Bear Hunting Alaska

[MountainBear]

I have, Lance, built and sold guns for a living for the last ten years. I am just now transitioning to something a little more stable to support my family.

This was not about having the fanciest gun, or the newest latest greatest caliber. Rather, it was about enriching the experience by taking something that I had built for my first bear hunt.

The rifles I was (and still am) building are an '06 and a .35 Whelen. Nothing exotic.

Had I been going up on a guided trip for a trophy brown, perhaps I would have done differently. But I had literally ten rifles to choose from as backups that were already in Alaska and sighted in, so Mr. Murphy didn't get as much say as you think.

 

[KaniksuKidd]

You need to beg the wife for another permit as a reward for your new license. Or buy one yourself. There have been two fatal predatory black bear attacks in Alaska already this year - a male 16 year old runner participating in a foot race on Bird Ridge near Girdwood south of Anchorage and a 26 y/o female field geologist collecting plant specimens with her female work partner near the Pogo Gold Mine outside of Delta Junction. That poor boy had time to text his parents at the bottom of the trail that a bear was chasing him. A cell phone is not an adequate weapon in the bush and if he had time to text he was not running fast enough. The female geologists had two cans of the infamous bear spray between them. The bear attacked them from behind w/o warning and by the time it killed the first woman the other had her bear spray out and sprayed him when he came at her. She called a nearby crew member on her radio. The bear came back and got another dose of bear spray and ran off again. The crew member arrived with a 12 bore and when the bear came back a third time it was killed. Alaska needs more dead black bears. We've had two recent attacks around Priest Lake here in N. Idaho recently but those were sows with cubs and they didn't kill anybody, just roughed them up. The moral of this story is don't bring bear spray to a gun fight!!!

I just had another idea. ID Fish and Game reports that there are an average of 3 black bears (many of which are cinnamon colored) per square mile around Priest Lake. Come kill some here. It ain't Alaska but it'll do.

 

[MountainBear]

State of Alaska doubled the cost this year. Probably take a while to save up again...