The river I fish for steelhead, trout etc has a Forest Service cabin at the outlet to salt.

Anyway, I'm all alone fishing a little bar in the river and a couple with their 10 year old son appear. A float plane dropped them off at the cabin the day before.

They then proceed to flank me, the man and son on one side and the wife on the other side of me. Maybe 10 feet seperating us. Of course there is 2 miles of river behind me and not another soul within 30 miles, but they have to setup 'camp' right next to me.

Come to find out they are from Georgia. The man said he saw a sign at the cabin that read "Boil all water for 5 minutes before drinking." He asked me if I thought that was necessary. I told him yes and that there were beavers in the lake and river. He then says "I've drank from other streams the last time I was in Alaska a few years ago without any problems." To which I replied, "Then WTF did you ask me?"

I still wonder if he spent the next 6 days [bleep] through a straw waiting for the plane to pick them up.

Good times.....

Here's one I'll never forget.

We were trailing a bunch of cattle down a county/gravel road towards a holding pasture a few miles away. The herd was strung out about a mile long when a pick-up full of 'outta staters' pulls up. My old man let em know it would be fine to putt along through the cows and be on their way.

"Oh no, we're in too big a hurry for that B.S." the driver replies.
So he just pulls off the road down into the pasture and floors it. They made it a couple hundred yards before they hit a 3 foot creekbed/washout doing about 30 mph.
The idiots managed to knock the front axle clean off the truck and there they sat cussin' and bitchin' like a bunch of little kids.

My dad stills laughs about it....

That story reminds me of a traffic stop I witnessed a while back. The bad guy saw the tow truck coming and knew the gig was up (he had a pickup full of stolen stuff) so he took off. It was a short chase when he shot through the highway fence in his mighty 4x4 (lifted), thinking he'd leave the Crown Vics in the dust. He took out a second fence bordering a large field and then floored it out across the field. Being a looser from the big city, he didn't know how to interpret a grassy strip dividing a freshly mowed field. He hit a large irrigation ditch while still hard on the gas. His pickup bounced through the ditch like a bucking bronco (it was a Chevy) then came to rest, permanently nose down. He totalled his pickup and sustained injuries consistent with such an experience.

Just happened last week. Couple guys from Kalifornia, fully camoed, stopped me in front of my house whilst I was walking the dog, "Is this the way you get to the big road above town?" they asked. (There isn't really any such road.) "Do you mean the bypass?" I finally inquired, after staggering through a semi-incoherent discussion. "OH, yeah, that's the one."

"Well," I said, "You go seven miles back down this highway, through the first stoplight, then turn left on Third Avenue."

Getting lost on the paved road system sorta takes them out of the threat-to-the-bear-population category ...

DN

Muledeer
You shoulda told them to drive over to the airport and then take a left...

Hot off the press:

This afternoon during the last hour of hunting light I'm setup to hopefully ambush a decent little muley buck I saw at the same time and location yesterday. My rig is parked at the entrance to an old skid road so it's obvious that someone's hunting in this drainage. Twenty minutes after I get set up a Suburban comes crawling down this road with a woman yelling out the window for her dog. She yells going up the road, then coming back too. She's parked by my pickup when I return (early rather than after dark). She asks "have you seen a Springer Spaniel?" I told her "No, but I heard you yelling," and kept walking to my pickup. I found out later that she'd talked to my wife (sitting in the truck) and asked if I was hunting in the blind she saw set up. SO, she knew there were two hunters in that drainage during the peak evening hunting hour.

Best part is the Suburban's windows are advertising her husband's business-------custom meat cutting. You'd think they'd care about how much the local hunters hate them. I can understand wanting to locate the family pooch, but how about waiting until after legal shooting hours to yell her head off, or better yet, leave a scent filled shirt and water dish where the dog was last seen and call it a day. While hiking back to my rig PO'd the this thread popped into my head.

