AK black bear hunt over

[diem24]

Details to follow. But as I sit in the airport about to board the plane back to IL, my minds already racing trying to figure out when I can come back and do this again. Long hard week of hunting, with many ups and downs. Ill post more details and pics when I get home and soft through my journal.
Nik

 

[diem24]

The hunt planning started last August. I bought my dad an under-subscribed black bear tag for his 50th birthday. He always has some lame excuse as to why he hasn't ever gone with me on a hunting trip (time, vacation, money, etc, etc). So I removed all of his excuses and forced his hand. The priorities of the trip were a) get him a big bear, b) learn a little about hunting unguided in AK, c) after he shoots his, shoot one even bigger with my bow. Here are my journal entries that I kept while we were away. Sorry they're kind of tardy.

Day 1 (Saturday 5pm)- Left from Chicago on Alaska Airlines to Seattle. Slept in the airport on a cold, hard bench next to a crazy college kid headed to AK to work for the forest service all summer. He really was nuts but I was so tired that I didn't care much. After my third run to Starbucks I tapped out and went to sleep.
Day 2-The flight from Seattle-Ketchikan-Wrangell-Petersburg was uneventful and short for each leg. We met up with the boat rental guy. He had his wife pick us up at the airport. Ran around town grabbing some food and misc gear. And got some tips from a few locals. Picked up the boat and loaded all of our gear and went over the boat with the owner. He said, "it runs perfect and the 9.9 kicker is cold-blooded. Oh, and the guy who had it last says the fuel gauge isn't working" (fore-shadowing). We left the harbor headed out to our unit. Got out past the point and was like......"oh s$#@*, those are some big waves." We had rented a 20' HewesCraft w a 150HP Yamaha. See pic below lol. We got a nice view of the hull later in the trip. There was about a 6 foot chop and it was raining and blowing about 25 knots. I was nervous in that small boat on those big waves. But we made it up the sound and setup camp at the Forest Service cabin. It was nice, small and comfortable. The wood was wet and it was tough to get a fire going and tough to keep it going. My original plan was to use it and hunt around there for 4 days, then jump North and hunt out a beach camp in a tent for the last 4 days. We settled in and unpacked and went fishing. The third cast from shore, my dad caught a nice trout. We headed out on the boat and sat a crab pot about 60 yards from shore. Didn't see any bears that night but caught a few fish and saw some great scenery.
Day3- Sitting on the porch with a spotting scope killing some time, I found a nice mtn goat maybe 2-3 miles away. Had a nice skyline profile of him and snapped a few pics. Around 10:45am we marked a bunch of fish on the Lowrance fish finder while we were out hunting. We drifted back over them and decided to get some lines in the water. We motored back up current once more to drop the lines. I look over to shore and there's a real nice bear out feeding on the beach. I idled the boat back to shore downwind and out of sight from the bear. We anchored and worked our way about a mile back to where we last saw him. It was perfect....Wind blowing straight in our faces and he was hidden behind a point. Perfect setup except he had fed off back into the timber by the time we got back on him. No big deal right???? First day of serious hunting and he was a nice bear but not one I'd lose sleep over. So we waited a bit and headed back to the boat. I got about 400 yards from the boat and see that its now in the rocks. I sprint back and try to muscle the boat out of the rocks and get it floated out. No such luck!! The tide was going down very fast and we never did get the boat out. I look at the tide charts and see that low tide is 5pm. That means the tide will be going down for 5 more hours and then needs to come back up 5 hours plus some for us to get our boat floating again. So we went back and picked out a place to watch an entire 3 miles of beach. I was under dressed for sitting in the rain and 20 mph wind, so I curled up under a big boulder. About 2 pm, my dad wakes me up and says the bear is back out. I put the Vortex binocs on him and gave him the green light. Hes pretty good size and nice coat. The bear is still upwind and is 200 yards out. He takes about 3 mouthfuls of grass and DARTS back into the timber. We sit there for awhile wondering what this dudes deal is. Go back to the boat and its now 10 out of the water and looks like someone took a crane, lifted our boat up and set it on a rock shelf. Ive never seen anything like it before. We go back and sit down for another 4 hours. My dad falls asleep. I watch and the bear shows up again. This time my dad is ready already has his 300 Jarrett on the bipod and its ready to rock. I was right behind him watching through the binocs telling him to hold on the shoulder and wait till hes broadside and that whenever hes ready to kill him because hes big. The bear gets goofy again and sprints back into the timber. I was like, wth is he waiting for. I keep watching and spot the bear walking inside the timberline headed away from us. He comes back out about 50 yards further down the beach. This time he would stay out for about 4 minutes and he would never make it back in the timber. My dad lined it up, squeezed it off and as I watched the bear run away, I saw a red mist of blood spraying out of the side of the bear. I knew he was hit and it was a fatal hit. I decided it was probably best to go check the boat again and give the bear some time to expire. We ate and about an hour later go back in to where we thought he went. Im looking around and see no blood, and lots and lots tracks and scat EVERYWHERE. I think there was multiple bears living there and we were definitely in his living room. I followed the trampled down game trail in to the timber about 30 yards and decide this is a TERRIBLE idea. I have a pistol and am tracking a wounded bear and I have no blood trail to guide me. So I come back out and tell my dad to go to where he shot from. I told him I thought the bear was further down the beach and I was going to try and pickup the blood trail further down the way. I walked about 20 yards down the beach and there he was stone-cold dead at the edge of the beach and the timber laying in a puddle. This is where the hunt starts going south...... My dad is deathly allergic to deer, elk, moose cats, horses etc. I didn't want to take the chance that he would be allergic to bear so I did all the cutting, skinning etc. It was either that or risk anaphylactic shock and would have to stab him with an epi-pen. No big deal. In a couple hours we had high-fived a million times, taken all the celebratory pics, and I had the bear skinned. The good news was that the boat is now floating again. The bad is that the water is now so high that I don't have a way to get to it without scaling a rock face to get it untied. Finally get all the gear, hide, bear meat loaded up and get back to camp about 11-12pm. Had no trouble sleeping. (Note: the bear was an awesome bear. Big, nice boar, with a perfect hide on him. No rubs etc. Skull measured 18" at the DNR office. My dad was thrilled with it. Pics below.

