Blue-collar hunter trades luxury for trophies
New York tradesman Mark Dittberner has worked long and hard to go to 16 countries on five continents in pursuit of his big-game dreams
"You know how big a house you'd have if you didn't hunt?" they say.
This stupefies Dittberner.
"Is that what everything revolves around?" he asks in a small, heated shed behind his farmhouse in western New York. "I don't have any regrets for a nickel I spent on all the hunts and travel."
In all, it's about 40 million nickels.
Dittberner, 46, a landscaper, welder, Christmas tree grower and auto-body repairman, counts 92 hunts outside New York state since 1980. He has hunted in 16 countries on five continents, including trips to China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in August and September, and Sweden and Finland in October.
| “ | I don't have any regrets for a nickel I spent on all the hunts and travel. ” | |
| — Mark Dittberner |
"I've had a tremendous year," said Dittberner, who calls the Wayne County town of Ontario, N.Y., home. Then he corrects himself. "Actually, I've had a tremendous life."
Dittberner grew up on his parents' farm next door to where he lives today with his wife, Karen. Hunting and working hard were instilled in him at an early age by his grandfather, Carl, and his mom and dad, Carol and Earl.
He hasn't outgrown either of those drives. He makes no bones about living and working to hunt.
"I'm a trophy hunter," he says in one of the many rooms he has stuffed with game ranging from Arctic musk ox to African zebra.
But, he says, "It's not just pulling the trigger. It's start to finish: The people — what they eat and where they live. The terrain. The weather. Extremes. I've hunted in 100-degree heat in the Australian Outback and minus-40-degree cold in Siberia."
He collects experiences, memories and information about cultures that are better learned firsthand than from a magazine or a DVD.
"When I shot the moose in Sweden, as soon as it dropped, my guide put a spruce sprig in my hat and one in the moose's mouth," Dittberner says. "Hunting Russian brown bear, they poured vodka on the top of my hat and on top of the bear.
"It's the cultures, the traditional ways of hunting."
Dittberner isn't interested in technology supposedly designed to make life easier. You can keep your handheld organizer and laptop computer. He'll stick with his backpacking stove and custom-lightened Winchester Model 70 .264-caliber rifle.
"I wish I could have lived in the 1800s," Dittberner says.
He is a throwback hunter, taking to the field with all he needs packed on his back.
That same backpack is the heavy equipment he uses to carry his kill home.
The Eastern European moose he shot in Sweden was hauled out 150 pounds at a time over 2 miles from forest to camp. He needed to make five round-trips. In all, hiking 20 miles.
"That's part of the hunt," Dittberner explains.
He eats the meat and shares it with others. He boils skulls and salts capes to preserve the trophies. He has the racks mounted for display. He sells the pelts of the small game he hunts and traps near his home. Nothing goes to waste.
He does not pursue the record book, instead seeking "respectable animals."
Getting a respectable animal is "80 percent luck on any hunt," Dittberner claims. "Twenty percent you can make yourself. Be in shape. Don't give up. Hunt, hunt, hunt.
"If you're on a 10-day hunt, don't hunt just seven days. Go out every second possible. If you don't get anything at the end of that, go back again."
Dittberner has gone back several times. He made three trips to Idaho to get a mountain lion and three trips to Alaska for an Arctic grizzly bear. He is 0-for-2 so far on the Maral stag in Siberia.
Despite a few failed hunts — including that first trip to Quebec for a caribou in 1980 — Dittberner figures he has a 90 percent success rate. The other 10 percent he blames on blizzards, poor tracking conditions and bad migrations.
Dittberner shoots year-round on the 200-yard rifle range he has built out behind the pens in which he raises ringneck pheasants.
| Going big | |
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His hunting is not restricted to the short seasons in western New York. It is year-round. Dittberner runs and exercises to prepare for strenuous hunts.
In Kazakhstan, he climbed to 12,000 feet in the Tian Shan mountains to pursue Asian Ibex. He spent four days looking for this large, wild sheep before camp packed up and moved to China, where he successfully hunted the Chinese Roe deer.
From there, it was on to Kyrgyzstan to hunt the Siberian Roe deer. After taking what scored as the eighth-largest Siberian Roe in the world, he returned to Kazakhstan. On the last day of his 14-day Asian hunt, he bagged an Ibex with 46-inch horns.
Five weeks later, Dittberner again went abroad. In Sweden, he shot an Eastern European moose that had a 12-point rack with a 46-inch spread. It was the sixth of the eight moose species of the world that he has killed.
He intends to finish his "moose slam," as well as the "reindeer slam." He has three of the six reindeer species and is planning a trip this year to go after the Finland and Russian reindeer.
He had planned his seventh trip to the Arctic Circle to hunt polar bear earlier this year, at a cost of $20,000.
"I work hard to hunt," said the blue-collar trophy hunter.
One day, he hopes to open a gallery of his big game. He has museum-quality trophies lining the walls, and 30 more animals waiting to go to the taxidermist. Where he'll put another one is a mystery.
There's already everything from mountain goat to moose crowding him out of house, shed and workshop.
Dittberner would eventually like to fit everything under one roof, but that would require building a bigger house — the kind of house he might have been able to build if he didn't hunt. A trophy house.