An excavation company I worked for built a subdivision close to Seward in the 80's. We finished the project in early August but had to go back to rebuild a couple of spots the first week of October. The clouds burst, drenching the east side of the Kenai with 11 inches of rain overnight. Took two days to complete repairs. The storm caused the rivers to rise and take out three of the bridges at the lower levels closer to town. Things were a royal mess.

After completing the repairs on the subdivision, I hired myself (had dozer...would travel ) out to the bridge company that came over to rebuild. On this one site, I was building the approaches to said bridge and had a fleet of Kodiak quarry trucks hauling material to me. Electric and telephone utilities for these areas had been mostly restored for a time, yet were only temporary. One of the drivers (Packer fan...wore the shirt, jacket and hat! )had just dumped his load and headed off, dump bed up. I jumped off the dozer and ran in front of him waving my arms. He stopped 5 feet short of taking out the temporary, 50 pair telephone cable that had been hoisted overhead days before. He thanked me and, after lowering his bed, took off for another load.

There were many things that needed done that day. Later, I espied one of the surveyors walking over to me; he was shaking his head from side to side . "We need to bring the approach back over 4 feet...the radius is too tight," he exclaimed. While chatting with him and contemplating the extra work bringing the road bed back out of the creek, I looked up just in time to witness our Packer fan's bed snag the line and pull it down... thus taking out the service for the west end of the area for the second in a week. Didn't see the green and yellow on the job after that...

bhtr

My story involved three reloading of a semi auto deer gun and damned near got me killed from the spray and pray.

Twern't at all funny.

Got zero time for DBDSer's, DSMFer's or Clueless Halfwits...........

Had a guy walk up to me as I was getting my stuff together at my truck before going into the woods during rifle season.We chit chatted while I got ready.I was kneeling down to tie my boot laces.When I looked up I was staring into the muzzle.I pushed the rifle aside and began cussing this guy out.Dont worry he said.See.....the safety is on.I guess getting cussed out once wasnt enough for this idiot.

Had a fella unbeknownst to myself, my uncles, or my cousins set-up shop on the backside of the ridge the youngest of the bunch of us (at the time, IIRC, he was 10) had been staked out on. Said cousins propensity for walkin' around a bunch was a problem, and that just made later matters worse.

From sun-up to noon, the SOB musta fired at least a box and a half, maybe two boxes of .270s (as we discovered later). At first, we figured it might have been said cousin.... it weren't.

About noon-ish, all of us met up for grub, and up the ridge comes the DSMFer (fortunately for him JUST after said lil' cousin). Asked if he heard all the shooting, he says, "No. But I shot some..." Asked then what he got, and he says "nothing". "So, what were you shooting at?"

DSMFer replies "Well, I got off some good 'sound shots'." Huh? "Sound shots", it would appear, are de rigeur in PA where DSMFer is from, and they are just shots into the brush where a sound like a deer .... or something.... is heard.

He never could understand how lucky he was to only be marched out at rifle point about 2.5 miles to the local check-station and picked up by the warden. If lil' cousin had been late, DSMFer would certainly have been in a huge hurt locker....

Place I hunted ONCE in Arkansas was a family gathering of sorts for a pards family. Had a cousin that lived back in the hollow after turning his back on Chicago and deciding there had to be a better way to raise his kids. Am thinking he did right by them though the teenage girl was a typical teenage girl.

Said family had a cousin that hailed from the big D and I'm sure he was not representative of Texas or this particular family, he was just an abberation on both counts.

He loved to tote his single action 22. mag along in a gunfighter holster on the deer drives.

It does get just a bit brushy in that part of Arkansas, guess why they took to driving deer.

Pretty good hill and 3-4 of them were sidehilling it trying to push deer to a power line where the rest of the clan was ready to unleash hellfire upon whatever poor deer ran ahead of these guys.

They heard a crack, and then a whizz..boom, whizzz.boom, whizz boom.

