Dodge City’s Lee Hawes takes hunting back to the 1800’s

  As the hunting world advances technologically, game stands less and less of a chance against the modern marksman. But at what point does technology come between the sport and its original spirit and purpose?
    For Lee Hawes, that point has already come and gone. The owner and operator of Hawes Ranch Outfitters in Ford takes clients on buffalo hunting adventures in the winter and spring months, but he lodges them in tipi camps and arms them only with old-model black powder rifles.
    "If you use these modern scope rifles and vehicles, it's just not sporting," Hawes said. "It's just not enjoyable for me. But when you take an iron-sided rifle and you're hunting on horseback, it's what hunting was meant to be."
    He also said Hawes Ranch Outfitters is the only outfitter in the nation that can basically recreate the 19th-century experience of buffalo hunting on the Great Plains. He keeps nearly 300 head on his 2,000-acre ranch in unincorporated Ford County.

A hunting showcase
   
    Hawes' rustic hunting methods have been on display for two years to a television audience through his show "Classic Hunts," which had been airing on the Sportsman Channel. But for the third season, which starts Monday, Hawes has increased his potential audience by signing on with the Pursuit Channel, which is available on DirecTV.    
    The difference between "Classic Hunts" and other hunting reality shows, Hawes said, is that his show emphasizes the hunt and the adventure, not necessarily the kill.
    Hawes controls the direction of the show with his production company Jeremiah 16:16. The Bible verse about God sending forth the hunters rings especially true for Hawes, who calls himself a hunter of beasts and men.
    "The atmosphere of the hunt makes people very spiritualistic, and it becomes a door to discussions of that nature," Hawes said. "A lot of problems have been solved in my cook shack."
    Though most of Hawes' clients during his time guiding hunts are experienced hunters themselves, most of them live in urban areas and come from hundreds of miles away to get the entirely vintage experience Hawes offers. So he understands if he becomes a part of a client's religious experience.
    Hawes can think of little else that he's ever been deeply involved with aside from hunting, ranching, family and faith. He learned to trap and bow hunt at the age of 9 from his grandfather, Amos Hawes, on the same ranch that Judge Hawes settled in the late 1800s and Lee owns today.
    He runs Hawes Ranch Outfitters from that land, which will be the setting for the first episode of the coming season of "Classic Hunts," which will feature tandem buffalo hunters who happen to be women.
    "It's sort of a young women, old rifles type of feature," Hawes said of the season premiere.
    But buffalo hunting is not all Hawes Ranch Outfitters has to offer Hawes also has a pheasant preserve on his ranch, and he leases an 840-acre tract of land in Meade, on which he and his clients hunt Russian boar (which are comparable in size to smaller bears), wild sheep, elk and deer.

Close calls
   
    In his three years of taping hunts for television and 10 years of leading hunting expeditions in the Kansas wild, close calls and brushes with death have become somewhat commonplace for Hawes.
    "I spend a lot of time in prayer," said his wife, Tamie Hawes.
    In 2002, Lee contracted West Nile virus, which developed into equine encephalitis. When Lee was in a coma, doctors told Tamie that if he lived at all, he would have to re-learn to communicate and walk.
    He walked out of the hospital five days later, he says, and was fairly unchanged by the whole experience.
    "The only way it affected him was that he quit drinking coffee after that," Tamie said.
    "I've never been a daredevil or an adrenaline junkie type of guy," Lee said. "These things just sort of happen."
    While in Russia for a taping of "Classic Hunts," Lee was not allowed to bring his own guns into the country. After being assured that appropriate weapons would be distributed to him and his team, the hunters were given .308-caliber rifles to hunt grizzly bears in Siberia.
    Needless to say, the .308s were not Lee's first choice, given the size of the game he was stalking. As his team made their way into the bears' den, an adult male charged at Lee but was distracted by one of the team's dogs, giving him just enough time and space to place one bullet in the side of the bear's head.
    "Those Russian boars are almost more stubborn than bears, too," Lee said. "Shoot them once, and they get torqued up and then they really start to charge at you."
    He recalls one March on his property in Ford when he was walking near a stream and noticed something strange barely protruding from the water. It was too early for water snakes, he thought, so he went closer to investigate.
    As he inched up to the water's edge, a boar jumped up and charged at Lee, forcing him to dispatch the animal or be dispatched himself.
    "He's got to be on his toes at all times," said Tamie, who keeps the outfitters' books.
    Though she realizes the danger her husband routinely puts himself into, she has faith in his skill and the precautions he takes.
    "I'm always focused on making sure clients get to harvest an animal, but I've always got to be aware of our surroundings as well, from slippery surfaces to snakes to bears," Lee says.
    After hunting in South Africa, Russia and all over the U.S., his favorite hunting ground is still the plot in southwestern Kansas that his great-grandfather settled.
    "I hope that 'Classic Hunts' can draw some attention to western Kansas and give it some well-needed publicity," Lee said. "We like to do some historical segments on our show, and it gives us a platform to draw people in here. Without the show, we were already drawing several hundred people a year to the area, and we're just scratching the tip of the iceberg."