“STILL BEDDED,” I SAID to my buddy Frank Schultz while I eyed the band of Dall sheep rams we were after. I turned out of the wind and scooted back between the rocks that cradled a grassy spot atop the jagged ridgeline. We were pinned down, unable to stalk closer, but at least we were out of the wind.
Schultz had drawn a coveted tag for the Delta area in central Alaska, and I’d come along to help him out.
Now there was nothing to do but wait. I was kicking around anxiously in the pea gravel at my feet when I noticed a hint of dirty metal. A single spent rifle casing lay among the rocks. It had a patina that only decades atop an Alaskan ridgeline can give a piece of brass. As anyone would do after picking up a spent casing from the ground, I looked at the headstamp. It read “REM-UMC 1906.” “Definitely old,” I said of the .30/06 casing that wasn’t even marked as a .30/06. “I wonder if ol’ Glaser smoked a ram from this spot.”
Frank Glaser, the legendary Alaskan hunter and trapper, was certainly no stranger to this country. He almost surely