Hunting With An Alaskan Legend

[Mark Audino]

Hunting has been a journey of personal discovery beyond the animals and experiencing the chase. Some of the people I have met along the way are permanently etched into my memory bank. An Alaskan guide, Art Fields, was famously known for his hunting wisdom and remote bushcraft. And I was headed to Kotzebue with a friend to hunt mountain grizzly, caribou, and moose with him. Art was a character of note. A really good guy, soft-spoken, but as tried and true and full of grit as any real man could be. He was an Eskimo.

Before he chartered us into the bush, we went to his home for supplies. The roof was covered in caribou antlers. Dozens of them.

If you didn’t get sick from turbulence flying into camp in his Super Cub, the smoke from his always-present cigar would do the trick. Thick and green, those stogies looked more like rolled-up Army blankets on fire. The Cub would fill up with thick smoke as he puffed away and turned passengers green, too. I managed to keep everything down.

The Noatak River had flooded a few days ahead of my trip and the raging torrent of water washed the camp and gear well out into the ocean. So, we flew to a spot high above a mountain valley to set up a spike camp. He could land the Cub on a dime and we set down where we had a commanding view of thousands of acres of an unspoiled animal kingdom.

He pointed to a stream well below our camp. Through the binos I could see the sluice box that he had set up to mine gold. He told me that whenever he needed extra money for a family wedding or medical procedure, he would tap that stream for a few nuggets. He wore one of the early Casio watches and my eyes popped out of my head when showed the watchband band to me. He had “upgraded” it by Supergluing several gold nuggets to it! There was gold in those hills for sure.

A year before the hunt, I had purchased a print of a mountain grizzly, framed it and hung it in my office. In a very surreal way, the mountain grizzly that I took was the real-life equivalent of the picture. Same wide-open terrain, same sky, same slope of the mountain, and an almost look-alike bear.

I popped my head out of the tent early one morning only to see about a thousand caribou feeling in the valley in front of me. With a pick of the litter, I took a double shovel. My friend took a moose and grizzly with one of Art’s guides in another part of his area. Art’s the white beard speaks of his wisdom and adventurous spirit. I’ll never forget the rich culture he represented and the privilege of hunting with such an Alaskan legend.

 

[Jeff SN]

Your a very lucky man to have hunted with Art! I have grown up on Art stories my whole life from RJ, a man that knew him very well. I think RJ was there the year of the flood. Days that will never come again. Thanks for posting this story, you pulled some heart strings for a few people!

 

[Mark Audino]

Wow, thanks for letting me know that you and others knew him. That hunt was a long time ago, but I remember the details as though it took place yesterday. A hunter-mentor of mine hunted with Art back in the days when polar bear hunting was legal there. Art would simply fly north and set down on the ice. On one such sortie, Art told me that he landed in Russian territory, but he was able to return without incident.

A couple other little side bars to the story of my hunt -- As we flew into camp, we spotted a good moose. Already dizzy from the cigar smoke, he dove in on it for a closer look, and I nearly lost it. But the moose was well over 60" and we knew it was a shooter to pursue. So, we flew to where the base camp had stood before the flood and unloaded me and my gear. He then flew my friend and his guide to a riverbank close to where the moose had been feeding in the hope that they could find it, judge it, and go after it the next day. Those guys unloaded and left all their gear except for a daypack and rifles for protection on the bank of the river and entered the bush to locate that bull. While they were glassing a grizzly bear happened upon their gear and chewed through everything. My friend had a spare pair of glasses in a case, and the bear perforated them. But the bear most preferred butter and jellybeans.

Art told us that he had floats on his plane one year and beached the Cub on the Noatak in front of the camp. A bear had his way with one of the floats overnight and tore holes into it. I kept thinking of mountain grizzly as being the smaller, more irritability-prone of the grizzly variants, but not strong enough to wreck a float. But I was later educated when Art showed me a monstrously big, tanned grizzly skin that covered his bed at home. It was almost brown bear sized rather than mountain grizzly sized. What's more, the bear that wore it had attempted to raid the camp, and his guide killed it with one shot to the throat with a .222. The Eskimos used that caliber to take many animals regardless of size.

 

[Jeff SN]

One of the funniest things about Art was what he liked to hunt most. He thought wading through the swamps shooting muskrats was the best. This is the guy that guided to, oh boy a ton of polar bears

 

[Mark Audino]

He guided a mentor of mine for polar bear, and I did not realize how prolifically he hunted them at the time. And there's something cultural about shooting muskrats! Reminds me of the Inuit. They are prolific wolverine hunters. All the fur trim around their hoods comes from wolverine.

 

[Jeff SN]

One short one. When RJ was around Art alot, most hunters would ask what should I pack for the hunt. You can understand the concern as it was just a tiny bit north of anything. Art would just say, bring lots of money! Doesnt weigh much, and its easy to pack!

 

[baxterb]

That is very cool. It reminds me of a friend who recently hunted Tanzania with an older PH. When I was visiting him and we chatted about the hunt, there were as many stories about the PH as the hunt itself. These characters add a special spice to hunts, and it's great to hear their stories.

 

[Mark Audino]

I totally agree and thank you. I guess that what inspired me, and I have many more such stories. I still have lots of hunting ahead of me, but I have been hunting internationally since 1974. I reflect every day on the PHs, guides, and hunting teams that helped me enjoy remarkable lifetime experiences and be successful. On the PH side, I shared a camp in Tanzania with PH Nicky Blunt, son of Commander Blunt, and author of the safari hunting classic, "Elephant". Nicky was a fine soft-spoken person, and great hunter. He shared stories of his father that were fascinating. I have the book, and it seems to come alive when I think of Nicky.

 

[PARA45]

@Mark Audino, that is a wonderful story. No one can take away memories like those. Keep them coming, I'm sure I'm not alone when I say we want to hear more.

 

[VertigoBE]

Thank you very much for sharing this story with us Mark, I hope you will share many more.

 

[Mark Audino]

Thanks, gentlemen. Loads of short recollections coming your way in the weeks ahead.