A longtime pilot with decades of search and rescue experience is questioning the RCMP's emergency policies after his friend died alone in the woods earlier this month.

Doug Makkonen and others were forced to find their own helicopter to look for 78-year-old Archie Graham when the police decided not to search.

It was Monday July 8th when friends last saw Graham alive, crossing the Kluane River in an inflatable boat with plans to go to a prospecting site near the Kluane Wilderness Village for a week or so.

Graham was a lifelong Yukoner, retired geologist and prospector who, even in his later years, was comfortable in the outdoors.

"These guys once they get rocks in their head that's the way they are,” Makkonen said. "They just love prospecting, they love getting out into the woods and doing their thing.”

Makkonen, who has been recognized for his years of work with the Kluane search and rescue, gave his friend a SPOT GPS locator to activate everyday to confirm he was all right.

On Tuesday Graham activated the device. There was no contact Wednesday or Thursday.

"So now there's some concern here,” Makkonen said.

Examining the GPS location from Tuesday, Makkonen realized his friend was going in the opposite direction he was expected to.

"You have to realize he's been in the bush for 60 years, before GPS, before anything. He doesn't get lost,” he said.

"Now he's in the totally wrong direction and there was absolutely no reason he should be there.”

Makkonen, who's from Haines Junction, called the local RCMP detachment Friday. He was passed on to Beaver Creek, he said.

It was Saturday the 13th when police informed him they wouldn't be authorizing a helicopter to go search.

"I called them up and said, ‘We're all ready to go here' and they said ‘Whitehorse refused the flight.' They said they would not respond. It floored me. I was shocked,” he said.

"We had organized this thing yesterday and now your people are saying they will not authorize the flight.”

In his experience with Kluane parks service, no search was ever refused, Makkonen said.

"You have to go and you don't stop until you find the person. Maybe 90 per cent could be situations where nobody had a problem. But there's always the 10 per cent.

"How can you judge that? You can figure it out afterwards, not at the time.”

In the end a local company agreed to provide a helicopter and pilot free of charge.

Makkonen, a retired ranger, a paramedic and the pilot went to the last known spot indicated by Graham's GPS device when he hit it on Tuesday.

Looking down through the dense trees, Makkonen spotted his friend, who had clearly died.

A group would later walk an hour through the woods to collect the body.

Graham had fired off three pen flares. "The only reason he did that was because he knew he was in trouble,” Makkonen said. Suggesting maybe his friend had a aneurysm and got disoriented.

He doesn't know why the SOS button on the SPOT device wasn't pressed.

"Here lies the failure in the system. Why did the RCMP refuse the flight?” Makkonen said.

"The RCMP do not have the expertise of search and rescue, they are policemen. You don't get a plumber to do a triple bypass so you don't get a policeman to do search and rescue.”

If he had been asked by the police, Makkonen said he would have told them to start the search.

He said he's spoken to other experts who feel the same way.

Yukon RCMP Staff Sgt. Brad Kaeding denies police made their decision without consulting search and rescue personnel.

He insists police did speak to experts out of Beaver Creek before coming to a decision.

"The RCMP are not necessarily search and rescue experts. So we depend on people who have some experience. We'll consult with people in the community to say ‘what is this particular environment like?'”

Kaeding said he "wouldn't agree at all” with the idea that a search should be conducted 100 per cent of the time

"We base our decision on a number of factors and it totally depends on the circumstances or the situation. It wouldn't be the case where you have A plus B plus C then you have a search.”

Those factors include things like a person's knowledge of the area, health, age, experience and comfort level outdoors.

He said Graham's experience outdoors contributed to the police's decision not to start a search.

"His capability, his experience, his comfort with being in the woods by himself, and the fact that he's done this many many times before,” he said.

"His lack of desire to use electronic technology was a consideration as well. He wasn't familiar with that technology, and technology tends to fail as well.”

As for what it would look like if searches were conducted 100 per cent of the time:

"There would be an awful lot of resources expended for people who either don't need to be, or don't want to be found. There have been those cases in the past where we show up in the wilderness and people will look at us and say ‘what are you doing here?'”

Kaeding said police offer their sympathy to the family and friends of Graham.

"We would prefer not to be in a position like this where we are addressing these specific questions. It definitely is a sad state of affairs that this gentleman has succumb in the woods.”

Makkonen said he hopes police learn from what happened and change their policy.