Air Force Vet Turned Outfitter Aimed High, Now Soaring In Hunting Industry

The following appears in the September issue of Alaska Sporting Journal:

BY CHRIS COCOLES

Had fate gone in a different direction, perhaps Dan Adler’s hunting outfitter/guide business that’s now considered North America’s largest might have taken him to Alaska full time.

Adler’s Arizona-based operation was still in its infancy about 20 years ago when he first discovered what an addiction the Last Frontier’s wide-open spaces were becoming for him.

But these days, the 49th state represents mostly pleasure trips for Adler, whose Diamond Outfitters (520-730-8147; diamondoutfitters.com) hosts big game hunts in several Western states and branches out into international adventures as well.

A United States Air Force veteran, some of Adler’s early times in Alaska were spent assisting a new friend, longtime Fairbanks outfitter Joe Letarte of Alaska Wilderness Enterprises (wildernessenterprises.com).

“I didn’t qualify for any of the Alaska guide rankings, so I just went up there as a meat packer, where I didn’t even draw a paycheck,” Adler says of doing unpaid grunt work for Letarte. “I financed my own way and helped glass for sheep and moose and bear guides, and I was just there to pack meat off the mountain and did that for several years, and I had to decide if I wanted to become an assistant guide or a master guide outfitter (in Alaska).”

But then, after some early struggles, he says his Arizona guiding business “was growing and growing and growing” between 2007 and 2009, and has blown up in the last 15 years.

“So I never got into Alaska from the business side of it, but I’ve gone back and done multiple hunts,” he says of a state that he’s only scratched the surface of in about a dozen visits since. It’s become a special playground when he gets to stare down the big game he’s helped clients get within range of.

“Alaska is a big part of my fishing and hunting heritage, but also spiritually. If I didn’t live in Arizona, I always said that I’d be in Alaska for summers and maybe Wyoming as the only other places I could see myself living,” he admits. “But Alaska is such a special place.”

And he’s had a special journey along the way to get there.

ADLER HAS NO REGRETS about serving his country during a decade-long active-service stint. A University of Arizona graduate who participated in the school’s Air Force ROTC program, he’d become an Air Force second lieutenant and then served as a flight line maintenance officer, working on iconic planes such as the F-15, A-10 Warthog and AC-130.

It was exciting work, taking Adler around the world and which he called “an amazing 10 years.”

After growing up in Phoenix, part of Adler’s Air Force stint saw him return to nearby Tucson, Arizona, where his college alma mater is located, to continue assignments at Davis-Monthan AFB.

But as his military career wound down and with a wife and soon two kids joining the family, Adler wanted to know what was next. A hunting trip with buddies would soon resolve that.

Adler and friends from Arizona met up in Colorado for a guided mule deer hunt. Halfway through the trip, the guys had scored some nice bucks and also filled a couple of elk tags they picked up over the counter. Adler, who’d already considered starting his own guiding business, had an epiphany one day when they were hanging around camp.

“This was the unguided portion of the hunt, and I was kind of looking around and thinking, ‘We’re really good at this glassing thing,’ and not in an ego way. I kind of halfway joked to the guys and said, ‘Hey, if I get out of the military and start a guiding business and do all the legwork, would you guys help me guide?’ They laughed about it, but they said, ‘Yeah.’”

The next year, Adler went on a solo Colorado trip with another guide, but he was left unimpressed by the experience.

“There were a lot of things within this outfitter’s control, and I was thinking to myself, ‘Boy; I hope the bar for quality isn’t this low in the industry, and if it is, what a sad place for the reputations for guides to be.’” Adler says. “‘I want to give this a shot, and if the bar is this low, we’ll have a shot.’”

AS A YOUNG BOY in the Phoenix area, Adler and his family would escape the oppressive Valley of the Sun summer heat for the cooler California temperatures in San Diego. (The city’s naval connections and a love for boats had Adler convinced he’d pursue a career in the U.S. Navy, but fate intervened when at the U of A, his Navy ROTC appointments got canceled, cinching his Air Force route.)

When he was 6, young Dan fished on a San Diego charter boat, the Fisherman III.

