Alaska's Youngest Big Game Hunting Guide with Tyler Kuhn - TAS #11

This week I sit down with Assistant Guide Tyler Kuhn about his truly amazing story of becoming Alaska's youngest big game guide. Growing up impoverished in Western Pennsylvania, hunting was both an escape and a way to put food on his family's table. From a young age he had a singular focus to move to Alaska and become a big game guide. His journey of the last 6 years has been filled with harrowing encounters and bad actors, but through perseverance he achieved his dreams.

Links

www.TheAKShow.com

Tyler’s IG @BearSkinner907

One of Tyler's contributions to Fur-Fish-Game Magazine https://www.furfishgame.com/back_issues/2019/2019-01.php

Interview Notes

Tyler is 23, he’s an Alaskan hunting guide, and hails from a small city in Western Penn called Newcastle. Hour north of Pittsburgh.

Interesting upbringing - kind of an inner city environment. Grew up hunting - he was very poor. Once the steel mills disappeared in the 1980s the economy never recovered and a lot of drugs moved into the area. Tyler grew up with no real income in the household - tons of family members did drugs and drank. His release was being in the outdoors and hunting, fishing and trapping.

It was both a way for his family to eat and for his own release. There were times where food was scarce because they were on food stamps and welfare. Hunting white-tailed deer was a means to provide for himself and the family.

Extended family would live in the house. There were times when they’d have 5-9 people in one household. 

Tyler hunted and fished everything - deer, turkey, small game, fishing for trout and walleye. Anything Tyler could get his hands on he would.

School was interesting for Tyler. When you grow up in that environment getting an education was on the backburner. He wasn’t sure if he’d have something to eat when he got home, so it would weigh on him. Back when he was in school he got picked on and bullied a lot. He used to be a really scrawny, frail, emaciated kid. Now Tyler has changed a lot through the experiences of being a hunting guide. School at that time was really tough. Tyler was the first person in his family to graduate high school. He’s thought about getting further education.

Tyler, when he was 7 or 8, saw a documentary program about the western caribou migration and told his grandma he would live in Alaska. No one believed him. In high school Tyler thought about getting into a science feel like wildlife biology or zoology since he loved the outdoors so much. But when he was a teenager he discovered the Alaska guide industry - and that became his main focus when he was 14 or 15 years old.

He learned about it initially by studying Alaska. One day he was watching a hunting show on tv and saw a guy do a goat hunt in Alaska. Tyler admired the way the guide presented himself and how strong he was. At the time that really impacted Tyler. The mindset of the Alaskan guide is no matter what you must push through.

After that he started reading literature by the pionee