They started hollering HEY what the hail are you shooting at them bullets is buzzing right over our heads?

Turns out gunslinger had caught the hammmer on some brush pulled it back far enough as he was struggling free to set off the live one in the chamber, it traveled down by his leg creased his foot as it took out the welt that is the edge of the sole of his boot!

Evidently his momma didn't raise no fool, when fired upon return fire, he seriously thought his cousins or someone had shot him so he was returning the favor in the direction he assumed the bullet must have came from.

took one of the other relatives to piece together just what had happened when he saw the bullet hole in his boot sole, the apparent angle of entry and asked to take a look at his new fangled sidearm.

he tried to tell them no he kept an empty shell under the hammer, but they said you could still smell gunsmoke faintly in the barrel and he looked like the cat that ate the canary when busted with his foolishness.

Only thing I don't understand is why they didn't just shoot him then with his .22 and write it off as a hunting accident.

Prolly if they knew all the other stunts he would pull over the years they would have. But to my recollection that one was pretty well #1 with a bullet.

A pard, now retired, worked summers for USF&W here on the Kenai. As he was homing from some campground work out Swanson River, he saw this dude in sports jacket and low oxfords, stalking down the edge of the road, peering back into the brush, .44 Mag in hand.

A bit of conversation determined it was some ottastater oil field honcho, going out to "inspect" one of the drill sites, and he'd "seen a moose cross the road".

A bit of further conversation ensued in which was passed along the info that, although it WAS moose season, one had certain regulations to abide by before shooting a moose.

As they parted, said dude asked "Say, just how do you tell a spike from a cow, anyway?"

A guy I knew once got into handguns after graduating from high school.When he would go hunting w/a rifle or shotgun he would always carry a pistol but instead of a holster he would tuck it into the front of his pants...right around his buckle.He really thought he was the cat's meow.One day while reaching for his revolver... as he reached down to get it he pushed it far enough down to move the hammer back before withdrawing it.Yes it went off inside his pants barely missing the head of his tool then entering the upper inside left thigh coming out behind the left knee-re-entering the left calf out the front of his shin and into his foot.How he kept from crippling himself is a wonder to me but the bullet did not hit any bones until it reached his foot.Needless to say his John Wayne days were over.Never was a bright guy to begin with in my opinion! powdr

Back when I was 19 I broke my back on a dirt bike and spent a week in the hospital. The guy next to me was in because he was out jacking deer at night and kept his 22 mag. under the seat of his truck. When he pulled it out it went off and got him in the ankle. What a nasty hole.
I might be some Alaskan's favorite DSMF as one who was "lower fourty eight'en" visiting a friend was so low on cash he had to work along the way back to Alaska to pay for gas and such. His clutch on his van went out near where I lived. I picked him up during a sub zero run of weather. Felt sorry for the guy so put a clutch in his van for him for nothing working outside on the ground in like ten below and sent him on his way.

When I was younger working down at the Beach Boardwalk, Monterey Bay used to throw the tourist for a loop.



As you can see, when standing in Santa Cruz looking out toward sea, you look to the south at Monterey. Most tourist assume they are looking west when they look out to sea.

I once had a tourist ask me if the ocean was a lake. When I told them it was the ocean, they told me BS!, I can see across it.

One lady told me she thought they were looking across Lake Tahoe (250 miles to the east); but the classic was when a smart ass I worked with told a tourist when the atmospheric conditions were just right, you can see Hawaii...yep, they bought it.

Which must have made for some great looking sunsets, to the north.

Not much needs to be said here other than, "if your not going to unlock your tailgate, that schitt's gonna happen.

A guy has just got to feel dumb sitting way up there.

Alright since MOST Alaskans are transplants....let's hear what was the dumbest thing y'all did once you got to the last frontier!

Mike

Steelie we have a racially insensitive term for that kind of fishing here in GA which I'm sure you probably heard while in FL.

