Steve Meyer of Soldotna is lifetime Alaskan and an avid shooter. He writes every other week about guns and Alaska hunting.
Clark's Gun Shop was one of those places that may be a business but you didn't want to walk into unannounced -- and besides, the rumor was that Clark might shoot first and ask questions later.
Taking a photo of an animal won't put food on the table, but it can be nurturing all the same.
Bounded by Cook Inlet to the north, the Barren Islands are lonesome chunks of real estate surrounded by waters that provide some of the Gulf of Alaska’s most spectacular weather.
If hunters who have been allowed wide-open hunting of bears and wolves for many years and they can’t find and kill them enough of them, are they going to be able to find bear or wolf dens? Probably not.
Some will say the world is better off without these little sharks, but columnist Steve Meyer offers no apology for saving 15 of them.
The assignment turned into a costly train wreck. But it was a great adventure, the kind of trip that makes Alaska what it is — a story worth telling.
I loaded the big antlers in my truck and drove to Soldotna to show a buddy of mine. Then the emergency lights flashed from the Crown Vic that had been following me and soon I was sitting in a patrol car, about to be arrested.
I thought, well hell, I’m old but I can still do 14 miles in waders for a chance at a monster trout.
Even though I knew it wouldn’t hurt him, it was still with trepidation that I hit the stimulation button. He stopped. I had his attention, and the tone button sent him to me as his bird-addled brain made the connection.
It occurred to me as I stood there how out of touch with nature it seems we have become — that we are so self-important that unless a dead animal is salvaged for human use, it is wasted.
I’m not buying it anymore. I’m stealing away, running from camp, out into the darkness where one resolves issues with clear thought instead of cheerleading.
Opinion: Walking through the aisles of plastic that pass for consumer goods on your way to pick up those organic vegetables, most of us never consider that it took resources mined from the earth to make most of it, and it didn’t arrive by horse-drawn cart.
