Bear Grease - Ep. 142: Alaska Stories (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

On this week's episode of Bear Grease, Clay Newcomb has curated a selection of stories about close calls and near death in Alaska. We've got five stories of raging rivers, charging grizzlies, boat wrecks, and nights on the mountain sleeping under a goat hide. You'll hear from hunting guide Billy Molls, Chad Ferguson, Carrie Kegler, and Meateater's own Randall Williams. We really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. We decided to take a route down that we saw on the way up that looked like it was going to be a lot easier. That was an illusion, as it often is. We've been pounding hard over the last six months of this Bear Grease podcast, diving deep into the Mississippi River, David Crockett, and the literary conman, Asa Carter. These were some of my favorite series, but I need relief from the browbeat. history and science. I fear we've all become too smart in our proclaimed, quote,

pursuit of understanding the world. Remember when William Faulkner said you had to understand a place like Mississippi to understand the world? I just need some regular old excitement. How about a fresh plate of harrowing stories with a tall glass of adventure and risk? That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? This is the first part in our series of wild, stories from one of my favorite places on earth, Alaska. America has been enamored and perplexed for the last 70 years by its sheer volume of wilderness, wildness, and its great beasts. Today we'll hear five stories from five storytellers about wild rivers, grizzly bears, widow makers, and even a cold night under the hide of a great beast. We've never done

an episode like this before, and we're about to meet some great people. I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one. And she looked at me, and then she stood up and stretched her neck out and cocked her head, and then immediately went into a charge. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

presented by FHF gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Alaska is an anomaly. It's a deviation from the standard American state. In the late 1800s, naturalist John Muir called Alaska Wilderness a temple, claiming the place was still in the morning of its creation. It's a giant place. As a grown man decades out of high school geography class,

I find myself still trying to grasp its size almost like a math equation with symbols and multipliers I have never been trained to manipulate. It's hard to understand how big it is. The state is over 665,000 square miles, more than twice the size of our second largest state, Texas, and larger than our biggest three states, Texas, California, and Montana combined. Roughly 700,000 people live in Alaska,

making it by far our most sparsely populated state. Purchased from Russia in 1867, you may have heard the term Seward's Folly. Secretary of State, William Seward, negotiated a price of $7 million. That's less than two cents per acre for the whole state. He was ridiculed for the purchase, like someone living in the plains of Kansas might chide his neighbor's purchase of a hundred-foot yacht

now parked in the driveway. Alaska would gain statehood in 1959, making it America's 49th state. But I'm not here to give you a history lesson. Remember, I said we're done with all that. Our first story is told by a man that I'm starting to feel like as an old friend of mine. His name is Billy Moles. Originally from Wisconsin, fresh out of high school, he fulfilled a lifelong dream when he headed to Alaska to become a hunting guide.

Now, after 20 plus years of living that dream and spending over 100 nights per year in a tent hunting brown bear, caribou, sheep, and moose, Billy is no doubt an Alaskan wilderness veteran. Big Fast Water is the Achilles heel of a human moving across the landscape of foot. It's a natural feature that humans are almost completely unequipped to deal with. This first story is called the Rising River.

Here's Billy. This story starts in a small farm in southern Wisconsin. A young boy by the name of Don Johnson was fishing on the Mississippi River with his brothers. Wintertime, they were on the ice, they were smoking cigarettes, and their dad was going to come by and pick them up. So Don takes the cigarettes and was going to. towards offshore a little farther out and towards the current and was going to bury the cigarette butts and the snow. And when he went to do that, he fell through the ice. Long story short, he nearly drowns.

And ever since then, Don is terrified of death by drowning. So 40 years later, Don is my neighbor in Wisconsin. Fellow farmer, I've known him on a little bit my whole life. But I'm 15, 20 years into guiding, and he comes to me, he's like, hey, I want to go caribou hunting. And so we put this hunt together. And Don is bringing his cousin Mike. So they're both in their late 50s, early 60s. And then Mike has his son Greg to come along. And it's a three-on-one hunt.

And pretty much every time I've done a three-on-one hunt, it has turned into a debacle. But against my better judgment, I agree to it. I hadn't connected all the dots back then as I have now. But I take these guys and we go up into the Northern Brooks Range early August. We show up into camp and they got all kinds of gear. So the next morning we're eating breakfast. Her caribou starts coming through.

It could see him about a mile and a half off and we get into position. Greg shoots a really nice bull. It starts to rain. We get that bull taken care of the next morning. It's still raining. And we were in relatively flat open. tundra, but right across the river, there was a nice knob. And so what we're doing is we're walking across this creek and then we'd hike up to the knob and then we'd sit there all day and glass.

We could see anything coming. You can see five, ten miles in either direction, farther than you'd want to walk. This creek's ankle deep, maybe mid shin at most when we first get there. And so we're sitting on the hill. We're glassing for caribou and this spot, this little, the creek, We could see the creek out in front of us, and we're not paying it too much attention, but I can see there's a nice shallow riffle there. Anytime I'm hunting a creek, I'm always looking for access points, you know, easiest spots to cross the creek. And this creek was still so shallow, it wasn't a big issue.

And we don't see anything the next day. Get back to camp that night and go to bed. Next morning, we're up eating breakfast. And I could see the creek was rising, but it still was no big deal. Go back up on the hill, get fog. out it's raining don't see anything on the next day so then the following day same deal we wake up it's foggy the river's still raining the river is definitely coming up but it kind of clears up early morning and I just told the guys like hey man we're we're gonna have to get out of

here but it's too the ceiling is too low to fly so we can't get moved with a plane today regardless but let's go up on if we climb up on the hill we can sit for a couple hours and you know if we don't we don't get anything we'll just come back and basically at that point we're going to wait for the have to wait for the weather to lift because this is getting so high like it could flood out our camp because we were camped on a gravel bar so we climb up onto the hill and i'm looking at this river and i'm noticing that shallow spot that i had noticed a couple days before and i'm watching watching the river rise up on this big rock on the bank and I figured it was rising somewhere between an inch and two inches an hour.