I certainly wouldn't have minded popping a few shots into the water in front of where they were fishing or shooting imaginary birds...that usually moves them right along

Mike

Spent a year in Bethel for a few days...

It must really be that bad!

Mike

Have been asked many times about the elevation of Kodiak while people were sitting on the boat, on the ocean...

Well, we are pretty low-down, most of the time!

There have been a batch of DSMF's bear hunting at the end of my driveway for the last 4 days. No [bleep]....

I wave with a grin, everytime I have to run to the store....

One thing about people: if they think they're having fun, they are.

I resemble that!

I guess he is guiding in a new area..............grin

"One thing about people: if they think they're having fun, they are. "
__________

You are too right._______________

LOL...

"I guess he is guiding in a new area.............."

That is some funny stuff if I am catching the drift!

I had a professor (note the small p) from Ill (formerly texas...note the small t) tell me about scopes once....

Since this seems open to anybody one of the best ones I know happened this way. The state was puting in a bridge over Boggy creek when Unk Abe rode up on a mule to look at it.

The state boys thought they would have some fun so they asked him if he thought the bridge was high enough.

He said, "Boss, I don't know but I have seed water through the fork of that tree," pointing to a tree about two feet over the bridge.

They all had a big hee-haw and the engineers told him they had studied the creek and it couldn't carry that much water because there wasn't enough drainage.

Six months later water went through the fork of that tree again and they lost the dump at both ends of the bridge.

Moral of the story is, sometimes it pays to listen to folks that live there.

BCR

a person can't fathom the dsmf'rs I had on the boat today. Simply Amazing.

I probably can, but give me a taste.

I'd be willing to bet even their underwear was camo.....

And then came story of how after "hunting hard" they took a 3 foot bear (cub). (actually, they said it was less than 3ft squared) Then they told me they were only 8ft away from the bear and shot it twice with a 30-378, blowing a hole the size of a football in it. Apparently it wasn't dead after the first shot from 8ft..

unfortunately i'm not kidding or exaggerating

Where were they from? Did they go fishing today?

I ran a charter today. Missouri.

Three foot might not make it into the realm of adulthood and might invite a legal summons, no? Had it been sealed yet?

You think this year's cub would make 3 foot?

I asked them if it was legal, and they claimed their was no minimum size limit for bear.. I'm sure they'll get a surprise when it's taken in to be sealed.

No size, but there is an age requirement.

anyways, I was thinking of this thread as I was listening to stories of boone and crockett whitetails and 3ft bears.

Better you than me brother........

Chamces are a cub would not make three foot but a two-year-old would be bigger than that and the main kicker... They ain't going to lie and call it smaller than it was... But the reverse is far from true...

the extra loot from bear hunter charters will be promptly invested in stock symbol: TSX and MCM

it ain't that bad..

Figure it is a 1 1/2 year old bear, which is about right for a 3 footer. I hear ya, if it is a bit smaller or mom had a fat tit they might have some issues....

Speaking of B&C whitetails and three-foot bears... Had an expert talking about all the big bucks he shoots for days. Finally shot a deer from the boat (legal) and cutting to the chase needed to gut it.

After a LOT of hemming and hawing ("Kilt a ton o' WT, but I never even seen a blacktail before!") he knelt in the snow and made a neat little transverse cut right across and just in front of the penis sheath... Maybe 6" wide...

Bikini cut?

