When The Paying Bear Hunters Started Coming In

When the paying bear hunters started coming in, Fin And Gary Told Me That Our Most Important Responsibility As Their Guides Was To Protect Them From Their Own Mistakes. Even though most hunters were competent individuals, they were all handling loaded firearms, and there was a great, expansive forest to get lost in where we took them hunting. We three Registered Maine Guides strictly enforced all of the rules of safe, legal hunting. We also did our best to see that everyone enjoyed themselves and had a lot of laughs.

Most of our paying guests had a real good time in Maine. We had many satisfied customers in 1969, and our hunters got over half of the bears reported killed in the State of Maine that year.

Some of the hunters liked my wild and wooly ways so much that they gave me an open invitation to visit them if I was ever in their hometown.

Unfortunately, some of our paying hunters felt great animosity towards Fin, because he had verbally assaulted or offended them at some time during their one week stay at the Lodge. Some of them had spoken to me about these incidents when no one else was around but the other hunters who agreed with them. Those hunters had witnessed the way that Fin and Marty treated me, and they didn't like it. They were all aware that Katahdin Lodge provided honest-all-out-effort bear hunts with clean, comfortable lodging and lots of good homemade food to eat, but for the money they had paid Fin and Marty they expected to be treated with complete respect at all times. Then after a few days of experiencing the way that Finley talked to some of them at times, and they felt that they had gotten to know me well enough to realize that I wasn't happy about that bullshit, they spoke candidly to me about it. That was a difficult aspect of my adventures in Maine to stomach; Finley was after all, first and foremost, my uncle.


Fin took this photo of Gary and I, because it was the first time that hunters at Katahdin Lodge had gotten 4 bears in one day.

That’s one my favorite hats that I have on, a green Efrennam Crusha’. I wore outa’ few of them, and I still have the last one I bought in Patten, and it’s some kinda’ broke in, let me tell you.

Photography by David Robert Crews

This is up over Rt. 11, about halfway between the Lodge and Patten, looking out into the Great North Maine Woods that stretches out for 90+ miles behind Katahdin Lodge.


Copyright 2006 David Robert Crews

ursusdave
Patten Maine
Katahdin Lodge
David Robert Crews