Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters The Greatest hunter,

sounds like an incredible man

Dersu would be right up there for me!

Reading Francis Sell made me think a lot. Never a bad thing.

That's the truth. The guys I've known in this part of the world that consistently take big deer on public land are beasts. They're on the ground putting in the miles year round to make it happen.

Chuck Adams...

I'll throw some of my favorites into the ring:

Meshack Browning -- At one point he was allied with a pack of wolves that aided him in his deer hunts. This guy's idea of fun was lauching himself onto the back of a large buck or black bear and going one-on-one with a knife.

Phillip Tome -- live-caught elk and brought them back to town for display

Fredrick Gerstacker -- Landed in NYC and walked all the way to Arkansas, hunting on the way.

If you are not familiar with them, then I suggest that you look up these names on Amazon and elsewhere and acquire their autobiographies.

Ernst Koeppe-- He was my dad's mother's older brother. He was the hunter-in-chief for a district in the Black Forest. Of the family, he's the best hunter I know. Dad hunted with him once-- was able to call up a stag from hundreds of meters away with an antler whistle.

This.

Have known a few of this type over the years.

> Montana creek < as always you seem to be wrong again and just to negative! this marine with a couple of others did help Carlos alot in Viet Nam,how would you know ? these certain Marines were assigned to lead him out in North Viet Nam and to either wait or go back and bring him back later ,these marines were known as the good guys by Carlos. maybe read one of Carlos`s books and learn something and try and be a little more positive ,you make Montana residents look bad with your negative comments. the words you need to use should be more positive and helpful we do have younger people reading and trying to learn things on 24 hr. campfire . >>>> so if you don`t have anything positive to post just don`t post its that simple. have a nice day,Pete53

When I think about the "best" hunters, I look at the flint arrowheads and spear points we find every year in the very same fields where I hunt. That these people fed themselves and their families with rocks tied to sticks is pretty mind-blowing. The same could be said for the Bushmen or any other indigenous hunters.

I grew up on the Florida coast in a town that was a destination for offshore fishing-- I walked into a men's store one day that was filled with mounts, including three Cape buffalo bulls. I didn't know what they were but I knew that I wanted to hunt one. From that day forward, I was not a fisherman, I was a hunter.

I've known some hunters who were notable killers of game and some who were more notable for their affinity with the game. Some were fellow gun loonies while others barely knew which end to load.
One fellow who had to be a pretty good hunter was a rancher/hunter/trapper who lived up the North Thompson river. Now, Lude wasn't just a skilled hunter and trapper, he was, in the old mountain man tradition, also a great storyteller and one could help but wonder if some stories didn't gain a little in the telling. One such story recounted the time he had put a rope on a grizzly and the extreme difficulty of trying to get the rope back. It was a great story and well told but I couldn't help but think it was less than credible. It was maybe five or six years later that I was working on an old Savage for an old cowboy and talking with him while I worked. He asked where I lived and I told him.
"Say", he said, "Do you know a guy up there; name of Lude Proulx?" I said yes, I knew him very well.
"We rode together back in the thirties. By Jesus. I'll never forget the time he rode down and roped a grizzly bear! You want to see a rodeo? You want to see a guy trying to shake that rope off a mad bear!"
Another story involved the shooting of a deer on a bench across a creek. Lude was shooting his Model 64 25/35 and shot this three point buck on the other side of the little valley. I was well acquainted with the spot since I hunted it often. The shot he took was a good 350 yards. Anyway, he said the deer dropped right there, into the foot of snow on the ground, and he set off to retrieve it. The 350 yards, as the bullet flies, was closer to a mile once he had made his way down to the creek (probably six hundred feet or so) and climbed up the other side. The foot of fluffy snow made the going almost silent and Lude said he was going slow, looking for the buck, when he saw him, curled up, and just a bit closer than he expected.
"I slid up close and reached down to grab an antler", he said. "when I grbbed on and pulled his head back to cut his throat, that buck just exploded up and the fight was on! We went 'round and 'round. I was stabbing at him with my knife and he was stbbing at me with his horns. At one point, we broke apart and that buck and I both sat back on our haunches just glarin' at each other. Then we jumped back into it! Finally, I managed to get the upper hand a got his throat cut. I was pretty beat up and a little stiff and sore whilst gutting that deer. When I got the job done, I stood up and took a little walk around just to loosen up a bit. I stepped over a log and looked up ahead and there was a deer! Just layin' their with his feet stickin' right up in the air. It was the buck I had shot!"
Quite a story. I spent a fair bit of time with Lude and he had a wealth of knowledge of the country and the wildlife it held.
Another guy was a dedicated cougar hunter who was also a serious muledeer hunter. He confessed to occasionally killing an extra cat or two. He said that made up for the extra mule deer. He was a tough guy who seemed impervious to the weather and could walk forever. He once chased a cat too far and got caught out when an arctic front rolled in. He spent the night in a hole in the snow; cuddled up with his hound and the dead cougar. He was wearing jeans and a quilted flannel shirt. He said he didn't know who was shivering harder, he or the hound. He could go into an area which was new to him and instinctivly know where to find the big buck or bull.
I've gotten to know a lot of real hunters in my work as a gunsmith. I also gotten to know some very accomplished outdoorsmen whose hunting was just part of their experience. All could teach me a lot. GD

