Trudging Across the Tundra

North to Alaska, in pursuit of the noble ptarmigan

[img 2 right caption=Getting there is at least half the fun when you're flying with guide Bob Ledda in one of All Alaska's Super Cubs.]

It was a late-night phone call no traveling wingshooter would want or expect after a full day of driving, flying, airport connections, baggage-claim hassles, rental car issues and one last, stunning drive to reach the lodge.

"Hey, Ed, this is Bob."

"Hi, Bob. How are ya?"

"Uh, good, Ed, pretty good . . . . Hey, I was going to call you a couple of weeks ago to tell you that I'm not finding a lot of birds this year . . . ."

"Uh-huh . . . ."

". . . and I wasn't sure if you'd still want to come out. But you're here, and I had a report from another pilot that a group of caribou hunters he flew out reported a lot more birds than I've seen, so I have some places to go look if you don't mind scouting a little bit with me . . . ."

Mind? Well, no, I didn't mind. I'd just crossed the continent from Maine to Alaska to spend a week in my old stomping grounds during the finest season, early September. Sure, I wanted to see birds and bring some down, but in this setting more isn't necessarily better. I was there for the experience: for flying through high mountain passes, putting down where the ground looks best and following a dog with an old British 12-bore in the crook of my arm; for walking tundra under brilliant blue skies that only a privileged few reach every year.

Besides, I knew we'd find birds. It may have seemed like a "thin" year to an Alaskan guide like Bob Ledda, who routinely flushes hundreds of ptarmigan a day in flocks of 30 and 40 and who helps clients fill their amazing 20-bird limits on a regular basis, but I was sure that even thin numbers would look like a lot of birds to me.


And birds we did find, within 20 minutes of setting off across the tundra near the headlands of the Stuyahok River. It had taken us more than two hours in Bob's Super Cub to cross Cook Inlet from his home and lodge on the Central Kenai Peninsula to reach the plateau northwest of massive Iliamna Lake. We'd put down on a shallow half-mile-long kettlehole pond after flying its length twice to measure it for takeoff and scout for rocks that might reach the surface.

Bob's two-year-old Drahthaar, Doc, had been coursing the grass tussocks, willow thickets and lichen-and-berry mounds atop a steep bank that dropped 30 feet into the gulch of the swift little river. Doc suddenly had put his nose down, taken a few rapid, indeterminate steps, quickened the action in his stubby brown tail and launched such a symphony of motion and body language that I'd have sworn he was one wiry hair away from busting some birds.

"Whoa, Doc! Whoa!" (Bob had told me that he trains his dogs in the field on birds, not in the yard on textbooks.)

Now it was my job to move up quickly through the gaps between the knee-high tussocks and prepare for a shot. I'd covered half of the 30 yards, with Bob alongside me, when Doc finally locked up. I was able to take two more steps before the bird flushed. I brought up my gun as Doc did a two-step of his own, and I couldn't help but look as three more birds got up quartering away to the right. I shifted focus back and followed through with my gun mount, then noted with dismay that the bird already had gotten out to the 40-yard line. I let go with the right barrel while I was still optimistic, fumbled a foot shuffle, and jerked the rear trigger, knowing it was a Hail Mary. I watched as the bird continued its long glide, 200 yards and into the impenetrable willow thickets flanking the Stuyahok.

In total, the flock had been a half-dozen birds, and they'd departed with all of the unnerving noise of stuttering cackles they could muster. Some had pitched into the willows; others had chosen to flee across the treeless tundra to our east, away from the river. For a moment I'd thought the birds in the open would make for easy follow-ups, but then they'd put together another set of short, furious wingstrokes and sailed on until I'd lost them in a landscape devoid of landmarks.

I broke the gun, muttered something mildly bewildered and profane, and then plucked out the short shells and shoved them in my pocket. My head was down. I was the bird hunter who'd come clear across the country and couldn't hit a bright white grouse quartering away in the open.

"I'd have been surprised if you'd gotten that one," Bob said, "the way he started up so far out there." And that had been the right thing to say, and we agreed that Doc had gotten a little carried away and that we would put the obligatory first miss behind us and go find more birds.


I was in Alaska because Bob Ledda-the guide, dog handler, pilot, part owner of All Alaska Outdoors Lodge, itinerant wing-shooter and spare-time ER doc-had invited me for three days of "one on one" guided hunt-ing. It's his personal specialty: one Super Cub on floats, one bird dog, one pilot/ guide/dog handler, and one sport. "I offer this basically because it's what I want to do the most," he'd told me over the plane's headset intercom on the way to our first hunt. "There's not a whole lot of money in it, but God I love it."

Bob's wife, Tyna, handles much of the responsibilities at their home and lodge on Longmere Lake, outside of Soldotna, and it's from that base that Bob and a handful of guides and pilots shuttle guests to salmon fishing hotspots, remote fly-fishing streams, duck flats, caribou drop camps and wildlife-viewing tours. The lodge and its cluster of cabins are set among the glacial till and spruce that are typical of the Central Kenai, and they're also on the road system, so a lot of guests will book a day or two of fly-out adventure and spend the rest of their week taking readily accessible day trips, such as halibut-fishing charters or drift-fishing for the famous king salmon or rainbows of the Kenai River.