Exactly!

beat me to it

Ran across a pick-up parked along side the road in the wee hours of antelope opener a few years ago. As I pulled up I noticed the Wisconson plates about the same time he jumped out of the cab and flagged me down. Turns out he was lost and was looking for a Block Management Area a few miles away. As luck would have it this area bordered the ranch I was hunting so I told him to follow me and I'd stop by the sign in box so he'd know where to start. We get to the box and he gets out to walk in and I hear dogs barking so I ask him what kind of dogs he has with, he says he brought his GSP's with to do a little bird hunting after he tags out. I wished him luck and took off for the area I was planning to hunt. A few minutes later I pulled my truck up to a hilltop that overlooks both the BMA and part of the ranch and started glassing -- and listening to this guy's dogs bark and bark and ... An hour or so later I see the guy walking along when all of a sudden he drops to his belly and starts shooting - frantically. I, for the life of me can't figure out what he's shooting at until I spot a coyote running along a hillside with rounds kicking up dirt around him -- has to be 400 yds+ from this guy. Figured he must not like coyotes and forgot about it until I ran into him across the fence on the ranch I was hunting a few hours later. Told him he must have gotten turned around being he was no longer on the BMA and asked if he'd seen any antelope (they were all over the place) he said, "yup, emptied my gun on a nice one this morning but never touched him. I think it mighta got knocked off on the trip out." Not really knowing what to say to that I just nodded and showed him back to the BMA. Didn't see him again but I often wonder how one mistakes a coyote for an antelope.

While elk hunting several years ago, I notice a guy standing in a pull out on a mountain road trailhead. The guy was holding a rifle, but with no vehicle around I thought maybe he needed help.

I pulled over and asked the guy who was dressed in cowboy boots, a nine and a half gallon hat, and even had a leather Matt Dillon vest on, if he needed help. He said, "Nope, I'm hunting" I thought this seemed more than a little strange, since most guys actually get out of the parking lot to hunt.

He pointed to the ground and said a herd of elk had just been thru this area in the last couple of days and he expected them back soon. I looked at the ground and noticed shod horse tracks and a few deer tracks in the dirt.

Things started to get weird at that point...

I made the mistake of asking if he had heard any bulging? "No, the Fish and Game depatment had changed the rut to a month earlier and all the elk were done breeding by early August" according to him, since he had come out from Pennsylvania a couple weeks early to scout and that is what he had figured out.

I commented on what he was shooting. "45/70" was the answer. He had started out wiht a .270 several years ago, and it wasn't enough for elk, so he bought a 300 WBY mag and it wasn't enough either. The 45/70 was real elk medicine from his experience. When I asked about the elk he had killed with the little calibers he kinda himmed and hawed and admitted he had shot at running cow in almost this exact spot two years ago. "The .300 didn't even slow her down!" he said. I didn't even mention that there hadn't been a cow season for many years in that area, I just wished him luck and drove on.

Weirdest Sum Bitch I've ever run into.

I've got two of them, here's one;

Was elk hunting about six years ago north of New Meadows, ID. Walking out on a gated logging road about 1100 one morning when I came around a curve and spotted another hunter coming up the road. I stepped off on the high side into the brush a bit and waited for him to pass. Well, when he got close enough, I notice he's got his rifle at port arms, he's taking one step at a time like he's marching in slow motion, stopping and looking 360 degrees and then taking another step. He's decked out in a complete set of that wool camo that Cabela's had just brought out. Spendy stuff in those days. BTW, Idaho does not require hunter orange. Too much for me, so I step out so he can see me and wait for him to get to me. BTW, he doesn't change his tactic for the 30 or so steps it takes for him to get to me. "Huntin elk?" "Yep." "Seen any cows?" "Yep", I says, "but they're not legal in this area." "Nope, they're legal; I've got a tag", he says. "Might want to check with the Rangers in New Meadows for a map", I says. "Already have", he says, and promptly pulls out a Forest service map with his cow area highlighted. "Mmm, that's nice", I says, "But, you're not there. That area is EAST of this US Highway 95, and you're WEST of it about three miles." "Are you sure?", he says. "Yep, and why don't you walk back out with me so you can hunt in the right area?" "Nah, I like this area!" "Well", says me, "I'm headed to town to eat a burger with the Game Warden (I wasn't), so I'd suggest you'd oughta head on back out and hunt east of 95." On the way out I showed him visually the mountain he should be hunting on and even told him how to get to the road up the mountain. Strange, but true.

