Alaska Penninsula Brown Bear hunt.....

[ramhunter]

Just got back last week from a Brown bear hunt down Cold Bay way on the Alaska Penn, flew down with a good friend in his super cub, weather was awesome the hole time. Saw 5-6 bears in the 9'-9.5' class and ended up taking his 10', shot him at 277 yds with a 338 Edge with 250 gr Lapua Scenar bullets @ 2980 fps. 1st shot was on the shoulder and exited out the other side, shots 2nd & 3rd were also on the shoulder, but angled back, both them bullets were on the hide on the far side, just lead & copper pieces!.....skull was 28.5", front pad was 9' across and back pad was 11' long!

 

[colonel00]

Very nice! I keep telling myself that one day I will get a chance at one...

 

[bbrown]

Wow congrats! There has to be more to the story.. and hopefully a few more pictures too.

 

[Nick Muche]

Saw this on another forum and I am thinking the same thing now as I did then.... WOW. Congrats.

Could you give us a bit of information on the Logistics, what the camping was like and any other details?

Incredible. Huge congrats, that bear is awesome!

 

[SHTF]

Man he's gonna look good in front of the fireplace. Congrats

 

[Snyd]

He's gonna make ANY fireplace look small!

Holy Smokes! Way to go!

 

[Craig Van Arsdale]

Nice bear! Congrats

 

[shaun]

Nice bear!

 

[ramhunter]

Wow congrats! There has to be more to the story.. and hopefully a few more pictures too.

Here ya go....

We left Wasilla on May 14th around 9:00 am, we flew down across Cook inlet and thru Lake Clark pass, Lake Clark, Lake Iliamna and landed at king Salmon to fuel that was around 1:00 pm. Then headed down the Bristol Bay side of Peninsula, make a few stops along the way, get out and stretch the legs and pee! Stopped at Cape Seniavin to take some pictures of Walruses on the beach, that was pretty cool! Found some dead walruses on the beach, mostly hide & bones, and someone beat us to the tusks!....lol

We wanted to hunt between Port Moller and Cold Bay, a friend had guided bear hunts down there and kind’a pointed us in the right direction! We flew up a creek on the Bering sea side about six miles from the bay and found a small gravel bar that Benny could landed his cub. Thinking we got there around 7:00 pm, put up camp,.....the bar we were on was perfect, as the creek forked into three big valleys, lots of bear tracks all over up high in the snow!....we saw a few bears that night on the hillsides around camp, one 9’er and a sow with 3 cubs , and a few smaller bears, the only bad thing as the wind was blowing from the north, and right thru our camp and right into bear country, wind is everything when bear hunting!....bad deal!

Morning of the 15th we were just starting on our 2nd cup of coffee, maybe 700am, when Benny yelled holy s**t!...look at that bear!...about a 1000yds up creek and down wind was a 9-9.5’ bear walking out of one of the valleys, it wasn’t every long and he got our wind, he did a 90 degree turn into an alder patch never to be seen again! Not that I was thinking he was a shooter, but may have liked to get a better good at him….grin. The next two days we glassed from a nob near camp, seeing less and less bears….the wind was blowing all the bear out of the valley!

I had shipped some gear to Cold Bay via Penn Air Cargo a week before we left, a bombshelter tent, hip boots, food and some extra cloths etc….we only took six freeze dried meals in the cub, so we needed to fly down to Cold bay and get our stuff from Penn Air , so no the 17th to flew into Cold bay and grabbed some food, extra clothes, a pack raft etc. I left the bombshelter tent as the weather was mostly clear and sunny, we were sleeping in my Hilleberg Nallo 2 Gt, and figured we didn’t need the 10X10 BS unless the weather got ugly!...we fueled up the cub and headed back to camp, after we landed I told Benny we need to make a move on finding another spot here the wind didn’t foul us, being we were already airborne and couldn’t hunt that day already, Benny said lets get in the air and go lookie…nice to have a great pilot and cub!....grin
So we flew around a bit and found a very nice river valley on the Pacific side of the Penn, the wind was blowing right down the valley and we found a spot that looked great, lotsa bear tracks up high in the snow! so we flew back to our camp, Benny took a load over to the new spot while I packed the tent, sleeping bag etc, wasn’t long he was back, and we loaded up the last of camp and headed over to the Pacific side camp!....after setting up camp and eating a meal we started glassing the hill sides, it wasn’t long before we saw bears!....hmmm maybe this new spot will pay off!

The next day 18th we didn’t leave camp, didn’t want to stink up the place, the wind was perfect blowing right out of the mountains, right thru our camp and down river. We saw 6 bears that day, a couple were in the 9-9.5’ range, they would eat for maybe 1-2 hours and lay down and sleep for 1-2 hours and then up feeding and sleeping all day long! I told Benny this is the spot!!!!

