Gamble

One Fall in Alaska I was guiding at Rainy Pass Lodge.  My client was a hunter from Italy.  We flew into Halfway Camp and backpacked up a rugged canyon.  This Italian hunter was packing a beautiful Blaser gold inlayed, double rifle.  We hiked for 2 days before we found a good ram, which was with some other rams about 300 yards from us.  The sheep were coming up the steep a very steep cliff and we were in a perfect position to get a good shot. 

My client didn’t speak good English, which I would soon realize was going to be a problem.  In Spanish he said: “Is the ram Bueno?”  I said: “Yes, Bueno.”  I was trying to communicate to him that the ram was a good sheep.  He was asking if it was nice enough to shoot. As soon as I said: “Bueno” he fired the shot.   I didn’t want him to shoot as the ram was high up on a steep cliff and we needed to wait and until the sheep was on a flat area and not on the cliff.  Unfortunately, he thought that when I said “Bueno” he could shoot.  I freaked out as the ram fell down the bottomless cliff.  Had he waited a few minutes the ram would have soon been closer on a flat top and would not have fallen.  Needless to say, it fell, and it ended up beat up in a bottomless canyon. 

The terrain was so steep that it was too dangerous to go down.  We would have to circle far out of our way and hike around the mountain to retrieve his kill.  It took us an hour and a half to get to the ram.  Perhaps it took us longer than I thought to get to it because when we finally got to the location there was a nice big black bear feeding on the ram. 

The client shot the black bear and then I knew things were going to get a bit crazy. Here, we had a nice ram, cape and horns and then a black bear and all the meat to pack out.   We were almost 2 days from Spike camp and about out of food.  Thankfully, there were plenty of wild blueberries and we were obviously not faced with a shortage of sheep meat. I caped out the ram and saved most of the meat. The bear had made a mess out of about a quarter of the meat. I didn’t mind because the weight of everything to  pack out was an almost too much.  I then skinned out the bear and loaded it all up in my pack. I needed help to just stand up to get walking.  No wonder I have back problems today.  Too much abuse from packing way too heavy of loads.  

We began to hike out with too much weight in shale terrain.  Poor footing.  In these conditions you take 3 steps to get one.  When we got to where the canyon forked my client from Italy wanted to go another direction, which may have been easier, but I didn’t want to take a chance.  I told him that there could be unknown waterfalls and cliffs on an unknown trail down the canyon. It could be troublesome and we would have to go back up the way we came in.  I have too much weight!  I told him that moving in the direction he wanted to go would be a GAMBLE.  I must have repeated the word GAMBLE a dozen times in an attempt to get him to recognize that it was not a smart path.  He didn’t understand we couldn’t take a chance.  We were overloaded, beat up, and losing steam.  To add to the mix, he had managed to rip his pants half off while hiking through the alders.  It was so hard trying to communicate with him. We were a mess.  We finally made it back to camp to find the outfitter and other guide who had been pretty worried about us. If someone gets hurt in the area, it’s No Bueno, as it’s really hard to get any help 80 miles from Anchorage.  No communication at all like there is today.

Now here is the punchline, and the reason for the story. Ten years later I am at Safari Convention show with some friends walking down the aisles.  At the show you see hunters and outfitters from all over the world along with some very impressive taxidermy from all over the world.  I felt like I had died and gone to heaven.  While I’m enjoying the show and caught up in all the action this big Italian guy approaches me and hugs me.  All he could say was GAMBLE, GAMBLE, GAMBLE.  He repeated this about 10 times!  I remembered him but correlated his words with the fact that we were in Vegas – obviously the hub of Gambling.  Why did he continue saying GAMBLE, GAMBLE, GAMBLE?  There was too much going on all at the same time and my brain was on overload.  Wealthy old hunters sporting around with trophy wives half their age added to the scenery and also had me sidetracked and also diverted my focus and attention. 

All of a sudden it hit me.  When we were hiking out this Italian kept insisting, we go back to camp through a different canyon.  I kept saying we can’t.  It’s a GAMBLE, it’s a GAMBLE. 

Happy Hunting! 

Jaret Owens - 805-551-6815