One Heck Of A Ride

180 T o my eyes, except for their darker colors, the brown bears on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula across the Bering Sea from Alaska are identical to the brown bear I shot on one of the Aleutian Islands in 1982. Scientists, however, claim they are two distinct subspecies, Ursus arctos beringianus on Kamchatka and U.a. middendorffi on the Alaskan Peninsula. I’m not a scientist but it seems to me the reason Kamchatka’s bears are slightly larger on average thanAlaska’s bears is because comparatively little trophy hunting is done in Siberia and fewer older bears are removed from the population. I was pleased to see that the license for the fourteen-day combination hunt I booked with Bob Kern’s Hunting Consortium for August and September 2003 included a Kamchatka moose (my main quarry), an Asian reindeer, a Koryak snow sheep, and a Kamchatka brown bear if time allowed. I had made many stopovers in various hotels in Moscow on hunting excursions across Russia over the years, and I was convinced that the Intourist Hotel on Tverskaya Avenue, the main street that leads to Red Square, was the most convenient. There was a pizza restaurant next door, a McDonald’s around the corner, and shops with souvenirs within walking distance. St. Basil’s Cathedral, which in my opinion is the world’s most beautiful and unique structure, is at the far end of Red Square. I wanted to stay there again, and was disappointed to learn that Bob Kern had booked rooms at the Metropol Hotel for clients overnighting in Moscow at each end of this hunt. When we drove past the area where I expected to see the Intourist Hotel and restaurant, I learned why: only vacant lots remained where they had been! (Two local people I talked with claimed the Chapter 23 Kamchatka Brown Bear In Siberia Swiss investors who owned the hotel hadn’t complied with all of President Vladimir Putin’s “requests,” and Russian leaders had ways of “resolving” such problems. That certainly could have been the reason the hotel and restaurant were demolished in 2002. However, the Moscow Times claimed the 30-year-old, 22-story, 434-room hotel was an outdated sore thumb in a popular tourist area and its owner – the city of Moscow – wanted to replace it with a modern, five-star facility.) I was shocked to hear the soothing sounds of a harp played by a beautiful young lady when my hunting partner Galen Kirn from Los Osos, California, and I walked into the Metropol’s main lobby. It helped ease my disappointment about my favorite Russian hotel being torn down. After registering, I was in my room when Galen knocked on my door. He was as white as a sheet when I opened the door and I asked what was wrong. “I got the wrong suitcase.” “How the hell did you do that?” He had no explanation, but we had no choice but to return to the airport with our guide. Someone who has never tried to exchange someone else’s bag for his own bag at the Moscow airport will never understand the frustration we experienced. Even with our guide translating, it took a while before the baggage people understood what we wanted. Nonetheless, with lots of patience and determination, we finally got it done and returned with Galen’s suitcase to the Metropol for a relaxing and very good dinner. We spent the next night at a hotel in Petropavlovsk, the capital of Kamchatka, and early the next morning flew to Tilichiki, where a helicopter took us to our camps. (As anyone who has hunted in Russia knows, helicopters are used there like SuperCubs and floatplanes in Alaska