Meet five of the best guides in North America. And they're all women.
Mar 1, 2005
Born to the Wild
Nature-versus-nurture arguments can run all day, but whichever side prevails, there's no doubt that Alisha Rosenbruch-Decker came by her outdoor ability from the very start.
Both of her parents are registered Alaska guides and her father has probably accounted for more southeastern Alaska brown bears than anyone. Within weeks of her birth, she was introduced to hunting camp, and she has never been far removed from that world. By the time she was five her parents were letting her use a knife to help clean the meat off the bear skulls taken by their clients. Alisha's first opportunity to take a game animal came during a trip with her family to Africa when she was seven years old. "We were in spike camps in Tanzania for 30 days and we were after Thomson's gazelle," Alisha recalls. "I was shooting my dad's .300 and [BRACKET "legendary African guide"] Paul Huggins was our PH. We were watching this herd of gazelles and my dad was on one side of me telling me when I should shoot and which ram to go for and Paul was on the other side doing the same thing.
Finally, I turned to them and said, 'I know which animal
I want and when I'm ready to shoot, I'll shoot. Just chill out!'" The men, with several decades of guiding experience between them, fell silent and Alisha took her ram.
At an age when most teens are eagerly awaiting their first driver's license, Alisha had something more ambitious in mind. In Alaska you have to be 18 to obtain an assistant guide's license, which she did as soon as the calendar allowed. After the mandatory two-year period as an assistant, she met the state's stringent standards as a registered guide herself. When she married three years ago, she and her husband reversed the traditional order of entry many married guide teams follow. He had no prior experience as a professional outdoorsman, but now he works as an assistant guide aboard the family's 85-foot vessel, Alaska Grandeur.
Growing up along Alaska's coast provided Alisha with an exceptional introduction to the skills needed in this challenging environment. In addition to her qualifications as a guide, she's licensed to operate 100-ton vessels. When she decided she wasn't satisfied with the taxidermy on some of her personal trophies, she mastered that skill as well.
Based out of Gustavus, Alaska, Glacier Guides remains a family affair. At any given time Alisha's mother, father, husband or brothers might be aboard the Alaska Grandeur with her. Her busy season begins in late April, with bear hunts scheduled through May. In August, she sometimes leaves the area to guide a sheep hunt in the mountains west of Anchorage at the request of a repeat client. September and October mean fall bear hunts. And once snow begins to push game out of the high country, she guides hunters along the coast for mountain goats and blacktail deer. How she finds time to do any taxidermy remains a mystery.
While she's hunted just about everything in Alaska, she admits a long-standing fascination with brown bears. She
uses the adjective "magnificent" repeatedly as she describes
a lifetime of experience hunting the fearsome animals. A
successful client-who happened to be a woman-once asked Alisha to photograph her posed with a foot on top of the
fallen bear's back. Alisha flatly refused: The request conveyed insufficient respect for the animal.
Her own quest for an exceptional brown bear turned into an epic. "I had been hunting bears for nine years and had turned down close to two hundred of them," she says. "I had one day to hunt this spring and went out and saw three bears. Two were over nine feet and I couldn't believe I was turning them down. I started to wonder if I really didn't want to take one. I have such awe and respect for them that I almost felt
I wasn't worthy."
But later, while hunting with her dad, her bear-the only bear she says she'll ever take-appeared. The ancient boar squared 10 feet 4 inches, a remarkable specimen even by Kodiak Island standards. Quite possibly, no one has ever killed a larger bear in southeastern Alaska. "For as long as I can remember, brown bears represented the wilderness where I grew up. Killing one is always an intense spiritual experience for me, even when a client pulls the trigger," she says.
After three years of marriage, Alisha says she is starting to think-think, mind you-about children. But she has no intention of neglecting her outdoor career, and achieving a balance between guiding and parenting represents an obvious challenge. Of course, she's seen it done right before. "When the time comes," she reports, "I'd like to be able to raise kids the way my parents raised me."
Contact: Alisha Rosenbruch-Decker, 435-628-0973; Glacier Guides, P.O. Box 460, Santa Clara, UT 84765.
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