So I'm gauging and I just decide, hey, we've got until noon. After noon, if we haven't, we're not after something, we've got to be back to camp because it was up to our crotches when we crossed by camp that morning. And I knew that we could, on the way back, we would go back in that shallow riffle kind of below our glassing knob, which was about a half mile below our camp, but that was much, much shallower than where we were crossing at camp, but I, I knew that it was kind of pushing the limits of what I was comfortable with it, but I just figured for Don and Mike particularly, it was going to be pushing their limits to be crossing that river. Well, as it turns out, about 11 o'clock, we spot this

herd of caribou. They're about two miles off, and I just figured, hey, if we're going to go after any caribou today let's go after them give them a run if they're not there we'll turn around we'll come back so we run after these caribou where we're hoping they are they're gone well there's a ridge right up ahead of us about a 10-15 minute hike and we could look over this lip and so well they're probably right in there and so we get up over this lip and sure enough there's there's the caribou they're about thousand yards off so we sneak up around, go up in this next little ridge, trying to figure out if there was a way we could ambush them, and we get up there, and there's nowhere to go. There's just no way to really ambush them

to get to them without them seeing us. And the whole time in the back of my mind, I'm really nervous of this river crossing, because now it's about 1 p.m. And I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to make the guys scared. And I just told the guys, hey, that river coming up, we're just going to go right at these caribou if they run off that's fine but we got to take our chances here and so they understood so we just take off we start going right towards the caribou well just as we take off they get up because they were bedded and they start feeding toward us and I'm like well let's just wait but when looking back I could just see all these little little minute details we're just pushing the envelope pushing the envelope you know we had two more caribou still to kill and our hunt basically at this point

is more than half over. But the caribou are working towards us, and we sit and we wait. That takes another 20 minutes. Well, finally, Don gets a shot opportunity. Boom, he shoots the caribou, runs off, intermingles with the herd, so he couldn't get a second shot without risk of hitting another caribou.

Beds down. Finally, I just take my rifle, and I just walk around and boom, and I just finished the thing off. I just didn't have any patience because I wanted to get the thing killed and get back to camp. We're high-fiving, take some pictures. Don's happy.

a real nice caribou. We butcher the thing. I mean, we're working. I'm slicing and dicing and they're taking the bags and we get this thing whipped up pretty quick. I said, all right, guys got everything, let's go. And Don's like, well, I forgot my binoculars. And I'm like, what do you mean you forgot your binoculars? And he said, well, I think they're up on the hill where we shot from. I'm like, he's like, we can get them tomorrow. I'm like, no, we ain't come back tomorrow. I said, you guys see that willow bush? I point to it. It's about three quarters of a mile away. I said, there's nothing between here and that willow bush. I said, you guys get hiked into that willow bush, and you do not stop until you get to that will of bush.

You sit there and you wait for me. And I was pretty direct. And Don recognized that I was pretty direct. He's like, well, I'm hungry. And I said, grab a couple candy bars and eat them as you walk. I said, we got to get back across that river. Again, I didn't want it to be firm, but I didn't want to freak them out. So I run up to the top of the hill where we shot from.

And there was his binoculars and I beat him down to the willow bush. and I can see they're tired. He's like, oh, can we take a break? I'm like, you guys can take a break when we get back to camp. Let's keep her moving. And they just kind of looked at me and I didn't argue. I think at that point, that's when they realized that, and they were cognizant of the river coming up as well.

So we hike about another mile and we, maybe a mile and a half, and we get to that shallow spot. We actually walk a half mile further down stream of camp, but we got to that shallow spot and holy smokes, that river was angrier. and darker. I mean, the water is just so silty. There's no reading the river at that point.

I mean, it's just covered over. It's probably about, gosh, I would guess 70 yards across of just water. And now this is up to our belt. And it was darn near to crotch level almost the whole way across, which three days earlier it was basically ankle deep. And I told the guys, Don's like, oh, my gosh. She's like, I don't know about this. And I'm like, Don, I don't know what our option,

and other options are. We could stay here, but, you know, the clouds are still too low. Nobody can fly in here. There's no place to land the other side of the creek anyway. I said, well, just let me go across and just watch where I go and go exactly where I walk. I told them, undo your chest strap, only have your belt strapped. And if you go down, keep your head downstream,

and if you keep your head above water, and if you have to shuck your pack off. And that's one thing I've learned. You get in a dangerous situation. You've got to keep instructions really, really simple. And so I go across, not a big deal. I mean, it was deep, but Mike makes it across. And then Greg comes, and he comes about three quarters of the way across, and there was like a little island. It was submerged, but it was about knee-deep water. And so Greg walks to that knee-deep water, and he sits there and he waits. I just told him to wait there, and we have Don come across. We've all got trucking poles. Don makes it across. You can tell he's pretty nervous.

He makes it to that island where Greg is. And it's only at this point it's like 10 yards to get all the way across. And I just told Don you got it, and that's the deepest channel in the river. And so I go about 30, 40 yards downstream of Don just in case. And Don goes across and he's right in the heart of the channel. And of course, you're in fastest water. That's where the rocks get small, because the rocks, or the rocks, get big because the small rocks are swept downstream. And Don stumbles, and then he kind of corrects

himself, but in doing so, he puts too much weight on his trekking pole, and he bends his trekking pole into the shape of an L. And looking back, I should have told him to just throw the thing in the river. But I didn't. He corrects himself, and I said, you got it, you got it, literally four more steps, and he's across the river. Well, Don, in his muscle memory, he goes to take a step, and then he goes to take another step, and when he did that, he put his other trekking pole, down or tried to use it the one that he had just snapped in half or as the shape of an L. And so when he did that and that support wasn't there, he goes down, boom, under the water. I mean, just like that.

And now he pops up out of the water and it just, you know, happens like almost slow motion. He pops up out of the water and his eyes are like saucers in his mouth. He's just gasping for air just like that. And he's floating down the river like a rubber ducky game at the fair. I'm imagining that as he comes by, I'm just going to grab hold of him and just like pull him right to the bank and, you know, everything's going to be okay. But as he comes by and he's got the caribou antlers on his back, and again, that was a mistake of mine. As I grab him and I try to pull him to the bank, I realize I should have been pulling him at about a 45 degree angle downstream. And I learned that after the fact.

