"Tough Bears Don't Dance" continues Ernest's experiences in far-flung hunting vistas that include Alaska and its peninsula, Castro's Cuba, Colombia, Honduras Canada's Lac Seul Wilderness, the Eastern Shore of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay for Canada Geese, and a revisit to some of Africa where the hunting in these tales of adventure take a back seat to saving his life, as well as encounters with emerald smugglers, the Colombian Medelin Cartel bosses, prostitution, confrontation with Russian "freedom fighters "from Nicaragua's revolution, murder, and withch doctors, being attacked by a rqavenoous bear a a Cuban dog, being lost in a frozen wilderness tundra, and assorted otyher interesteing distractions, with a little humor tossed into the mix now and then.

"Tough Bears Don't Dance"

A Personal Collection of World-wide Hunting Experiences and Campfire TalesBy Ernest W. Abernathy

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Ernest W. Abernathy, M.D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-5571-3

Contents

Tough bears - Foreward....................................................xiThe Alaskan Peninsula – Tough Bears Don't Dance.....................1Witch Doctors And Murder..................................................41Colombia, South America...................................................51Beyond All Boundaries – The Lac Seul Wilderness.....................75Mbogo, Mau Mau Revolution.................................................95Hunting- Maryland's Eastern Shore.........................................101Hunting Castro's Cuba.....................................................115Lions, And Elephant Attack................................................165Shorty - There Never Was A Dog Like Shorty................................173Hunting Honduras..........................................................179Mbogo, Nostalgia..........................................................201Campfire Tales And Fables.................................................211I Travel Southern.........................................................233Postscript................................................................235Toughbears – Author's Note..........................................247

Chapter One

THE ALASKAN PENINSULA – TOUGH BEARS DON'T DANCE

Early morning in Anchorage, Alaska, opened its slush gray streets with remnants of a melting snow. Little tributaries of hardness remained as frozen ribbons, coursing amid piles of collected dirty, ashen ice. The street was empty of activity as the first early suspicion of daylight crept slowly over the roof tops and through the trees, partitioning shadows and ellipses of light upon unsuspecting targets of manmade objects, and upon any member of mankind coerced by occupational needs, or daring enough, to be stirring in the cold of this early dawn.

Opting to check out the area and dismissing the motel coffee shop, I exited the front door and entered the bosom of an Alaska morning, cold and windy beyond my expectations. Inspection of the area revealed a diner café near enough to scurry toward in order to get out of chill of the brisk gusts of wind, and to gather some warmth out of a cup, before heading to the airport and an airplane to King Salmon, the next spot in a trek to the Alaskan Peninsula for an intended rendezvous with a great Kodiak brown bear.

In a nearby doorway, a man in raggedy filthy clothes was laying on the concrete floor with his back up against the door, amongst scattered newspapers and cardboard, oblivious to the world in a profound state of drunkenness, out cold. His facial bony structure indicated he was probably of an Eskimo or Native Indian heritage. He was beyond any help that I could offer.

Passing on to the diner, I entered through an entry alcove into a long narrow room with a countertop running from front to back, along the center of the room, and two people working behind the counter. One man was bald, the other short and stocky with a large curved mustache. At the far end of the counter a customer was reading a newspaper. He looked up, scanned me, saw nothing of interest, and returned to his paper.

"What'll you have?" The bald man behind the counter stepped my way as I sat down upon one of the stools in front of him. The other man behind the counter looked sleepy or just plain bored.

"Coffee," I replied, "with one sugar and just a touch of white." Magically, the steaming cup appeared almost before I could get the words out of my mouth. Makes one wonder about mind reading and ESP. More likely, hot coffee is the first thing out of every customer's mouth during cold Alaska mornings.

As I added the accoutrements to my coffee, I mused about my arrival the previous evening and how different Anchorage had been from my expectations. At the airport, a lifelike taxidermy of a ten-foot tall, standing polar bear in the lobby had been the first of many surprises. During the taxi ride into Anchorage, the town seemed smaller and less rustic than I had anticipated, homes in the residential areas being mostly small, but nice and comfy-looking, one-level modern abodes. Nowhere was there an indication of ego assertion with showy opulence, nothing to indicate any large estates or mansions existed anywhere along my route into and through Anchorage.

The business area was mostly small one-story buildings, and occasional two-story structures. Snow from a recent falling was blanketing the terrain giving an impression of quiet peace and tranquility. The motel in which the night was to be spent could never be mistaken for the Ritz-Carlton by any means, but would likely prove adequate.

An overweight middle-aged man with a receding gray hairline and an ingratiating smile came over to my table in the coffee shop at the motel and introduced himself. As we talked, he proved rather quickly to be not my kind of man, his intentions for a shared recreational tryst not being to my particular line of romantic interest. For me, it's always la femme, but hopefully never the fatale variety. The intruder was unceremoniously dispatched to seek other more lucrative hunting grounds of a different sort more to his calling. In his avocation, he was a hunter of men.

