Alaska’s Lonesome Dove Outfitters
Welcomes you to Alaska 2006 Hunting Parties

Once again, we would like to thank all of the clients who came up and hunted with us this past year. As you probably remember, it was one of the worst weather years that we have experienced, and almost everyone got their fair share of rain or snow. There was no lack of wind either, but these conditions were prevalent pretty much across the entire State. We had one period in early October when Cordova received 27 inches of rainfall in 3 days. Thankfully we were hunting mountain goats as all of our bear country was flooded out. The city airfield was under 3 feet of water, and houses along the river had to be evacuated.

Spring bear hunting proved to be frustrating with cold, snowy conditions that kept the bears in the dark timber and very lethargic early in May. By the second hunt in the middle of the month, the weather had improved and the bears started moving much better. It was a record year for the black bears with 6 of our hunters taking bears with skulls over 19 inches. We are redoing several of the brown bear hunters this next spring to make up for the foul weather condition we encountered in 2006.

Sheep hunting found myself and veteran guide, Zach Richarson, hunting for ourselves in the Alaskan Range with our good friend from the Air Force, Bob Gates. We all three took rams on opening day with Bob’s being the largest at 36 ½ inches and green scoring 158. I am discontinuing my guided sheep hunts for the foreseeable future, as it is far more lucrative for me to stay in Cordova and gillnet for salmon at that time of year. I truly love to hunt sheep, but my wife and I are still in the position in our lives where we are dictated by finances. With more and more people discovering the differences between farm raised and wild salmon, there has been an increase in demand and also price that we get for our fish, so I am forced to stay on the water and fish when I would much rather be in the mountains looking for sheep.

None of our September bear hunters drew the moose tag for our area, so Zach, Chris, and myself hunted moose for ourselves on September 1. Our intention was to get as many gut piles as possible to hunt from, especially since Bob Miller, an archery mountain Goat hunter from the previous year, wanted to try for a brown bear with his bow. We killed two bulls on opening day and the 3rd one on the second day of season. With one more day to pack out the moose, the clients arrived after that. A nice bear got on one of the moose kills rather quickly, but unfortunately Zach had to shoot it at 8 feet with his rifle when it charged him and Bob. The weather took a turn for the worse, and that was the only opportunity Bob had at taking a bear with his bow.

Our mountain goat hunters did very well in spite of the bad weather. Both Jesse Schowengerdt and Bill Dzyak took their archery goats on the first day of their hunt, and brothers Lowell and Ernie Stevens both took B&C goats out of the same group of billies. We are expanding these hunts to 6 days instead of 5 to have more leeway with the weather. Most of the hunters take their goats on the first or second day, but this will allow us to be able to wait out more storms. We currently have only 2 openings for either brown bears or mountain goats for 2007. We only book the number of clients that we can adequately handle, and you won’t be shuffled around as happens with many outfitters who overbook their capacity.