Day 4- Wake up with good breakfast, spot the goat again and start fleshing the hide and quartering the bear. The fleshing and turning of the ears, paws, lips seemed to take forever and it did a number on my back. We went hunting but never saw a bear that day. Didn't help out that we ran out of gas around 1 pm. Luckily, there were a few fisherman here and there during the week. One in a runabout was kind enough to stop when we flagged him down. He towed us back to the cabin. We thanked him and offered him $40 for the help and to pay for his gas to tow us in. The guy flips out and yells at us to get the F&*% out of his boat. I still am baffled that he was so kind and then so angrily took off yelling. The boat rental guy made the trip out with 4 gas cans and refilled the tank. Evidently the previous user didn't fill the tank like he said he did. That night we stayed close to the cabin and hunted some local bays. Cooked up 3 of the dungeness crabs that we caught in our pot and grilled some rib-eyes over a campfire. My dad was coughing and hacking up wads of green slime. Not a good sign.

Day 5 (Thurs)- he's worse, wood is wet and wont burn, the cabin is cold, got down to 35 degrees last night and he is still in his sleeping bag at 10 am. I hunted and fished a bit that morning but there wasn't anything out and nothing biting. We head back into town to fill up the 37 gallon gas tank and 4 gas cans and to grab some more propane for the camp-stove. We ran the bear down to the DNR to get it sealed and taken to Coastal Cold Storage. Great people to work with. (Note: When we came back before our flight home, they had the boxes exactly a shade under 50lbs to take home, neatly packaged and in Styrofoam coolers for surviving the flights.) At that point, I'm walking up the hill from the marina and I see a guy wearing a Sitka vest and I'm thinking this guy must be a rich hunter up here hunting bears. All the locals were in fishing clothes and rubber boots. Didn't matter whether it was at, the hardware store, grocery store, bar, hotel, man, woman or kid. They all wore rubber fishing boots. So, the closer I get I notice the Federal patch and its Randy Newberg. Chit-chatted with Randy, Brad and Matt for a few minutes about their gear debacle. They were sweating it big time. All 3 of these guys are legit and super good guys. Thurs pm we got back after it and saw a few small bears but nothing to shoot. Let me rephrase that.....I got after it while my dad laid in the bottom of the boat shivering, wrapped in his warmest hunting clothes, a life jacket and an emergency blanket. Poor guy was miserable but he toughed it out. While I sat glassing for the last 3 hours of dark he slept in the boat. While he was sleeping a cow moose walked up to the boat about 30 yards away and gawked at him for almost a half hour. Pretty neat to watch her.

