Tales of a Big Game Guide

By Russell Annabel

“Tall tales of tall ranges. Good reading for any man, for he’ll find his sport, be it fishing, riding, camping, good jokes, fine sportsmanship and hardy company sandwiched in between the big game hunting. Annabel is a guide who certainly knows his trails and game, but far more important he knows what few others do—how to tell a grand story. Brought up in the big game country of Alaska he learned from bitter experience why Tex had wisely refused to let him peruse precocious rams up mountain peaks in winter, how to stalk grizzlies, to manage horses in spring drifts, to bring out heads with 69 inch spreads, and with delicious humor teach adventurous grizzlies a lesson. There are caribou, too, although he makes their hunting sound a bit too easy-dude-ranchey after the he-man stuff which characterizes his usual trips.

“It is a book to whet the appetite of any man or woman who has ever longed to stalk big game. Africa is a long way safely out of reach. But Alaska—by plane? Well, maybe, if times pick up before they’re too old for such strenuous adventure. Meanwhile Annabel as guide and all Alaska lies before them. Suggest it as the best possible vacation to take in one’s den.”—Kirkus Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789123562

Russell Annabel

Russell “Rusty” Annabel (1904-1979) was known as one of the greatest outdoor writers of his time, with a unique ability to tell a hair raising adventure tale like no other. Sometimes referred to as the Capstick of Alaska, his stories are mostly fictional and were based on his own experiences during his early years in Alaska. Born on December 4, 1904, in Tacoma, Washington, he had long dreamed of moving to Alaska, and soon made his way north to the frontier. He lived off the land—fishing, hunting, guiding and trapping—whilst writing numerous articles for sporting magazines, including Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, Field and Stream. Many of his articles featured his most memorable character, Tex Cobb. During World War II, Annabel served as a United Press war correspondent in Alaska. He died in Mexico in 1979.

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Text originally published in 1938 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TALES OF A BIG GAME GUIDE

BY

RUSSELL ANNABEL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

PREFATORY NOTE 4

ILLUSTRATIONS 5

TO KILL A MOUNTAIN RAM—MY FIRST SOLO SHEEP HUNT 6

LONG TRIP EASTWARD 15

KENAI MOOSE HUNT 39

ADVENTURES WITH CARIBOU 49

WRANGLER’S LAMENT 58

IN THE MOON OF PAINTED LEAVES 69

SPEAKING OF SHEEP HUNTING 76

ABOUT GETTING OUR GOAT 83

PLENTY OF BEAR 92

THE LAST HERD 99

A TROPHY TO SUIT A KING 105

THE YOUNGEST HUNTER 110

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 116

PREFATORY NOTE

I MUST explain that in selecting the stories which make up Tales of a Big Game Guide I have sought to cover the field of Alaskan hunting rather than to achieve any sort of continuity. Because it seemed important to describe a winter mountain-sheep hunt, for instance, I have included To Kill a Mountain Ram, even though I appear in it as a sixteen-year-old youngster, and in the next tale, somewhat incongruously as a grown man holding a professional guide’s license.

I also wish here to express my sincere thanks to the following publications for their permission to reprint materials contained in the book: Sports Afield, National Sportsman, Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Hunting and Fishing.

