The late Peter Jensen, simply put, was a legend in the big game outfitting community.

"Pete was the longest-serving outfitter in North America, by far,” Dennis Campbell, president of the Grand Slam Club which honoured Jensen last year, said in a telephone interview this week.

Jensen died in Las Vegas at the age of 70 while attending last month's Grand Slam convention.

Campbell emphasized it was not only Jensen's longevity and his 45 years in the business that set him apart from others, but also his commitment to his clients.

"He believed in a high-quality wilderness experience,” Campbell said. "It wasn't just, ‘Come on, let's go shoot something.'

"He would not guarantee a person they would shoot something, but he did guarantee them a quality experience. I admired him for that.”

Campbell remembers when, as a young boy growing up poor in Alabama, he became enchanted with the world of big game through the outdoor magazines his neighbours would buy. It was in the back section of the classifieds where outfitters advertised their business that he first came across the name Pete Jensen Outfitting.

Years later, he first bumped into Jensen at an outfitting convention in the early 1980s, and they became good friends the early 1990s.

"I've been following this man's career for most of my adult life,” said Campbell, who described Jensen as a quiet man, extremely intelligent, with a hardy but dry sense of humour.

"He could be a really funny guy, but you had to take the time to get to know him. That was just Pete.”

Jensen was nominated by Terry and Ruth Wilkinson of Ceaser Lake Outfitting for the Grand Slam Club's 2009 Legend Award.

And last year, Jensen and his wife, Sharon, accepted the award in front of a standing ovation from an audience of 2,000.

"He was a legend,” said Campbell. "I knew him, and I knew him well. He will never be forgotten.”

After 10 years with the RCMP, Jensen left the police force while serving in Dawson City to become an outfitter, to avoid any chance of being transferred out of the Yukon.

He was a methodical man who never flew off the handle, Sharon said this week. Their hunting guides, she said, liked working for him, and would stick around for years.

She said she's been getting phone calls and e-mails from clients all over the world.

Pete was well-respected, said Sharon, modestly, but matter-of-factly. She first went to work for Pete as a cook in 1969 and ended up marrying him in 1975.

As much as Pete was attached to the outfitting business, he loved farming and a good barn dance as well, she said.

"He was born in New Brunswick and grew up on a potato farm originally,” said Sharon. "He was Danish, and I think the Danish like to farm.”

Every year for the last several years, the Jensens hosted a barn dance at their farm outside Carmacks where they grew hay and oats to sell and feed their own herd of horses they used for hunting in the Ogilvie Mountains northeast of Dawson.

"Pete loved the barn dance, and he loved to dance,” Sharon said.

And having always been around horses for the business, and seeing a need locally, the Jensens built an indoor riding stable off the Mayo Road last year.

"The horse community is really using it; it's doing well.”

Sharon said it will be tough to sell the outfitting business, but it won't be this year, as she plans another full season of clients.

Sharon, said Ruth Wilkinson, has been the backbone of Pete Jensen Outfitting, right alongside Pete.

While Sharon did the running around and cooking, Pete kept the camp life stoked, Wilkinson said.

"Pete was the entertainment,” she said. "He was not one to talk and talk and talk. But when he did talk, people stopped and listened to what he had to say.”

It was the Jensens, Wilkinson recalled, who took her and her husband around at their first local big game banquet to introduce them to other outfitters after they broke into the business.

Pete mentored a couple of young outfitters breaking into the business years ago, and they are are still successful today, she noted.

"It's really been wonderful to see the relationship that has occurred between some of the younger ones and him, as one of the elder outfitters.

"... I was the one who put his name in the for the Legend Award, because you could probably count on one hand how many people have been in the business for that many years ... consistently, for all those years,” Wilkinson said.

When Pete Jensen's name was called out at last year's award ceremony, there was a standing ovation, instantly.

"That was quite impressive.”