Larry Kohler and Francis Sell, Don Zutz amoung those already mentioned.

Corbett. One gets pretty well tuned up when the quarry is hunting you.

We do not have the mix of species found in the India's highlands, but Corbett could pretty well read the going's on in his immediate environment by simply listening.

Man-Eaters of Kumaon, 1944, Jim Corbett

As a kid, reading Jack O'Connor and watching The American Sportsman with Curt Gowdy.

I don't agree with Blackheart very often but he hit this on the head as well as Beaver 10. Elmer is and was a favorite as well as Hagel ,Sell and Whelen. These days just about anything JB writes, Wayne Van Zwol, and John Havalind simply because John H mentors a lot of people as well as taking other peoples kids hunting, that shines. MB

He’s probably not the greatest but at least the most interesting to me. My dad has a great uncle whose wife died in childbirth with their first kid when he was in his early 20s in the late 1910s. He leased out his farm and moved to the river bottom and basically hunted and fished every day for the next 50 years.

My Grandfather. Well, he, turns out, not really was my grandfather, but I disgress. I knew him to be my grandfather my whole life. A forester in the Harz mountains. When I took up hunting he told me many wise things.

Things I, of course did not listen to. Let me give you an example. Granddad would say: "I used a 4x power scope my whole life. What you can not shot with that, is either to fast, to far away or its to dark." (His was a 4x32 Zeiss with German #1 reticle).

Lets just say, I paid a lot of bucks to prove his point. ;-)

The question is: “The greatest hunter, Who living, dead otherwise served as your inspiration to learn all you can and apply this skill to hunt Big Game.”

To that, it would be Chuck Adams for me. That’s who I was reading at the time I decided to get back into hunting.

In the years since I’ve learned that hunters with a lot of big animals often have better opportunity rather than better skill. Though not always...

I used to get every CD from a couple different hunters, and one day I was watching an episode where they took a kid out for an afternoon deer hunt. Passed on many great bucks and then finally chose to shoot a real nice deer. It was literally child’s play to pick and shoot a deer bigger than I’d ever even seen in years of hunting public lands or small, heavily hunted woods. I never bought another CD. I could never relate to their situation again. So when I see hunters who can reliably make it happen on heavily hunted public lands, I have a great respect for their skills and pay attention to them.

Again you are wrong in every way. I never said Carlos didn't work with other Marines! Reading is not your friend I see. Again let me say this really sloooowwww for you there are no F_cking soldiers in the Marine Corps! If you are in the Marine Corps you are either a Marine or a Navy Corpsmen.

Under the OP's guidelines for me it would be three guys

Fred Bear
Nash Buckingham
Chuck Adams

You can clearly see what my love of hunting is based around! Archery and Shotgunning.

Though I know they may not be the greatest (which is mostly subjective) they impacted me and hunting the most.

My Grandfather.He hunted with a Model 92 32/20.He killed deer,bear,moose in Ontario and anything that lived in the UP with it.He was 5'6" tall and 140 pounds .I have seen him stalk big UP bucks for miles ,kill them with a head shot and drag them back to camp by himself.He killed for food and never bragged about what he shot.He lived in Lake Linden in the UP.At his funeral he got the ultimate complement .A wreath was placed on his coffin by his Minister and friends.It read Freddy "A good man in the woods."