RUSSELL ANNABEL

ILLUSTRATIONS

CAMP IN THE FIRST FAIT OF SNOW

THE AUTHOR BRINGING MEAT TO CAMP

OVIS DALLI RAM SKY-LINED

YOUNG RAMS AND EWES

BUCK WITH OVIS DALLI RAM

BAND OF EWES FLEEING UP SHALE PITCH

IMMENSE PEAVINE FLAT IN INTERIOR ALASKA

TRAVELING UP THE ICE OF A FROZEN RIVER

HUNTING CABIN, CODY CREEK

BUCK FISHING BELOW AN ICE BRIDGE

OUR CATCH OF MACKINAW TROUT

POINT FROM WHICH MEAT HUNTERS SHOT SHEEP

KENAI BULL MOOSE IN A SPRUCE THICKET

THE AUTHOR TAKING OFF A MOOSE CAPE

CAMP IN THE SNOW

MAGNIFICENT SET OF WOODLAND CARIBOU ANTLERS

BRONC THROWN FOR SHOEING

TEX COBB AND THE AUTHOR PELTING LEOPARD SEAL

A BEAVER DAM IN DELLINGER MOOSE COUNTRY

IN THE SHEEP HILLS, TONZONA BASIN

PERFECT OVIS DALLI HEAD

THE CHUGACH LAKE—GOAT COUNTRY

THE AUTHOR HOLDING A GRIZZLY CUB

FEMALE GRIZZLY AND YEARLING

MUSKOXEN

THE YOUNGEST HUNTER AND HIS MOOSE

TO KILL A MOUNTAIN RAM—MY FIRST SOLO SHEEP HUNT

I was mad clear through. Time after time, since Tex Cobb and I had strung out our traps at the head of Knik River, I had asked him to let me take a day off and make a stalk for the mountain sheep we saw daily on the peaks above the stream bars, but I always had received a flat refusal. This morning, at breakfast, I asked him again. I guess I made it pretty strong, because Tex sat straight up in his chair, pointed his fork at me, and said:

Nothing doing. I said ‘No’ before and I meant it. Hunting sheep in winter is a tough, dangerous job. Sure as shooting you’d fall over a cliff, or get caught in a snowslide. Now, don’t argue. Dammit, you’re only sixteen. Wait awhile.

So that was that. There was no use asking him about it any more. He had a bow in his neck, and nothing could make him change his mind. I got up from the table, put my parka on, and went out to run the north end of the trapline. Moping along the snowshoe trail, I decided that the thing to do was to go hunting, kill a sheep, and tell Tex about it afterward. That would show him I was not such an incompetent as he thought.

I saw myself coming into camp with a fat saddle of meat lashed to my packboard, and pictured Tex’s surprise and chagrin at my casual announcement that I had killed a ram on one of yonder tall, white summits. Dramatizing still more, I imagined him holding out his hand and apologizing for having misjudged me.

The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. Yes, sir, it would prove that I wasn’t a kid any longer. Of course, Tex was the grandest fellow in the world. He had practically raised me, and my ambition was to be as nearly like him as possible. But still, a man had to stand up for his rights. There were times when you had to use your own judgment, and to heck with what the other fellow thought. Oldtimers of Tex’s type didn’t always look at things this way. They were stubborn and set in their ways. You just had to show them.

I was at the upper end of the line, arranging the toggle pole of a wolf trap and hurrying to get through so I could carry out my plan, when I happened to glance at the open slope above me. There stood a ram, and a thundering big one, too. He was at the rim of a snow-weighted service-bush thicket, a good two hundred yards below the first cliffs. It was a set-up, an amazing piece of good luck. I had never before seen a ram so far down the mountainside at this time of year.

Taking care to make no sudden moves, I shrugged out of the shoulder straps of my packboard and eased a cartridge into the chamber of my .30-40. If I could make a clean kill with the first shot, the ram would roll right down to the foot of the hill. Tex, I remembered, usually knelt for a ticklish shot like this. So I knelt now, but discovered that this brought a big snow-hooded boulder into the line of fire. Well, I’d chance it offhand, then. I had made more difficult shots. The only trouble was, my hands were trembling a bit. It couldn’t be buck fever, because only tenderfeet had that. Probably it was the cold making me shiver. Sure, that was it. The doggoned wind off the glaciers was getting a good crack at me out here on the open bars.

Standing up, I raised the long-barrelled Winchester and laid the gold bead on the ram’s brisket and then cut it down fine into the notch of the hind sight. I had started to close my hand, taking the trigger slack up as smoothly as I could, when the ram spotted me and made a driving bound sideways. He bounced to the right like a rubber ball, and then turned and headed up the mountain, breasting the drifts at a dead run. I got in a snap shot, but the bullet furrowed the snow two feet below him. Before I could fire again, he went out of sight around the corner of an out jutting ledge.

When I next saw him he was five hundred yards up the mountain, climbing great guns. I shot five times, but the distance was too great, and I couldn’t seem to make the proper allowance for the slope angle. Anyway, the only effect the shots had was to make him climb faster.

The ornery, cultus old son-of-a-gun, I gloomed. Why couldn’t he stand still for just one second longer?