A few years later, at just 12 years old or so, he approached the captain in the boat’s wheelhouse and asked if he could help out as a deckhand during the family’s California getaways. He’d soon get that chance.

“That’s where I learned that fishing could be more than a hobby. It could be a way of making an income,” Adler says. “That kind of planted the seed that the outfitting world is something that people can actually (pursue). It’s not just a dream and people can do it as a job and that it could be done.”

While still in Tucson, he and his wife Terri got the ball rolling on their fledgling Diamond Outfitters around 2006.

“We had a lot of years of ups and downs and losing money – all the deployment money I had saved up while we’re building a business,” Dan Adler says.

Tucson was a bit of an outlier spot to have an effective home base. While it was within a short distance of some good Coues whitetail deer camps, it was a bit of a hike to elk country, a key species in the guiding cosmos for the Southwest. But location wasn’t the only hindrance in those early days.

“There were a lot of growing pains, not only financial but also in launching a business being new to entrepreneurship,” Adler admits. “We read a lot of entrepreneur books and spoke to a lot of mentors who had been huntingguidesinthebusinessinjust trying to build this.”

But things would get better – a lot better. Attracting quality clients and, even more importantly, good word of mouth from those clients, made a big difference in the company’s rise until about 2010.

The Adlers would eventually score another game changer in 2011, when a Sportsman Channel TV show, Best of the West, brought Adler aboard to be an integral part of its programming. Something special was happening.

Around 2015, the Adlers migrated their headquarters to more elk-friendly central Arizona habitat in Prescott, where Adler has also worked as a search-and-rescue pilot for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department.

“I’ve got a lot of stubbornness when it comes to never quitting. That paid off big dividends in college, and it paid big dividends in the military, and it paid big dividends as an outfitter,” Adler says. “It probably was the fourth or fifth year into it that things kind of blew up, because we’re getting big trophies; more importantly, we’ve got a great team and staff, and great clients. And it just snowballed from there.”

Today, Diamond Outfitters employs about 60 guides who cover hunts in multiple Western states and in Sonora, Mexico. Globally, the company has branched out with hunting opportunities as far away as Ireland, Argentina and New Zealand.

Factor in podcast work and speaking engagements, and Adler proclaims there’s “no dust on my boots.”

“We went from just me and my wife to over 20 years having over 60 guides in six states, two countries and growing; 42 million unfenced acres that we’re hunting,” Adler says. “For a while we were North America’s largest veteran-owned guide business, and now I’m told the largest outfitter in North America, which is crazy to think about now.”

ADLER GETTING TO ALASKA for the first time involved one of the few big game species that isn’t hunted in the Last Frontier: feral pigs.

After meeting some friends who lived in California, Adler started heading there for hog hunts, often bringing buddies along to get in on the action. The outfitter started offering him commission for the hunters who’d tag along with Adler.

“In the summer these guys were always gone. I asked them and found out they do bear hunts and fishing trips on Prince of Wales Island out of Wrangell,” Adler says. “I went on a trip and, of course, fell in love with Alaska.”

He’d eventually meet Letarte and do his meat-packing work on the Last Frontier guide’s hunts before his own business popped. But more often than not, his Alaska getaways are for fun. In August, Adler and his son had planned a Kenai Peninsula trip to fish the saltwater out of Homer and then they would head inland for a Kasilof River fishing outing. He also recently was a guest speaker at the Safari Club International Alaska chapter banquet, and regularly works with and contributes to the Alaska Wild Sheep Foundation.

And he’s not done with the Alaskan outdoors. At least one elusive feather in his cap remains.

“That’s an easy answer. I want to get a wolf so bad. I love hunting predators,” he says.

Adler’s thirst to harvest one of Alaska’s wolves took another turn when he was on a big game hunt. After crossing a river earlier in the day, on the return across the river, he spied the remains of a caribou that clearly was killed by a wolf pack.

Back at the cabin, when he ran into other members of the hunting party who had gone their own way that day, he excitedly mentioned seeing the scene of wolf-on-caribou violence.

