Spirits of the Wilderness

By Keith M. Sheehan

This is the story of the fifty-year adventure of one man's shooting and wilderness education and how it evolved into what it is today.  It started in 1958 on the south shore of Long Island, advanced through Upstate New York, North Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, California, Africa, New Zealand, and, currently, back to California.

Every incident in this book is true, thus allowing the author the luxury of being both opinionated and, perhaps, a little unorthodox in his odyssey.  It is filled with great humor, bone-chilling dangers, high triumphs and devastating tragedies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 19, 2008
• ISBN: 9781467040044

Keith M. Sheehan

Keith and his Wife, Karin, live in Sonora, California with their two dogs, two Leopard tortoises, and an Australian Bearded Dragon.

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2010 Keith M. Sheehan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/28/2022

ISBN: 978-1-4343-6662-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4343-6663-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-4004-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008902823

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO F. GEORGE KLEIN; MY BEST FRIEND, a fine hunter, a fine shootist, a fine outdoorsman, a genuine Cowboy and above all, a fine gentleman. Without his friendship, encouragement and support this book may never have been brought to life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my father for originally opening my eyes to the pleasures and principles of handgun shooting. I thank him for teaching me that all life has meaning and that the taking of a life must have purpose, merit and honor in order to have justification.

I thank Tito Balistrieri, the finest rifleman and coach I have ever known. I thank him for teaching me the principles of precision shooting, focus, practice, concentration and bullet placement.

I thank Uncle Sam for allowing me the opportunity to be a member of the Third U.S. Army Advanced Marksmanship Training Unit (TUSAMTU) and the All Army Marksmanship Training Unit (USAMTU) High Power Rifle teams and letting me shoot forty hours a week year after year with the finest equipment and coaches in the world.

I thank my brother, Brian for teaching me the art and principles of wing shooting with a shotgun.

I thank Chris Sussens, of Tshukudu Safaris, Hoedspruit, South Africa, for guiding me through the pristine perils and unforgettable adventures of hunting in Africa with my Cowboy Gun.

I thank Peter Chamberlain of Kiwi Wilderness Safaris, Christchurch, New Zealand for an unforgettable and totally successful hunt on the South Island of New Zealand with my Boat Anchor.

I thank my wife, Karin for sacrificing our savings and encouraging me to go trekking off into one wilderness or another in pursuit of the sport I cherish so much. I thank her for enduring all my adventure stories over and over, and for becoming a first class chef of all kinds of wild game.

Finally, I thank the late John W. Segal, who, through his example, showed me how a truly kind and generous human being can influence everyone with whom he comes in contact. By his actions and example, he will fondly live forever in the minds of all who knew him.

PREFACE

My wife, Karin, thinks that my guns are too heavy and much too loud and although she enjoys the pleasures of target shooting, she has only hunted once. Since then we have mutually agreed that all her future hunting will be done with a Credit Card.

Although not destined to be a hunter, she seems otherwise fully rational and is the logical half of the family on virtually all other issues and topics of importance. For example, she tells me that some people actually don’t know the difference between a .45-70 and a 12 bore, and although I find that hard to believe, I accept her wisdom. She also tells me that I need to explain some of my early background which fostered my intense interest in firearms, hunting and the outdoors in language that folks, (maybe even a few non-hunters) can understand. I’ll do my best to comply.

My Father was a 6’4" Irish Police Captain in Nassau County, who conducted the Firearms Training Bureau for 27 years. He was responsible for teaching firearms safety and proficiency to all the new recruits as they went through the Police Academy. It was he who instilled in me the concepts of how I was to conduct myself with, and around firearms.

The only hunting I ever saw him do in those days was twice a month, when he would pile me and my brother into the back seat of his police car and drive down a deserted farming road, shooting cottontail rabbits through both open front window frames, with his S&W K38 Target Masterpiece revolver, while driving and switching hands as needed. My brother and I sat in the back seat, covering our ears. He would drive about five miles up the road and drop one of us off to backtrack and pick up all the rabbits, while he would drive down another nearby road in the opposite direction, take out a few more rabbits and then drop off the other brother to fetch the rest of them. He’d come back in an hour or so and pick us both up with our trophies and bring us back home before he left for work. We cleaned the rabbits in the garage, gave them to my mother, and headed off to school. His rules were simple and still stand today; if you shoot it, you eat it.

My Mother, all 5’2" of her, was the brains of the outfit, having graduated Summa Cum Laude from Skidmore University with a Masters Degree in Journalism. She spoke nine languages and wrote a weekly column in the N.Y. Times for many years. The scariest thing about her was seeing her finish the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in less than an hour, IN INK. Oh, yes, she was a master chef of wild game, especially rabbits, and game birds.

My parents, my 5-years-older-than-me brother, Brian, and I lived in a modest, brown shingled house, heated with a coal furnace in the wintertime, in the town of Wantagh, on the south shore of Long Island, New York, when it was still a small potato farming community. At the time I was growing up, I never knew that we were on a tight budget, but looking back, there were four of us living on Dad’s cops’ salary of less than $100 month.

