LaVern Beier
"In 1970, I was 17, and I thought I was on my way to Vietnam. I wanted to see Southeast Alaska before Southeast Asia. So I saved up $262 and bought a standby ticket to Petersburg, to visit my sister and brother-in-law. After that visit, I planned to join the Navy before I turned 18 and got drafted. I had a lot of friends who went to Vietnam and came back not in one piece, or not at all.
About a week after I got to Petersburg, we flew to the Unuk River in a Super Cub to go moose hunting, and Bruce Johnstone was there, on crutches. We got a moose, and everyone had to go back to work except Bruce and I. I had read about Bruce before I met him and I thought he was older than dirt because he was such a legend.
Bruce was born in 1909. He was the only man alive who had survived an attack from three brown bears at one time. In 1935, a bear known as Old Groaner stalked him and his brother. And Brucejack Mine on Sulfide Creek is named for him and his brother.
Bruce had continuous stories about growing up in Misty Fjords. He guided rich and famous people in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s all over Southeast Alaska. He guided with Allen Hasselborg. It was like being with someone from the past.
He wanted to go trapping again. In hindsight, he really wanted to prove to his friends and family that he could still do the all-day Alaska stuff that he used to do. But he was on crutches, so he needed someone to look out for him and do the muscle work. And he discovered I was trainable and I was a pretty decent cook.
Walter Cronkite used to have a Vietnam body count every night. We tuned in religiously. It gave you some kind of a meter for how the war was going. The body count was going down, so a combination of that and spending about 10 days with Bruce, he kind of brainwashed me to think — maybe I won’t join the Navy. Maybe when I go back to town I’ll gamble on my draft card number. So we tentatively agreed we were going to go trapping together next spring.
When my birthday came around — November 8 — my draft number was 260. So Bruce and I decided to go trapping in March 1971."
— LaVern Beier, Unuk land & cabin owner, trapper, hunter & retired ADF&G bear researcher
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