OUTDOOR HUB
Jim Kinsey | February 3, 2014
Walker Kinsey celebrates his successful opening-day elk harvest with his father.
Images courtesy Jim Kinsey
Five bulls began to materialize on an grassy opening nearly a mile away. One by one, they slowly began to move toward the saddle we’d set-up on well before light. My oldest son, Walker, who’d just turned 19, was sitting on some prime real estate 500 feet below our vantage point. The lead bull, a smaller 5×4, suddenly went from walking down the slope to a full-out run and began to drop off the mountain like a runaway train towards Walker. It was on his shoulders now. I whispered a silent prayer that he’d connect against the epic backdrop afforded by the Rocky Mountain Front.
I’ve been fortunate to make a living in the great outdoors, and through that job I’ve met some incredible people along the way. Every person I’ve met has helped me to get to where I am today. Two of those people who I have a huge respect for are Bob and John Nosler. On one adventure in 2005 I was filming a muskox hunt on Victoria Island in the Northwest Territories. The Noslers were field-testing their soon-to-be-released Model 48 custom rifle. I filmed both John and Bob take two muskox bulls with the prototype rifles chambered in .270 WSM under the harshest environments on the planet. I was also blessed to spend 10 days with them while they hunted moose, grizzly, and mountain caribou in the Yukon. That hunt celebrated the 60th anniversary of the release of the Nosler partition, and how Nosler came to be. Both of those adventures were beyond epic and still rank as my fondest memories afield. I dreamed of one day owning a Model 48 rifle for myself.