On the morning of the 19th we made a decision to work our way up the river bottom to a nob about a mile away and sit there and glass. Benny packed his pack raft along too, which turned out to be a good move! We hung around camp till about 1:00pm and then started up the valley, about half way to the nob we spotted one of the 9-9.5’ bears up sleeping on the hill side about 800 yds away, we watched him get up and feed around a bit. We got up the nob and started glassing, not much moving as it was around 3:00, we may even got in a little cat nap laying in the sun…lol We got up and moved up the nob a little higher for a better view of our surroundings, Benny moved over about a 100yds from me glassing up the valley, while I glassed down the valley. It wasn’t very long when Benny came running over to me and said “I saw a hog up on a far ridge”…I grabbed my pack and we went over to where he saw the bear from, he pointed out where the bear was walking, the bear was laying down on the edge of the ridge, we put the spotting scope on him, but it was hard to tell just how big he really was!....Benny was squealing about how big he was, so I said let’s move up the valley and get closer, as the bear was about a mile away. We moved up the valley and had gotten about a ½ mile when the bear got up and was walking down the hill into the river bottom ahead of us, I took one look thru my binos and said OMG, that’s the bear!...The wind was perfect blowing right down the river valley into our faces! The bear walked down off the hill out of sight into the river bottom, which was alder patches and open meadows. We crossed the river and got up on the hill side opposite of the bear, I wanted to get some slight elevation, so that we could see down in to the river bottom, or in case the bear crossed the river and was going up the other side, at least we could maybe see him!

We eased along slowly, we got to about where the bear came down off the ridge, we were maybe 100 higher than the river bottom, we were glassing the river bottom over hard, then the bear came walking out into a 4 acre grass meadow across the river, he was just feeling and milling around in the meadow. We put the spotting scope on him, after looking at him for not long, I told Benny he’s the one, I’m shooting him, the bear laid down right in the middle of the meadow, Benny ranged him at 277yds. I was packing my 375 AI with 270 gr “X” bullets, but didn’t want to make that long of a shot with my old three-six-bits, so I took the bear with Benny’s 338 Edge after he got back up and was feeding. That’s one heck of a round, that 338 edge, wow was I impressed!

After taking pictures and video it took us 2 hours to skin him out, Benny packed the hide 40yds to the river and put it in his pack raft and the skull!....Benny floated it 2.4 miles back to camp, damn that was A good move bring that pack raft!....grin

Oh, yeah….we run into a huge bear (pushing 10’) 200 yds down river from where a killed my bear, he and Benny run in to each other at 50yds!....while Benny was floating out the hide and skull, I got some awesome video of him sitting on his ass looking at us at 50yds! He stood up on his hind legs, and then waddled into an alder patch!...that was cool!
We got into camp about 11:30 that night, next morning we flew the hide/skull and some gear to Cold Bay, shipped it via Penn Air Cargo back to Anchorage, fuelled up, flew back to camp, loaded our stuff and headed back home up the Alaska Penn!....got into Wasilla at midnight!

Make a few stops on the beach, picked up 40 glass fishing floats for the wives, the weather from Port Moller to King Salmon was clear with no clouds, a few very high clouds up thru Lake Clark!....What a great trip!.....guess where we’ll be in 2016?....grin ( Alaska Penn Brown Bear is open only in the spring of even years 2014 and Fall hunts on odds years 2015)

Oh, I forgot. Benny didn’t have a bear tag, he shot a grizz last fall in the Brooks sheep hunting!

Well that’s pretty much the long & short of it!

Dave

 

[ramhunter]

Benny with the bear...

 

[ramhunter]

Benny floating the bear out!

 

[ramhunter]

First Valley...

2nd valley/camp...

 

[ramhunter]

Along the way!....

 

[CtP]

Awesome! Gotta love bear hunting.

Congrats!

 

[bbrown]

Here ya go....

Awesome - nice write up and great pictures. Not sure why but I have zero interest in actually pulling the trigger on a bear but I would love to tag along on a hunt like this.

 

[Nick Muche]

Great writeup and pictures!

 

[fillthefreezer]

great story and pictures. very jealous.


question- forgive me being so lower 48, but is grizz meat that bad? cant think of many grilled backstrap photos from brown bear hunts..

 

[Bmcox86]

Looks like a fun hunt, hoping to transfer up there next summer

 

[ramhunter]

great story and pictures. very jealous.


question- forgive me being so lower 48, but is grizz meat that bad? cant think of many grilled back strap photos from brown bear hunts..

Oh, it’s edible if a person wanted to eat it!....I ate grizzly back strap one time on a sheep hunt, it was pretty strong in flavor, and tougher than cooked owl s**t…. bears have 70 plus known parasites that they could have, some folks like eating bears, it’s just not for me or my family....

 

[mtnclimber]

great story and pictures. very jealous.


question- forgive me being so lower 48, but is grizz meat that bad? cant think of many grilled backstrap photos from brown bear hunts..

A lot of it has to do with time of year, and what part of the state you've taken the bear in. but like ram hunter said, theres a crap ton of parasites in em and many choose not to take the risk.