Sitting around the campfire that evening, one of my hunting buddies says to us all, "You wouldn't believe the loony I met this afternoon from CA. Was camo'ed up in that spendy wool camo and walking on the road at port arms. Jim, he was on that road just above the one you were on this morning."

Here's another:

I was stationed at Ft. Rucker, AL, circa 1976. Drove around and found a hunting club to hunt with. It was a small club with only about a dozen members. We ran dogs, as did everyone else. We had rights to a piece of land on the river of about 600 acres. Some of us also put a rifle in the truck because some weekends when we only had a few folks show up to hunt, we still hunted, rather than ran the dogs. It took about six hunters to make it work with dogs on that piece of swamp.

Well, this Sunday morning, only two other guys show up so we decide to still hunt. We meet back at the trucks about noon to go get a burger. One of the other two guys is a fairly new guy with the club (like me) and he is driving a newer Pontiac Grand Prix. He says his rifle is new and he hasn't sighted it in (gunsmith bore-sighted it when he mounted the scope) and would like to shoot it off the hood of his car to check the zero. Well, we're parked in a cut on the dirt road so there's an eight foot, almost vertical, red clay bank on one side. It's in a slight curve in the road so we can get about an eighty yard shot. It's a dirt/gravel road so we can hear if anyone's coming and the red clay bank will capture any bullets. Said guy pulls the GP sorta sideways on the side of the road and leans across the hood with the Remington 742, .30-06. Well, for those in the know, you'll remember that a GP of that vintage has a significant ridge down the hood with a chrome strip on top of it. Now that ridge was easy to see standing beside the cer, but invisible through the scope. Yep, you guessed it. First shot went right through the ridge at a right angle. "Whoa!", we says. "Crap," he says. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever done." After-which, he proceeds around the open driver's door on the GP (It was a pretty blue with white vinyl top, did I mention that earlier?)and, in disgust, throws the rifle into the car. And, yes it goes off again, promptly ending the life of one Turbo 400 transmission.

"Nope, I was wrong", he says, "That was the dumbest thing I've ever done", and starts walking to town. "Hey", we says, "Wanta ride to town?" "No!", he says.

Well we secured and safed the rifle, locked it in the car, noted the several quarts of transmission fluid draining on the ground, and then went back to hunting. The car was gone when we came out that night, and he never came back to hunt with us again.

This ain't an AK story, but it happened in Banff National Park, which tends to attract the same sort of DSMF's...

One fine August day I put my packrod, flybook, and a few odds & ends in a daypack and rode my mountain bike about 10 miles up the trail that runs on the north shore of Lake Minnewanka. Fished the outlet of one of the pretty creeks (Aylmer? IIRC) for a few hours, caught some nice cutts, then headed back. About half a mile from the parking lot/tourist lodge area the trail crosses a wide scree slope with a few scattered firs growing alongside the trail. In one of the trees was a family of three, a man & woman in their 30's and a kid about 10. At the base of the tree were two Bighorn ewes, looking up at them. There used to be a LOT of Bighorns around Minnewanka lodge, where they got plenty of handouts from the tourists. Anyway, I figured these folks must have climbed the tree to get a view of the big rams that hang out on the rimrock. But as I rode up to them, the man looked at me with eyes bugging out of his head. "Aren't you afraid of them?" he shouted in a distinctly down-South accent. I looked around to see if there was a griz I'd missed, perplexed, then realized they'd been 'treed' by the freeloading sheep! I tried to reassure them that the sheep wouldn't harm them, but they weren't having any, especially when they saw one of the sheep trot behind me hoping I'd drop a snack for her behind my bike. When I got down to the lodge I found a park ranger and suggested he might want to organize a rescue party for those poor folks in the tree.

lmao all good stories, but I particualarly enjoyed the

"treed by a sheep" story.