Guide Life: Charlie Summerville
Ryan Barnes for SPLIT REED
Not very often do people make the life choice to move to Alaska and do something brand new in the outdoor world. Especially when it’s something that hasn’t been done before. The idea of going to the “Last Frontier'' to guide hunting and fishing trips didn’t daunt Charlie Summerville like it would most others. From his beginning, living in a tent in the backcountry, to now running Alaska’s premier waterfowling destination with Aleutian Island Waterfowlers, he’s truly grown into a mecca in the waterfowl industry. Split Reed had the chance to talk with the famed sea duck guide and see just where he got his start in the guide life.
“I’ve been known as the king eider guy. I pioneered all of that. I was the first one to guide those types of hunting trips out to St. Paul Island,” says Summerville. He and a few friends made the trek out there and were the only ones out there that weren’t native. After their first hunting experience, it all took off from there. Charlie wasn’t new to the guiding scene, though. At only 12 years old he had worked on charter boats on the Great Lakes as a first mate, helping with hunting and fishing expeditions by the Adirondack Mountains. “I have a long, diverse history in guiding. Starting in fishing, then doing the wilderness raft trips, and then getting into waterfowl and pioneering that up in Alaska”. Charlie said that he had been hunting and guiding waterfowl since the ’80s, but never got real serious about it until the ’90s. That’s when he started taking trips down to Cold Bay, and started flying the coast, landing on the sand, and setting up decoys, and shooting birds as they migrated their way down.
While Summerville may well be known for his adventures in Alaska, he is actually a native to Sandy Creek, New York. A small town only about 70 miles from the Canadian border. Even though waterfowl hunting was a part of the local history, it wasn’t something that Summerville found himself actively participated in other than a few trips with his friends every now and again. “To be honest, my dad didn’t really like guns. So I didn’t do a whole lot of hunting when I was younger. That’s why I went the fishing route. I was a fishing guide because that’s what I had more experience in,” Summerville says. He bought his first drift boat when he was 16, and started doing steelhead trips on the Salmon River. At 19 he went up to Alaska, just one year after he graduated, with $300 in his pocket. He sent out 5 different applications to 5 different lodges and received an offer from each one. “I had my Captain’s license, which was a big deal. In 1985, the Coast Guard changed everything that all guides in Alaska had to have Captain’s licenses. And that was another little side story; I was the youngest Captain in the United States. The day I turned 18, I tested out for my Coast Guard test”. Summerville had the ground set to make way in Alaska, now it was just a matter of time before opportunities, followed by a little ambition, began to present themselves.
When asked when he realized that waterfowl guiding was going to become a reality for him, Charlie says, “When I got to Alaska I realized that you only had a four-month fishing season, and it’s hard to make a living in four months. So I realized, ‘shit, I’ve got to do something else to make money’, and ended up being offered an assistant guiding job as a big game guide. From there, some of the guys that worked for me were waterfowl hunters, and invited me on some of the subsistence hunts”. While Charlie mentions that the subsistence hunts weren’t necessarily his favorite types of hunting in the world, it did give him a chance to get out, work his dogs, and help connect with the local waterfowl hunters in the area. Another element to Summerville’s future success was his ability to fly a plane. As a licensed bush pilot, he was able to fly around and see everything from, quite literally, a bird’s eye view. That’s how he came across the famed Cold Bay, and many other top hunting destinations. “I guess you could say one of my biggest strengths is also my biggest weakness; I’m never satisfied. I always have to be finding somewhere new and somewhere better,” says Charlie.
This fame hasn’t come without a price tag, though. Summerville has had to fight his battles with competing outfitters, native tribes, and other uphill battles. Some have even gone as far as trying to lease his lodge from underneath him. Charlie himself admits that he’s been one of the more controversial figures in the guiding industry. Largely due to calling competitors out on some of the antics and foul-play, they have tried to pull over the years. Even with some of the future ideas, he has in store he has to keep them under his hat due to the fact that other competition will go as far as to try to undermine his efforts. A sad commentary on the other outfits working in Alaska. “I don’t put up with bullshit,” says Summerville, “I pioneered this area and I did the work and these guys come in on my coat-tails and work for me for a year then go and start their own thing. That’s fine, I’ve helped probably 10 guides start their own thing over my 35 years of guiding start their own business, and I still try to support them. Unfortunately, there’s been some real ugliness to it too. Once you get to this level, everyone is trying to take you down”. Whether it’s been well-known booking agents, to high-caliber taxidermists, Charlie hasn’t been afraid to speak his mind when he believes people have taken advantage of his hard work. He does mention, though, that the people who have ill-feelings or speak poorly of Summerville and his outfit are people who haven’t hunted with him. Something that should speak loudly of his success in such a highly competitive market. He even had a lodge go as far as personally calling his clients and telling them that he’d gone out of business, no longer had a lodge, and wasn’t running hunts any longer; all in an effort to try to put Aleutian Island out of business. “It was a hostile takeover, and to be honest, I didn’t take it very well,” Charlie says, reflecting on the incident. What added more salt to the wound, was the fact that these were guys that had worked for Charlie, then had gone and started their own outfitting business.
