SALMON GUIDING IN ALASKA AND ELK GUIDING IN WYOMING

Scott Dillon has guided hunters and fishermen to game and fish across the U.S. for more than 15 years after training at a guide school in Montana where he learned the basic skills required to be a guide. Dillon, a longtime avid hunter and angler, uses much of he's learned about wildlife and fish to help outdoorsmen live their dreams.

QUESTION: Scott, you guide for salmon in Alaska. Where are you guiding out of?

ANSWER: I guide on the Kenai River out of Soldotna, Alaska, and on the Kasilof River within about 10 miles of the same area.

QUESTION: How many fish can anglers catch in a day there?

ANSWER: On the Kenai, you're allowed to keep only one salmon, but generally we won't keep anything less than 40 pounds. Once the clients catch their fish on the Kenai, they're pretty much done for the day. On the Kasilof, they can catch and keep, and then catch and release after that.

QUESTION: What do you like about salmon guiding in Alaska?

ANSWER: The image of Alaska drew me up there to work. It's quite different from guiding hunters, which is what I do the rest of the year. Of course I need the work in the summer when there's no hunting going on anywhere and I don't have any pay coming in and need somewhere to go.

QUESTION: What do you do when you guide? Do you paddle the boat? Do you bait hooks?

ANSWER: I run a drift boat, which generally holds two people, three at the maximum. The river is large and very fast. We're one of the only companies to offer only a drift-boat service on a motor-boat type river. Probably 30 drift boaters are on the entire river system that do only drift-boat trips. We fish with cut bait and roe. The fish on the Kenai are larger than fish on most of the rivers in the world.

QUESTION: Let's talk about elk hunting. You work as an elk guide where and when?

ANSWER: I work with Wolf Mountain Outfitters, about 20 miles south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We do mule-deer hunts for about two weeks each year, followed by elk season, which starts September 26. The hunts are usually three to four weeks, with three hunts during that period.

QUESTION: What's elk hunting like? Give me your schedule from morning until you go to bed at night.

ANSWER: We take our hunters on a three-hour horseback ride into what we call the spike camp. Once we get to the spike camp, we don't hunt that evening because generally the hunters are sore from riding. We hobble and bell the horses and turn them out. Then we get up about 3:00 a.m. the next morning to catch the horses and saddle them up while the clients are eating breakfast. After we eat, we leave about 4:30 a.m. to go out and hunt elk. We like to be where the elk are at daylight to catch them before they go into the timber. We'll hunt until 10:00 a.m. or may be 11:00 a.m. or perhaps even noon. Then after a good lunch out in the field, we start getting ready to hunt again about 2:00 p.m. We set up, listen, watch and hunt until pitch dark. If someone happens to get an elk, then we may not get back to camp until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. We still have to unsaddle and feed the horses. Then we'll go in and eat, put the horses in the corral and feed them hay pellets. If we bring an elk in that evening, a lot of times I'll have to walk in because I'll have the elk on my own horse.

QUESTION: How many hours of sleep do you get a night when you're guiding elk hunters?

ANSWER: Usually I sleep from 10:00 p.m. until 3:30 a.m. when elk hunting.

Check back each day this week for more from Preston Pittman...

Day 1 - Getting Started As A Hunting Guide
Day 2 - A Year In The Life Of A Migrant Guide
Day 3 - A Typical Day For A Deer Guide
Day 4 - Life As A Turkey Guide
Day 5 - Salmon Guiding In Alaska And Elk Guiding In Wyoming

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