Disgusted with myself, and all too well aware that Tex had heard the shots and would put me through a stiff cross-examination when I returned to camp, I decided I might just as well go the whole hog, now that I had committed myself. So, kicking off my snow-shoes, I found a broken, whale-backed ridge that the wind had blown partially clean of snow, and started climbing. As the mountain was the highest of a series of peaks that sheered above the river head, I knew the ram would climb to the top and stay there until he got over his fright. This much I did know about sheep, having hunted them in autumn with Tex.

It was hard slow going, up through the loose snow. Several times, deceived by overhanging snow combings, I stepped off the ridge and sank to my armpits in soft, fluffy drifts. And once, somewhere ahead, I heard the ominous rumble and growl of an avalanche spilling into the wild depths of a canyon. This should have frightened me, but it didn’t. I was becoming intoxicated by the thrill of the stalk and the certainty of making a kill when I reached the summit. There was a kind of fierce pleasure in bucking the drifts. Blood hammered at my throat and temples, my lungs took the frosty air in deep, easy draughts, and my legs felt tireless. There was nothing to this sort of hunting. The way I felt, I could climb all day and half the night. I laughed as I recalled Tex’s solemn, repeated warnings about the dangers incident to sheep hunting in winter.

But it was further to the crest of the mountain than I had thought. I topped three false summits before I finally came out on the real one. Looking at my watch, I was surprised to find I had been climbing for three hours. Already the short December day was drawing to a close. The sun had slid down to the horizon, and all the west was filled with flame tints. I leaned against an ice-encrusted boulder to catch my breath. My legs, I noticed, were trembling, and there was a dull pain around my heart. Well, maybe I had climbed a little too fast. But what of it? I’d be all right in a minute or two, as soon as I had rested a bit.

The ram probably was just around the mountain, watching his backtrail. I would kill him, drag the carcass down to timber, and cache all the meat but the saddle, or maybe a ham, in a tree until morning.

As I stood here looking across a low swale to a sister summit, it suddenly seemed to me that the snow was moving. I stared, wondering if something had happened to my eyes. The smooth slope appeared to pulsate rhythmically, as a swan’s breast might. Then, abruptly, the whole side of the mountain buckled and warped like a reflection in one of those trick mirrors that distort objects out of all semblance to reality.

Although I did not know it, I was witnessing a snow mirage, an arctic illusion which has caused even seasoned sourdoughs to question their eyesight. Tex had told me about seeing mountains dance against the sky, and valleys tilt up and down like a child’s see-saw, but I had put the tales down as pure entertainment. Now, confronted by the phenomenon, I was suddenly frightened.

Turning my back on the eerie display, I walked across the summit and looked down the further side. The snow here was cut up with sheep tracks. A band of at least a dozen had been on the crest since morning. I carefully scanned the long, ragged slope below me. At the brink of a rimrock cliff, some two hundred yards down, was a spot of yellow. Although it was not moving, it was the right color. I waited several minutes, and then it shifted position. It was the ram.

Some animal sixth sense, or a tricky downdraft of wind, must have warned him of my presence, for as I raised my rifle he wheeled and looked straight up at me. I picked him up fair and square in the sights, but held my fire, and we stood gazing at each other across the expanse of snow slope. Then he shook his head and came up the mountain at a tight run, making for the only safety he knew—height. I shot him at fifty feet, and he pitched forward on the snow and died.

For some reason I did not experience the anticipated thrill of triumph. Instead of being overjoyed, I merely felt cold and tired and hungry. I was pointedly aware that it was a weary journey back to the cabin, and that I probably would not arrive there until long after dark. To make matters worse, a knife-sharp wind was moaning out of the north, and my moccasins and trouser legs, soaked by melting snow, were freezing.

The valley was in deep shadow now. Only the loftier range summits caught the glow coming over the horizon.

I drew my belt knife and started down to the dead ram. At the top of the first steep incline I slipped, caught myself, slipped again, and suddenly was sliding down the mountain. With a swift surge of panic I realized what had happened. The temperature had dropped with the sunset, and the snow, soft and wet during my ascent, had crusted hard as iron in a few moments. On the summit, where the snow was always wind-stiffened, this change had not been apparent.

Twisting over on my stomach, I drove my knife into the crust. The blade caught on a concealed rock and was