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By
Robert R. Fithian
It was a warm late September
day in the Western Alaska Range during the mid 1990s that I decided
to write this article. The tundra had already gone through its
transformation of colors from summer to winter giving what few days
to us that we could call fall. The shortness of the season is
easily overcome by the radiant beauty of the change. Greens to
golds and reds followed by the winter browns in less than twenty
days.
Sharing this season of change with
me was Nick Harvey, Australia's Sporting Shooter and
Guns Australia magazines technical editor for over
three decades. Nick, one of the finest outdoorsman I have had the
opportunity to share time with, was on a fourteen day multiple
species hunt for grizzly, moose, sheep, caribou and black bear.
It was late afternoon and we had
spent the day at the top of a little tundra dome that gave us a
360-degree view of the surrounding Alaska vastness. We had been
successful that day in seeing a wolverine, a lone grizzly and a sow
with a large two year old boar cub, several small groups of caribou
and a menagerie of moose drama that had not yet netted us the view
we were looking for; that of a mature bull moose.
This late afternoon idyll for me was changed by the distant sound of
a Piper Super Cub that was doing more than traveling from point "A"
to point "B". I doubt that Nick noticed the little noise in the
distance but for those of us that have spent much time in the bush
there is quite a difference to the sounds of different types of
airplanes and the noise of one circling game or looking for a place
to land versus straight flight patterns.
This noise was coming from a location a few miles from our base camp
and after a little glassing I picked out the plane working over a
little piece of country on the flanks of the front range. I knew
the spot well and it was the same area we had seen the sow and cub
grizzlies an hour or so earlier. This particular sow and cub we
knew from previous sightings and had named the cub Rambo due to his
full time audacious behavior that was a continual challenge for his
mom to keep track of him.
The steady drone of the circling Super Cub captured my attention as
it made circle after circle with continual low passes in this small
area. Eventually after over forty minutes of this type of flying I
picked up the sow hot-footing it over a hill, stopping every
so often to look back towards the airplane. She disappeared into
the brush and the plane made a few more passes, left the area and
flew to a long bare ridge about a mile and a half distant from where
it had been circling and landed without making a pass.
I've had the pleasure of sitting in this same place for a good
portion of most of the Septembers of the previous fifteen years and
to my knowledge nobody had ever landed an airplane in that location
before. Two people jumped out of the plane and hurriedly unloaded
some gear after which the airplane and one of the people immediately
left.
We watched as the one remaining
person set up a small dome tent and carried a bucket to a small lake
to get some water, stopping often to use binoculars to study the
area they had been circling. Within forty minutes of leaving, the
Super Cub returned with another person. By then it was time for Nick
and I to head back to camp where the evening chill was diminished by
the warmth of a ready meal and comfortable quarters.
I never saw Rambo again and by the
following evening the Super Cub had returned to the ridge and picked
up the two people. Life was almost like it had been before the
airplane except for the little empty spot in my gut that has never
gone away and the cliché "Fair Chase" that would not
leave my mind.
I recognized
the Super Cub and made a report of the incident to the local Fish
and Wildlife Protection Officer for the Alaska State Troopers.
Unfortunately, without positive ID with photos of people's faces and
aircraft numbers they don’t get too excited. This type of thing
gets reported allot and I'm only one person is the same old story.
For many years, publications with
hunting stories have harbored articles of hunting experiences that
took place with the use of airplanes to search out geographical
habitats to find the right animal. This is followed by landing the
small plane in the near vicinity, and establishing a camp to
presumably hunt the same animal from the following day.
In Alaska it is illegal to hunt most
big game species except Sitka Blacktail deer until 3:00AM of the
following day that you are airborne, unless the flight that you are
on is a regularly scheduled commercial or commuter flight.
As our human population grows and
becomes more affluent in their ability to access the wilderness
habitats, these same habitats are shrinking in quality and quantity
for our precious wildlife resources. Poor management of these same
habitats by the governing land agencies has created opportunities
for the individuals that compromise the moral consciousness of fair
chase for materialistic gain.
