In the hunt

Stacy J. Willis

Thursday, Jan. 11, 2001 | 11:22 a.m.

He may have been pawing for moss in the Russian snow, or wooing a cow -- as it was mating season last October when he was shot.

But the story of this 600-pound caribou bull, who was probably 9 years old, doesn't end when he fell dead in the remote Kamchatka Peninsula, where four white-camouflaged hunters gathered around to gut him and pose for photos.

This caribou -- or at least his antlers -- ended up in Las Vegas.

On Wednesday, less than three months after his death, the antlers were on display in the Sands Expo Center and were sharing a marquee with the Oak Ridge Boys and former President George Bush, Bo Derek and Roy Clark.

More than 20,000 sportsmen and sportswomen are attending the 29th Annual Safari Club International Hunters Convention, which began Wednesday and lasts through Saturday. Last year's convention netted $3.87 million for the 34,000-member, non-profit, hunting organization. The international club's membership has grown 135-percent in the last 10 years.

This year's seminar topics range from Hunting In Zimbabwe to Advanced Gourmet Game Cooking.

Today convention participants will prepare and serve venison and salmon to more than 600 Las Vegas homeless people at the Salvation Army.

Additionally, Safari Club International will recognize last year's record-setting game trophies, including this sprawling set of caribou horns shot by sportsman Fred Mau of Wyoming.

The tale of this particular caribou's trip to Las Vegas is about both marksmanship and salesmanship, the age-old contest between man and beast, between sportsman and civilization. This Russian caribou arrived at his posthumous fame via capitalism, a rifle, five airports and a businessman in a cowboy hat.

A life's goal

The son of a game warden in Wisconsin, Mau got his first .22 when he was 5 years old. For years, he shot rabbits and developed a taste for gamey meats and bigger-the-better trophy collecting.

As an adult, Mau worked as an insurance salesman and continued to hunt as a hobby, before deciding nine years ago to combine his business sense with his love of the hunt.

When he started Fred Mau's Outdoor Adventures in Wyoming in 1993, he leapt into the increasingly competitive safari consulting industry. Now he and his small staff sell trips to remote hunt locations around the world, such as the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula.

"You fly from Anchorage to the Petropavolvsk airport, and take a custom helicopter to the camp," Mau employee Jason Jensen tells one of the visitors at the exhibition booth in the mobbed convention center. "There are only four hunters there at a time, and the lodge would be considered plush by North American standards."

Initially Mau sold only brown bear hunts in the peninsula for $7,900 -- and hundreds of big-game hunters signed up.

Sportsmen are led by 20-year-old Russian guides who expect big tips at the end of a successful trip.

"But not many of the Russians in that area actually hunt, because it takes a year's salary just to buy a used military rifle," Mau says. "So it is an area that hasn't been tapped much."

The hunt

Russian caribou are nearly twice the size of North American caribou, making it an irresistible temptation for a hunter, and a solid pitch for a salesman. Additionally, the category of game is fairly new in the Safari Club International record book, which means hunters have a better chance of getting their names printed than were they hunting something more common and competitive.

"There are not many U.S. hunters who have ever hunted Russian caribou," Mau tells hunt shoppers who are meandering between huge stuffed polar bears and custom rifle displays at the convention.

He doesn't like to call them by their other name, Asian reindeer, as it seems to shoo some hunters away, he says.

On his "inspection" hunt in October -- meant to see whether or not the caribou trip would be a feasible sale -- Mau and his group of two Russian guides and three hunters took snowmobiles into the wilderness in search of the caribou herds.

"We weren't sure it would pan out. There are great big snow fields that make it hard to get up on them."

Nevertheless, they spotted a herd of about 20 on a mountainside.

"We shut the snowmobiles off a couple of miles away from them, downwind so they wouldn't smell us," Mau said. "It was cold -- about freezing -- and we were dressed in snow camouflage ... We tried to use the slope of the mountain to hide our approach -- you want to get within 150 yards so you know your shots are going to be accurate.

"It's a beautiful animal. The horns look like an airplane on the snow. And once you see the bull, you have to make the shot. It's just like that -- you see him, and 'boom' -- you make your shot."

Mau gave his client Bob Nelson, a western art dealer, the first shot. Nelson killed the first one. Later, Mau shot another bull with his custom made Ed Brown 7STW rifle -- ("It shoots a medium-sized bullet as fast as we can make a bullet fly.)

"These caribou were so impressive that we knew they were extraordinary trophies when we took them down," he says with a grin that pushes his cowboy hat up. "So then it was photo time."

After taking photos that would end up on display at his Las Vegas booth, Mau and his hunting party dressed the animal.

"We cut around the neck, this area we call the cape, and take the hide and peel it off and saw the horns off. And of course we ate the meat while we were in Russia -- caribou is one of my favorite meats.

"This hunt is something I highly recommend," Mau says.

He charges $4,750 for his new 7-day Russian caribou trip.

The contest

On a table in the Sands lay black wildebeest horns, brown bear skulls and an assortment of other twisting, looping horns -- all waiting to be measured.

Bill Stratton, a "cowboy from Montana" and a recognized Safari Club Master Measurer is kneeling on the carpet stretching a wire along one of 34 tines, or spikes, on Mau's caribou horns. They stand about 3 feet high and nearly as wide, are thick and brown like wood, and have a small nick from one of the bullets.

The horns also have an airline tag taped to the middle -- they have flown from Russia to Anchorage to Minneapolis to Denver to Las Vegas, via Northwest Airlines.

"You do worry about leaving something so special in the care of the airlines, certainly," Mau says. "But some airlines really cater to the sportsman, and you learn to trust them."

Mau has brought a friend from the exhibition hall into the measurer's room to show off his trophy horns, which are expected to score in the Safari Club International record book's top 10 for their category in size and quality.

"It's beautiful," the hunt shopper tells Mau as they gaze on the caribou's antlers.

"There are not very many of these in the book -- very few," Mau says. "And we're going to have 12 more hunts over the next year. So let me know if you're interested."

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