The Hunter's Alaska

by Roy F. Chandler

  A bolt-action, dangerous game rifle should have controlled feed!

  What that means is, that when the bolt pushes a cartridge into the chamber of a rifle, the cartridge rim is gripped at the extraction groove throughout the process. If for any reason the bolt is not fully closed or the cartridge is partly withdrawn and then re-pushed, the case is held securely and moves with the bolt until the empty is ejected following the shot.

  This is control round feed. The long, strap-like extractor grips the extraction groove at the cartridge head and holds it securely throughout feeding, firing and removal. The cartridge will not fall out or get out of line if stressed while loading, and it is not possible to double feed and have two cartridges wedged into the mouth of the chamber—as can happen with push feed.

  The other type of bolt-action is called a push feed. That means that when the bolt pushes the cartridge forward from the magazine, the cartridge is guided toward and into the chamber, but is not held securely. The cartridge simply rests on the follower. Not until the cartridge is being seated in the chamber, does the extractor snap over the rim and grip the case ready for extraction and ejection.

  "Ho hum," you might say.

  Suppose, with your push feed rifle, you are momentarily distracted while feeding a new round, and you recycle the action. You could stumble, or suppose that you are rolling wildly to avoid being run over by a charge—won't happen? Maybe or maybe not.

  What can happen is that the partly chambered round you were pushing is jammed part way into the chamber by the nose of the next bullet as you recycle the bolt. Your rifle is then out of action and may take a ramrod to clear. Or, your round can simply fall out of the rifle, and you close your bolt on an empty chamber.

  Never encountered it? We have, hundreds of times, and by some of the world's best shooters. Military and law enforcement sniper rifles are almost always Remington push feed actions. Should they be? No, but that is another discussion.

  We teach those super-fighters at various training centers including the justly famous Blackwater Training Center in North Carolina. Even there, among those master shooters, we observe and encounter push feed malfunctions. If you have a push feed rifle, or are not sure which type of action you have, partly feed a round into your chamber, then withdraw the bolt and see if the cartridge comes with it. If it does not, you have a push feed. Push the bolt forward again. You may get a jam with a push feed. Another simple test is to watch your cartridge being fed into the chamber from the magazine. When it is partly in, grab the cartridge and see if it is held in place. With controlled round feed, the extractor will tightly grip the cartridge. With a push feed you will remove the cartridge.

  Which rifles have controlled feed is a legitimate question. Most Mauser actions—old or new, all Springfield 1903 actions, all Enfield 1917 actions, all pre-1964 Winchesters and their latest models have controlled round feed as do many others—such as Ruger, Dakota Arms, and Kimber (manufacturers I mention because I particularly like their products).

  Finally, imagine yourself facing a charge and in your nervousness fumbling and repeat chambering a cartridge. Believe me, having controlled feed will seem important, and it can be lifesaving.

  I have neglected writing enough about the mighty brown bears, particularly those on Kodiak Island. Kodiak bears are hunted quite differently than mountain grizzlies. Kodiak Island is brushy, and even average-range shots are rare. Most bears taken on Kodiak are shot at less than fifty yards. A big, heavy bullet is strongly recommended! Cartridges that are best for grizzlies are also right for brown bears.

  Kodiak hunters often move around in boats, and that includes those hunting on lakes. When ashore, it is difficult to see bears, and few hunters have mastered quiet approaches, which can turn out to be very dangerous if the bear spots you first. A favored technique is to float around glassing mountainsides as you pass them. If a good bear is sighted, the party goes ashore and stalks the animal. Even after seeing a brownie from your boat, a bear can be extremely hard to locate once you are ashore. There is also a strong possibility of running onto a bear that you do not want before you reach your chosen trophy. At point-blank range that can prove interesting.

  If the grizzly's head is somewhere inside this fur pile, this is a heavy load. If the head is boned out, the weight is a little better. The hunter is using an ancient US Army packboard, and for carrying heavy and awkward loads, they were the best—perhaps they still are. The author's only complaint about these boards (with a large canvas sack attached) is that they do not have an upright over which to hook a rifle sling. Within the hour, this hunter will be sick of gripping his rifle and would pay a handsome sum to be able to hang it from the pack.