Day 5 (vacate the cabin day)- We had to have camp tore down and vacated by noon. Salmon Derby Days were in full swing so everyone was out fishing. The cabin we had was rented way out in advance of when I thought of the idea to go bear hunting (Memorial Day weekend). At this point, I had to make a decision. a) Put my dads health at risk and go hunt hard for the next 3 days chasing my bear OR b) pack it up and hotel it and get him back to health. We hunted most of the day. I spotted a real nice bear that I stalked in to 47 yards with my bow. I ended up giving him a pass even though he was probably a "nice enough" bear. He wasn't a monster and I had already made my mind up that I didn't want to invest hours and hours of time in skinning, fleshing etc of a bear if it wasn't a stupid-ridiculous monster bear. We spotted 3 more smaller bears that I also passed on and didn't even put the sneak on. We got back to Petersburg around 6 that pm and checked into a hotel for the next two nights. I called in a prescription for him for a Z-pack and got him on the slow road to recovery.

Day 6-not much to report. Boring hotel stay with some town touring. Dads still coughing and hacking up crap.
Day 7- more of the same.
Day 8- Flew out of P-burg headed for Chicago. Landed safely around 6 am CST with the fiance waiting to pick us up at the airport.

 

[diem24]

Looking back on the trip, it was awesome and I am as proud of his bear as he is. I feel like its also my trophy. The scenery, animals, trophy, fishing, hunting and all the ups/downs were amazing experiences. If you haven't been to Alaska, do yourself a favor and go by any means you can. Sell a kidney if you have to. Which is thee nice thing about Alaska....its relatively cheap to hunt there so you can keep your kidney. For under $2k per person I made the trip into the hunt of a lifetime for my dad and Im just happy that I got to be a part of it. My tag is still un-punched so I may be headed back in the fall. My wedding in November may not allow the time though. This was a very valuable learning lesson about what to take, what not to take, tide issues, etc, etc. Lastly, I would like to thank the people who helped get me going in the right direction on this hunt (Dhosera, Randy Newberg, brownbear932008,mdhunter61, and Bambistew).

Nik

 

[diem24]

more pics

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[brownbear932008]

Congrats on what sounds like a great hunt SE AK is an awesome place. I am itching to go back myself in the next few years my buddy is dying to get back there. Love the pics:hump:

 

[Big Fin]

I hope you get the rest of your pics posted, Nik. I think the camera crew thought I had bribed you to come up and start talking to us in the midst of our despair.

Glad you guys got that bear. Congrats.

 

[fishing4sanity]

I enjoyed the account of your hunt, congrats on a great hunt with your dad.
It may just be my archaic internet connection, but I couldn't see any pics of the bear.

 

[Mica Man]

Thanks for sharing. I am in the process of getting a trip put together for this Sept. Spent a week on Etolin last Aug and had a blast. Can hardly wait to get back up there!

 

[1_pointer]

Very nice! That hunt is something I'd really like to try. However, my family has very bad luck with boats, so I'm a bit leery... Might just have to toughen up and give it a go one of these years though.

 

[noharleyyet]

Fine hunt account, thanks.

I wouldn't be so much worried about the boat as I would be the dock.

 

[pseshooter300]

Looking foreword to more pics

 

[L. I. Yankee]

Thanks for sharing...great story.....

 

[idahofishnhunt]

Great journal, can't wait to see more pictures that compliment it.

 

[EODRay]

Thanks for sharing the hunt with us. I'm sure you're dad will cherish the memory in spite of the illness. Can't wait for the pics of the bear.

 

[diem24]

more pics

More pics re-sized. Enjoy!

 

[big28hunter]

Beautiful trophy, pics, and memories there! Congrats to you both!

 

[Dhosera]

Nice

Nice work DIEM....