall eating, with a rich October coat. He seemed to reach out with his front paws and sort of pulled the ground back to him. He was not scared; he was just getting out of the way.

  I put the Weaver K4 on the front of his shoulder and touched off the .300 Weatherby. The 180-grain Nosier struck just behind his shoulder. The big bear tumbled end over end like a rabbit hit with a load of six shot He got his front feet under him facing back the way he had come, growled deep in his throat, nipped viciously at his side, and died.

  Art strode up as I stood over the bear. He did not seem surprised. He said, "Roy-boy, what a year you're having."

  I skinned out the big hide and retraced the bear's route to better understand and get the most from the hunt. The grizzly had been lying on top of a moose kill. What had brought the moose down, we could not tell, but little was left of the carcass, and the bear would have moved within a day or two.

  About two weeks before, Art had noted a lot of recent bear sign further up the valley and had seen ravens circling the woods. He deduced a big animal was down and that a grizzly would find it. As usual, he was right. That's the kind of woodsman Art Rausch was.

  Art knew a lot about bears. He was sharp as a tack on moose or caribou. I often thought he knew every goat in Alaska by a nickname. But on Dall sheep, Art was unlucky. He could put other hunters onto fine rams, but h
e never did get an ultimate sheep trophy for himself.

  We all rooted for Art on his sheep hunts, but as his legs grew less resilient and the climbing became too tough for him our hopes grew dim that he would shoot a really big ram. The year before he died, Art nailed the sheep he is shown with in this volume. It is a good sheep, and the best he ever took.

  It has always seemed strange to me that Art Rausch, who knew so much and hunted so steadily, was never rewarded with a magnificent ram trophy. As the years have passed, I have decided that it was good that he had not scored perfectly on the great sheep. It is good for a man to have something to work toward, and although it was also his frustration, getting a superior sheep was a living and active goal for Art until his own unexpected passing. Would that we could all have challenging goals still before us when our times come.

  Any real hunter would have enjoyed knowing Arthur Rausch, and through the pages of this book readers may come to know many of the things he knew and vicariously experience some of the hunts he, and we, enjoyed.

  Of course, that is not all. Alaska is an immense land, and our discussions and photos in this book will roam from the Brooks Range, to Haines, and west to the Kenai and the Alaskan Peninsula. My goodness, the memories those names conjure. Even reading them takes my breath away.

  Jays are notorious for making themselves at home in your camp. The birds are noisy and almost fearless. They will steal anything eatable and sometimes things that are shiny. If you encourage them, they just might accompany you when you do not want them around—on a difficult stalk, for instance. I like them, the arrogant pains in the butt.