The coffee was going down pretty good, so I decided to seek bigger game, "How about two scrambled eggs and some toast, partner?" It was an easy choice to stay in the warmth of the café's confines. With the delay, I wisely rationalized, inspection of the street area and its inhabitants would be remain unchanged until I returned to the streets of Anchorage later, and the weather might be improved also.

I had just reached this less than profound and convoluted decision when the door to the diner opened. A squat, obese female, appearing to be of Eskimo or Indian heritage, staggered through the front door into the diner and approached the counter. She was about as wide as she was tall, and her multi-layered clothing was dirty, greasy and in sad condition with tattered ends hanging out, her parka in its last stages of usefulness. Her uncombed, graying hair had remnants of black still recognizable among its matted tangles. I estimated her height to be about four feet and ten inches with a weight probably about two hundred and fifty pounds. Her weathered face was dark, with glazed eyes, as she looked first at me, then the counterman. She was obviously quite drunk. As she started to speak to me, her slurred words were incoherent, inarticulate, and utterly beyond my comprehension. The counter man stepped closer in our direction and ordered the woman to leave the diner. She did not argue, but turned, gave me a last plaintive, searching look, and staggered out the door into the coldness awaiting her.

"Damned drunk Indians. They're everywhere. You can't tell whether they are still drunk from drinking all night, or on a new drunk already started in the morning. Sorry about her coming in here and begging you for money, offering sex. She just wanted the money for more booze."

"Oh, that's okay. I couldn't tell what she said, anyway."

"Too many of the ones who come and stay in town are like that. They can't handle the alcohol. Makes the town look bad. You just traveling through, or what? I don't think I ever saw you in here before."

"Yeah. I'm flying out to King Salmon today, to meet up with Lee Holen and get out onto the Peninsula to try for a bear." A big Kodiak brown bear had been a dream of mine for years, which I did not feel necessary to mention.

"I'm going out next week, myself, to get a moose for my winter meat," he replied. "You probably don't know, but residents are allowed each year to take one moose, if they can, for that purpose – to help provide food for their family for the winter. You got a bear permit?"

"Yeah."

"Hunted anything big before now?" In his shoes, I would have asked the same question. A "wannabe" hunter would be needing counseling about confronting something as dangerous as Ursus Horribilis, the grizzly group, of which the Alaskan giant brown bear is the largest living land carnivore.

"I was lucky enough to get to hunt in Africa, and did alright."

"Get any of the big stuff? You know, lion, elephant or such."

"I was lucky enough to bag lion, elephant, Cape buffalo and leopard out of the so-called Big Five, but I have never got a rhino. In fact, I've about decided to never take a rhino. There just aren't enough of those prehistoric beasts left, better to save them."

"This your first bear?"

"First big bear, I had some luck with a black bears earlier."

"Well, you ought to do okay. I never got one, myself."

The customer with the newspaper came up to pay his bill, and the bald man turned to him, "Every thing okay?"

"Yep," the customer replied, took his change and departed, leaving the two of us alone in the diner with the bald man.

"The eggs and toast were great," I said. "Thanks a lot. I guess I had better head out to the airport. I'm flying out to King Salmon pretty soon. How much do I owe you?"

A surprise came. "I tell you what, this one's on me. Good luck on your hunt. On your way back through town, though, stop in and let me know how it went, okay?"

Overcoming my surprise at Southern hospitality in faraway Alaska, and wishing not to offend, I said, "That's mighty nice of you, thanks. I'll be sure to drop by." "I made a mental note to send him some kind of token gift or photographs from Africa. At the door, I turned and offered the traditional Southern parting phrase, "Take care of yourself now, y' hear?"

Aboard the flight, I thought about the fact that, so far, nearly every person I had met in Anchorage except the café counter man had made sexual advances of one kind or another towards me. It is my hope the bear will not continue the tradition when we meet.

Arriving at King Salmon, I was not met by the expected contact. I wandered about while awaiting my contact. No one came. A small gift shop with minimal wares occupied some of my time, as well as walking about inspecting the area. The building reminded me of many similar military structures. It was a one-story, with narrow ells extending in a couple of directions, one of which led to an area similar to a motel desk, where a few rooms were available for guests. The U.S. Air force base at King Salmon adjoins the airport area and seems to be about the only thing in King Salmon, from what I was able to detect from my lowly removed station. The base likely accounts for the building form.

After a few hours of thinking I had been forgotten, abandoned or conned, a message arrived. My contact had been unable to leave camp and fly to get me because a hundred mile per hour windstorm had occurred, wrecking the camp. I was told to spend the night and be ready in the morning.

Sure enough, next morning Lee Holen arrived in a small one-engine Cessna aircraft, loaded me and my gear, and we were off for the camp far out on the Alaskan Peninsula.

Below us on the ground were a continuing myriad of many hundreds of small lakes, prompting Lee to say, "Minnesota claims to be the land of ten thousand lakes, but they don't have nearly as many lakes as we have here."

I replied in my best bragging voice, "The State of Georgia recently made a claim that Georgia has more lakes than Minnesota. Of course, no data was available as to the size of the water body that qualified it to be counted as a lake. For instance, I wonder if they included a small two-acre pond on my land. That would be a travesty."