But as I pull him, I'm getting headway and all of a sudden he gets perpendicular to the current where he's straight out from me. And I'm pulling, and then the next thing I know, he's just a little bit downstream of me. And then all of a sudden I feel the power of that water on his body, his pack, those caribou antlers. And I'm getting headway, but then all of a sudden, I'm powerless. And I am pulled right out into the current with Don. And all of a sudden, the bottom goes from underneath us. Like, we can't feel the bottom in our feet at all. And we're like crappies, just trying to get our mouth to the surface.

and I'm a pretty good swimmer. Don can just maybe stay alive on a perfect, you know, a perfect pool and a perfect day. It's about all he can really do as far as swimming. But right below us, this 60, 70-yard stretch of river narrows down to a 10-yard channel, if you will, and it's like raging white water. You can tell that there's a big dip in the bottom of the river there. And so that's about 20, 30 yards below us, maybe 40. And then it makes a hard 90 degree bend. And I just tell myself, man, if we get to there, we're dead. And I'm yelling at Don, get your pack off, get your pack off. And I'm reaching for him as I got a hold of him. And I'm trying to find his belt of his pack to try to undo it, but I can't find it. And Don's face is just like right in front of

mine. And right away, his fear just kicks in as a kid who nearly drowned. And his whole life, He's, his only fear he said was death by drowning. And he just yells at me, is this the end? Is this the end? And I'm like, get your pack off. Get your pack off. And I can't find his buckle anywhere. And all of a sudden, I just realized, like, Don's in shock.

And at that moment, I realized, like, I either let go or hang on. And ahead is what I call it just a raging torrent, because that's basically what it was. And I'm just like, if we go there, we're dead. If we get that far, if we get that far, Don's dead. And maybe I got a chance. And I just realized it's like, I've got a decision to make, either I hang on or I let go. And at that moment, I just figured, you know what, I'm as good with God as I'll ever be. My wife knows who I am.

My kids know who I am? What I stand for, what I believe? And I just figured, you know what? If today's the day, if Don dies, I die with him. And it's almost like, I don't know, maybe within a second. You know, Don's still screaming. Is this the end? and I'm just trying to tread water and swim side stroke with him and my toe and in tow.

And just right as we hit that lip where that torrent, the angry torrent starts, I'm side stroking and all of a sudden I feel gravel in my toes. And I start digging the toes, my toes into the gravel, and I get a couple of steps, and I take about two steps towards the shore as much as I possibly could. And we're kind of coming up out of the water, but we're still being sucked down into that torrent. And I just, John and I kind of both, I guess, lunge, or in my mind, I'm just lunge and trying to heave us both towards shore and just pray that wherever we land, there's not enough current to push us down into that torrent. And when we lunge and we land, we're about, we basically went underwater, but it was slack enough that we stayed there. And so we get up and like, Don's coughing water and I'm coughing water.

And, you know, we just, Mike is there right there because he's. he was already across the river. He's like, are you guys okay? We're like, yeah, we get his pack off. We're like, where's your rifle? He lost his rifle in the drink. He's like, I don't care. I've just never been so happy to be alive, you know?

And, yeah, I learned a lot on that hunt. Greg, he was able to make it across, no problem. Later after that, we made it back to camp. We get done all dried out, you know. I mean, I made a ton of mistakes. I mean, there's just no doubt about it. I let my pride, my ego, and the pressure, the pressure. And I kept, you know, I just pushed the envelope.

and I knew I was doing it, but I thought I'd get away with it, and it almost cost a man his life. So we get back to camp, and the weather later that evening, it clears up, and Matt was able to fly in, and he was there to pick up meat, but in the end we just decided that we'd fly Don out that night, too, because we were going to have to move the next day anyway. Our camp was more or less flooding out. But Don said that when he was flying out that night, he said he found himself looking at. as long as he possibly could, and he only did he look forward, when he could no longer see the camp, and he said, for some reason, he goes, I didn't want to look forward.

And he said, when I did look forward, he said, I realized that, and Don said, this Don speaking, that my whole life I was looking back. I was looking back in that fear of drowning. He said, I realized that it almost, that fear almost killed me. And he said, I realized, I really, that at this point now, I'm never going to let that happen again. I'm always going to look forward and don't look back with fear and regret. And to this day, Don says that he won't change a thing about that hunt because it changed the trajectory of his life forever.

And what I've learned in Alaska hunting adventures is that adversity is one of two things. It's either cement that draws the people together or it's a wedge that drives them apart. And every Alaskan hunting adventure brings a new adversity. It's a new challenge. And what I've discovered in life is that on the other side of fear is freedom. That was a wild story. I've been following Billy for over a decade watching his documentary videos about Alaska and I read his book, Alaska and me years ago.

Billy is now a hunting consultant helping hunters who are wanting to go on big hunts, and he's doing a lot of public speaking events at churches and for groups all across the country about his adventures in Alaska. He's easy to find online if you're looking for him. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road.

I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a pool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Our next story hails from the high altitudes of the Alaskan wilderness and mountain goat country. Years ago, Alaskan resident Carrie Kegler, at my request, wrote a story for us. us at Bear Honey magazine about a black bear she killed that was missing two-thirds of its lower jaw and had apparently been without it presumably for years. The beast was happy, fat, and old. When she wrote this story, it was clear to me then that Carrie wasn't your average outdoors person. Here's her story that we'll call goat country night. My name is Carrie Kegler. I have been an Alaska resident nearly my entire life. My moved up here when I was about four, so it's pretty much all I've ever known and grew up in a

hunting and fishing family, really outdoorsy. Our dad got us started with hunting and fishing and archery when we were really young. I believe my brother and I got our archery certifications when we were probably 14 or 15, so kind of give you an idea there, like our background. So as an Alaska resident, we have a lot of opportunity here. We don't like to brag about it, but we're very fortunate. In one year, you could have a number of tags in your pocket. As a generality, you could have black-tailed deer, five of them, caribou, moose, doll sheep. They're very generous with the opportunity here, bear hunters.

We love it. take three black bears per season. And the season ends on June 30th and then begins on July 1st. So that's six bears a year. You know, you could take one brown bear per season as well. Lots of opportunity. So the story that I was going to share, it's my second goat hunt ever. But in the process, We learned a lot. Also got some reminders of things that you just don't do, or maybe you should do. I guess I go back to kind of where this hunt began in February of every year. It's kind of like Christmas for us, because we get to find out whether or not we drew a tag.

This year was in 2018, and I rarely ever get to. the opportunity to look up my own name. Yeah, it's one of those deals where by the time I wake up in the morning, a friend of mine has already texted me and said, hey, congratulations, you drew this or you do that, or, oh, bummer, next time maybe you'll have better luck. So this year, my friend Ryan had already texted me and said, hey, congrats on the goat tag, and I'm sure you'll do great. Well, at that time, I didn't have a hunting partner, and it's actually pretty tough to find somebody that will commit to one, to a goat hunt, that is. And I had just started dating John Kruger. I told him that I drew the tag, and he said, great, when are we going to go?

