John Deer

I'll make this as short as possible.

I took a trip to Prince Wales Island, Alaska last may on a "do it yourself" black bear hunt with two friends of mine. We had an excellent time, enjoyed the scenery, the comradry, the food, and all took a bear. It was truly the hunt of a lifetime.

We all took our bear to the local taxi to let him flesh the hide. Both of my buddies had him flesh only and then ship the hide back to them sothey couldtake the hides to their local taxi. I decided to leave mine with him to be rugged out."I live in northeast Oklahoma and felt better about letting ataxi that's done 100's of bear's doing mine rather than my local guy that has only done a couple."

I paid $150 to have the hide fleshed as did my friends. I then also paid an extra $150 deposit on the rest of the work I intended to have done.He (taxi) told me it would be approx 8 months to finish the rug because hewas backed up andwas in the process of moving to a new building. By the look of things, he was backed upand, 8 months didn't sound too bad to get the job done properly.

Well, now it's coming up on 11 months and still no bear rug. I tried repeatedly to contact him to check on the progressand an estimated time he thought he'd be finished.I started calling inearly January when the 8 months would have been up and much to my regret, I got ahold of his helper. She instructed me that he (taxi)was in the lower 48andshe didn't know when he'd be back.Also, she said my bear had been sent out to have the backing (felt i guess)sewed on.I didn't ask anything further but instructed her to contact me when my bear was done. Weeks went by and no calls,....... I tried again and got the same response from the helper. This time she said thatmy bear, along with other bearswere "supposedly" being shipped back from whoever they outsourced the sewing job to. I asked if they were having problems with these people they outsourced too and she said that they were backed up and that's all she would say. Again, I asked for a phone call within a couple of weeks to let me know the status of my bear.

Now its March 21 and I still hadn't recieved a call. I call and finally get ahold of the Taxi's wife. She says her husband has been diagnosed with cancer and has been in Oregon getting treatments for the last couple of months, and is actually due homethat very day.I apologize for bothering her with this trivial question at a time like this and again ask about the status of my bear. She informs me that my bear was outsourced to some people in Montana to have the backing sewed on along with many other bear. She said that they sent the bears along with $10,000 to pay for the work.She then said that they were having trouble reaching these people and had repeatedly tried to get in touch with them to no avail. She then told me that they were working with the local authorities (in Montana) to try to resolve the issue. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My nightmare has come true.What am I supposed todo now. I will be trying to call again tomorrow but I don'twant to bother this guy ifhe's real sick with cancer, and according to his wife he is. What should I do? I want my bear. Just asidenote,when we were there at the taxi's hewas talkingabout Ted Nugent being on the island and taking a bear. Nugent took his bear to this guy and had him rug it out. The last day we were there we were eating in a smallresturaunt and low and behold there wasTed Nugent with his son and film crew. We introduced ourselves and had a 10 minute conversation about our experiences on the island hunting. I asked Nugent ifhe took his bear to this taxi and he said he did. I figured if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me too. So, what to do now?