NDR - the hard part of my job...

Ray

Ray

Well-known member
...is the commute home at times...
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Headwaters of the Skwentna River a day after major flooding across the Alaska Range.

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Headwaters of the Hayes river with the Hayes glacier way in the back.

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Remmington of Rainy Pass Lodge being polite while waiting for you to throw the stick.

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Bucky Winkley's museum at his home in Rainy Pass. This is the scattergun wall, but is missing a dozen other smooth bores. One of which is 8 feet long and weighs 15 pounds. Missing from this collection is a punt gun and anything over 3 gauge. He has shells for larger guns but not the guns themselves. But who needs a three gauge when you have all those blunderbuss'?

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A stunning coach gun.
 
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This is the only ram Bucky Winkley has taken for himself. He has guided over 80 rams in 50 plus years of Alaska guiding. One of his customers talked him into getting his horns mounted and Bucky wanted one more representative of his lifestyle.



One of the rams in the Rainy Pass Hunter's Lodge. Well past the full curl minimum.



Same ram from the front.



Another corner of Bucky's living room. That is a Russian copy of a WWI Maxim machine gun. I didn't ask about the skull on the left.
 
I just saw Bucky on TV last night , looks like a cool guy who has seen it all, neat place!!

The show was on Discovery called "The Hunt" shot on Kodiak hunting bears.
 
I just saw Bucky on TV last night , looks like a cool guy who has seen it all, neat place!!

The show was on Discovery called "The Hunt" shot on Kodiak hunting bears.
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I watched the same show. His clients would seriously piss me off if I were hunting with them. Bucky seems like he's aces.
 
I met Bucky for a few minutes several years ago. He was getting his gear ready for a guided moose hunt and didn't have much time to chat. This time I had a few days and Bucky was resting up from a minor spot of surgery. First trip to the doc's in over 20 years. I had him cornered this time and there was nothing going to stop me from paying him a visit. Still could not spend enough time there. I will be going back every few years for project work.

He is from a small town north of Boston and specifically came to AK to hunt and guide big game in 1964. When he was younger he spent his off season traveling the world filming hunts for his clients. Most of the film was on 16mm stock with those huge cameras. There are photos of him with a huge BETAMax video camera mounted on a gun stock. He carried that up into the sheep mounts of a few different continents.

I was warned on Friday that he was a little hard on the dudes on the show. The show was filmed in the fall of 2013 and it took all winter for their lawyer to hammer out what footage could be shown. The family has done a couple of their own shows (see R 5 Sons on Hulu.com) and had a good entertainment lawyer. None of that scripted reality crap you see all the time. I got to hear from the wrangler/packer kid about the outhouse washing out. I don't think they will show that footage. At least I hope not, wrong kind of brown trout.

The younger dude not wanting to go after a bear that was less than a half mile away. Why did they bother getting on the plane? Must be nice to burn $20,000 just because you can.

And the funny statement about Steve Perrins being a younger guide under Bucky. Steve has been guiding in AK since 1977 when he left highschool up in the north east and moved to Rainy Pass for his first job. Bucky has just over a decade on Steve, but that's about it. Steve just doesn't show his age.
 
Really neat Ray, thanks. Guiding was my dream back in the day and Alaska beckoned. Alas, I've never made it ..YET. I still dream.........................
 
How do you commute in winter?
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We tend to stay home in the winter, since its hard to collect groundwater samples or excavate soil when its below zero. If we have to travel in the winter then we will hire planes on skiis. In the near future I will have to build an ice road across the wilderness to get a large excavator into a site, then it will end up sitting for a year waiting for the next winter to be driven out. Bettles, AK has a winter ice road from the Dalton Highway and we will be using that in February 2015 to haul out a bunch of non-regulated waste rather than fly it out on a C130.

The electronic technicians use snowmachines to get to the navigation aids. In the Lower 48 they use snow cats still to head up to the mountain top RADAR and radio sights. Up here there are very few snow cats left in operation since snow machines are cheaper to maintain and replace.
 
Wow Ray, what a cool place to visit. I love the stone axes/hammers. What a treasure trove.
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Tod, a lot of his native tools came from the NE. He has family in NH as well as MA. Most of the native tools have been in his family for decades, but an equal amount were purchased.



This is one of his purchases from Germany. An extinct European Brown bear, that if scored by B&C would be almost 31 inches making it larger than any currently alive brown bear.



An old set gun for taking out bears or people.
 
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