Meet five of the best guides in North America. And they're all women.
Mar 1, 2005
They're tough, talented, capable guides-complete pros to the core. Whether you need them to row through boulder-strewn white water, guide you up a cliff to chase mountain goats or face down a charging grizzly, they've done it all. Meet five of the most impressive hunters and anglers working in North America today. And, yes, they're all women.
A World of Adventure
Animated and engaging beneath a crown of reddish locks, 45-year-old Niki Atcheson(above right) doesn't really look deadly... until she starts talking about dangerous game. Last June 13, she aimed her custom .458 at a patch of black hide deep in the brush of Zimbabwe's high veldt and squeezed the
trigger on her 13th buffalo. Perhaps those inauspicious numbers should have told her something, but nothing occurred to her until she woke up in a Johannesburg
hospital-in Room 13.
The long road to her encounter with the buffalo reads like an improbable Hollywood script. Niki grew up in what was then Rwanda-Urundi, the daughter of an American physician who took her along when he hunted buffalo to supply his mission clinic with meat. Her collection of faded childhood photographs looks right out of the pages of Ruark or Hemingway. After her return to the United States,
memories of her unique African upbringing eventually prompted her to take up hunting again.
She readily acknowledges the support she received from several mentors along the way. Her odyssey began at a local gun club in Washington state, where an Alaska bush pilot introduced her to the fine points of marksmanship. Shortly thereafter, she returned to Africa, where she met Zimbabwean PH Gavin Rourke and began to develop an interest in hunting professionally. When she traveled to Hawaii to hunt with renowned guide Eugene Yap, he was so impressed with her ability that he offered her a job, which she accepted. By then, she'd met Montana guide Keith Atcheson through Rourke. She married Atcheson in 2000 and has been guiding with him ever since.
Despite the encouragement she received from mentors and clients alike, Niki also encountered her share of bias. While guiding in Hawaii, she had to deal with an irate client who was indignant that Yap had assigned him a female guide. "I just walked his butt off," Niki recalls fondly. By the end of the hunt-and after he had taken an exceptional mouflon ram-the two had made their peace.
For Niki, Africa still exerts a powerful influence, and she returns to hunt and rekindle her childhood passion for the bush at every opportunity. She realizes that her enthusiasm for buffalo hunting stems from memories of an Africa most of
"Sometimes when my father went out to shoot buffalo to supply the hospital with meat, our old tracker would carry me along on his shoulders. The days I couldn't go, I'd listen for the sound of the drums announcing their return. I still remember helping with the skinning, and cleaning rifles by the light of a kerosene lamp. Those were the memories that ultimately made me return to Africa." Which leads us back to the ordeal with her last buffalo...
As they took up the wounded bull's track, Niki began to suspect that she'd made a mental error in her shot placement. A long day's effort on the trail confirmed her fears. When they returned the following morning, they eventually encountered the buffalo...in full charge at eight paces. Before she could shoot, the bull knocked the rifle from her hands and began to gore her as Keith and their PH fired from point-blank range. The dead animal eventually collapsed on top of her, but the damage was done: fractures of her forearm, collarbone and ribs, a concussion, and two nasty horn wounds in the back of her legs that required multiple surgeries to repair.
Which sounds like an excellent reason to forget about buffalo number 14, but not for Niki Atcheson. She's already eager to return to Africa and introduce her daughters to dangerous game.
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