So from there, we kind of made our plans, and at the time, he was living in Arkansas for work. And so we'd made our plans, and he flew up here. This hunt took place in early September. We had incredible weather. You couldn't ask for better weather. Clear, cold, great visibility. You could see for 30 miles. Just perfect.

So we flew into a glacial lake. And from there, we got dropped off. we actually we were being dropped off as four other goat hunters were being picked up and they were actually successful two of the four guys had goat tags

they both got one got a billy one took a nanny I was surprised at the sparseness of the game bag for the fellow that had the nanny and asked him what had happened and he said well when I shot her she took a leap off of a cliff and ended up down at the bottom and pretty smashed up. So he ended up climbing down

there, rappelling actually, and got her. But there wasn't a whole lot left. When you're hunting goats, they're almost always, especially by September, they're going to be above alpine. They're going to be in the rocks. They're going to be high. You can expect to see them skyline sometimes, and they're going to be in all the little nooks and crannies that, and they'll perch themselves up there, and they do that so that they can get a real good view of everything that's happened and below them,

and they don't like things to be above them. And if you're going to be successful at taking one, you've got to be in good shape, of course, but also patient. You can kind of pattern them, for the most part. If you find one that you are certain is a billy, they've got characteristics that set them apart from a nanny.

They're usually a little dirtier. Their horns have more masks. But they're also usually alone. So for this hunt, we didn't actually get to pattern them so much. We really only came across one billy this time. And when we got to the hunting location, we made camp, set everything up, took another look at our topo maps, and we're just trying to make a game plan, make familiarize ourselves with the area and took a peek around. So we, we made camp and went up and over, like I would call it, like the foot of this mountain, just to kind of get an idea of what was on the other side. I mean, you can study those topo maps all you want, but.

You really get a feel for what it is that's there when you actually get your eyes on it. So we went up and over just exploring, because in the state of Alaska, you can't hunt and fly the same day. So we went up and over and just did some exploring and, you know, curiosity is getting us. What's over this ridge? What's over this one? And before we knew it, we spotted a goat. From there, we kind of just hung out, put him to bed, so to speak, and went back to camp, made a game plan for the next day, and then as soon as it was light,

we put some gear in our packs and headed on our way. And one of the things I'll mention, too, with putting gear in your pack before you leave for just what you think is going to be a day hunt, if you've got that extra puffy, you think it's going to be a few ounces too, heavy, put it in your bag, put it in your bag. And there's a reason I say that. So as we made our way away from camp, we had a pin marked the last location we saw the goat the evening before.

The way that the terrain in this specific area looks is you've got a glacial lake that we were dropped off at, and then you've got a big gravel valley that was carved out. by that glacier that left that lake. And as you get closer and closer to the toe of that glacier, you've got these braids, these gravel braids, of just meandering little creeks and streams. And it's all runoff from this glacier

that's essentially melting away. And then in front of that glacier, you'll see these big tills, which are huge mounds of just whatever that glacier left behind. So we were near the lake and we were making our way instead of going up and over the mountain like we did the evening before We went up this valley and decided about where we were going to start going up and over on the other end of this mountain closer to the glacier So we did that. We had a pretty decent ascent nothing

Nothing scary nothing really no I mean, it was tough. It was probably about a 1,200 feet elevation change, I would say, from the bottom. So after hours of sitting patiently and glassing and looking, John and I decided that we were just going to reposition ourselves and cover a little bit more, you know, real estate by splitting up. So we're probably at this point about two and a half miles or so from our camp. So I get to like a little rocky outcropping and just kind of looking around. And I saw something glimmer, which it caught my eye. It almost seemed glassy, like it didn't belong, you know. I took my binoes out, and sure enough, it was that billy goat.

And what I had seen was the sun caught his horn in a way that it shined, like you could actually see the shine on it. that's what gave him up. And so I went and found John, and we had about 1,300 yards, I guess, between the goat and us at that point. But we were also probably about three or 400 feet above him in elevation. So we had to stay off the skyline and out of sight and, of course, be quiet. So we made our path and stuck to it and got to.

within 280 yards. And he was completely asleep. Totally zonked out. And so I get set up on this really big flat rock because we didn't know how long he was going to be there. Sometimes they'll take naps. You catch them when they first lay down and they could be napping for hours.

So I get set up and I did a couple of dry fires. And at one point, I did a second dry fire, and I was absolutely certain that he heard it. Then he looks up, and John's moving around. He's a pretty tall guy, and I can tell through the scope that this goat sees him moving around, and I tell him, hey, he sees you. And John says, well, good, maybe he'll get up. And I said, yeah, hopefully. So it happened very, very quickly, but he did get up.

I fired the moment he turned broadside, and he fell right down, never moved. I was fortunate. This one didn't go anywhere. We got down to him, took the obligatory photos and all that, and started field dressing him, and caping him out. It had to be about 4 o'clock or so by the time that we, We left the kill site. So we got all the meat and everything in our packs, and we're heading back towards camp. This is where we made a mistake.

And I would say we broke one of those cardinal rules of mountain hunting, and that being, you go down the same way you come up unless there is no other navigable route that's safe. we decided to take a route down that we saw on the way up that looked like it was going to be a lot easier. That was an illusion, as it often is. You can look at a mountain from one end to the next, and it looks smooth and, you know, unassuming, but there's cracks and crevices in there

that you don't see unless you're right there. We took an alternative route down, thinking it was going to save time. And it did the opposite. We ended up in a couple of dead ends. We ended up on top of like a huge glacial till, couldn't go anywhere. There was a river that was probably hip high

and going very fast underneath a big sheet of ice. We had to go back up and around. By the time that we lost the light, we had come to a cliff face. It was about 100 feet above where we needed to be. And although we had headlamps, they just didn't cast enough light in that kind of terrain for us to safely navigate it.

And we were, like I said, we were out of light. So the best option was for us to just stay put until we could see. And that's what we did. So again, this is, This is September in Alaska, and clear skies. So that means during the day it's going to be warm. And at night, it's going to freeze.

It's actually going to frost more often than not when it's that clear. It was probably at night it was getting down to, I would say, below freezing. It was cold. It was cold. And when we got to that patch of alders, where we decided that we were going to hang out for the night, try to sleep before it got light. We emptied our packs of our game bags full of meat,

took the goat cape out, and we layered up with all the layers that we brought. And, of course, we both had a couple of coats, puffy coats, in our tent, but we wish we'd stuffed in those backpacks because, uh, It was a monumental regret, but it was what it was. So we had to make the best of it, and there was no sense in complaining about it. And we emptied our backpacks.