  A guide is required for a non-resident hunter going after Kodak bear, and even a resident hunter who is not familiar with the island would profit from having an experienced local guide showing the way. Most bears look huge to the inexperienced eye, and a good guide will not only keep you safe and locate animals, he will hold you back from shooting something you will later discover is too small.

  Patience is not a novice bear hunter's strongest attribute, and even the experienced can choke more than a little when a brownie is the target. Patience to wait for just the right animal and just the right shot often make the hunt.

  Yes, that is a grizzly hide lashed to the rear of the tractor. Hey, after the boredom of taking a huge bear one always pauses to shoot a few birds for the pot.

  21 - Dall Sheep

  The greatest thrill of my Alaskan hunting was the taking of my first Dall ram. For a hunter who prefers goat hunting and who has killed a lot of bear, moose, and caribou that is a powerful statement. But, I can still remember the thrill of that hunt. This is how it went.

  Jerry and I had camped along Morningstar Creek in the Granite Mountains and with the early dawn climbed the steep ridge that forms one side of the canyon. The climbing was steady, and the packs dragged heavily on our shoulders. We were bound for three or four continuous days of hunting, planning to hike into July Creek and perhaps scout the Gerstle River. That meant extra rations and decent sleeping gear.

  The morning started bitterly cold but warmed swiftly until we were hiking in short sleeved sweat shirts. About noon we saw a sheep far ahead and planned to swing over and take a look. It seemed a bit soon to see rams, but who could be sure about Dall sheep?

  We reached a good lookout perhaps seven hundred yards from the lone sheep and set up our spotting scope. A quick look showed us a really fine ram, and closer examination disclosed his buddy dozing close by.

  Both were good rams, but it was a little far to tell just how good. A ram can move its head a little up or down and appear to change from an almost full curl into a curl and a quarter. We decided it was worth turning aside to find out exactly what we were looking at.

  I can remember the hope mixing with a certain hesitation because our hunt could be so swiftly over. But, we made our way over the slides until we found another good glassing spot perhaps four hundred yards from our quarry.

  This look was very cautious because we were already within a range that many hunters consider close enough. Sheep have fine eyesight, and a human head jutting above a ridge or rock could not be expected to go unnoticed.

  This second look ended our hesitation. Both sheep were beauties. One was a big old ram with thick horns that were not broomed away. His friend had longer, beautifully pointed but thinner horns. Both were full curl rams. Back in those days, a three quarter curl ram was legal, but even then, everyone wanted full curl rams. We decided to go after them.

  We surveyed the ground between them and us. A route through a small feeder stream looked as if it would bring us close to the drowsing sheep. We retreated behind an intervening ridge and made our way downhill and up a small feeder stream that again moved us uphill and much closer to the sheep. The rushing water of the mountain run should help mask our approach, and scent was most likely to travel up or down the stream, not to the side and toward the rams.
We grounded our packs where the climb steepened, and taking only rifles, we began an approach up the narrowing stream bed.

  The mountains were high enough to make our lungs pull, and we rested a little now and then so that we would get into shooting positions in good physical shape.

  A waterfall blocked our way, and Jerry stood solid while I climbed onto his shoulders and slid both rifles above the falls. Then, I got a good toe and hand hold, and Jerry used me for a ladder. We rested again, now quite close to the sheep.

  Carefully, and very slowly, we crept to the lip of the stream and saw the sheep still lying down about two hundred yards distant. The sheep on my side lay with his head down between his front feet—just like a dog might. My only shot would be directly between his horns and into his spine. Even the slightest error could bounce my bullet off a heavy horn, and the ram would be off and running.

  Jerry's shot was less critical, and he agreed to let me get my bullet underway before he touched trigger. If my sheep moved his head even a little, I could be out of luck.