In today's world of wildlife
management we continually find that proven science gleaned from
intellect which is derived from long time experience in the field is
commonly offset by the sentiment of the voting majority. This fact
more than any other should make us wake up and realize that fair
chase by definition is one of the most integral tools to help
keep our rights to hunt and to pass on this hunting heritage to
future generations.
The definition of fair chase as coined by the Boone and Crockett
Club is the ethical, sportsmanlike, and lawful pursuit and
taking of any free ranging wild, native North American big game
animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper
advantage over such animals. Their definition of hunters ethics
includes the regulated harvest of individual animals in a manner
that conceives, protects, and perpetuates the hunted population.
The Club's official entry affidavit
for trophy entry specifically excludes spotting or herding game from
the air, followed by landing in its vicinity for the purpose of
pursuit and shooting. It continues to exclude herding or chasing of
game with the aid of any mechanical vehicle.
Safari Club International
uses a tenet to secure ethical practices on their official record
book score sheets by requiring the hunter to swear that to the best
of his knowledge that the animal was not taken in violation of the
wildlife laws or the ethical practices of the country that the
animal was harvested in.
The
Alaska Professional Hunters
Association's Code of Ethics promotes hunting by fair chase and
the pursuit of game in a legal and sportsmanlike manner, without
herding, driving, or chasing of trophies with the use of
mechanically powered equipment.
These code of ethics are words to live by as a professional guide.
Stepping out of the bounds of these restraints tarnishes our image
and severely affects our ability to promote our rights and best
interests to the public and the political arena.
Too many times, emphasis is put on
the professional guide by our potential clients for success rates
and trophy size. The quest of "one for the book" instead of
a quality hunt in many cases involves a violation of ethical pursuit
of the animal eventually harvest. A good friend of mine who
consistently finds his clients a 40-inch plus ram told me that he
averages over 200 hours of flying per 40-inch ram.
I believe that it is up to the
professional guide to promote hunting, not as a trade of monetary
values for a token of accomplishment, but to lead the charge to
promote ethical hunting and game management. To provide the
opportunities and heritage for our clients and their children to
expend energy in the field in habitats that provides caring
stewardship of our wildlife resources. In addition, that those same
energies provide the later reflections of the experience. These
reflections can be gleaned from the dining table, the wall of the
den, the memory of the hunt or the one that is still out there
somewhere.
In many cases, professional guides
are tuned into the numbers game of clients to accommodate a certain
overhead of operating costs, profit margins or job opportunities.
By doing so, they are destroying game populations and trampling over
other operators to find the ever-depleting numbers of required
animals. The trophy size and unique hunting experience for their
clients deteriorates rapidly. In most of these cases, a prudent
evaluation of their operating costs compared with their ethical and
sustainable resource availability will suggest a serious scaling
back of bookings. This in turn lowers the operating costs and still
provides a similar or better hunt, with possibly higher rates and
more profit than was realized with the larger number of clients; all
while providing better stewardship of the wildlife and clients as
well.
Well, I do not think old Uncle Nick
the Australian gun guru knew what was in my mind and heart that day
on the hill. However, by the end of his fourteen days of hunting
he was able to stand by the old picnic table at base camp with his
grand slam, all five major species of the Alaska Range. All
harvested within the confines of fair chase and hard work.. His
articles about Alaska and his hunt continue to provide us with
clientele and the friendships struck are solid. Not like the gray
areas of our conciseness that unethical and unsportsmanlike conduct
give us.
The guiding business, with few
exceptions is not an economic boon but more a way of life. If we
want to have the opportunity to pass this wonderful tradition on it
is up to us to promote the integrity of the true definition of fair
chase and proper stewardship to our peers.
This
story appeared in the Spring 2002 Issue of
The Alaska
Professional Hunter Magazine.
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