We climbed into our backpacks, kind of like a little gunny sack, you know. And we covered up our cores with that billy goat cape and on top of those backpacks. And just tried to huddle and stay as warm as we could. for the duration of darkness. And I remember looking up at the sky, thinking, man, this is going to be awful. And it was. It was the coldest, I think, I've ever been.

It was severely cold. I think maybe the two of us, maybe got an hour of sleep if you wanted to add it all up. But as soon as that sun came up, we were up with it and repacked our bags and got to it. I can't speak for John, but I know that I've never been happier

to get back to my tent. We were just absolutely exhausted. And, you know, like I said, we definitely left that hunt with some lessons and some reminders. You know, know your limits and don't ignore them. And go down the way you came up if it's safe.

And bring that extra. layer with you. Those few ounces aren't going to hurt you. Sleeping under a goat hide on the side of a mountain is rough, and it's certainly a pretty Alaskan thing to do. That was a good story. Well, the next story, I'm going to tell you. The best I can recall, I've never told this tale publicly, though it seared me with a humbling respect for Alaskan backcountry that has never left. It happened in 2015. on my first ever trip to Alaska. I called this one the Widowmaker.

I want to tell you a story about Alaska. A little backstory would be that in 2013, I acquired Bear Hunting Magazine. I had not worked in the outdoor industry full-time. Before, I had done some freelance writing and published a regional hunting magazine. But 2013 was major, breakthrough for me and my family. And with that magazine and that opportunity, I had already

bear hunted quite a bit, but a long time dream of mine was to go brown bear hunting in Alaska, which, as you might know, for most people, that's probably out of reach, because if you're not an Alaskan resident, which if you are an Alaskan resident, you can hunt just on your general tag. If you're not an Alaskan resident, you have to use an outfitter, which, you're not an Alaskan resident, which can be very expensive. But as things went, I remember telling my wife, I said, one day I'm going to walk in this house, and I'm going to tell you that I have secured an Alaskan brown bear hunt,

and that is going to be an incredible day. Well, I thought that might be 10 years from then, but two years later in 2015, I had worked out a deal with a brown bear outfitter, and I was going to Alaska. This would be my first time there. For all I knew, it would be the last time that I ever hunted Alaska. And I remember I secured the hunt in January,

and the actual hunt didn't take place until September. And every spare moment that I spent that entire year, I was thinking about being in Alaska. It consumed my thoughts. Well, September came, and me and my good friend, Scott Brown, went up there. We're hunting in south central Alaska on a river system. We flew a beaver from civilization, about 40 or 50 miles. A beaver is an airplane.

And we landed it on the river where we were met by the outfitter and his guides. And his guides were two young guys that I really liked, still do. And after a day or two in camp with the main outfitter, we set off to spike camp. So me, Scott, and two guides went and set up. a remote camp up this river. And the way that you hunt these brown bears is that there's smaller streams that feed into this big, braided river, and the salmon swim up from the ocean, and they go back into the mouths of these creeks that come in from the mountains. That's where they had been born, and they'd come back to spawn. There was bear sign everywhere, but I quickly realized how difficult

it was to actually see a bear. This was going to be a 10-day hunt, and by the fourth or fifth day, we had yet to see a brown bear. So what we would do would be mornings and evenings. We would go sit on a high bank with some cover on the mouth of this creek within shooting distance of where we were seeing a lot of bear sign. I remember the first bear that I saw on the trip, which would actually be the only bears that we saw on the trip. I'm sitting on the cut bank side of a bend in this big creek. You can see salmon swimming all down in front of you. It's about 10 yards across to this gravel bar,

and I'm sitting there with my traditional bow. This young guide who I've said I like so much is sitting right beside me. He's got his Marlon 4570 backing me up with the Trad bow, and this brown bear sow steps out on the gravel bar like 35 yards away and makes her way basically straight towards us

and is inside of 15 yards and now remember first of all we can't shoot this bear because it's a sow with cubs secondly it's a sow with cubs so it's a dangerous animal we're within 15 yards of this bear on the ground it does not know that we're there

and I have confidence in our situation because my buddy has his 4570 right over my shoulder. And all of a sudden, I start hearing a little movement right behind me, and my guide is filming with his phone over my shoulder. And when he does, he knocks his 4570, which is leaned up against a tree, knocks it over, the gun falls on my shoulder, rolls down my arm, and just plops onto the ground right in front of me,

which number one is dangerous. Number two, the sow and both cubs just go, lift their heads and just stare us down at less than 20 yards now. And he's got his iPhone up filming. And I'm thinking, holy cow, man, that is not a good time to make a mistake like this. And they pretty much ignored us

and just continued milling around and fishing for several minutes before they were out of sight. when they left, I'll be honest with you, I scolded that dude. I was probably 33 years old, and my guide was maybe 21. And again, I like this kid, but I was like, hey man, you got to bring your A game around here. And we had a little laugh about it after I, for real scold you. That was probably on day five of a 10-day hunt. Well, that was the only bear we'd seen in five days between two hunters.

And I started asking the guys, we were hunting one creek. We positioned our spike camp basically to hunt one creek, and that's where the salmon congregated, so that's where the bears congregated. And I said, man, is there another creek? I said, me and Scott need to split up. There's no sense in both of us hunting this same creek. We need to split up. And they said, well, there's a creek about eight miles up the river.