  I had a .270 Winchester in model 70 on this hunt. Jerry was using the same. We were both zeroed two inches high at 200 yards, and things looked really good.

  We sprawled among the boulders until we were both ready. With my Balvar 8 scope on 4X, I laid the B & L tapered crosshairs just above the junction of the ram's horns and squeezed as carefully as I ever have. The recoil rocked me a little, but I felt very good about the shot. I tried to again find the ram in my sight, but he had slumped out of view.

  Jerry's rifle went off in my ear, and I looked up in time to see his ram catch its stride as a bullet struck him. Jerry fired again, and the ram once more staggered a little. Still, he ran away down the mountain.

  As the range lengthened, rocks rose between the sheep and Jerry. He rose to his feet and sent one final shot after the ram. Down went the sheep as if struck by lightning.

  I took time to slap Jerry's back; his last shot had been long and a tough one. Then, I became concerned with my own sheep. Suppose he had been only stunned and had leaped up and run off while I was enjoying Jerry's efforts? I hastened across the broken rock and came rather suddenly on the great ram. Even sprawled in death his presence took my breath away. All of my hunting life I had wanted to take a full curl Dall ram. My heart pounded and flooded with gratification. I was content to slump against a rock and just look.

  The ram was truly heavy in the horn. The tops of his horns were cracked and broken from fighting. He had a huge lump of gristle in the middle of his nose where he had caught a hard butt. He reminded me of an old prizefighter, scarred and aging, but still tough and hard. I sat a long time admiring that ram. He was all I had ever hoped, and in a way, the culmination of my dream of becoming a serious Alaskan hunter.

  My bullet had gone true. It had slid between the horns and struck the sheep directly in the spine. It was as good a hump shot as I had ever made. The sheep died almost instantly. He felt the shock, but died without pain. You cannot have it much better than that.

  I met Jerry at our packs. We agreed to do up our own sheep and meet again to begin the hard hike out. I returned to the ram with my packboard and got out my Case knife to begin skinning and butchering.

  I suppose that sheep went about 180 pounds. He was big bodied as well as heavy horned. I got his skin off and boned out most of the meat. I dumped the meat into a big plastic bag that nearly filled the carrying sack on my packboard. I lashed the head, horns, and hide to the top of the load and tried to stand up with the whole works. Lordy, how my muscles popped. By getting onto my knees first, I was able to rise, but I feared my ankles would buckle with each graceless step.

  Jerry met me at our agreed point, and he was in just as bad shape. We wondered how we would ever make the long hours back down the mountain. There was no other way than to begin, so we did. We staggered and struggled. At first we giggled, joked, and groaned over it but, as the agony increased, the humor disappeared, and the whole thing became a grim matter of wills.

  The law said that edible meat had to be brought out and used. Those I hunted with prided themselves on doing just that, but both Jerry and I wondered what we would have done had our sheep been killed a couple of miles further in, perhaps on the wrong side of the mountain we were now descending. Our conclusion was that we would be far less exacting as to what was edible.

  We fell increasingly often, and rather than risk a twisted ankle, we rolled with the load, sometimes skinning a spot and having to again fight to our painfully weary feet.

  We made it, of course. How else could it end? The hike out, exhausting as it was, remains a fond memory that touches my emotions every time I pause to look at that fine ram's head hanging proudly among others on my walls.

  This is my first sheep. He is not my best, but he deepens my breathing and I remember.

  When I look at that sheep, I am younger again. I hear the wind whistling off the mountains, and I feel the strain of packing and climbing in my now aging body. The scramble up the waterfall comes to mind, and I see flashes of mostly forgotten things, like Jerry's huffing at the climb or his concentration when shooting at long range. I wonder often if memories are not the important spices of hunting. I find I savor them more each year.

  Suppose that we had taken our shots at 400 yards as we could have? Many hunters would not have hesitated. Lost would have been the rigors and memories of the stalk and the practicability of my shooting directly between the ram's horns.