One thing that speaks to Summerville’s determination, is the fact that at age 55, he’s still at it. Guiding in some of the worse conditions North America has to offer, he still grinds out a living helping clients get on trophy ducks. “I won’t let people prove me wrong,” he says. Maybe some of it is out of spite for those that have done him wrong, but either way, the proof shows that Charlie and his crew can get the job done killing some of the finest birds that Alaska has to offer. He also was one of the first to market Alaskan sea duck hunting. Starting back in 2008, Charlie started putting out video content to promote his business. Which quickly led to a surge in business for those that want to hunt the famous “Island X”. A term that Summerville himself actually coined. “Island X was a made-up, fictitious, marketing slogan that I started back in 2002. The reason I did that is because when you’re hunting on the X, you’re killing birds, and when I first started St. Paul Island, we kept it quiet, so we called ‘Island X’. I never posted the name St. Paul Island, I always just said Island X. Then what happened, when people started competing against me, they would specifically not use Island X. So they were selling hunts to St. Paul, and I was selling hunts to Island X (laughs)”. The true “Island X” is simply an Island off the coast of Cold Bay where the reef is that all the seals and walruses hang out on. That’s the true Island X as described by Mr. Summerville himself.
However, all this didn’t just fall into Charlie’s lap. Being the first one to truly pioneer Alaskan sea duck hunting, it came at the price of whatever he had in his wallet, some extremely hard work, and tireless effort to become a successful operation. Charlie and his wife started this whole game by living in a tent and sneaking into the dock-yard to shower at night. In 2015 they were doing almost $1,000,000 of business. “I came a pretty long way from a 19-year-old punk kid just trying to get by to running a $3,000,000 operation in my mid-thirties,” Charlie says. An accomplishment that anyone has the right to be proud of. However, it wasn’t all just making money. For the first 15 years, Summerville put every dollar he made right back into the business. During his first year going to King Salmon, he had $3,000 to his name. Needless to say, Aleutian Island Waterfowlers was literally built from the ground up. Summerville put everything he had into creating Aleutian Island into what it is now and growing it to be an operation where clients can experience successful hunts with trophy birds.
One thing that Charlie brings to the table with his 35 years of guiding experience, is his ability to walk the fine line between hunting hard to make sure clients have a successful hunt and pushing things too far. “People are paying good money to get out and shoot the trophy birds, the last thing they want to do is stay in the lodge,” says Summerville, “I study the weather, I read the reports, I look at the data. I know what the limits are. I know what I can do and what I can’t do. I may have pushed things a little too hard in the past, but I know right where that limit is to help my clients be successful”. Something that’s extremely vital when it comes to hunting the unforgiving waters of Alaska. One of the most impressive stats from Summerville’s record is the fact that in all his years of guiding, he’s only had 2 years of guiding for king eiders on St Paul Island where his clients haven’t killed birds. 18 out of 20 years all of his clients have been successful. That’s a 90% success rate on one of the highest regarded trophy ducks in the world. Just last year Summerville sent 61 of 61 hunters home with trophy caliber king eiders.
There are stories upon stories that could be told about Mr. Charlie Summerville. From his first hunt at Cold Bay to his experiences hunting with natives of the area, to crashing a bush plane. Stories to be told at a future date. No matter how you look at it, only one man can say he pioneered the Alaskan waterfowl hunting frontier, and that’s Charlie. Aleutian Island Waterfowlers and hunting trophy king eiders are the trophy he receives for all that hard work. From guide wars to sinking boats, there’s a story behind every hunt. The only way to truly see it is to experience it for yourself. And if you happen to be at a hunting expo and come across a gentleman wearing a yellow hat with “Alaska” on it, tell Charlie “Hi”.
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