Glenn St. Charles, Fred Bear and the Birth of the Pope & Young Club
Before modern bowhunting became a massive industry, it was a fringe movement dismissed by the broader sporting world. Firearms dominated the field, and archery was widely viewed as a primitive novelty rather than a legitimate method for harvesting big game.
To change public perception and prove the lethal effectiveness of traditional tackle, bowhunting required a grand stage. That stage was found along the glacier-fed waters of the Little Delta River in the foothills of the Alaska Range, where a series of historic expeditions from 1957 to 1959 laid the literal and philosophical foundations for the founding of the Pope and Young Club.
1957: The Discovery and the Cabin
The legend began by accident in 1957. Glenn St. Charles—a talented Seattle bowyer, National Field Archery Association (NFAA) secretary, and passionate conservationist—was flying over the Alaska Range in a small bush plane. The pilot temporarily lost his bearings and dropped altitude to scan the terrain. Looking out the window, St. Charles spotted a game-rich valley split by a braided river with an abandoned trapper’s cabin sitting right in the middle of it.
Recognizing the raw potential of the area, St. Charles returned later that year with hunting partner Keith Clemmons. Because there were no airstrips nearby, their bush plane was forced to land on an old surveyor’s strip 10 miles away. The men hiked through dense, grizzly-infested willow and spruce brush to reach the cabin.
During that inaugural 1957 trek, St. Charles successfully harvested a magnificent barren-ground caribou. But more importantly, the remote camp gave him the isolation to refine a grand idea. He spent his evenings discussing a scientific big-game scoring system specifically designed to validate bowhunting to a skeptical public.
Before they left, the men solved their grueling access problem: using hand axes, they cleared a rough bush-plane landing strip out of the raw wilderness brush right near the cabin.
1958: The "Gang" and the Arrival of Fred Bear
St. Charles had originally made a deal with Alaskan Airlines to capture promotional archery footage in exchange for transport. Realizing he needed a more prominent figure to elevate the film's production and reach, he extended an invitation to a legendary friend from Michigan: Fred Bear.
In August 1958, Bear arrived at the hand-cut Little Delta airstrip alongside Dick Bolding, Bud Fowles, and a crew that would become affectionately known as the "1958 Gang". When Bear landed, he discovered a grizzly bear had torn off the cabin's door over the winter. After patching it up, Bear surprised the group by outfitting everyone in some of the very first commercially available camouflage clothing ever produced by Bear Archery.
For two weeks, the group mapped the surrounding ridges. Both Bear and St. Charles harvested caribou and Dall sheep, capturing stunning backcountry footage. To protect their camp from future furry intruders upon departure, they nailed crosscut saws to the cabin door with the teeth facing outward.
1959: Overcoming the Glacial Runoff
The footage from 1958 was spectacular, but Bear and St. Charles agreed they needed one final season to round out a definitive documentary. They returned to the Little Delta in August 1959 for a month-long expedition, but the wilderness immediately tested them. Heavy summer glacial melting had turned the river into a roaring, impassable torrent.
Refusing to turn back, Bear and his crew spent two full days constructing a suspension catwalk bridge across the raging river using raw spruce beams, support poles, and wire. The iconic black-and-white photograph of Fred Bear crossing this hand-built log bridge with a pack on his back and a recurve bow in his hand became one of the most famous images in archery history, gracing company catalogs for decades.
The 1959 hunt also yielded Fred Bear's highest-scoring record-book trophy: an exceptional barren-ground caribou. Bear spotted the bull, crawled on his hands and knees across open, rain-soaked tundra, closed the distance to 40 yards, and made a clean harvest.
According to Bear's meticulous journals, the entire 121 man-day expedition cost just under $7,000. It was a massive sum for the era, but it bought a legacy that could never be duplicated.
The Abrupt End and Lasting Impact
The 1959 season would be their last on the Little Delta. That same year, the Territory of Alaska officially gained statehood. The transition brought sweeping regulatory overhauls, including mandatory guides for nonresident hunters and drastically increased licensing fees. Overnight, the DIY logistics of three men and a hand-hacked airstrip became financially impossible.
To add to the sting, a corporate management shift at Alaskan Airlines meant the promotional film St. Charles spent three years filming in grizzly country was permanently archived and never used for its original campaign.
However, the camaraderie and field data gathered during those three short years provided exactly what St. Charles needed. On January 27, 1961, Glenn St. Charles and Fred Bear officially established the Pope and Young Club. St. Charles served as its first chairman, giving his quietly assembled big-game records program a permanent home.
Named in honor of early archery pioneers Dr. Saxton Pope and Arthur Young, the club used the strict Fair Chase rules proven on the Little Delta to cement bowhunting as a deeply respected, ethical, and scientifically tracked sport across North America. Today, every archer who steps into the woods inherits the legacy forged at that hand-built Alaskan camp. By establishing the gold standard for conservation, selective harvest, and data-driven proof of lethality, the Pope and Young Club didn't just record history—it single-handedly secured the legal recognition and widespread respect that allows modern bowhunting to thrive today.
To watch Fred Bear and Glenn St. Charles hunting adventures, join our Stoney Wolf Outdoors channel online and on Amazon Fire and Roku TV.
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