When you read a typical outdoor magazine or watch a hunting video or show online or on TV, you immerse yourself in a fantasy world of adventure in which you’d like to place yourself. A publisher or producer thinks, Who would spend money to hear about a personality bitching about things that went wrong, or talk about hunting trips that didn’t go according to script?
As legendary old-time radio broadcaster Paul Harvey famously broadcast from 1951-2008, “The Rest of the Story” is often something entirely different. Some of my hunting trips you’ve not heard of were anything but successful fantasy adventures — nightmarish trips that were simply crazy-bad, even when an animal was taken.
So, for a fun change of pace, let’s talk about a couple.
Desert Sheep Disaster — Late 2000s
Living in Alaska I became a sheep hunting nut. I’d taken several Dall rams and one Stone sheep in British Columbia when I thought maybe I needed a bighorn, too. I’d been applying for decades trying to draw a permit — still trying — so I worked out a deal with a booking agent to buy a desert bighorn sheep hunt in Sonora, Mexico. A “bargain” at $15,000, I sold my ATV and five guns to raise the money. The hunt was on a 25,000-acre ranch, with the sheep running free. There would be gun hunters on the ranch pursuing mule deer and the booking agent’s son gun hunting sheep, but I was assured I’d have an area where the rifle guys would not go, so I’d have a fair chance at spot-and-stalk bowhunting success.
Long story short, when I arrived, I found the Mexican outfitter was raising several mule deer in fenced enclosures, which he told us was a way to supplement the local herd. Hmmmm … so sheep hunting I went, and after 3 days had found a couple of rams but not yet had a shot opportunity. The mule deer hunters were having trouble, so after the third day the outfitter decided they needed to hunt where I was, and they essentially blew up my area. That night, they and their guides got quite drunk, and went out and shot a couple of big muley bucks spotlighting them from trucks, along with who knows what else.
Things were going south in a hurry, and when the outfitter let it slip that a dude was coming in 2 weeks to pay $35,000 to shoot the biggest buck in the half-acre enclosure, and then said the kid hunter was going to be moving in on the rams I’d been playing with, I told my booking agent “buddy” that I could in no way be part to anything like what was going on, for both professional and moral reasons. I assumed I’d eat my money, but didn’t care, I just wanted the hell out. Next day I was on an airplane home. I still haven’t taken a bighorn.
Dall Sheep Death March — August, Late 1990s
I drew a Dall sheep tag in Alaska’s Chugach State Park (top photo) — one of the state’s premier draw hunts — and was psyched. I found rams scouting, set my backpack camp 10 miles from the trailhead, and on opening day a buddy and I made a 5-mile hike around a steep pinnacle, and were on them. The ram I wanted got within range, I made the shot, we took a couple of pics, then decided we’d take a shortcut back to the tent. Big mistake.
When we hit the pinnacle wall, we found we couldn’t get over the top to the tent. The choice was either go back around — now probably 10 miles — or keep going and head for the truck, also about 10 miles, but much easier ground. So off we went. We hadn’t eaten much of a breakfast, were packing 80 pounds each, had maybe 500 calories worth of food in our packs, and little water.
By the time we reached the truck, we’d been on our feet for 16 hours and were as exhausted as I’ve ever been, thirsty and very “hangry.” We drove to a local McDonald’s, ordered two super-sized Big Mac meals each, pounded ‘em down, headed to a buddy’s apartment in Anchorage, and passed out. The next day, I dropped Mike at dawn at the airport, had a lumberjack breakfast at a local diner, then hiked in, grabbed camp, and hiked back out. It took weeks to recover. Moral: Short cuts are often long cuts.
17-Day Donut — August 1993
I have a love/hate relationship with horses, having been seriously kicked in the gonads as a young boy. The problem is, as a guided client, you ride “dude” horses that only think about three things: where are my buddies, when do we eat, and how can I rub this rider off my back? And the rodeos I’ve seen.
On a British Columbia Stone sheep hunt, the guide told me he didn’t have to lead the pack horses, they’d follow us along on their own. It wasn’t 100 yards into the trip when the pack horse that had my bow strapped atop his load decided he needed to drop and roll in the dirt. Luckily, I was able to leap off my horse and kick him upright before damage was done. The guide was as lazy as they come, a drunk who wanted to hunt 8 to 5 when it was daylight from 0400 to 2200, who beat the horses and spent most of his time on the shortwave radio BS’ing with his buddies, and who tried to get me to shoot a grizzly when I didn’t have a tag. After 17 days, I had not laid eyes on a ram, either. That lovely adventure cost me $11,000.
