Meet five of the best guides in North America. And they're all women.
Mar 1, 2005
Mountain Woman
The remote peaks of northern British Columbia include some of the continent's least forgiving terrain. It's not a place for the faint of heart; you have to be tough to survive there. Just ask the wolves and grizzlies...or a remarkable woman named Heidi Gutfrucht, who leads her packstring into the mountains every fall to provide her clients with opportunities at a half dozen challenging species of big game.
"Raised on moose meat" in rural British Columbia, Heidi-dark-haired, blue-eyed and 5 feet 6 inches tall-left home at age 20 to become a big-game guide. "Well, my school teachers couldn't do much with me when I told them I wanted
to live in the bush," she says. "They told me to go get a job
but I didn't listen. I was just a country kid and I headed for
the mountains." Her outdoor-minded father treated his son and daughter as equals when they were growing up, and it never occurred to her that hunters might be reluctant to engage a female guide-until she started booking hunts. At that point, overcoming male skepticism "became my life story," she says with a laugh. Responding with determination, she simply went about her business, relying on word of mouth from satisfied hunters to build a base of repeat customers. Over the last 25 years, she's never missed a day of hunting...a record of endurance that baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. might envy.
From early August through mid-October, Heidi, now 46, leads hunts by foot, on horseback and by boat for Stone's sheep, goats, grizzlies, black bears and moose, aided only by her daughter and an occasional assistant guide. Tending to her equipment, farm and nearly two dozen packhorses takes care of the rest of the year these days, although prior to the recent crash in fur prices she ran a winter trapline for
lynx, marten and coyote. She isn't shy about the secret of her ability to handle this daunting schedule: "I was born strong. And the life I've led has made me stronger."
Heidi acknowledges a special enthusiasm for hunting sheep and goats because of her love of the high country. "The scenery is spectacular and the toughness of the animals up there is amazing," she says. "Their ability to survive those winters is what makes them so majestic." Heidi also relishes the physical challenge of high-country hunting. "Everything is unpredictable in the mountains, especially the weather. We get lots of rain and snow, and because the headwaters of the rivers and creeks where I hunt can get so high so fast, I carry life jackets for the river crossings. Not many hunters expect to see them on a sheep hunt."
It's hard to spend a lifetime in grizzly country without a few unnerving bear encounters, and Heidi, who carries a .45/70 lever gun for protection, has survived her share. She estimates that she's killed a half dozen grizzlies in self-defense over the years, and that number represents only those
confrontations she considers "really scary." Horses in rough terrain can be as dangerous as bears, but Heidi laughs off those concerns with the aplomb of a veteran horsewoman.
"You just get up, dust yourself off and get back on," she says of her colt-breaking sessions each spring.
Asked for her advice to women interested in a career in the outdoors, Heidi Gutfrucht offers a two-word response: "Don't quit." She didn't, and it certainly worked for her.
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