LAST EDITED ON Mar-09-14 AT 00:01AM (MST)[p]
LAST EDITED ON Mar-08-14 AT 09:28?PM (MST)
Our bears are closer in size than they look in the pictures. Mine is 6'3" and Shaun's is 6'0" nose-to-tail. For some reason his looks quite a bit smaller than mine. I have no idea what they weighed but good lord they were hard to drag and move into position to photograph and skin. Even in the spring they had a lot of fat on them which is typical of bears that forage along the sea shore.
Anyway... I took this picture on our hike a few minutes ago. I live smack dab in the middle of country that people pay thousands of dollars to visit and hunt. I love my life!
Alright, things to make sure you have...
- A GPS. You'll probably have one because we hunters usually have one anyway. It's also fun to check out all the places on BingMaps when you get home. Turn it on when you leave the dock and mark it as a waypoint. My son and I were boating back from a remote island and a storm kicked in. We had to go really slow because of the waves. Then the fog rolled in and it started to get dark. We had at least another 1/2 mile and I couldn't see 20 feet. Shaun got his GPS out and guided me right to the dock. It saved our butts that night. Alaska has more coastline than all the rest of the U.S. put together and all the coastline looks simalar down in that area. Even on clear days you can get twisted around.
- Bring something windproof to wear. Your rain gear will work for that. You'll stay WAY warmer with something that keeps the wind from robbing your heat.
- "Wool works, cotton kills" You don't need to have wool on but it sure keeps you warm even when you're drenched. You can buy the expensive, hoity-toity crap that I wear but honestly you don't need it. Just stay away from cotton, even your socks.
- Do whatever you can to drop your bear on the beach. Bust him through the shoulders and drop him on the spot. There's nothing wrong with a backup buddy putting a few rounds in him if he heads for the trees either.
I have a pretty sturdy set of nuts when it comes to tracking wounded bears but I get shrinkage in the thick, nasty growth that grows on the edge of the sea. You'll see what I mean when you get there. You can't see under, over or through that stuff. I tracked a wounded bear into the growth and it was one foot at a time. The wet moss sucks up the blood and all you have for tracking spoor is scuff marks on the mossy logs and ground. At one point I was tracking by wiping my hands over the moss and checking to see if I had blood on them. Sh!t gets real bad real fast when a wounded bear, who has nothing to lose, charges for his last time. I've been there and it's mayhem times ten.
- Please don't kid yourself and bring a shotgun for self defense. Use your rifle with your scope at low power. Bear spray works great for charging bears unless it's wounded. I guarantee it won't have any effect on a bear that's hell-bent on killing you kind of death charge. Besides, having a couple of frantic hunters spraying bear spray at a bear AND each other probably doesn't help things.
- In your unit you have to bring out all the meat, hide with claws attached and the skull. You have to check it in and get the hide and skull measured and tagged. You can throw your meat in the dumpster after it's checked in but I'd take as much of it home as you can afford. I've donated bear meat to shelters in Ketchikan, Prince of Wales, Kodiak and Petersburg. Download the form off the AF&G website and fill out the top and bottom. You keep one half and the meat recipient keeps the other with the meat. Now everybody's happy and nothing went to waste. Bear meat is really good if you cook it in a crock pot or bottle it. The steaks on some bears are really good, on others, not so much. I kept a bunch of grizzly meat last year and I couldn't stand to eat it so I bottled it for my dogs.
- The Ketchikan area gets more pressure that POW because it's a fairly big city and a popular place for Washington and Oregon hunter to go. I haven't hunted farther from Ketchikan than the places I told you about but I'd imagine you'd see more bears farther away than where I went. POW has more bears because it's more remote and harder to get to. POW has a LOT of bears. Kuiu, in my opinion, is the king of black bears in that area. Good lord I've seen some big bears there! I stalked to within 30 yards of a 7'6" blackie in 2011. The wind changed before I could get an arrow in him. I wished so bad I had a rifle.
Kuiu has no towns or villages and is hard to get to without a long boat ride or an expensive float plane. I know a cheap and easy way to hunt Kuiu but I'm not going to post it here. If you get a tag someday PM me and I'll fill you in.
- One last thing, keep an eye on the weather and don't go out without being prepared to stay the night. Don't worry about food or water too much. Just make sure you have several ways to make a fire and something to get under to stay dry. You can stow a tarp/visqueen and fire starters in a fairly small package too. It rains 63% of the days of the year where I live. Stay dry and warm and you'll make it through any storm.