And I said, well, why don't we go up? there. I said, let's take three days worth of supplies and let's me and my guy go up there and camp on that creek and we'll leave Scott here. So we decided that's what we're going to do. I want to describe now these braided Alaskan rivers. If you've never been on one or seen one from the air or been on one in the water, they are very hard to understand. This valley that we were in had big mountains almost in every direction, big snow-capped, you know, 9,000-foot-plus mountains. And these snow-caps have been melting and feeding this river. And the river is a light grayish color from glacial till. There's big glaciers up in the heads of these valleys.

and this river, the further you go up it, you're going towards the head of the valley, the swifter the water gets and the narrower it gets. And this river in places was over a half mile wide, but in that half mile, there might be 25 to 50 separate braids that were separated by gravel bars and willow flats. and the best way that I can describe an Alaskan river like that is they are angry. I mean, it looks like a war zone in those braided rivers with all the stumps and snags in this gray water that you can't see more than six inches. If you're standing in it and watered up to your shins, you can't see your feet. And because the water is colored the way that it is,

you can't tell how deep some of these channels are. So we had a 16, foot aluminum John boat with a jet motor on it. This was a really strong vessel design for going up these rivers. And me and my guide set out with a couple of days supplies going eight miles up the river. But the braids change. He didn't know the way. There was no main channel to go on. So it was really hard to tell, you know, do you go up that braid, that braid? There might be a big braid that looks like the way you need to go, but when you get up there, it very quickly turns four inches deep. And so you'll be powering through and just gravel out. And then we'd have to jump out of the boat, push it, and then go back downstream, back to the Y, and then take the other braid,

and we'd go up the braid, and we're just working our way. And we got about two miles from camp, and it had taken us a while. And we're not sure if we can make. And we're not sure if we can make. at eight miles, but I am dead set on getting up there. And I'll tell you why. For me, this was what I believe was a once-in-a-lifetime hunt and probably what scared me more than anything. And it's kind of dumb to say this, but was not bringing home a bear. And if you've ever been on a big hunt, you probably understand what I'm saying. So every time that one of the braids would peter out and gravel out, I would say, let's go back, let's go try another one. And we'd push the boat out of the gravel and float back downstream, spin the boat around, and go try to find another

shoot. And we'd get up there and there'd be a huge log across it. We'd have to turn the boat around, go back down river, 200 yards, and go up another braid. And a small braid might turn into a big braid and it was just this this maze of little streams going through these willow flats well we're now several miles from camp and we gravel out and we push the boat back get it spun around and get out into the main part of the river which at this point is probably 20 yards wide and deep and fast flowing. And I'm standing in the bow of the boat and we're going downstream,

but I'm facing upstream. So my back is to the direction that we're going. My guide, he's in the back of the boat, standing up with his left hand on the tiller of the motor, which is the twist throttle control and steering stick of that jet motor. And he is looking back upstream. We're trying to find which braid to go.

go on. So both of us have our backs turned to the direction that we're going. And if you remember, I said that these Alaskan rivers are angry and they eat the banks. And there's trees that are just waiting to fall into the river around every cut bank where the pressure of the outside bend of the river is eroding away the bank. So I've got my back facing the direction that we're going And just all of a sudden, I just feel a incredibly powerful, just slammed me in the back. And I just go tumbling through the boat. Head first, I go down. And my head is like, imagine my head on the touching the boat, the only part of my body touching the boat and my feet straight up in the air.

That is the angle to which I saw the culprit for what had just happened because I see what we called widow makers. It was about an eight-inch log that hung about 10 or 12 feet out from the cut bank of that river, a dead log. And I see that dead log. While I'm upside down, hit the guide right in the chest. He's standing in the very back, holding the stick, and bam, that log takes him. and we're going as fast as the current is taking us down the river with a little bit of throttle. And it hits him right in the chest, and I see him go head over heels out the back of the boat. C splash!

And I am now, that's what I saw when I was upside down, and then I complete the somersault, and I am now in the back of the 16-foot boat. I scrambled to my feet, and I see the guide in the water. He's wearing breathable waiters, like breathable fishing waiters. He's completely submerged. I see him come up out of the water, gasp for air. I know that he has all our communication equipment on him. He's got the sat phone on him.

He had our fire starting equipment. He had all the important stuff on him. And here he is going downstream, and I'm in the boat now. All I knew to do was just push that stick as hard as I could to the the left and just whom, just ram the boat up onto a gravel bar. I just needed to make this stop. And I, boom, get up on the gravel bar and I'm yelling this guy's name and I see him just floating down the river. The water is probably only like navel deep, like just below his chest, but it's fast moving so he can't really stand up. But I can see that he's gaining his footing as he goes

down and he's working closer and closer to the bank. And finally, 50 to 70 yards down from where I've pushed into the gravel bar, he makes his way and crawls up on the bank, waders full of water, and it's over, and we're safe. When the widow maker, the slog hit me in the shoulders, I was really sore. It didn't really hurt me. I mean, it didn't break anything. I remember I had my traditional bow strung laying in the bottom. of the boat and somehow me tumbling over that bow unstrung the bow didn't damage it too bad just banged it up i was grateful to be alive and as much as i had to take responsibility for what happened because i wasn't looking downstream i was also to be honest upset with the guide

for you know when you're out in a place you've never been you kind of depend on the people you're supposed to depend on. And so I look back now and realize it was my fault. I mean, I just have to take personal responsibility for pushing him to go up the river. And, man, we just sat on the bank and he dried out. And this was the seventh day of a 10-day hunt. And it absolutely just took the steam out of me. It really scared me.

I was very, it just, Alaska is such a wild place. It's so remote. And if you've never been there, it's hard to understand what the place feels like. It's romantic when you see it on TV, when you read about it. When you're there, in some ways, it's a lot less romantic and it's just more real. And you realize how small mistakes will kill you. Those Alaskan rivers are waiting to kill you. That's just the truth.

we didn't make it to the second creek. We went back downstream and went back to our camp and we remained there for the final three days of the hunt. And I did not kill a brown bear. That's the story that I call the Widowmaker. I still get a little shook up when I recall the shock, surprise, confusion, and sheer force of that log clothes lining me off the bow of that boat.

the aloneness and vulnerability you feel when something unpredictable happens in the wilderness is unnerving. We were lucky. No harm, no foul, though. But the scare truly humbled me and haunts me to this day. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated

with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record.

If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

The next story is told by Alaskan resident Chad Ferguson, a man who I've just met. You're just going to have to hear this one. I'm restraining myself by allotting minimal foreshadowing. Well, no foreshadowing. This story I call. Gunslinger. My name is Chad Ferguson. I am originally from Ohio,

but I tell everyone that I've lived as many places as 10 people. If you read me Hemingway, you'll probably encounter a quote from him that says, when you like to hunt and you like to shoot, you have to move often and always farther out. And that's been about the truth for me. So she and I were just talking about this the other day. This is our fourth autumn up here, actually.

