Louis Brown (1913 - 1987)
Louis Brown grew up in Stettler, Alberta where he learned how to hunt and trap. Before coming north, Louis was hired by the state of California to clean out the wolves and he became an expert at poisoning. He came down the Mackenzie River to Aklavik but was legally prevented from trapping and could not find a job. Told about jobs in Keno, he crossed the mountains and travelled down the Porcupine to the Yukon River where he took passage on a sternwheeler to Dawson. He arrived broke and started work with Yukon Consolidated Gold Corp. In the late 1930s, he started trapping in the Bonnet Plume River area and was investigated for poisoning wolves and shooting beaver, common but illegal practices for trappers in that era. Author Robert McCandless was horrified when Brown became of the Yukon’s most prominent big-game hunters. In the winter of 1939-40, Louis trapped with Ernie Barz in the Wind River country. Louis married Effie Martin, sister to Robert Martin, in 1942. Effie died a few years later, perhaps of tuberculosis. Around 1952, Dolores Cline came north to hire and eventually marry Louis. She became an active partner in his game guiding business until it closed in the late 1970s.1)