“They all kind of laughed and smiled. ‘Yeah; well, you’re not going to believe what we saw. We were 500 yards away from when the attack happened. We heard it first, then we got to the high ground and saw the wolves taking down the caribou.’ They were 250 yards away but they missed three shots,” Adler says.

“The ongoing joke from me was you can have all the sheep and the caribou; I want a wolf. That’s my bucket list for the world.”

And as he continues to oversee his company, Adler will also savor the busy work-hard, play-hard life he and the family have established.

Now 48, he considers himself young compared to the big names in the outfitter world.

“I still do have the energy, and you know what it is? I feel called to serve. As a veteran, when you leave the military – and I’ll speak for myself – there is this component of you that says, ‘I’ve served my country; what do I do and identify with now?’ For me personally, ‘How do I match that level of pride?’” Adler says of his career change that now sees him helping others harvest the biggest, baddest bulls, bucks or bears.

“It’s incredibly satisfying. On a podcast, someone asked me, as North America’s largest outfitter, what my job description was. I started asking my guides the same question. At Diamond Outfitters, our job is to make our clients’ dreams come true. That’s it. That’s what we do.”

“To have those clients in that moment and see a fully grown man fall to his knees and break down in tears and gratitude and happiness, it’s a joy and fulfilling a life’s dream. It really is a blessing to be a full-time outfitter.” ASJ

Editor’s note: Follow Diamond Outfitters at facebook.com/Diamond OutfittersZeroOutfitterFees and on Instagram (@diamondoutfitters_zof)

Sidebar SURVIVING ALASKA: IT CAN KILL YA

In his Alaska meat-packing days, Dan Adler remembers one client who realized how different the Last Frontier can be compared to the Lower 48. 

“He was an executive from a big retail store (chain). And he had booked this hunt three years in advance,” Adler recalls. “When he got off the plane he looked a little pale and I thought maybe he didn’t like flying in a Super Cub. I didn’t think much about it, but we’re gathering our stuff. The plane took off, and as soon as he didn’t see it anymore, he looked at the mountains, looked at me, looked at the mountains and then he became even more pale and broke into a cold sweat.”

Adler could tell this hunter wasn’t ready for how intimidating this state and its surroundings can be for less experienced outdoorsmen. Adler, who is sharing his memoirs in a soon-to-be published book, wrote, “This is the moment the hunt ended.”The hunter would last about two-plus days in the bush, then called the outfitter on the satellite phone and wanted to go home.  

“He wanted out of there. He had that Alaska moment. It was just too remote for him,” Adler says. 

Indeed, while Adler’s Diamond Outfitters hunts have taken place in some rugged areas of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming, he’s realized Alaska is a unicorn. 

“Everywhere I’ve been to you can get a truck to, a side-by-side to, horses to. In Arizona or New Mexico, you can walk in any direction 3 or 4 miles away and usually hit a road. There’s just so much access,” he says. “But in Alaska, you do have to remind yourself and remind clients, even if I call an SOS button on the sat phone, we can be looking at hours before anyone shows up. Then they have to be able to find us,” Adler notes.

“One of the things that I always talk about, whether I’m standing on a fishing boat or at a hunting camp in Alaska, I always – no matter how beautiful it is – make a comment that there’s no force more beautiful in the world than Mother Nature. But she’ll also kill you without remorse,” he states.

Alaska is even more of a threat to unprepared anglers or hunters. Adler understands that he has to be on his A-game at all times when in the Alaskan bush. He’s learned much about the state’s hunting as well as survival skills and more from those he’s interacted with, particularly trappers.

“I’ve always respected trappers because it’s a really neat craft. But it wasn’t until I started meeting people in Alaska and then had trappers who hunted with me (that it resonated with me),” he says. “I have never, in 20 years of guiding and 40 years of hunting, had a trapper who wasn’t an excellent hunter. I don’t mean just a good hunter; every trapper who has come to my camp has been an excellent hunter. They come in all shapes and sizes and personalities, but they’re excellent hunters. That was my biggest a-ha – talking to Alaska trappers and hunters and incorporating them into my life and my hunting world.” CC