A guiding spirit on cutting edge

Wildlife guide Travis D. Reed knew it would be a bad day in New Zealand last June when he was told in a satellite phone call to his helicopter base that a storm was coming and to get to lower ground immediately.

He and his party were at 8,000 feet, 25 miles from the nearest road, a three-day walk. Mr. Reed knew of a hut they could get to as shelter from the storm, but he had never taken the rugged, direct route to it. His group, dropped off by chopper, consisted of three men, two of them Marines, and his future wife, Margot.

They had no choice but to make the dangerous trek to the hut, Mr. Reed told his group.

Lead the way, they said.

Mr. Reed, a Barnes Corners native, has been leading trips in the outdoors for the past several years. He also is carving out a niche as a noted chain saw artist.

In June (winter in New Zealand), he and his party were at Bennison Valley at about 8,000 feet, one of the few climbable passes across New Zealand's Southern Alps, a range used extensively as a setting in “Lord of the Rings” films.

“Kiwis are pretty tough and if they say things are about to get bad, they are serious,” Mr. Reed said.

“The walk (to the hut) according to the map was only two to three miles, but we dropped 5,000 vertical feet on the roughest country on Earth. We had to make several freezing and dangerous river crossings and the hike that I thought would take eight hours took 13 hours,” Mr. Reed said.

They didn't stop to eat or rest.

“We knew we were in a serious situation,” he said. “By the end we had many bumps and bruises and one of the guys had a pretty good cut.”

Once at the hut, the team waited for two days with little food for the helicopter to lift them out. The storm turned out to be the biggest of the year and, had they not made the trek to the hut, Mr. Reed suspects they would have been trapped for days, if they could even have escaped freezing to death and avalanches.

“We definitely made the right choice,” Mr. Reed said. “The pilot said he never heard of anyone walking out the way we did.”

Mr. Reed has been rambling in the outdoors since he was a youth growing up in the Tug Hill area.

“I grew up in the outdoors,” the 1999 graduate of Copenhagen Central School said. “I was always hunting, fishing and trapping.”

When he's not doing those things, he uses his chain saw to carve out animal likenesses. He's taken first and second places at national chain saw carving competitions in Wisconsin and Minnesota, respectively.

Mr. Reed, son of David and Karen Reed, Barnes Corners, talked a few weeks ago by phone from a 7,000-acre ranch in Wyoming, where he and his wife are working temporarily.

“I just walked in the door,” he said. “I had to rope a calf.”

Following his graduation from Copenhagen Central, Mr. Reed graduated in 2001 from Jefferson Community College and in 2004 from Colorado State University with a bachelor's degree in wildlife management and fisheries biology.

“All through high school I knew I wanted to get into wildlife management,” Mr. Reed said.

He passed a round of tests to become a game warden in Wyoming but realized a government job wouldn't be a good fit for him.

“I decided I wanted to get into guiding,” he said.

He started that while at the Wyoming ranch after college, organizing trips for a few antelope hunters.

Mr. Reed, who is now hired by top adventure/outfitting companies, has led hunts featured on “Petersen's Hunting” seen on the Sportsman Channel and profiled in North American Hunter and Petersen's Hunting magazines.

He spent the last three springs in New Zealand guiding hunters and fishermen for red stag, tahr, chamois and trout.

In 2005, Mr. Reed traveled to South Africa to hunt for himself, which sparked his interest in guiding hunters there. He returned to South Africa last year to attend a professional hunter school, graduating with a license to guide in that country. He also hunted in Mozambique and Namibia last year.

Mr. Reed will travel to Alaska soon to receive three weeks of unpaid training under the tutelage of a guide who owns an outdoor adventure company. He'll repeat the trip next year to receive the required training so he can, he hopes, become an official guide for the company's owner.

Mr. Reed said it takes certain skills to be a hunting guide.

“It takes good physical fitness,” he said. “You have to be able to outwalk your clients. You need certification in first aid and good people skills. You sometimes do a lot of baby-sitting because many people find they aren't comfortable in the outdoors.”

His favorite place to hunt/guide is New Zealand for its varied regions, which range from temperate rain forests to glacial areas.

“It's untamed,” Mr. Reed said. And the mammals were all introduced to the island nation.

According to the New Zealand Department of Conservation, bats are the country's only native land animals.

He enjoys guiding tahr hunts in New Zealand. The short-horned wild goats are native to Arabia, India and the Himalayas.

“In this country they would be like a mountain goat, but more nimble,” Mr. Reed said.

He also delves into mountaineering, which he is able to do in New Zealand. And in 2006, he climbed Mexico's highest mountain, the 18,900-foot high Pico de Orizaba.

No matter where he hunts, Mr. Reed likes to be in remote areas and his party often is dropped off by helicopter.

“In many instances it's, ‘Take a satellite phone and call when you're done,'” he said.

Mr. Reed hopes one day to operate his own outfitter/adventure company.

“I need to get more experience and set myself apart from other people,” he said. “I'll keep working hard and build up the experience.”

This year, besides his Alaska trip, he'll focus on guiding in Colorado and New Zealand.

Mr. Reed became interested in chain saw sculpting after he saw artists at work at the New York State Woodsmen's Field Days in Boonville. He's been carving for six years and has competed and/or displayed at events in 10 states. He's never placed lower than third in a competition.

He said it's tough to pick which activity he enjoys more: guiding or carving.

“I like the money I make chain saw carving, but I really like guiding,” he said.

He does most of his guiding in the spring and his carvings in the winter. “They work really well together,” he said.

His carved pieces range in price from $200 to more than $2,000.

“My wife does the finishing work, like painting and sanding,” he said.

On Jan. 2, Mr. Reed, while on a trip home, married his high school sweetheart, Margot A. Papworth, also of Copenhagen, at a ceremony at Lake Placid.

She recalled that June day in New Zealand as they struggled down the slope to the hut.

“At the time, it was the scariest day of my life,” she said. “The other three boys told me that they would have given up, but they saw me keeping up with Travis and they didn't want to be shown up by a girl.”

She added, “My husband has a way of pushing you to and beyond your limit, but in the end he is proving to you what you are really made of.”

Mrs. Reed is a 2009 JCC graduate and the daughter and stepdaughter of Margot and Doug Jacoby of Barnes Corners and Edward and Becky Papworth of Charlotte, N.C. Besides helping out on hunts in New Zealand and elsewhere, she also works as a cook on trips.

Mrs. Reed said they are looking forward to a busy year of not only hunting, but attending fairs and competitions where they will display and sell their chain saw art. They plan to be at the Woodsmen's Field Days in Boonville in August.