http://www.jamestownsun.com/sp...-game-permits-hunter



No more big-game permits for this hunter


By Bernie Kuntz / Outdoors on Apr 14, 2017 at 6:52 a.m.


For the first time in more than 40 years, I won’t be applying for a single big-game permit this spring. I am reminded of my father’s words after he went on his last elk hunt at age 86: “I hate to give it up. My heart is still in it but my body is not.” And so it is with me at age 68.

The time was when I’d apply for special elk permits in Montana, Nevada and New Mexico, antelope, moose, mountain goat and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in Montana; Rocky Mountain bighorn in Colorado and Wyoming; desert bighorn and California bighorn in Nevada.

I was pretty lucky over the decades, drawing three either-sex elk permits in Montana and one in Nevada, desert sheep permits in Arizona and Nevada, Rocky Mountain bighorn permits in Wyoming on two occasions. Ten years ago, after 22 years of applying, I drew my lone moose permit in Montana. I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me, but in some 32 years of applying for a sheep permit in Montana — both as a non-resident and then as a resident — I struck out every time.

Applying for special permits was an annual adventure for me, and in the odd year when I drew something, it was particularly exciting. It makes me smile to remember what an old friend said to me one time about drawing special permits: “The best thing about special permits is the day you receive it in the mail. It all goes downhill from there.” He was referring to the hassles of getting time off from work, the pressure of filling the tag.

I could relate to that after the 1996 drawings. I had a two-week unguided caribou hunt scheduled in Alaska with two partners from Montana. But then I drew an antelope permit and a special elk permit in Montana, a mule deer permit in Nevada and a Rocky Mountain bighorn permit in Wyoming!

A newspaper reporter who I had worked with on numerous occasions insisted on interviewing me. Against my better judgement I granted him an interview in which I said, “My hunting is getting in the way of my hunting.” My boss at the time was incensed because I was gone so much, and the article further increased his chagrin. I managed to fill all the tags except the Montana antelope, yet every time I look at the shoulder mount of the 4-1/2 year old Wyoming bighorn ram I finally settled for, I wish I could have gone back for another week of hunting and located an older ram. Oh, well …

Competition is fierce for special permits, but that is where one finds the very best big game hunting. I run into guys all the time who wistfully admit, “I’d sure like to do that someday.” Some of these fellows are in their 50s and have never applied for a special permit. “You’d better get going,” I say to them. “It takes years to build up bonus points, and you don’t want to wait until you are too old to do justice to the hunt.”

And that is the main reason I quit applying for permits. I can still hunt antelope, but I have taken 40 antelope in my lifetime and have no desire to shoot another one. But with sheep … the very thought of drawing a bighorn permit in Montana, and then fumbling around in the Missouri River Breaks with my screwed-up foot and back, not doing justice to the permit — that would haunt me to my dying day.

So it’s time to quit applying. As Jake said, “My heart is still in it but my body is not.”

Contact Bernie Kuntz

at b.kuntz@bresnan.net

Tough to realize when that time comes. I hope my time is still a ways off.

It is something all of us will face someday and that is life.

All Good Things End, but for me it has been one Hell Of A Ride and I would not have missed a minute of it.

At 61, I know the day is coming. I have exercised hard my entire life. I hope to hold it off longer than most. August will find me backpacking through over 50 miles of ANWR. Not done yet.

Well God bless Bernie. I understand perfectly. I'm 68 and came down with CHF in 2010, so those wilderness elk hunts packing out the meat on my back are out, but I still hunt, with my sons preferably, but by myself if need be. More guided hunts are in my future if my health holds and my sons finish college so I can afford it. That time will come for all of us.

quote:

Originally posted by larryshores:
I hope to hold it off longer than most.

Ha! Small thinking.

I plan to live forever. So far, so good. (Stephen Wright)

I have lived long enough to have done big game hunting throughout NA and Africa for more than 60 years. I like some of you have seen the sights and lived a majestic life but I have also seen most of the truly good hunting become a thing of the past. Some can still be found thru special entry permits or in isolated pockets but gone are the days of climbing into my truck and driving heading out of state and driving to a game rich area public area...sad. I still have the health and mind set to make hardcore hunts but more and more I find myself booking easier hunts on private land with guides. I believe I will leave the hunting game the way I came into it as a deer hunter on our family farm in Pa.

Cut the crap, Im 82 and Im still hunting, and Im still roping..Its more important now that you get off your dead ass and move or you will die..The 60s and 70 are a cake walk if you work at staying healthy, walk, lift weights, stay busy eat right, avoid the couch, and quit whining if your healthy now its not to late, if your bedridden or ill that's a whole nuther ball game and I feel for you and my prayers are with you. BTW I have two stints in my heart, COPD asthma (inphasima) and type 2 diabetes, and I feel my age, I just refuse to quit..I hope all of you will follow my lead and fight age, you will fare better I promise.

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
Cut the crap, Im 82 and Im still hunting, and Im still roping..Its more important now that you get off your dead ass and move or you will die..The 60s and 70 are a cake walk if you work at staying healthy, walk, lift weights, stay busy eat right, avoid the couch, and quit whining if your healthy now its not to late, if your bedridden or ill that's a whole nuther ball game and I feel for you and my prayers are with you. BTW I have two stints in my heart, COPD asthma (inphasima) and type 2 diabetes, and I feel my age, I just refuse to quit..I hope all of you will follow my lead and fight age, you will fare better I promise.

Im with you Ray.I will go out kicking and screaming.OB

Everyone knows their own limitations or should. Don't know about anyone else but setting here composing this I look back on a dozen or so folks over the past 20 years that either thru death or illness had their hunting/fishing careers cut short.