I have not been in Alaska very, long. I thought I'd be here the day after I graduated from high school and just kind of got waylaid with this and that. But finally made a decision to come up here and I'll never live anywhere else. Well, I have lived in a number of places. I've lived in Wyoming. I've lived in Oregon. Lived in Pennsylvania, of course, where they've got black bears. Lived up here for a few years. And so I've seen a few bears in the wild. Not a lot of bears in the wild, but I've seen a few in the wild. And you can chalk this up to coming from the Midwest after too long down there, or you can chalk it up to reading too many outdoor life articles, or I don't know what, but I was

certainly, I certainly have a lot of bear fear. Like when I'm in the backcountry hunting here for caribou or moose or whatever, even Tarmigan, like I've always got bear spray with me or a 44 on me. So very bear aware, you know, like lifelong campers. So you try to be smart. You don't fry bacon and then crawl in your tent. And you say, hey, bear, hey, bear, when you're walking through places where they might be

and where they might not be able to hear you coming and just try to be smart. And so I would definitely characterize myself as somebody who is bear aware, bear smart, and bear afraid. Yeah. In fact, I'll tell you something that I really in another essay and it's an anecdote about a guy that I met up here and he and his cousin they grew up here.

Well anyhow, he and I were in the truck riding somewhere when we were King salmon fishing. And he said to me, I'll tell you when I quit being afraid of bears. And of course I'm all ears. He was bear hunting, actually bear baiting. And he had this big grizzly come in to the bait. And he said that grizzly bear didn't make a sound. mean didn't even break one little twig. And it occurred to me that if they can be that quiet anytime they want to, they could take you anytime they want to, and they don't, or they don't

very often. And that's when I quit being afraid of bears. And boy, that made a lot of sense to me. That made a lot of sense to me, right? Because you can really make, you can worry yourself to pieces. It was a beautiful fall day. Quintessential, autumn, weather. I was moose hunting. It was early September. Blue skies, some light clouds now and then, and the colors were really starting to come on. I mean, everything was pretty. In fact, to this day, the desktop on my laptop, the background is a picture that I took from this trip. And it's just so pretty, it looks like it was painted by an impressionist painter. I was out for a week, moose hunting. I had not been to this area before.

It's a special walk-in area, and I'm here to tell you that there's not enough of those here in Alaska. There's more ground than you could ever cover in 10 lifetimes, but you're going to need a plane, a boat, and some buddies that have planes and boats to go do it. But there are some walk-in sites. This one has a trail, and you can take a bike on the trail, a non-motorized, non-electric bike with a little trailer, which was my plan. In fact, that's exactly what I'm going to be doing here in a couple weeks, going back to the same area.

And, yeah, I was out for a week, solo moose hunting. I had not been here before. I had seen some moose, some guys that were sub-legal, as they say, less than 50 inches. And then I saw one that was probably three miles from me, for sure, maybe a little bit more than that. And I was already eight miles in from the truck. truck. So when you're so low, you know, hauling out, you know, what could it be? I mean, it could be 900 pounds after he's, you know, gutted and skinned. You got to think about that, right? I mean, there's plenty of people that'll say don't shoot a moose farther than a mile from the truck or the landing strip. And that just wasn't an option for me on this hunt. And in fact, a moose that I had watched for a couple of days on this trip, either him or one that was like him between where I

was and that moose, a couple of other guys went in after me and I told him I've been watching this moose and a couple days later they were coming out with a real nice one. So I fancy that it was the one that I'd been watching and just didn't have the, you know, gumption to go after. And that's something else I've had to learn about being up here is you don't want to be foolish, right? And you always have to have a plan for recovering the game. But I'm pretty confident that people will figure it out, you know. So if he's a little deeper than you wanted to be and it's going to be a little more effort, we just got to dig a little deeper. It was late afternoon and I am eight miles into a walk-in unit. I had about an hour hike to get to a good glassing knob and I had my rifle

strapped on my backpack, a 308 bolt action strapped on my backpack and a 44 magnum on my hip belt. I always carry bear spray with me, but that day it happened to be zipped in my backpack for some reason. But I round a corner on the trail, and I look up the trail about 50 yards, and there's a big brown bear. It would turn out to be a sow grizzly, and she standing broadside, and she looked at me, and then she stood up and stretched her neck out and cocked her head, and then immediately went into a charge. and I mean she was every bit of seven feet tall and here she comes so

is the only thing I could get out before I had to do something and I had no time to think I didn't feel any fear I didn't have any thoughts at all I just immediately unholstered my 44 put both hands on her and followed her in and she starts running down the trail towards me and at about 20 paces she stopped

turned around and took two steps going away from me and then she looked back over her shoulder and I was still standing there she immediately flipped back around and charged again and when she hit 12 paces and those were measured off after the fact I shot three times as fast as I could with my revolver just right into the middle of the bear and hoped for the best she winced at the shots and I didn't know how many times I'd hit her but it was almost like she'd been stung in the chest by Hornets. She kind of pulled her paws up to her a little bit and recoiled a little bit. And she turned at those shots and ran 30 yards back up the trail.

And then she bailed off to the right into the scrub. The colors were just starting to get pretty. So the dwarf birch was starting to turn red and the willows were starting to turn yellow. and the brush in that area is about four or five feet high. She just disappeared into that off the trail. So I immediately, you know, holster my revolver, drop my pack, get my rifle undone, chamber around, dial it down to 2X, and I just start creeping up the trail, which might seem like kind of a crazy thing to do. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but if I was going to do any more hunting, I had to go

forward, not just that night, but, you know, in the next few days. and I needed a dead bear, not a wounded bear. So, again, I didn't even really think about it. It wasn't like I made a decision. I just got my rifle off, got the magnification dialed down, started walking up the trail. And I'm just like, you know, on the scope, off the scope, on the scope, off the scope, like looking for any patch of brown fur that I can see. And as soon as I see a patch of brown fur, I shoot right into it.