  Suppose Jerry's or my ram had run at four hundred yard range? Could he, or I, have still collected him? Pretty doubtful in the real world. Getting close is always the right choice.

  Dall sheep inhabit many of the mountains in Alaska. Occasionally, sheep and goats share the same mountain. I found that to be true more on the Kenai Peninsula than elsewhere.

  Sheep are gregarious and are rarely alone. The exceptions to this rule a few ancient rams that become loners and can be found living on isolated rocky crests.

  Ewes and lambs form flocks that can number thirty or more animals. The rams, however, live separate from the ewes and lambs. Even those lordly creatures prefer the company of their own kind, and bands of rams numbering a dozen are not unknown.

  More commonly, the hunter will find a pair of rams staying together, or a small group numbering five or so animals that graze and sleep in close proximity.

  As horns grow, they sometimes interfere with a ram's peripheral vision, and he rubs them away on rock outcroppings. We call this "brooming," and there is little more frustrating to the hunter than to find a huge ram that has broomed away one or both of his horn tips.

  In this next photo, Jerry and I have just backpacked in from the mountains and are removing the heads and hides from our Yukon boards. The big sack below the white sheep hide is packed with sheep meat.

  Then, we got to pose for the camera.

  The Old Guide, in the center, had shot his ram the day before. Please note the shape of a Case jackknife in my left hand shirt pocket. I mention that tool in the chapter on knives.

  Jack O'Connor stated that a heavy set of horns that has been broomed, but still measures 35 inches around the curl is a good trophy. I am in agreement. Admittedly, the pointed sweep of un-broomed horn is preferable, but some of the finest of mature rams have scraped away a horn tip. They should not be ignored.

  The biggest-horned Dall rams come from the more southern Alaskan mountains and the Brooks Range in the north produces a lot of tight-curled rams. The middle ground—the Alaska Range—has been less noted as a sheep hunting area. So, that makes it better for those of us who hunt there.

  There are a vast number of sheep in the Alaska Range, and their very numbers legitimize consideration of this thought:

  A mature ram, the kind that has trophy horns, must be at least eleven years old. It takes that long to add not only the annual growth rings that give length, but also the lateral growth that provides thickness of horn. So, although an area may have been hunted heavily a decade or ev
en five years earlier, means not that the place is hunted out, but that some really superb trophies will probably have matured in there since the hunting eased.

  A wise hunter can hunt back hollows, minor stream sources, and some of the smaller nooks in the big mountains to great advantage. World record trophies will come, as they have in the past, from these kinds of places.

  For decades, my friends and I have concentrated on just such obscure spots. We go into the Chugachs or up into the Brooks Range for the fun of something different, not to get a better ram.

  The Alaskan Department of Fish and Game has a marvelous volume available that geographically points out every known body of sheep in Alaska. It is an extremely useful book for a hunter seeking greener pastures. The Fairbanks Fire Department has a copy and will allow its use.

  Years ago, Cliff and I were rehashing our thoughts concerning the Jarvis Creek glacier and why the whole line of Granite Mountains past Fort Greely was so "sheepy." We turned to the Fire Department's copy of the above-mentioned volume. Clearly pointed out were not the two mineral licks we knew of, but five mineral licks. No wonder sheep like it in there.

  Since I first came to Alaska, I have hunted goats and brownies in the Ernestine Creek area, north out of Valdez. Until I saw the Game Department's study, I did not suspect that a band of Dall sheep lived only a couple of miles distance. Since then, we occasionally combined moose, bear, goat, and sheep into magnificent hunts. There are few areas in which a hunter can conveniently do that. Thank you, Game Department.

  Where a goat has a small head, a Dall ram has a large one. But, there is not much difference in typical overall animal size. A sheep might be favorably compared in weight to a whitetail deer. Obviously, his configuration is different. Because of their relative size, some hunters assume it is therefore proper to use a deer rifle on a ram. I do not concur in this thinking. In my opinion, the ram is a much tougher hombre than a deer and is usually shot at greater range.