Persistant Hunter

Are You a Persistent Hunter?

By Dave Freeman

Are you a persistent hunter?

What is your definition of persistence? Have you spent 100 hours in treestands looking for a deer? Did you hunt the same boss gobbler all season this year? Have you spent more than one year chasing that certain buck?

How about three years of your life?

Three trips to the Alaskan range near Healey, Alaska and about $30,000 in search of a sheep.

Hermitage, Penn. hunter, Jeff Bendas did just that. In August 2000, Jeff, an environmental manager at K&M Star, headed to the Alaskan wilderness in search of a dall sheep.

Jeff had booked his hunt with A & L Outdoor Adventures and began a rigid exercise program in January of that year, which included running every day of the week, starting at two miles and working his way up to seven miles as his exercise program progressed. He used an electronic scale to weigh everything in his pack so he could plan his hunt to include the least weight possible.

The first year, Jeff backpacked with all of his gear 28 miles into his wilderness hunting area. The weather that year became a major factor in his first attempt to harvest his sheep. Jeff told us that it had rained four days, 24 hours a day, and then snowed for three days. The snow had melted and the streams he needed to cross to go into his hunting area went from a width of six feet to over 100 feet. This made traversing the stream not only noisy, but extremely dangerous. There were many sheep spotted on this hunt but none with a full curl. A large amount of the time of the hunt is spent walking and glassing the areas and walking and trying to find a ram with a full curl which is a legal animal.

The second year, once again with the same outfitter, and the same 28 mile walk in, Jeff was staying in a two-man backpacked tent, drinking chocolate looking water from glacier streams and eating MREs. In addition to trying to get accustomed to the 10,000-foot altitude, it was also difficult to sleep. The sun goes down at around midnight and comes up again around 3 a.m.

The second year was the same as the first year, with no sheep harvested.

Jeff’s luck changed the third year when he was drawn for a special hunt area, the Delta Management Area located about 50 miles from the Yucon border. The special management area allows no motorized vehicles five days before season. That required Jeff and his guide Gabe Andre’s to fly into the area six days before the season, set up a base camp on a river, which included a life raft, and then walk 14 miles to a spike camp.

The day before the season opened, Jeff spotted some legal sheep on the side of a mountain. Rather than trying to find the sheep once the season opened the next day, Jeff and his guide stayed on the mountain overnight, using only a space blanket for cover. Rain and fog ended the first day and they returned to the spike camp for sleep. Day two saw a full gear 6 1/2-hour hike up the mountain to get to within 122 yards of the sheep.

A three-year quest was completed when Jeff fired his Bansner Custom 300 Winchester Short Magnum, and harvested his ram. The battle, however, was not over at this point. It took 1 1/2 hours to walk the 122 yards to his trophy because of the steep terrain.

The sheep was then skinned, quartered and backpacked to the spike camp. After some much needed rest, the two men made two trips, the 14 miles from the spike camp to the base camp. They then pumped up and repaired 14 porcupine-chewed holes in their life raft before they traveled the 16 hours and 56 miles down the river to their pick up point.

Shallow water required dragging the raft and, at this point, Jeff got frostbite on all the tips of his toes. All part of sheep hunting, Jeff stated.

Three years of physical and mental preparation at a cost of over $30,000 dollars and an extreme amount of persistence paid off for Jeff, who said next August he will again start a new quest, this time for a grizzly bear.

Persistence, one finds after talking to Jeff, is a word that has different meanings to different people.