One Heck Of A Ride

26 The Making of a Hunter other Alaskan game and included a year-around taxi service. When I started thinking about hunting an Alaskan brown bear I wanted to know four things: How big a bear could I expect to find? Where would I have a reasonable chance of finding such a bear? How dangerous are these bears? And, finally, how large a caliber would I need? The answers to the first two questions are what led me to hunt with Don and Warren’s company. The record books that Safari Club International and the Boone and Crockett Club publish both rank the size of bears by combining the width and length of their skulls. However, a more meaningful yardstick for most hunters has been the size of a bear’s “squared” hide, a measurement obtained by laying a wet hide on a flat surface and adding the distance between the front paws to the distance from nose to tail, then dividing by two. Traditionally, the ultimate trophy for most brown bear hunters has been a brown bear whose hide “squares” more than ten feet. As does every brown bear hunter, I wanted a ten-footer. In researching where I should hunt, I found that about 150 brown bears were taken on the Alaskan Peninsula in 1980. Their average age was seven, and the average male bear’s squared measurement was 7.9 feet. Bears taken on Kodiak Island were about the same size. To me, this meant I would have to be mighty lucky to take a ten-footer and probably should settle for any well-furred mature bear that presented itself. The next question was should I hunt on Kodiak Island or the peninsula? The peninsula was open for bear hunting only on alternating autumns and springs. There would be a fall hunt in 1981 and a spring hunt in 1982, but the next hunt would be fall 1983. Theoretically, at least, the peninsula’s bears had a better chance to grow older and larger, I told myself. And just what was I getting myself into? Were brown bears as dangerous as some hunters claimed? I didn’t doubt that they were. Years earlier, I had read over and over a story in Outdoor Life that told about an Indian who had his head taken off by a bear. I also knew that Alaska’s newspapers reported unprovoked attacks, some of them fatal, by these giant bears every year. Much of this is because brown bear habitat lends itself to close encounters. Coastal Alaska has dense alder patches, some reaching ten feet high, and it isn’t unusual to stumble into a bear at close range. These bears also are territorial and may choose to protect their favorite salmon fishing holes and berry patches against any intruder. They sometimes will charge without hesitating when startled. The areas these bears inhabit are remote enough that most brown bears have no fear of the foul- smelling, two-legged creatures that occasionally invade their domain. And woe be to anyone who gets between a mama bear and her offspring. A female bear has strong maternal instincts and will keep her cubs with her for up to three years. By that time, the cubs themselves are big enough to be plenty dangerous. Contributing even more to the dangers of hunting big brown bears are their heavy bones and muscles, and a nervous system that some experienced hunters claim is nearly impervious to bullet shock. Yes, an unsuspecting bear can be droppedwithonewell-placedbullet, but that seems to be unusual. My choice for hunting a brown bear was a .340 Weatherby Magnum with a Leupold 2.5-8X scope. I had acquired the Weatherby a few years previously in a Bank of Boulder promotion that offered rifles to new depositors. I loaded my ammunition with 250-grain Nosler Partitions. Warren put the plane down on Bear Lake and we taxied to the dock at his family’s lodge. Because there were only a few flights each week to Cold Bay, Bud and I had arrived a few days before the bear season opened. We passed the time fishing and getting to know our guides. Mine was