Second Chance Grizzly
50 Archery Magazine April/May 2007
I WAITED UNTIL I had finalized the hunt details and sent in my signed contract before calling him. I knew he would be excited for me but I also knew he would question the logic of spending a year and a half worth of truck payments on a hunt. We had discussed my future and my money management, or lack thereof, many times in my youth. Although he doesn’t comment about it now that I’m an adult, I know that dad still questions my decisions at times. He was really worried when I turned thirty, was still single, and was living in a cheap rental place with two other guys so I could spend all the money I made from guiding and working a full time job on hunting. That was nine years ago and although a lot has changed in my life, the one constant is that I still spend most of my time and money on hunting. When I called dad he was excited for me. We talked about how I used to dream of hunting in far away places since I was a young boy with a dog eared copy of Fred Bear’s Field Notes. Dad instilled in me a love for the outdoors and a respect for all animals. He felt a hunter should be able to recognize everything in the woods, not just the game he pursued. So I poured over bird books as well as field guides for trees, insects, flowers and everything else I could get my hands on. But what really fueled my thirst for adventure was the great writers and storytellers whose spoken and written words and pictures of animals, scenery
and people took me to amazing places. For me, a job at Bear Archery when I was a young man took me one step closer to the places and animals I dreamed of seeing. My job was working in the pro shop at the Fred Bear Museum under Frank Scott. Just working there and getting to look at and touch Fred’s trophies from all over the world left an unquenchable thirst for adventure. One of my jobs was to clean Fred’s museum mounts. I would dust the animals and clean the claws and noses with mineral oil. The huge claws on the grizzly mounts would always amaze me and I often daydreamed of seeing one of these huge bears in the wild some day. Here I was at thirtyeight, almost twenty years later, but I was finally going on my grizzly hunt. I had booked the hunt a year in advance and not a day went by that I wasn’t thinking about it. Finally the big day arrived and I was in a boat heading up the Unalakleet River in Alaska. Sadly enough, my adventure was just beginning when things started going south on me. The first warning flag popped up in my head when I found out my guide, although a nice guy, had never guided anyone before. I was his first client. This was a cause for concern in my book. Worse yet, was that he didn’t even know the area that well. Things continued on a downhill roll when on our first day the boat broke down. The second day, we had recreational campers set up near our “remote” hunt-
By Fred Eichler
ing area. On day three, things went from bad to worse when our second and last boat broke down. The engine overheated and we were drifting downriver towards camp. We drifted into a sweeper (a tree hanging in the water) and the boat swamped and went under the limb. It all happened in the blink of an eye. One second we were drifting, then we floated sideways into a tree and I was struggling for my life. The weather was cold and we were dressed for it. I had on heavy pants, long underwear, a sweatshirt, a jacket, gloves and waders. As the boat started to roll under the sweeper, my cameraman Mike Leonard jumped off the back of the boat and made it to shore. I was in the bow of the boat and didn’t. One second I was in the boat, the next I was in about twelve feet of water. My waders filled up instantly and my gloves and heavy clothing made swimming impossible. I lucked out and grabbed a tree
that was hanging down in the water. I managed to hand over hand my way under water to shore. We had gone down on a corner in the river where the water was deep. The deep section went out about ten feet from shore. Then there was shallow water only ankle to knee deep for twenty feet. Unfortunately the swift current kept me pressed along the shore and the deep water. Mike helped me out but I had swallowed too much water and spent the next few minutes puking water out of my stomach and lungs. Our guide was also soaked but managed to stay with the boat until it came to rest along a logjam. He crawled up on the logjam and out to shore. Almost immediately we were both shivering uncontrollably. My emergency gear and lighters were in my fanny pack going downstream. Mike fortunately had a lighter in his pocket and quickly started a fire for us. Even though I was cold and wet, I felt
Bruce Cull and author Fred Eichler.
Archery Magazine April/May 2007 51