Mine almost was in December 2011, but I fought back and am glad I did, but it made me aware of somethings especially reality.

During the past 5 years +, I have learned a lot of things, one being that all good things end and while I am not ready to quit, I have started viewing the future a little more honestly than I had.

Don't candy coat it for us Ray, give it to us straight!

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
Cut the crap, Im 82 and Im still hunting, and Im still roping..Its more important now that you get off your dead ass and move or you will die..The 60s and 70 are a cake walk if you work at staying healthy, walk, lift weights, stay busy eat right, avoid the couch, and quit whining if your healthy now its not to late, if your bedridden or ill that's a whole nuther ball game and I feel for you and my prayers are with you. BTW I have two stints in my heart, COPD asthma (inphasima) and type 2 diabetes, and I feel my age, I just refuse to quit..I hope all of you will follow my lead and fight age, you will fare better I promise.

I run 4 miles three times a week and ride my bike 20 miles once per week. I can only recall only one guide that could outwalk me and he was in his 20s (I am 57). I don't enjoy running or riding my bike (I ride at a fast pace), but I can see I am in better shape than almost anyone my age. Ms AZW and I recently took two 15 year olds down the Grand Canyon. Our last night was at Indian Gardens. We made it from there to the top in 2 hrs 5 min - longer than it used to take, but we beat those 15 yr olds by an hour and their parents (younger than us) by four.

There are days I don't want to get out of bed and run, today being one of them. But I rolled out at 5:20 am and pounded out the miles.

Another thing I do is step on the scales every day. If I go more than 154, I eat less, work out more, and/or drink less alcohol. Keeping the weight off helps big time.

I plan on hunting into my 80s as well.

I was diagnosed with a couple of heart conditions that precluded regular forms of exercise nearly 40 years ago, but I continued to hunt by setting my own pace. Most people I hunted with had no idea I had problems.

As the years passed, pacemakers and prescriptions helped me greatly, but decades of smoking (I worked for nearly 30 years in a newsroom with 50 other smokers) led to COPD that gets increasingly worse each year.

As does Ray, I also have stents, but I also have what seems to be every acronym for a heart disease known to modern medical science as well as pseudo-gout, a painful form of arthritis in my feet that cripples me for a week or so when it strikes a couple of times a year.

Even so, I try to keep moving.

Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to keep it off, I have been gaining about five to six pounds every year since a heart attack in 2002.

Just six years ago, this fat old man hunted by himself and found, shot and packed out (albeit in two pieces) a nice Coues whitetail buck. Since then I've taken elk, Arizona mule deer and Texas whitetails on do-it-yourself hunts with friends.

For years, I have told people I hunt because I must, and I will hunt until I can't. At age 81, I have no plans to stop hunting but I have come to realize there are many things I no longer can do, especially now that I'm wedded to a portable oxygen machine.



Bill Quimby

I am 61. I lift weights HARD 3 times a week. In fact, I lift more weights than I ever have. I do hard core cardio 6 times a week. I have worked out hard for many years.

I just had my annual physical. All was good, even great.

In 2013, I gained about a bunch of weight in spite of this exercise regimen and eating about 1800 calories a day. I eat very healthy. The doctors were puzzled. I spent 4 days in Mayo Clinic having everything checked. In the final analysis, they said it was from stress.

I am probably going to work about 6 more years. I can still go pretty hard while hunting. I do have to be a bit more careful with my joints. In August, I am backpacking 50 miles through ANWR in an area where no human may have ever been. I am hoping to whack a rather large arctic grizzly. The thought of that does not even phase me.

I hope to keep going for years to come.

Bernie was definitely a hunting fool before his health failed him.

I don't know him, but I know who he is. When I hunted Dall sheep with Gana River Outfitters in the Mackenzie Mountains in 1999, I saw where he had signed his name on the wall of the hunters cabin a year or so before me.

He is also friends with Randy Newberg who featured Bernie on one or more of Randy's TV show "Fresh Tracks" on one of the Outdoor channels.

Like Bernie, I've shot my share of Pronghorn Antelope, although I'm a few shy of his 40. I've also been lucky enough to have drawn Montana Bighorn Sheep, Moose, and Goat tags although those were 29 to 39 years ago, and I've applied every year since then without drawing.

At 71, I'm still in good health and I just applied for those 4 tags for this year. I'm also looking forward to a Dagestan Tur hunt in Azerbaijan that I booked for this coming August.

I wish it was as simple as getting my butt in gear. A rare cancer took me from hiking a peak 3 times a week to get in shape for the hunt, to needing braces and a cane in only 6 months. Slogging through marsh mud or jumping from rock to rock is no longer an option for me. But I still put in for antelope hunts.

At 55, I'm plugging along, try to stay in shape and keep on hunting
I look at hunting as I look at living and breathing, you just do it till you can't.
Sometimes just chasing whitetails in Montana and Idaho mountains will make my year
Hunting doesn't have to be exotic or special permits
But I agree with the old guys, there is end to everything...

It hit me last year while on a Newfie moose hunt. I discovered that I just couldn't do the job anymore, even a job so easy as a Newfie hunt is supposed to be. Perhaps it is the two new knees I got a year and a half ago? More probably it is the fact that I have atttained the age of 75, and don't have the stamina or even the will power I used to have. No more Dall sheep hunts. No more horseback hunts in the Rockies. Maybe one more African photo safari, but no more chasing Cape buffalo in the bushveldt.

I'm not sad about it. I have my trophy room and a mind full of great memories, and on eventide, a glass of single malt or a fine bourbon while sitting in that room of rooms brings me good cheer. If I have one regret it is that I never got to go to Argentina to hunt, but that I can deal with. Mr. Kuntz, you and I should get together sometime and discuss things as they are, but would be if we were to be put in charge.