I met Jack Bunch 23 years ago in Ketchikan, I don't remember the how and
why. He was nuts, and he still is. He wasn't a very big person, but what
he lacked in height, he made up for in volume. He hung around with a guy
I used to work with, Milo Balzer. Milo and I worked for the local VW dealership
in the early 70's. We spent a lot of time under the influence of whatever
we could afford. My wife and I left Ketchikan in 1976 for Soldotna and Jack
left in 1977, and ended up in Eagle River. Jack got married, and my wife
and I had a child. I didn't see him much until 1980, when the Dead played
in Anchorage, and I needed a babysitter near Anchorage. We showed up there
the night before the show and went to see the guys the next night, they
were great. I was sicker than a pig with a cold, but I didn't care. That
night Jack woke me up about 3:00 and wanted to know if I had a gun, because
there was a brown bear sniffing around outside and not much keeping him
out there. I had a gun, but I couldn't imagine any circumstance under which
I wanted to use it on a bear. We watched ol' Ephraim for a while and he
wandered up to the neighbors and out of our lives.
Jack came down to Soldotna a few years later, he didn't tell me at the time,
but I learned in the next week or so that he and his wife were not getting
along real well. We had planned a week long moose hunting trip up in the
Swanson River area. We drove out to the end of Swan Lake Road and set up
camp about 3 days before the season opened. I had an old VW double cab pickup
with a homemade sleeper on the back and we found a real nice spot where
we could see for a couple miles. Every morning we would get up before dawn
and walk up and down the road and eyeball the local moose population. After
a couple mornings, it became obvious that there were no boy mooses hanging
around the area. Well, boy mooses don't much care for the company of girl
mooses unless the girl mooses are in a receptive mode. We concluded that
the weather had been too warm to push the girl mooses into estrous, and
therefore, if we wanted to find a bull, we would have to get further out
in the boonies. Every morning, while we were sneaking around as the sun
came up, and every evening while we sat and watched the swamp holes (moose
pastures) to see who was moving where, there were always small aircraft
circling around if any moose were present.
Jack and I, being the purists we were, and also resenting the noisy presence
of pilots flagrantly defying the aviation rules, became increasingly pissed
off at these aircraft. We headed out to a small knob we had checked out
earlier and set up camp on the afternoon before the season opened. We decided
to hang around the camp that night and not disturb anything. Over on the
gravel road we had driven in on, we could hear the people driving in for
the next days opening. We were sitting on a log on the side of the hill
in the afternoon sun sucking down a pint of whiskey when we saw a guy in
shorts come out of an alder break with a woman. He was walking kind of crouched
over and looking all around so I elbowed Jack and told him to hold real
still, cause it looked to me like this guy thought he was in the wilderness.
We were bumps on that log as that guy worked his way up the hill, tiptoeing
across logs, working his way around snags until he got about 10 feet from
us. Jack couldn't stand it no more, so he blurts out "Howdy, seen any
moose?". The guy jumped two feet in the air, which wasn't easy with
his girlfriend hanging on him like that. They didn't seem to want to talk
much and soon left and returned to the road system.
Meanwhile, Jack and I moved over to the other side of the hill to see what
would happen in the moose pasture after the sun went down. About a half
hour before sunset, as we watched a cow with a calf being joined by another
cow with two calves, here comes another one of those damned planes. The
dumb bastard sees the moose and has to drop down to a couple hundred feet
over the pasture and circle 'round and 'round while his equally stupid buddy
finds his binoculars. Meanwhile, the moose have beat feet back to the cover
of the forest. Wouldn't you? We began to talk about what we would do to
the next SOB in a plane that dropped below the legal limit of 2500 feet
during the first two weeks of the season.
The next morning, opening morning, we woke well before dawn and sneaked
over to out observation post of the previous evening. There were the cow
and calf, the cow and two calves, and two other cows, but no bulls. As we
sat there, we saw another airborne idiot come swooping down to check for
horns. That sent the two cows with calves into the first growth. Then, we
could hear something walking through the second growth and so could the
two remaining cows, who headed for the woods.
Unsuprisingly, out of the second growth comes our friend of the previous
afternoon. He walks right across the middle of the moose pasture in which
30 minutes earlier there had been 7 moose eating. He was still walking all
hunched over as if he expected something to jump up and eat him.
Jack and I were completely disgusted by this time and decided to head overland
to the camp and find another place to hunt. That was a mistake. We should
have gone back along the ridge we followed the day before. As luck would
have it, we became enmired in a swamp that seemed to have no end. Every
time we thought we saw and easier way, we ended up in deeper water. At one
point, we had to form a two man human chain across a deep swamp hole that
would surely have sucked up either or both of us had we slipped or lost
faith. We staggered up to the camp about 10:30, completely drained and extremely
thirsty.
Being the kind of guys we are, we opted to polish off a few beers and a
couple of nips of whiskey to build our strength. I don't know if it was
the alchohol on top of our extreme exertion, or if we were just pissed off
enough, but as we stood there by the camper, out in the open, right on top
of a bald hill, we saw another one of those damned airplanes coming. He
was skimming right over the treetops and as he lifted to go over our little
hill, Jack said "F*** this guy, let's moon him." I could find
no fault with his idea, so as the pilot climbed over our hill, he was treated
to two vertical smiles. Well, you would expect that someone seeing that
view would understand that he wasn't wanted around there. This yahoo began
circling us. So we circled too. He got a 720 degree moon, at which point
I became alarmed, but Jack yelled "he wants to see the elephant!"
I had to hold Jack to keep him from exposing his genitals, which in itself
may have looked weird from above.
I talked Jack into ignoring the bastard, which wasn't easy. I suggested
that we take our fishing poles down to the lake we were near and try to
get some trout for lunch. We went down there and fished for a while, but
that plane seemed to keep coming back and circling us. I had a bad feeling
about it.
About a half hour later, three Fish and Game trucks came flying around the
corner and stopped up by our camp. The plane continued to circle. The officers
were obviously directed by their airborne buddy to come down to where we
were fishing. We observed all of this, so it was no surprise when they walked
right to where we were. The head honcho, the dude with the badge says to
us " Whatever you do, don't smile. That's Lt. Reynolds up there, and
he's hot enough to f***. What the hell did you two do?".
"We mooned him, " I replied.
The six F&G agents that had been dispatched to arrest us all burst into
laughter and again told us not to laugh. They had the advantage of having
their backs to the Lt.'s plane. They were very nice to us and had a very
good time speculating about the color of their boss's face, etc. but Jack
and I had to go in to see the guy when we got back into town. He maintained
that he was legally able to arrest us for indecent exposure. I maintained
that I was legally able to arrest him for flying below the legal limit.
So Jack and I walked.
Last week I wrote you that I would write again this week about the mooning
of Lt. Reynolds. I hadn't heard from Jack in 4 years. This week he called
me. He lives up by the Canadian border in Idaho. He's taking care of his
mother so she won't have to go to a home. He got divorced just after our
hunting trip, and he's crazier than a Christmas goose. Then again, I guess
I am, too.
Come a come a funeral knotty no go
No one's burial yet you want I
Come a come a funeral, make your friend come
Claim say you're the general.Peter Tosh Peter S. Oleson
From [poleson@ptialaska.net]
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