"Sorry, I could not meet you yesterday, but that windstorm tore us a part. We knew it was coming and we dug six-foot and eight-foot trenches in which to put our two aircraft. Then we used tie-downs to fix the planes securely at the bottom of the trenches. We filled the trenches with dirt back up all the way to the wings, leaving only the wings showing, laying flat on the ground. The wind still tore one of the planes out of the ground, flipped it upside down and backwards nearly a hundred yards where it landed on its back."

"Wow," I replied. "A hundred miles per hour wind is a hurricane force about a grade two, I believe. And here we are today with a beautiful sunshiny day, as if nothing had happened."

"Yeah, it was really something."

A couple of hours, and we arrive above the camp. From the air, I spot a small rounded building like a WW II Quonset hut and another smaller building, which appeared to be a cabin in a linear rectangle design.

On the ground we are met by eleven campmates, among whom is Lee's wife, who had a television show in Anchorage, a couple from Wisconsin who hunt here every year, a loan officer from Anchorage named Dave and his wife, a taxidermist from Anchorage named Tiny Spencer and his lovely wife, as well as a young man from Brazil whose name was Gabriel ("Gabby"), as well as Gabby's brother and several others yet for me to meet.

There is also an 18 year-old bush pilot named Butch King, and two or three young assisting guides, one of whom wears a strip of thin leather banded about his forehead and reminds me of Tonto, the sidekick of the Lone Ranger. Another guide is a young man about twenty-six years old who bears a remarkable likeness to a young Ernest Hemingway with the appropriate beard and mustache trimmed to enhance that similarity. He went to a great deal of expanded efforts to further that connotation, and spared no opportunity to delineate his vast knowledge and advanced hunting experience. I satirically name him "PaPa." He seems to like it.

The people from Anchorage are there with the goal of collecting their one allotted moose for their winter meat. Lee's lovely wife and two of the other wives are there as non-hunters. Except for Butch and the young guides, the rest are bear hunters, including Tiny Spencer's wife. If ever a misnomer of a name occurred, it is the name Tiny Spencer. He is a strong man about six foot four, with two hundred fifty pounds of pure muscle, well complemented by a laughing disposition and a good sense of humor. His beautiful blonde, freckled wife, who has the looks to be a famous model, also has the same joyous charm and lovely attitude about laughter and life as does Tiny. Believe it or not, she is there to hunt a bear.

The men are to sleep in the Quonset building, called the "hut," whereas the women will stay in the main building. Several choice Playboy magazine centerfolds grace the walls of the hut, much like any men's locker room of merit, along with photographs of previous successful bear hunts. Instant bonding among the group is easy because every one in this group is jovial, pleasant, and we are all there with a unity of spirit involving similar intentions, as opposed to some camps I have entered, where clashes of personalities and ego made camp life less than pleasurable. In the camp there proves to be three guitar players, folks who like to join in the singing, and plenty of booze, especially scotch, to embellish the laughter and fellowship of each evening while the wind and weather howl away outside.

In the morning no encouragement is needed in the hut to pull on enough warm clothes to journey to the cabin and knock down hot coffee or tea with a solid breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and orange juice. The first morning meeting is held to assign certain areas for each of the party as their primary hunt zones, and the plans for each day outlined.

I am loaded into the back of a Piper Super Cub aircraft, sitting behind Lee. Because of the cramped room in the little aircraft, my legs are wrapped around both his torso and his plane seat toward the front of the cockpit. We begin scouting likely areas as we cruise through the air from area to area.

Of the few bears we spot from the air, the most memorable is the large mama bear with two good-sized cubs. The huge mama bear raises up on her hind legs and reaches for our aircraft as Lee circled lower and lower for me to get a good look. Feeling her cubs to be threatened, she is deadly serious, with her jaws opened showing teeth and her arms swinging up at us, showing full protective resentment at our infringement of her territory. The noisy whine of the engine prevents me from hearing the roar of the mama bear. I silently pray the plane not to stall at our low altitude, only sixty feet above her, or mama bear will be upon us in seconds. My fear vanishes as we climb and continue our searching elsewhere.

An occasional moose is noted. We return to camp where the collective experience of all the different searched areas is shared. An evening of music, laughter and getting to know each other is aided by a few nips of friendly booze. Certainly the selections of scotch that I personally chose proved to be especially friendly to me.

The biggest impression made upon me during the day has been the enormous distance between any geographical landmark you observe and how long it takes to reach it by air. I now realize the pictures I had previously seen of Alaska were incapable of clearly indicating the distance across a valley, or how far away was the distant mountain which seemed so close, but would require several days of tortuous hiking through the soft, spongy tundra to reach. For the first time, a new realization of the enormity of Alaska unfolded.

The next day is used flying out to points at the limit of the aircraft's ability to get back to camp. Before turning back towards base, the plane lands and a deposit of fuel is placed, then the return trip is made back to camp. This process is repeated several times, having in mind that this will enable us to refuel and proceed to more distant areas to hunt and set up camps, yet be able to refuel in these deposit areas on the return trips.

(Continues...)

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