I don't even know what part of the bear it is and chamber another round. And I'm watching for movement, trying to pick her up again. And then finally just stretching my neck out and standing up real tall, I can see that she's laying there and she's still and that it's over. So, of course, I go up to her and as I'm walking up the trail, I can see every few feet there's a splattering of bright red blood off to the left of the trail. So I knew that I'd hit her in the heart or in the artery at least, but it almost immediately started. started to dawn on me just how incredibly lucky I was because she was only 12 paces from me at a full run and she's weighing 400 pounds is what I estimated her at. She was a very big bear. I could barely move her when I got up to her. At the shots she decided to turn around and run back up

the trail and she ran 30 yards which was a lot farther than she was close to me when I shot her. So she could have just as easily, flip of a coin, decided to keep on going forward, and while she was dead and didn't even know it, she could have knocked me down, broke me up, bit me up, maybe, you know,

severely mauled or maybe even killed me, and then died herself, you know? So it just occurred to me almost immediately how incredibly lucky I was on this. And the other part was that I'd hit her at all. I mean, I'm not Roy Rogers with a six, shooter, you know? I don't practice. I don't compete. I mean, I side them in, sure, but, you know, hitting a running target, like, that's not something you practice very often. So I just felt really

lucky. So, you know, I start to, I try to get her moved around a little bit. I want to take some pictures, but I just couldn't move her. And it was also pretty late in the day for as far back as I was. And I knew that since I had a tag, that area, you don't have to have a locking tag. So if you have a hunting license and the bears are in season and they were, you know, I could tag the bear legally. And I was happy to do that because I was definitely going to be keeping this one. You know, it would be easy for me to say that I'm a brave man, but that just wouldn't be the case. You know, like I'm not a quarterback who's had to face down linemen coming across for that crushing sack. I'm not a veteran who's ever had to operate under fire.

I've never rushed into a house that's on fire, anything like that at all. And I'm just happy I didn't run. But next time I might run, you know, I mean, I hope not. But there was no time for a reaction. Like I saw her. I said, I uttered that expletive. I immediately took my 44 out. And there was just no thinking about it at all.

And after everything happened that I told you, and from the time I saw her to the time that. I was taking my pack off. I mean, it was less than 10 seconds. There she was. Here she comes. Bang, bang, bang. And now she's running off.

So you hear people say that I didn't have time to think or I didn't have time to be afraid. And that was absolutely the truth. So I get my pack off. You know, I shoot the rifle. I finally see that it's done. I walk up to her to see that she was not breathing. Probably should have put a safety run into her to tell you the truth. Had been something else that would have been smart to do.

But I didn't. you know, the African guys will tell you, it's the dead ones that kill you. And I did feel very calm. I called my partner and I told her what happened. I had one bar reception. And after that, I texted a couple hunting buddies. And I'm like, you would not believe just what happened. And 10 minutes later, I was shaking so bad I wouldn't have been able to hold a glass of bourbon.

Chad is undoubtedly better trained with a pistol than he gives himself credit for. However, if he had it to do over again, the outcome could have been different. Encountering an aggressive grizzly at close range is a life-altering interaction that I'm certain imprints someone at the psychological level. And now, I'm totally speculating here, but probably even at the DNA level. Somehow our offspring know what almost killed us, and we make subtle amendments to adjust, trying to avoid the same fate. That was a good story, Chad. I'm glad you were prepared for the worst. Well, we'll end with a short story from Dr. Randall Williams,

the resident historian of Meteeter Incorporated. Randall spent eight years as a fishing guide in Alaska, and he's got a story. My name is Randall Williams. When I was 22 years old, I took an offer through a friend of a friend to go up and work at a fly-out fishing lodge in Alaska. I kept going back each summer and guided my last trip in the summer I got married of 2015. For all those years, I split my time and my worldly belongings between Montana and Alaska. Every year at the end of the season, I'd roll up all my stuff, underwear, t-shirts, and a couple pairs of jeans and a hoodie,

and a big blue plastic bag. These bags we used to pack fish for clients, and I'd tuck it all away in my cabin so it was waiting for me the next summer. I had a pair of extra tufts that lived up at the lodge, and I had a big box of books. That way, I only had to fly with my fishing gear and my personal items. I had my Alaska stuff, and I had my Montana stuff. The late May through mid-July was king season. These were extremely long days, with all that daylight. You wanted to be at your spot well before legal fishing hours at 6 a.m.,

and you're often going out after dinner until fishing closed at 11 p.m. In July, we started getting soccer. and then silvers and chums through August, and by late August and early September, we were targeting rainbows. It was an education to say the least, and I saw my share of wild, weird stuff. Bears, boat crashes,

cabins getting swept down river. We even had the troopers come out and conduct a manhunt in the drainage around the lodge one spring, and another summer we found a bunch of coffins and human skeletons from the old mining days as they washed out of an eroding cut bank. This was only in Alaska kind of stuff.

But the biggest shock I think I ever faced up there happened on May 20th, 2014. And that was the day I flew out to the bush for the summer and realized the only pair of underpants I had were the ones I was wearing. Now remember the clothes system I mentioned earlier? Well, that was a system that worked great until it didn't. I'm sure a lot of people that have worked intense,

seasonal jobs are familiar with this feeling. You get to the end of the same. season and you tell yourself, I am never coming back here. Long hours, hard work, nightmare clients, and in my case at the end of the summer 2013, I'd gotten engaged a few months before I came out. I thought I was done. So at the end of that summer, I threw all my clothes in the burn barrel and torched it, and I forgot all about doing this until May the following year. For a while, my lack of underwear was a crisis. You can imagine it's just about impossible to hit a strategically timed wash cycle in the middle of King's season.

And then the whole situation became a source of entertainment for everyone in camp. We kept a running tally. When I was asked to record this story, I reached out to my old boss to see if he could remember the details. His reply, I know it went on for over a month. I was just talking about that to some of the guides this summer. Another fellow I worked with replied,

I know you broke two weeks for sure, maybe a month. Then another guy responded with a photo of the underwear in question, which we nailed up above the front door to the guide shack after the situation was resolved. Someone was finally able to fly out with a five-pack of haines and a special pair of Superman undies to celebrate. That photo shows a whole bunch of threads hanging from a stretched-out waistband nailed into a rundown shack, and next to it on the wall is a hand-drawn sign, reading as follows.

certified, 33 days of continuous use. Randall Williams, June 23, 2014. Only in Alaska. You, my friends, have just been punked, and you walked right into it. It was almost as foolish as me standing on the bow of that boat looking upstream while we were heading downstream. Regardless of if you have clean underwear, Alaska is a wild place. From raging angry rivers to cold nights under a mountain. and goat hide to charge in grizzlies, Alaska's stories are forever intriguing, and we're just

getting started. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greets. Hunting season is upon us, and be sure to check out First Light for all your hunting clothing this year, including White Tail and Waterfowl gear. I've been wearing First Light for almost a decade, and it would be hard for me to wear anything else. And thanks to everyone who bought a Phelps-Akern grunt and bleat call, they sold it. out in about 24 hours.

We're trying to get some more made as quick as we can, so stand by. I hope you've got big plans this fall. Be careful out there and have some adventure. Just be aware of what's going on around you. I can't wait to talk to all the folks

on the render this week about these Alaskan stories. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters.

No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.