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it. Once we got our differences
worked out around the camp-
fire and decided how to hunt
the area without interfering
with each other, he turned
into a fertile source of lore and
opinion.
In addition to Kodiak bears,
he also guided Dall sheep hunt-
ers in the Brooks Range. “If I
have a sheep hunter who is in
reasonably good shape and can
shoot a rifle,” he told me over a
shared dinner one night, “I can
almost guarantee him a good
ram. But spring brown bears?
That’s a whole different story.”
I got a taste of what he
meant on that trip, but the
lesson didn’t really sink home
until I started working as an
assistant guide on the Alaska
Peninsula several years later.
Popular impressions of the
Alaska brown bear almost all
arise from spots like McNeil
River and Brooks Falls, where
bears are protected, habitu-
ated to people, easy to pho-
tograph, and present in large
numbers when feeding on red
salmon returning to freshwater
streams to spawn. I’ve bounced
off dozens of them a day at
close range when fly-fishing in
Katmai National Park. But in
areas where they aren’t treated
as tourist attractions they are
completely different animals,
especially in the spring when
they are widely dispersed. Just
finding a mature boar then can
be difficult. Killing one can be
even harder.
When I turned my attention in the opposite direction,
I could see tracks start to appear in the snowfields
high on the flanks of the mountains as bears began to
rouse from their dens. Those bears were many miles
beyond hiking distance, but we knew it was only a
matter of time until they walked down the valley
toward us in search of food.
Spring bear season on the
Peninsula takes place in late
May, when daylight floods the
tundra landscape almost con-
stantly. A hill requiring perhaps
thirty minutes of steep but
pleasant climbing rose behind
our camp, and one of us was
always on top of it with bin-
oculars and spotting scope. I
enjoyed the solitude there, and
never minded taking my turn.
If I pointed my optics downhill
I could watch big rainbow trout
rising to the surface of one of
the world’s most celebrated
trout streams, and the lake was
usually alive with courting wa-
terfowl.
When I turned my atten-
tion in the opposite direction,
I could see tracks start to ap-
pear in the snowfields high on
the flanks of the mountains as
bears began to rouse from their
dens. Those bears were many
miles beyond hiking distance,
but we knew it was only a mat-
ter of time until they walked
down the valley toward us in
search of food.
We knew it, but sometimes
our hunters didn’t. If one of
them really wanted to take off
through the alders and corn
snow to look for a bear I was
always glad to do it, but I’d
learned my lesson back on Ko-
diak. I like to cover ground as
much as anyone, but successful
spring brown bear hunts are far
more likely to begin with hours
of patient glassing than with
miles of ambitious walking. The
trick is to adopt a frame of mind
that allows you to enjoy those
hours even when they don’t in-
clude any bears.
But eventually, they always
did. The sudden appearance of
a big boar lumbering across the
tundra—its gait pigeon-toed,
its head swinging rhythmically
from side to side—could affect
the mood atop that glassing hill
like a volcanic eruption as ques-
tions began to swirl. How big
was it? What would the wind
be doing across the valley?
What would be the best route
of approach? Then the part of
the bear hunt that everyone en-
visions when they think about
bear hunting would begin.
Those were always excit-
ing times, for there is no such
thing as a casual stalk on a 10-
foot bear. They also served to
illustrate the respect that old
Kodiak guide had for the quar-
ry. Never mind the misconcep-
tions created by all those doc-
umentaries filmed in National
Parks. A brown bear that has
grown large enough to shoot
has seen it all, and may be
the wariest, most calculating
game animal on the continent.
Patience is just as important
during the final hours of the
hunt as it is during the days
that precede it.
I did eventually kill a spring
brown bear of my own—with
a longbow no less, at a range
of perhaps fifteen yards. Every
bit as exciting as it sounds,
that remains another story for
another day. But somehow the
events I remember most from
all those days afield came pri-
or to the moment of truth: the
lone white wolf that walked
by me as I huddled in the rain
on the glassing hill, the cow
moose that lost her newborn
calf to a bear after a ferocious
but futile defense.
Those memories matter
just as much as the dead bears
now, and they came purely as a
result of patience.
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