OVER THE LAST THREE QUARTERS OF A CENTURY I HAVE made hundreds of trips with hunting and fishing outfitters and guides throughout the Western Hemisphere. Almost without exception, these men watched over my welfare in the woods and were excellent outdoorsmen and capable professionals.
But not always. Through the years I have been saddled with a handful of guides who were, for one reason or another, scarcely qualified for the job they were supposed to do.
The Green Gambler
YEARS AGO, WHEN REGULATIONS REGARDING OUTFITTERS were less strict, I was assigned a guide (and I use the term loosely) in Alaska who usually made his livelihood as a professional gambler. I have since forgotten the man’s name, but I do recall that he had gone broke and had taken a job with an outfitter friend to tide him over.
After a few days with him, I began to wonder if he had ever made a track beyond the city limits. On our first day on the tundra, he got turned around so badly that I had to show him the way back to camp. Then, on the second day, I killed a large brown bear. It was cause for celebration, but the situation quickly became awkward. As we stood over the dead trophy, my guide said, “We’ll come back tomorrow and skin it.”
“What’s wrong with skinning it now?” I asked. There was silence for at least half a minute before he replied. “I’ll have to look at the book to be sure I do it right,” he admitted.
“You build a fire and warm your hands,” I said, “and I’ll skin it out.” This happened 50 years ago and was a rare case even then, when most guides were experienced hunters. Today regulations are such that it is all but impossible for an unqualified person to be issued a guide license.
Catnipped and Catnapped
NO MATTER HOW COMPETENT A GUIDE IS, HE’LL ALWAYS have stories of little adventures that reflect his personality and add character to any hunt. One of my favorite guides in this respect was Cap Atwood, a noted bear and mountain lion hunter who hung his hat in Colorado.
When I first met Cap, he showed me some barely healed scars on his hand. “I had a young cougar in a sack,” he told me. “I intended to turn it loose and let it grow some more. Some folks wanted to see what I’d caught, so to show how tough I was, I reached into the sack to grab the cat by the scruff of the neck and hold it up for a picture. But before I could get my hand on its neck, the little rascal sank its teeth in me and bit out a chunk, and I was bleeding pretty good when I pulled my hand out. I put it in my pocket to hide the blood. I didn’t want those folks to know what a fool I’d been.”
A producer who was filming a series of outdoor shows contracted with Cap to help make a video of a mountain lion hunt. With all the actors, writers, directors, and hunters following, Cap and his hounds found a cold trail. The camera crew made some footage of the trailing dogs, but the action soon became so slow that the entire crew went back to the bar and air conditioning of the ranch, leaving word with Cap to send for them if and when he treed a lion.
The trail was long, but the pack finally jumped a big lion, and after a short chase, they put it up a tree. Cap sent his helper with word to the video crew.
The dogs jumped around the base of the tree for a while, but the day was warm, and eventually they stopped barking and lay down. The lion was stretched out on a big limb with its head on its paws. Cap swears they all went to sleep, including him and the cougar.
Then the entire team returned in trucks and on horseback. The cameramen set up, Cap kicked his hounds awake, and the hunters on horseback charged into the picture. “That poor old cat probably wondered what the hell was going on,” Cap told me with a chuckle.
Bearly Alive
IN OTHER WRITINGS I’VE TOLD THE STORY OF MY GUIDE Johnny Luster going back with a borrowed rifle to skin out a grizzly while I brought up the horses. Johnny was only six feet from the “dead” bear when the grizzly suddenly reared up to its full height and towered over him. Johnny turned and ran while shooting the rifle over his shoulder. Luckily he broke the bear’s neck with the last shell in his gun, but when I came back up the trail half an hour later, Johnny still wasn’t taking any chances. He was sitting on a hillside well above the grizzly throwing rocks at it to be sure it was really dead.
Two-Toed Tall Tale
A GUIDE WHOSE ONLY DISHONEST ACT AS FAR AS I KNOW was to help me as a friend, went along with me to fake the only fiction story I ever claimed as an actual experience.
Hugh Howard, who lived on the rim of Georgia’s Altamaha Swamp, and I had spent two full seasons trying to hem up an old long-bearded tom turkey that always managed to elude us. We had seen him only a few times, but we knew his tracks and were very familiar with his range. He had lost a toe on one foot, to a gunshot or in a steel trap, and wasn’t about to be duped by any of our efforts.
I was writing on a freelance basis (this was before I joined the staff of OUTDOOR LIFE), and sales were slow and I was hungry. When an editor told me he would pay for a story of the two-toed gobbler, with pictures, I was determined to give it to him—one way or another.
I went back to the swamp, and Howard and I hunted for two days without finding a track or other sign of the big gobbler. I was desperate enough to come up with an idea that was so deceitful that we almost decided against it. But there seemed to be no other way. I had to have that story, and as much as I knew it distressed him, Howard agreed to go along.
We drove to a turkey farm and bought a 35-pound gobbler with a two-inch beard. From there we went to an old turkey hunter who was a friend of Howard’s and pawed through the drawerful of beards he had collected over three quarters of a century. We selected the longest, heaviest beard in the drawer and attached it to the farmyard tom. Then we dyed the white tips of the bird’s domesticated tail feathers, turning them the shiny brown of a wild bird.
Back at the swamp we arranged the photo: Hugh got into a blind, and out in front I tied the gobbler to a picket wire. The scene was perfect. But each time I got into position to make my snapshot, the turkey bent over, with its rump higher than its head. At least a dozen times I had to go to the bird, make it stand straight, and try to get back to the camera before the gobbler leaned over again.
All of this took most of the afternoon, but we finally made a reasonable set of photos and I got my story. Hugh was more than a little embarrassed. When we said goodbye, he shook his head slowly. “I promise not to tell anybody,” he said, “if you won’t.”
Read Next: Our Senior Staff Writer Nearly Died on a Backcountry Hunt. Here’s What We’ve Learned from the Experience
The Smell of Success
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SPECTRUM WAS A LOCAL mountain guide I knew as Jess. He was remarkable in many ways. He knew every trout within long-legged distance of his mountain cabin. With his native wit and philosophy he was a delightful companion in a boat or on a stream, but only as long as you stayed on his upwind side. He was the most fragrant individual on two legs or four of my acquaintance. I never knew him to take but one bath. One afternoon while I was waiting for him at his cabin I saw him come up the trail from the creek, his shirt and overalls so completely soaked they were dripping water.
“How’d you happen to fall in?” I asked.
“I didn’t fall in. I was taking my bath.”
“With your clothes on?”
“Shucks,” he said. “They needed washing too.”
They say that of all the senses, smell is the most powerful trigger of memory. And I must agree. Jess was certainly one of the most memorable guides I have known.
This story was originally published in the August 1995 Issue of Outdoor Life.
Read the full article here