Some of my earliest memories were of my father coming home with his pistol case full of his handguns, spreading a canvas cloth over the dinning room table and disassembling and cleaning each one of them. The only acceptable cleaning solvent in those days was the famous Hoppe’s Number 9. It had a very strong and wonderful smell that drew me to the table like a bee to honey. Dad would take the time to explain how each mechanism worked and why they assembled in a certain way, and kept me fascinated for hours. Finally, as my seventh birthday approached, (June, 1950) he agreed to take me to the range and teach me how to shoot. The size of my hands were such that I was only allowed to shoot his three smallest and lightest Smith and Wesson revolvers; a .22, a .32, and a .38 Special. At the end of the day, and after firing several hundred rounds through each gun, I realized two things: the bigger the caliber, the bigger the noise and the greater the recoil; and I had acquired and undying love of guns and my dad. Fifty years later, nothing’s changed.

In later years, Brian became a member of the famous All-Star Champion Rifle Team at St. John’s University and his prowess with a precision .22 target rifle was well known on the East Coast. After graduation his interest slowly changed to hunting with a shotgun. He is one of very few people I know who could make the transition from the steady squeezing of the trigger of a match-grade target rifle to the required swinging of a shotgun and the slapping of the trigger, and has become a superb wingshot of those humiliating, fast flying and elusive ducks. My Father held 5 East Coast pistol Championships, and, after college, I joined the Army and eventually became a member of the All-Army Rifle Team in the High Power Rifle category.

The world and I lost my Father in 1979 and my Mother in 2006. Brian retired after his 25-year teaching career and moved to Florida, where he has become a fishing fanatic.

This is a tale of simpler times during a not-so-distant bygone era. Life was not so cluttered and complicated. The lines between right and wrong, and the Good guys and the Bad guys were much easier to see and accommodate. I have been fortunate beyond all measure to have lived in, and even lived through, some of these adventures and I’m grateful for how all of them have shaped my devotion and dedication to every aspect of shooting and hunting.

I am an opinionated person. I’ve earned the privilege. I have been shooting, reloading, hunting, learning about, and listening to qualified instructors about my craft for more than fifty years. My formal education into the intricate world of shooting began in 1950 when Dad agreed to take me to the range for my very first shooting lesson. I was seven years old. That lesson taught me that simply pointing and shooting actually made hitting the center of the target a rare and strictly random act of luck, and that to be consistently accurate required sight alignment, trigger control, total mental focus and, as it turns out, many, many years of serious practice.

I have been blessed by being in the company of truly talented and knowledgeable shooters for most of my life. They are treasures of wisdom and the instructions and guidance they have given me are just as rare and precious as finding a pearl in an oyster. However, believe me, you have to go through a whole lot of oysters before you find one.

Every shooter you meet has his or her own opinions about the sport, but very few of them are able to teach you anything worthwhile. Just as you cannot learn to become a champion racecar driver by listening to the spectators, you cannot learn from anyone who hasn’t become a master of his profession with a proven track record. If you want to become a superb shooter, follow only the advice of superb shooters with proven success records. If you want to become a superb hunter, follow the advice of superb hunters with proven success records and methods. A very good example is to listen to avid, successful turkey hunters. These guys, as a group, are some of the best hunters anywhere. Even the birds they hunt are so well respected that, in most states, they are classified as Big Game.

My Dad had very little interest in shooting rifles, but some of his closest friends did. When I was 14, my Dad introduced me to one of the finest riflemen in the world. His name was Tito Ballestrieri, and this man was, indeed, a Pearl. He had won 2 gold medals in the 1932 Olympics and was currently the Head Coach of a championship rifle team, which, at the time, had not lost a single match in eight years of competition. On the day my Father introduced me to him at the indoor range, Tito positioned me prone with an ancient Springfield .22, taught me the pain and precision of a correctly adjusted rifle sling, and had me fire 10 shots downrange. While I was still in the prone position, with my Father watching, and using all the principles he had taught me, the resultant group was literally one .22 caliber hole. Tito reached over and adjusted the rear sight one click to center the group in the bullseye, and said that he would be happy to loan me the rifle until I could afford to buy my own. Many months later I learned that it was that same rifle that Tito had used to win in the Olympics! Under his watchful eye, I used that rifle all through High School and College where I managed to hold the highest offhand average score in the League. Sadly, Tito died in l962 and his wife was incredibility generous to me when she gave me his rifle. I still use it whenever there is a local match around here and it still wins for me. Thanks, Tito, your words still turn into X’s.

The next step in my education was to learn to shoot centerfire rifles. To achieve that, after graduation, I joined the Army and quickly rose through the various teams until earning a position on USAMTU, better known as the All Army Rifle Team.