The main lodge is fairly new and built of massive spruce logs. It is tucked into the trees next to Bob and Tyna's large log home and offers four suites of fully outfitted kitchenette guest quarters overlooking the lake. Steep stairs alongside the lodge lead past a log-hut sauna and down to the lake and floatplane dock. Back from the lake and lodge and set into the trees are three additional cabins-comfortable but not fancy-that sport the same fully equipped kitchens and offer a choice of spaciousness or budget-consciousness. Although there is no grand dining hall for sharing drinks, meals and stories with other guests, there is a patio for casual fireside gatherings. The lodge is about a 15-minute drive from Soldotna, a major tourism and commercial center with all form of supplies for the 'fridge and a fair selection of restaurants.

Bob and I had met on the dock the morning after my arrival, as the previous night he had been working in the emergency room of the local hospital. In this setting-on the dock, with a young assistant stowing gear and helping with final preparations on the plane-first impressions mean a lot. Putting yourself in the hands of a bush pilot is an act of faith, and sometimes there's only a minute or two to assess your chances. I had lived in Alaska for eight years, and in that time had logged dozens of hours in light planes, from two-seaters to big Beavers. I had landed on skis on high glacier snowfields, dropped through the trees to land on winding rivers, and splashed down fuselage-first in an amphibious Grumman Goose. I also had read the crash stories that all Alaskans read, week in and week out, and once had returned safely in a plane that reeked of electrical overload, only to learn weeks later that the company had lost the same type of plane along with the pilot and a full load of tourists.

So here's Bob: intense but not over-bearing; a shaved head with a moustache and a close-cropped beard on his chin; not big but extremely fit-looking; quick to smile and authoritative, but decent to the kid loading the plane. As he told me later, he's thrilled to get paid for doing what he loves, and I could see that out on the dock. I liked him immediately. The plane looked immaculate.

You have to like flying in light planes to enjoy a one-on-one trip with Bob-and I like flying a lot. For each of three days we spent at least five hours in the air, and I was able to experience Bob's three planes, including a Super Cub on floats; a larger, faster Cessna 185 on floats; and a Super Cub with soft and oversized tundra tires for beaches and cobblestone river washes.

That first day we crossed the Inlet and passed through the Aleutian Range between the 10,000-foot snowcapped peaks of Redoubt and Iliamna, each the classic cone shape of an active volcano. We followed the directions of the friendly pilot whose caribou hunters had seen birds, and put down on the nearest pond. After that first flock got up, Bob chose to chase the birds in the easier going of the tundra. It was a crystal-clear day in the mid-60s, dry and with a light breeze, and Doc was able to relocate the scent and put us back on the birds in short order. This time he showed decent discipline, as the birds were split up and running among the tussocks. One flushed wild, but Doc stayed the course and managed to pin another and hold it for my approach. When this bird flushed I hurried the first shot, but at the second report the ptarmigan's low, white streaking flight was interrupted with a puff of feathers, a tumble, and then a skid. Doc hesitated as he brought the bird to Bob's hand, but then delivered it in fine shape.


Lagopus lagopus, the willow ptarmigan, is both Alaska's state bird and the "red grouse" of the Scottish hillsides. The British race, with its rufous-red markings better suited to the mild heathers, gets a scotious added at the end of its Latin name to mark its variation in color and geography. The Alaskan version shares the mottled reds and browns of that famous grouse of genteel driven shoots, but mostly on its head, back and breast, and then only in the summer. For winter, it switches from white underwings and legs to a solid white plumage. In Alaska and across the Far North, to Labrador, the UK, Scandinavia and across Northern Russia, these birds occupy a vast habitat niche that sweeps from the edge of the boreal forest and across the moors, from the alder-choked river bottoms and tundra flats upslope to where the last shrubs give way to low alpine heathers and berries. (Alaska's two other ptarmigan species -white-tailed and rock-occupy slightly different habitats but can sometimes be found on the same outings as those for willows.) To be sure, there are a fair number of Lagopus lagopus present in the circumpolar region on any given day.

Of course, if you want to hunt ptarmigan, you still have to find them. The species is noted for the precipitous rise and fall of its populations, although these swings don't appear nearly as cyclical as they do with, say, ruffed grouse. This could be explained by the feast-or-famine nature of their habitat: A cool, damp year with just the right sun can carpet the tundra with a cornucopia of catkins, bugs, shoots and fat, sweet berries; a dry year can produce little sustenance before winter sets in. Ornithologists say the species produces one brood a year with a clutch of six to 11 eggs, and here, too, fickle weather can knock back the ground-nesters with unusually heavy rains, late snow or-as perhaps was the case in 2004-a rare spell of scorching heat.

