One of Alaska's oldest and most respected big-game guides has been charged with 34 felonies related to illegal hunting in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, most of them alleging that he allowed another unidentified guide to use his exclusive guide area.  Joe Hendricks, reached by phone at a winter home in Kentucky, said he couldn't talk much about the lengthy indictment handed down on Dec. 14, but seemed mainly worried about what it would do to his reputation.

"This is going to mortify my daughter,'' he said.

Hendricks' business, Fair Chase Hunts, has been guiding big game hunters to trophy Brooks Range sheep and monster Kodiak Island grizzly bears for more than four decades. "I've had an impeccable record for 45 years,'' he said. He hinted that it might have been tarnished now by one of the people with whom he has been doing business in the Arctic. "It's pretty much assistant guide stuff,'' he said.

Alaska has a complicated guiding system that parcels out hunting opportunities to a select handful of master and registered guides. They are then free to hire state-licensed assistant guides to work for them. As it now exists, the system is similar to limited entry in the commercial fisheries off Alaska's coast. The idea behind such systems is to ensure viable incomes for the people who work in them and, theoretically, to enlist the help of these businessmen to protect public resources as wise stewards of Alaska's resources.

"What I believe is that the reasonably good guides...they work like game wardens out there,'' Hendricks said, echoing this theme. Both guides and commercial fishermen have widely pushed the "wise-steward'' idea in an effort to portray themselves as more responsible conservationists than capitalist businessmen. The theme took a big hit earlier this year, however, when it was revealed that Arne Fuglvog -- a one-time Alaska "Fisherman of the Year'' before becoming an aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska -- had long been a fish pirate.

While busy fishing illegally, Fuglvog masqueraded as an advocate for wise management. Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski named him as to a seat on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and Fuglvog later came close to becoming the director of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The management council is the federal body that largely dictates how multi-million dollar commercial fisheries off Alaska's coast are run. The fisheries service has the ultimate authority for fisheries management in all U.S. coastal waters. Fuglvog had to withdraw his candidacy after his crew ratted out his illegal activities. They revealed he had for years been making false claims about where he was fishing in order to catch fish in other areas where he could maximize profits. An investigation ensued. It eventually led to a plea agreement that saw Fuglvog plead guilty to illegal fishing and quit his job as Murkowski's aide.

All of that rocked the commercial fishing business -- not only in Alaska, but nationally. Despite that, however, the federal fisheries service is plowing ahead with plans to privatize ever more fisheries in the belief that commercial fishermen given an ownership share in public resources will behave more responsibly. This is exactly the thinking behind the guide areas in Alaska, though even Hendricks admitted some doubts about whether such schemes work.

"I don't think it's gotten any better at all,'' he said. "There's always that 5 percent. What you want to do is weed out the 5 percent. There's like 5 percent who are really bad guys. I'm not one of the bad guys. If I was one of the bad guys, you would have heard about me 25 years ago.''

Hendricks, it should be noted, is not a pilot and does not keep an airplane in his hunting camp. All of the state's most infamous outlaw guides -- men like Ron Hayes and John Graybill -- have been linked to illegal, same-day airborne hunting. With the use of an airplane, it is easy to spot trophy-size Dall sheep, grizzly bears and moose in many parts of Alaska, then land and kill them. It is the reason same-day airborne hunting was made illegal.