Just about everyone complains about how miserable their stint in the military was for them. Not me. For four years I got to shoot the finest and most accurate rifles in the world, I was coached by the finest coaches in the world, I got to shoot 40 hours a week for free, and on top of all that, I was paid to do it. Nope, no complaints here!

A few years after I got out of the Service and finished college I started my career designing Corporate Profit Sharing and Pension Plans for a large Insurance Company. I eventually married, had two sons and a daughter, bought a modest home, two fairly new cars and even bought a membership in the local country club.

For Christmas, back in 1958, my father bought me a gently used pre-war Winchester model 70 in .30-06. At the time, a box of ammo cost the outrageous sum of almost $4, so I went down to the local hardware store/gunshop and bought a Lee Loader in .30-06 for the princely sum of $9.95. I also bought several hundred Remington primers, a can of Dupont’s IMR 4350 gunpowder, an assortment of bullets, and a reloading instruction manual made by Lyman. My total investment back then was less than $25, and for the next ten years, I spent all of my spare time loading, fine-tuning, and shooting thousands of rounds of first rate, hand loaded ammo. Those simple, basic tools taught me all the fundamentals I needed to know to assemble ammunition that was more reliable, more accurate and far less expensive than I could buy at the hardware store, and because of the long time to make each one, I learned to make every shot count.

As my job became more and more time consuming, I began to be bothered by how best to enjoy my limited free time. There are eight hours of sleep, followed by eight to ten hours of work, but I wasn’t really enjoying those remaining six to eight hours. With that in mind, I came home one day in December and announced to my wife that we were going to sell the house, the furniture and the cars, cash out all our bank accounts, move to Alaska, build a cabin in the bush and live off the land. I was 27 years old.

The rest of this book is my education by many of the Spirits of the Wilderness.

Contents

PART ONE: THE GOOD OLD DAYS

FIRST BLOOD

A MOM’S VIEWPOINT

BIRDS AND BAYONETS

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE….

PART TWO: THE OLD DAYS

THOMAS’S PROMISES

KENNY’S STORY

WHAT’S A .44 FOR?

LEAN, MEAN WOLVERINE

HOW TO FISH IN ALASKA

THE PHIL AND ERNIE SHOW

THE PLANE! THE PLANE!

THE FANG

SLICED TURKEY

GOLD FEVER

HOOVER

SNOW MACHINE SEASON

AS CLOSE AS IT GETS

CARDIAC KODIAK

FUN WITH THE POWER COMPANY

FOOTPRINTS

COMING IN FROM THE COLD

KARIN THE KILLER

ALASKA VS. CALIFORNIA

BOARING CALIFORNIA

PHOTOS

PART THREE: THE GETTING OLD DAYS

DEEPEST, DARKEST, ABSOLUTELY MOST WONDERFULEST AFRICA

LAMSON, THE LIVING LEGEND

THE HAT TRICK

POINTING OUT A COBRA

HE’S THE KING

ELEGANT, EXHAUSTING ELAND

HEIR TO AN ELEPHANT’S TALE

CONNECT THE DOTS

THE LAST AFRICAN SUNSET

FAR AWAY FALLOW

STALKING THE STAG

JOHN’S BUFFALO

WIND ACROSS THE PRONHORNS

STEVE’S SEQUEL

WHO’D A THUNK

BECOMING A HUNTER/GATHERER: 50 YEARS IN A NUTSHELL

PART ONE:

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

FIRST BLOOD

I had been hearing stories for months about a particularly nasty fellow who lived in upstate New York, and how much grief and misery he is giving the farmers in the area. The farmers had become so obsessed with the eradication of this guy that they had banded together and come up with a cash bounty for the culprit dead or alive. This was to be my first assignment.

Everywhere I went, I heard stories of how he pillaged the land, victimized farmers and crippled their livestock. He was tough and he was mean. He would actually dig holes at slight angles in the fields so when some unsuspecting cow or horse stepped into it, the angle of the fall would break its leg. Even though all the locals had matching descriptions of the short, stocky brute, and often spent their spare time pursuing him, he had always been able to evade even the most intense efforts to take him down. So now they gave me the contract to track him down and end his career.

According to the local residents, he lived out in the middle of nowhere, never ventured into town, lived entirely off the land and was a legendary survivalist. My only chance was to take him on his own turf. After following leads, tracks and trails all day, I began to figure out some of his patterns of behavior. So just before dusk, I positioned myself near a trail in the most probable area for his return to his hidden lair, and waited. Motionless patience pays off.

When I first saw him, he was like a ghost, and just seems to pop up out of nowhere. Even though he was still a little over 200 yards away, he appeared to be very cautious and alert. It was easy to understand why no one had been able to get him; there were nothing but open fields between us, and I knew that if I attempted to get any closer he’d spot me and just disappear.

Everyone had insisted that he would never be taken alive, so I decided to take the shot from where I was. I had positioned myself behind a low rock wall. The afternoon was clear, warm and bright. There was