Chicora resident Chuck Mager shows off the ram he shot last month during his sixth hunting trip to Alaska. He bagged a moose, grizzly, goat and bobcat there on previous trips.

CHICORA — When it comes to hunting, Chuck Mager has been there, done that.

Soon to be 57, Mager's trophy room in his Chicora home resembles a miniature jungle, complete with a lion, caribou, goat, elk, antelope, bobcat, grizzly bear, moose, deer, etc.

“I've hunted in Africa, Quebec, Utah, Wyoming, pretty much all over,” Mager said. “I've been into big-game hunting for a lot of years.”

Mager made his sixth hunting trip to Alaska last month. He bagged a goat there in 2006, a moose in 2012, a grizzly in 2014.

His quest this time: a ram.

“I almost didn't go,” Mager admitted. “Those trips out there are physically taxing and I'm getting up there in age.

“But I had prepped for it and decided to go for it.”

Part of Mager's preparation included walking nearly two miles with a 20-pound backpack periodically for a month, upping that to a 40-pound backpack for nearly three miles in the next month, then a 50-pound backpack for nearly four miles in the following month.

Mager emphasized that these Alaskan hunting trips feature a guide, a couple of other hunters and carrying your own supplies.

“It's a traveling camp out in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains, and the weather was horrible when we were there,” he said. “It was almost constant rain. On the mountain top, it was snowing.”

Mager described the rains as “crisscrossing storms that don't let up.”

On the fifth day of the hunt, 4,000 feet up a mountain, Mager spotted six rams on top of a cliff. He fired his shot out of a 257 Magnum from 598 yards away and hit one of them.

“It was an uphill shot — a long shot,” Mager said.

The kill was only one step of the hunt.

“You have to bring the animal out of there yourself,” Mager said. “We're talking 75 pounds, hide and meat ... My knees were buckling toward the end there.”

The ram will wind up giving Mager 70 pounds of meat. It was one of the bigger rams harvested in Alaska this year and will be measured by Boone & Crockett once the hide dried out. Alaska officials gave it a 178 green score.

So are Mager's hunting travels finally complete?

“We'll see,” he said. “There's always deer hunting in Pennsylvania and I know I'll be doing that. You never know what else is going to come up.”