Dave Dolbee, Assoc. Editor
"After two full days of air travel, a motel stay, meeting my outfitter to make the five hour drive to base camp, and a short floatplane ride into spike camp, my Newfoundland woodland caribou hunt finally began.

"I wanted to see a lot of the country, so I requested a guide who liked to walk. I've since learned to be more careful about what I ask for.

"We hunted hard throughout a long first day without spotting a stag big enough to justify taking. While closing in on a nice stag half way through the second day, not paying attention to where I was walking, I slipped into a bog and pulled a groin muscle. We continued hiking up and down hills, around tundra and bogs to the tune of 10 to 12 miles a day, with me hobbling painfully behind my guide.

"A hurricane arrived the fourth day, forcing us to sit it out inside the cabin. Being the only bowhunter in camp, and the only hunter not to have filled his tag, made for a rough day; more wind blowing inside the cabin than out.

"The following morning the wind still howled, so we stayed in camp, setting up a spotting scope to watch the tundra across the lake. At about noon, my guide spotted a good 'bou with a large herd of cows. We were afraid that if we took the boat across the rough water, we wouldn't be able to land it, so we grabbed our gear and started a two-hour hike around the lake to reach them.

"Once in the area, it took about 40 minutes to locate the herd again. I started my stalk from 150 yards out, crawling under falling rain and through cold puddles of water. I was 80 yards from the big stag when he stood to fend off a satellite bull bothering his cows, chasing him away, with the cows following. Sometime later the situation repeated itself, undoing another hour of careful stalking.

"I'd been stalking the big stag for four hours.

Bad weather nearly foiled him, but Dave Dolbee used a blustery last day to overcome the odds on his first Newfoundland caribou hunt.

"I stalked in again, seeing antler tops at 40 yards, the stag bedded in a slight depression with 16 cows and two satellite bulls scattered around him. I lay shivering for 30 minutes, waiting for the big stag to stand, contemplating taking one of the smaller stags I could easily see, just so I could get back to the cabin and get warm. One of the satellite bulls finally began stirring things up again. I got up on my knees behind a small bush, ready. When the stag rose, quartering away, I held two feet off his nose into a 55-mph wind and released. The arrow hit him just back of the liver and exited through the heart and lung on the far side.

"Upon reaching the downed stag we realized he was an old bull in decline, with only one good antler. While not my biggest woodland caribou, he certainly was my hardest won."

Jay Strangis, Editor
"I bowhunted deer probably five or six years in Minnesota and Wisconsin, taking a lot of does and baby bucks, but never a buck that claimed forked antlers. I had a lot of interaction with deer, saw plenty of them, but really didn't know how to bowhunt them effectively. That was in the 1970s when not a lot was being written about archery hunting.

I was in my early 20s, owned no tree stands, hunted with a recurve bow, and did all my hunting from the ground. I didn't even own camouflage clothing. I wore a green surplus army parka that reached to my knees; it reversed to white, so I'd turn it inside out when there was snow on the ground. I had close calls with big bucks, but just couldn't kill one. After several years of making every mistake possible I was becoming frustrated.

"I was hunting big groups of deer feeding in field edges of picked corn and soybeans. The deer would come out into the fields to feed, decent bucks normally trailing well behind the herds of does. I had hunted through October and November without filling my tag.

"Around the first of December it had turned unusually cold, with about a foot of snow on the ground. I'd found a place where deer were filing out of a creek bottom to reach a picked soybean field. I climbed into a tree for the first time ever while hunting and perched on a limb. The deer came as planned. At the end of a long file of does and spikes was a six point, but it was so cold, and I had on so many clothes, I wasn't able to get a shot off.

A young Jay Strangis spent almost six years trying to arrow his first whitetail buck. The deer wasn't big, but the event was huge.

"After they passed I climbed out of the tree and ran around the quarter section field and got into a brushy fence line at the field edge. All the deer were slowly feeding my way. About sundown, as I knelt shivering in the snow next to a weedy fence post, the buck finally got close enough for a decent shot.

"I hit the buck too far back and he bolted and ran toward me and across the same fence I was hiding behind. I was panicked because he was headed straight toward some newly-built homes. I didn't know enough to wait, plodding through the snow following his tracks immediately. After a while I could see the buck ahead of me. He was slowing down gradually, obviously hurt, but getting closer to the houses. I just ran up to him. He was hurt enough that he stood and I put another arrow in him and finished him off.

"After all my mistakes and unconventional way of hunting, I had finally killed an antlered buck. I can't remember ever feeling so satisfied, so proud of myself. He was only a young six point, but a real milestone for me. He was my first buck with a bow."

Randy Ulmer, Full Draw
"Alaska's Chugach Mountains are some of the state's roughest, laced with glaciers, diced by deep chasms where anything not made of solid rock or ice is covered in devil's club and alder jungle.

"In early August my guide and I started my Dall sheep hunt, backpacking 12 miles while carrying 80-pound packs with enough food for 10 or 12 days. Three thousand to 4,000 vertical feet separated river bottoms from sheep country.

"The entire hunt was simultaneously wet, cold, miserable, frustrating, exhausting and frightening. I was mentally and physically prepared to handle all that. I had a tougher time with my guide's attitude. I've met rattlesnakes I'd rather share a tent with.

"We located the first legal ram several days into the hunt. He was huge, with horns past full curl. He was bedded in a large boulder field--a good place to stalk. My guide refused to let me go after him. He insisted that we watch him to see what he would do. I insisted we go after him.

"My guide refused to budge.

"A heated discussion followed, my guide pointing out a dozen times that he was the guide and in charge of all decisions and there was no room for discussion.

Randy Ulmer's guide declared the hunt over, but the determined hunter hiked 10 hours back to recover this cliff-fallen ram.

"He wanted to hike back down the mountain and glass for sheep from the river--where life was infinitely more comfortable--wait for sheep to 'come down.' It was obvious my guide was tired of being on the mountain.

"We camped near the river day after day with thin hope of seeing a sheep. With two days left in what I believed was my last Dall sheep hunt, I told my guide I was going up the mountain with or without him.

"After struggling up the mountain for a day we spent the night under a huge overhanging boulder. I climbed farther into sheep country the next morning and spotted a ram a half-mile away. I spent the rest of the day attempting different approaches, getting cliffed-up repeatedly, and having to back out. I finally found a knife-edge ridge--scooting on my rear much of the time--taking me directly above him. The wind was blowing so hard I had to wait.

"The shot would be straight across a chasm that was funneling the wind. The ram had been bedded four hours. I knew he could vanish at any time. When I shot him he disappeared over a bluff with a 500-foot cliff beyond.

"Darkness sent us back to the bottom. The next day we climbed back up to where the ram had disappeared and found blood trailing off the nasty cliff but we weren't able to see the ram. By bellying to the very edge of the cliff I spotted a patch of white hair on a ledge well below. I was convinced the ram was dead.

"We returned to the bottom, packed our gear, and hiked down the drainage to the side canyon leading to the basin at the base of the cliff.

"We were within spitting distance of the cliffs when my guide refused to go any farther and look for the ram, stating that the time I had paid him for was up and the hunt was officially over. Before I could protest he bee-lined to camp. I didn't have gear to stay. With not a single word exchanged I grudgingly followed to camp, loaded my pack, and made the 10-hour trip to the vehicle and parted ways.

"I found a young outdoor enthusiast with a car who offered to take me to the store and buy provisions, then hike back in. Soon we were beginning the long, painful climb back up to claim my sheep. I've never been so utterly and mentally exhausted in my life. It's the hardest thing I've done in my hunting career, struggling down the mountain with my sheep 14 days after my hunt began."