For whatever reason, last year Bob did not have one of his better years in terms of early scouting. With an August 10 start for bird season, he was able to check on favored haunts even while shuttling salmon fishermen a month before my visit. He knows and travels a huge swath on the west side of Cook Inlet and through the Kenai Mountains on the Peninsula, not only from his time as a flying guide but from his own scouting as a diehard wingshooter and big-game hunter. (In the off-season Bob travels to the high plains of the West for early season pheasants and Huns and to Arizona for a mid-winter break of quail. His impressive taxidermy collection reflects a passion for bird hunting well beyond his backyard.) In an average year, Bob says he's able to put clients into 10- and 20-bird limits-depending on the game management unit-every day.

But we were out in an off year, and the hunting was still good by most standards. Although Bob usually takes strenuous hikes that lead to long mountainside traverses near the brush line, his scouting had turned up few birds in such places. He theorized that a dry spring and hot early summer had pushed birds down into the wet trickles and low spots, where the damp ground would provide a greater food supply. So it was down on the flats that we searched, and there we found more like 50 or 60 birds a day, usually in groups of four to 10, easily providing enough quarry to make the miles stumbling through hummocks and thickets worthwhile. Despite a guide's obvious push to put a lot of birds on the strap, Bob's more basic concern for the resource had us foregoing chasing singles from the smallest groups. And with my shooting, we probably could have eaten the total take for dinner any given day.

On our second day out we flew to the same area in the 185, a comfortable four-seater with plenty of room for Bob's more experienced dog-his nine-year-old Drahthaar, Razor-in the rear compartment. We hunted that day with one of All Alaska's investors, Johnny Holleman, who was visiting from Alabama and toting a borrowed autoloader that magically transformed itself into a single-shot in the field. The mood was decidedly more casual, as at least we knew there were some birds; Razor hunted smarter and held birds better; and, with three of us moving up on points, I shot less, shot more slowly and shot better. Weather-wise, it was another brilliant day, although 70-ish temperatures made it hot for my tastes, and we put in some miles from our landing spot on a large, unnamed, wind-swept lake.

The brush, grasses and berry bushes felt scorched dry in most parts of the tundra we walked, even though we could find stretches of wet mud bearing the hoof prints of hundreds of the caribou that summer on the plateau. The surroundings made me think of the stark contrast between this day afield and that other pursuit of this grouse, where tweed-clad shooters pull up in Range Rovers and phalanxes of stout locals sweep birds that have been nurtured by gamekeepers to the butts. Perhaps my workmanlike William Evans boxlock had even witnessed such a drive prior to bearing up under my clumsy handling out on the edge of the American frontier. I was pleased to have such a handsome -and lightweight-gun to carry, and though I would never refuse an opportunity to shoot it from a butt, I would rather walk the countryside, be it the moors or the tundra.

On the third day we rested, in a sense. We flew across the Inlet again, putting in just behind a beach at a creek named Silver Salmon, where a dozen anglers were into all of the stream's namesakes they could handle. Coming in low to check the landing zone, Bob dipped the Super Cub's wingtips in greeting to his guides and their party, and we could see clearly the hundreds of finning fat footballs heading up-current just 100 feet below. But fishing in such a crowd was not for us, and we exchanged the Cub on floats for the Cub on tundra tires sitting on the sand beach, and Bob flew me 20 minutes up a broad valley hemmed by steep peaks where a few clearwater tributaries flowed into a mainstem clouded with glacial silt.

After a bouncy landing on a grown-over gravel bar, we hiked upstream 10 minutes to a languid pool where hundreds of salmon were staged in preparation for pushing on to their spawning grounds. I stood on the shore for hours, roll-casting first a sinking flash fly and then a floating chunk of feathered pink foam into the line of fish, and on nearly every cast a few stripping twitches on the retrieve would bring a salmon 10 pounds or better on an aggressive beeline to crush the intruder. I reeled in fish and laughed until my forearms ached, smoked cigars (to keep the bugs away -wink, wink) and every now and then remembered to look up to see if all of the splashing had attracted one of the big bears whose paw prints crisscrossed the shore.

We had started that day swooping over combative pairs of bull moose from breathtakingly low altitudes, and we finished with a flying tour of the highest places in the Kenai Mountains, scouting bands of Dall sheep for the rams with the biggest curls.

I rounded out my week at All Alaska with a halibut charter to fill the home freezer, some small-stream trout fishing and a leisurely day thrashing the rental car on the gravel roads of the Central Peninsula between short hikes in pursuit of spruce grouse. It had been a week of fly-out adventure on a grander scale than anything I'd experienced while living in Alaska and a proper over-the-top return. Foot-weary and lugging a cooler of frozen fish and birds back through the airport, I had created a fresh Alaska memory to layer over the old. And I will get back there as soon as I can.


Author's Note: For more information on a wide variety of wingshooting adventures, contact All Alaska Outdoors, PO Box 208, Soldotna, AK 99669; 800-646-4868; www.allalaska.com.


Ed Carroll is Shooting Sportsman's Associate Editor.

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