I don’t think I could have drawn up a much better adventure trip for us on Kodiak Island. You never know what to expect on a trip like this. You could kill a bear on day one and have your hunt be over right away or you could spend all 10 days hunting ‘dark to dark’ in an absolute suck fest for weather and go home empty handed. Selfishly, I had hoped we get the “full” Kodiak experience with our success towards the end.
The trip started out taking a float plane from the town of Kodiak to the an area closer to the area we would be hunting. The plane(a de Havilland Beaver) landed in the bay and we spent the night in the guide’s off-grid cabin. The following morning at sunrise we hitched a ride on a boat and we were dropped off to begin our hunt. We spent the day hiking several miles and we set up base camp. This would be our home for the next 10 days.
The next eight days were filled with glassing for bears atop our nearby glassing points from sunrise until sunset. The first day we glassed up 17 bears. The slowest day we still saw four bears and we probably averaged close to 10 bears a day. At one point, I made the uneasy realization that if the mountainside across the valley that I could see into was that loaded with bears then I suppose that odds were pretty good that our side of the valley had just as many bears roaming around.
We had one stretch with 60+ hours of solid rain and wind. I joked that it felt like Forrest Gump as we had all the kinds of rain; light rain, heavy rain, sideways rain and of course stinging rain. We had our own little river form through the middle of our camp and somehow worms and snails were arriving in my tent around my sleeping bag. The main river below camp transformed from something you could cross in hip waders in most spots to a raging river that would likely be deadly if you tried to cross it. It swelled outside its banks and we watched 100ft cottonwood trees being slammed down river like little branches. Behind the rain came snow and wind and a couple mornings we woke to a frosty sunrise over a valley covered in fresh snow.
We watched blacktail bucks chasing does through the valley below, mountain goats run across the mountain skyline above and eagles perched everywhere along the trees above the salmon filled river.
We watched bears moving through the valley throughout the day being extremely cautious on when to make our move. This style of hunting will test the patience of any hunter. “Dark to dark” is easy to say but if you actually sit in one spot ‘dark to dark’ for days on end you start to get a little antsy wanting to go after every bear you see. The guides knew exactly what they were doing though and basically everything they said was going to happen, ended up happening. They warned us that one bad stalk through the bottom of the river valley would send your scent miles up and down the river and could blow all of the big bears out of the area for a long time. The big boars we were after were extremely sensitive to any human scent, even several days old. Making a stalk on a bear wasn’t worth the risk unless the scenario was absolutely perfect. Until that perfect opportunity came, we sat on our observation points just watching and waiting.
Even after seeing all of those bears, we didn’t actually make our first stalk until day seven. We had a giant brown bear just 35 yards from us in the thick brush. Seth stood ready to draw his bow and the guide Ryan made a call sounding like a wounded blacktail deer trying to call the bear towards us. The bear came closer towards us probably 10 yards or so but stopped short of the edge of the brush. He knew something was up. After debating on his next move for a while he turned and slowly went the other way without giving Seth a clear shot opportunity.
On day eight we woke with another fresh blanket of snow. The wind had subsided, the little river running through camp had turned to icy mud and temps were hovering around 20 degrees. We glassed up two really nice boars and watched them fish for salmon in one of the streams below. One was a ‘diver’ and the other a ‘snorkeler.’ The floodwaters had brought new salmon into the side streams of the main river and now that the waters had receded it left the salmon pretty vulnerable for the bears in the now shallow streams. We watched the two boars fish for over three hours before they finally went to bed. The bigger of the two boars bedded in a wide open area of tall grass. The bear was in a very stalkable location but we had no wind noise to cover the noise we would undoubtedly make stalking in the tall grass and brush. We were halfway into day eight on a 10 day hunt. The thought of being that guy going home empty handed was undoubtedly starting to creep in Seth’s head at this point. Knowing it was a bad stalking opportunity for a bow, one of the guides asked Seth if he was going to use his gun or if he want to try to use his bow. Seth sarcastically replied, “what bow?”. Ha!
Decisions were made and the stalk was on. We scrambled down the steep hill and towards the bears. We crossed a stream, went around the beaver pond and snuck wide around the other sleeping bear to get to the nicer of the two. As we approached where he was bedded we saw just his head poke up over the tall grass locking onto our position. He stared us down for over two minutes at around 100 yards offering no shot. He lowered his head and we all moved forward trying to get a better visual. I followed behind Seth, Ryan and Justin with the camera when the bear appeared again. This time he was in a big hurry to get out of there and was running the other direction. Seth started shooting and he connected with several good shots on the bear. He was a beautiful boar. He squared right at 9’6’’ which is exactly what the guides guessed before the stalk.
We celebrated, took photos, processed the bear and packed it back to camp. The next day we broke down camp and packed all of our gear down to the river. We inflated our four pack rafts and loaded them full of gear. We spent the next eight hours rafting out on the cold river. The scenery on the float out was incredible and I wish I could have captured it better while I was paddling my raft. We had to portage around a log jam and again for 3/4 of a mile around a huge rock gorge with raging rapids. We paddled the river all the way out to the ocean and then back to the guide’s cabin. A coat of ice covered my raft and all of my gear. We made it back to the warm cabin and wood stove a little after dark.
The whole experience was wild, remote and raw and was just what I hoped for. I learned a lot about brown bears and I gained a lot of respect for the hunting guides who dedicate so much of their time for the bears. No one cares more about these bears and no one does more for bears and bear conservation than these guys do. The story and their commitment is really incredible.
I know a lot of people have no interest in bear hunting and don’t understand it. I totally understand how it can be confusing from the outside looking in. I can tell you that the taking of large boars out of the bear ecosystem is truly 'addition by subtraction'. Scientifically, it is the healthiest thing to do for a population of bears because they kill so many other adult bears and bear cubs themselves.