Minus 20 Degree Rodeo — September, Late 1990s
Then there was the time in Alaska when we had a 12-horse pack string loaded to the gills with three bull moose and a grizzly hide, with myself, three other guides, and two clueless dude clients riding back to a cabin in minus-20 degree temps. Riding through some peckerpole pines, the pack horses got tangled, and when the bucking stopped, all our gear was scattered to hell and gone. It took hours to regroup, and our 10-hour ride became an 18-hour marathon. It was only by the grace of God nobody got injured or frostbitten.
Media Hunt Mayhem — January 1988
On an early January media bowhunt for muleys in New Mexico decades ago, my guide and I were on a whopper buck for 3 days. He’d feed with three dozen antlerless deer in a big hayfield early, then they’d head into the adjacent cedars to bed for the day. We were getting the pattern down, and everybody in camp knew our plan.
One morning before dawn, we drove in the dark to the cabin where all hunters had coffee before heading off when, there the big muley was, right by the road. Holy buckets! We asked the other guides to give us 5 minutes of barely-see light to let us see if we could get right on him before they all drove out, and all agreed. But when we snuck down the road, there was a guide truck; he and his bowhunter, Charlie Palmer, a corporate raider who’d just bought a well-known broadhead company but knew nada about bowhunting, were standing and talking.
“I just shot that buck out of the truck bed!,” the jackwagon smirked. I thought the two guides were going to come to blows, but we drove off instead. A half-mile later, as they still were trying to pick up a blood-trail, we saw the big muley walking, an arrow sticking out in the void above the right hip, not fatally hit.
Did we radio them? Nope. Charlie went home the next day, and 4 days later that buck was back with his does. Two days later, I killed him. Back home, I printed an 8x10-inch black and white of me and the buck and sent it to him with a note: “If you’d been shooting a better broadhead, you might have killed him. Your friend, Bob.” Amazingly, he still advertised with my magazine.
Bow Case Killers — October 2010
How about airline baggage handlers? Arriving in Montgomery, Alabama, via Atlanta one time, I found that my indestructible Kalispell aluminum two-bow case, which had flown with me around the world for more than 100,000 miles, had been totaled (photo below).
My bows were damaged but repairable, and I lost only 1 day hunting getting them shooting again. But it took 6 long months before I could get Delta to reimburse me for the case – which, sadly, was irreplaceable, because the company had quit making them a few months earlier.
Guided Whitetail Disasters
I could go on and on about guided whitetail bowhunts. Been on a bunch, and most have honestly been pretty mediocre. A very few have been great, but some … can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told you’ll be sitting a fresh stand tomorrow, only to get there to find the only thing fresh about it was the candy bar wrappers and empty scent bottles strewn about.
One time in Illinois I made the mistake of telling the outfitter that I’d had a really good buck bed close to my treestand, and I thought I could get a shot at him if I played it right. He told me we should give it a day to rest the stand, then go back. What he meant was, I’m sending you somewhere else while I send in the TV guy and his cameraman tomorrow, who totally blew up the place. That buck was never seen again.
And Don’t Forget . . .
- The young British Columbia grizzly guide who, when he got into the skiff for an afternoon hunt along the coast, forgot his binocular, but remembered to wear a belt that held a six pack of cheap beer.
- The Willys jeep that caught on fire while we were still in it and burned to the nubbins miles from civilization.
- The cocky Alaska bush pilot who swore we weren’t overloaded, then ran the floatplane 100 yards into the tundra when he couldn’t take off, puncturing both floats.
- The Alaska air taxi service that forgot we were in the bush, and was a full 7 days late picking us up; we survived by arrowing ptarmigan with blunts and catching Arctic grayling.
- The Mexican drug cartel toughs who, somehow, picked the lock on the ranch gate and, politely I must admit, informed my buddies and I that it would be better if we hunted someplace else; later I found out they were using the ranch as a landing pad for the small planes they were using to fly drugs across the border.
- The “famous” Saskatchewan whitetail outfitter who took mine, and three friend’s, money, then put us on stands where, in 6 days, none of saw a single deer, nor did we see any deer tracks or deer poop, then had the balls to tell us that, “Well, you know, you have to put your time in to see a buck in this country.”
You get the picture. When you travel to bowhunt, you often cede control to others who probably don’t care as much about your success as you do. And that’s not factoring in Murphy’s Law. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after more than 40 years of bowhunting around the world, it’s this: You can plan and prepare, dream and train, do everything in your power to control the variables, but sometimes, stuff happens. Success is never guaranteed, but adventure always is.
Don’t you feel sorry for people who have never experienced it?
Photos by Bob Robb
