Tales from the Outdoors: The Worst Hunt Ever?

By Bob Chapin

People often ask me, “What was the worst hunt you were ever on?” You would expect it would be a hunt where I was injured, or where an airplane taking us in crashed on the way out, or simply where we did not get the quarry we were after.  While my last horseback elk hunt in Idaho was no picnic (three broken ribs, knee wrenched and back injury when the horse fell on top of me) it was still a good hunt in beautiful terrain with good companions, and we heard and saw elk though did not shoot at any.

A contender for the worst hunt started out with such promise. There were four of us who were flying in via float plane to a secluded peninsula down in Prince William Sound, Alaska for Black Bear. We flew in on a De Haviland Beaver, the work horse of the north. The plane is capable of carrying a tremendous amount of gear and passengers—as they say you ‘cube it out before you gross it out’ meaning you can’t load any more into it before you reach the gross take-off weight limitation. We took what we thought was going to be a comfortable camp for 6 days in the wilderness—tents, food, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, clothes, and rain gear.  The weather the day we flew in was spectacular—sun shining, not a cloud in the sky, no wind and temps in the 70s—not bad for an Alaskan May.

About the time we got to our campsite and got the tent set up the clouds formed then parted and it started raining like a Southeast Asian Typhoon. It didn’t let up for five days!  We made the best of it we could and hunted hard the first three days. By the fourth day it turned into a survival trek. Everything we owned was wet—all our clothes, our food, our bedding, everything in the tent was wet and so were we.  We even dug a trench under the edge of the tent and bailed water out of it with cooking pots in an effort to find a dry spot. Tempers flared. A normally convivial bunch of guys who all got along well on a normal day, were suddenly at each other. To make matters worse, the promised land of Black Bears was suddenly devoid of game. One guy saw a bear, got a shot …and missed. I don’t know why but we all hated him for missing, like if he made the shot, we all would have somehow felt vindicated. That hunt could not have ended soon enough. Fortunately, the clouds parted the morning of the pick-up day and our air taxi operator showed up as promised. It was a quiet ride out.

Another bust hunt was an elk hunt in western Colorado. This hunt had everything going for it. We had a guy on the ground in Monument who was our liaison, he knew the lay of the land, had hunted this area in the past, was going to get and pre-package all the groceries for our drop hunt and lined up a packer he knew with horses to get us and our gear into the public hunt zone. We had driven out from Virginia for this hunt and were eager to get started. The first indication of trouble was when we arrived at the trailhead to find several horse and camping trailers already there—not good! We pressed on as the packer was confident that this was the entry to a vast area and we would soon out distance the other guys. We used a camp the packer had used before, it was a couple of wall tents and a horse corral. Normally, the wrangler would have ridden out with the horses but two of us elected to hire him as a guide for the first day.

Our guy on the ground and his buddy from Colorado left camp at daybreak and proceeded to fan out on the mountain opposing our camp. The wrangler took two of us up to a saddle in the mountains where, “the elk just pour through here” according to him. We were not 20 minutes out of camp when we heard shooting coming from camp’s direction and we secretly rejoiced for our friends. Shortly, as we approached the saddle we stumbled upon another occupied camp, clearly positioned to intercept the elk as they came through. The area was not large enough to support both our parties, so we returned to camp planning on helping our buds recover their elk.

When we rendezvoused with our buds, we couldn’t believe the stories we heard. The buddy from Colorado shot at a bull but could not describe where he was standing when he shot, where the bull was when he shot, what the reaction of the bull was when hit, or what direction he went once shot. Upon further questioning it was discovered this was his first hunt…for anything, it was a borrowed rifle, he had never fired the rifle on the range, and had no idea where it would hit at 100 yards! We spent two hours looking in vain for any sign of a hit. This guy should never have been in the woods.

Our buddy’s story was even more bizarre. He is an accomplished hunter and should have known better than to leave a novice alone on the hillside. Our buddy shot a cow elk about the same time his buddy shot but rather than stick with it, he elected to go look for his buddy to see if he needed any help…nice thought but not the correct response. Unfortunately, after he heard his buddy’s saga, he was unable to locate his cow. Again, we used valuable hunting time looking for a cow that should have been recovered instantly. Those were the only living elk seen that trip.

Two days later I was hunting in the same general area, and I could smell a dead animal. I started a search pattern across the hillside and had not gone far when I discovered a deceased cow elk under a blown-down tree. In just a couple of days it had been found and fed on by coyotes and a black bear. The shooter walked up as I examined the cow and harvested only the eye teeth as jewelry as the meat was spoiled.

These were two hunts I’d like to forget! <