The floats of the 1950’s de Havilland Beaver touched down on the water of the choppy bay after a beautiful 55-minute flight over the Kodiak coastline. The bay would become familiar over the next few days at camp as I would observe whales, seals, otters, loons, and many species of sea ducks that were at home in the frigid water. “Big country” is an understatement, especially in contrast to the Ozarks we called home. The oak ridges we were familiar with have a sense of intimacy in which anything that you can see, you can touch, and even the biggest of basins are a quick walk from being explored. The opposing shore across the bay seemed close, almost swimmable if a man had a reason to. Karl asked me how far I thought the shore was from our camp, and I replied with, “500 yards or so.” He quickly informed me that it was actually one mile almost exactly. This was a wake-up call as the opposing shoreline looked just as intimate as an Ozark’s ridge in comparison to the snow-capped peaks that loomed over us behind our camp. After getting all our gear organized that evening, we had a meal of moose, rice, and onions to the soundtrack of Karl Braendel’s hunting stories that a lifetime of chasing Alaskan game had gifted him. It had finally set in that we were on a bear hunt.
The next morning consisted of bacon, eggs, and countless hunting stories. Karl told us stories of all of Alaska’s game animals and the interesting clients he had put on them in his 45+ years of guiding. As the day warmed, we confirmed the zero on Danny’s rifle on the beach by camp. After Danny shot a tight three-shot group into the target, my gaze shifted toward the mountain peaks that made up the horizon behind our camp. The snow- covered peaks with windswept chunks of exposed slate-gray rocks were just as breathtakingly beautiful as the water-worn shores of the bay and had a way of captivating onlookers in a near trance-like state. What snapped this trance, however, was the realization that one of the exposed rocks was moving very quickly from left to right across the mountain. A mad dash for binoculars confirmed that the first brown bear of the trip had been spotted. Karl and Kiche didn’t get to spend enough time evaluating the bruin through a spotting scope to thoroughly judge before it dipped down behind the mountainside into the basin behind our camp, but to an inexperienced Missouri eye, it sure looked like a giant. Karl called Sea Hawk Air on his sat phone and received a weather forecast that would make it impossible to hunt the creek they had initially planned, so we changed plans to spend a day or two hunting behind base camp where we saw the bear head today in hopes of catching back up with the blonde-tipped bruin. A dinner of moose burgers was devoured while we anxiously awaited the first “hunting day” that would greet us the following morning.
We threw our packs on our backs and trekked up the hill behind base camp, trying to find a good spot to glass the mountainsides that stretched high above us. I tried my best to keep an open mind with no expectations of what I would encounter on the island, but the terrain was outside of my imagination entirely. A soft, mossy floor was covered in large concave dips. Not a single square foot of the land was flat, and with each step, we sank to our ankles as though walking across a mattress. As I tucked myself into one of the larger dips to shield the biting wind, I found myself overlooking a boggy bottom housing a system of three beaver ponds. Beyond the bog, which was roughly 500 yards across, was a foothill shelf. Above the foothill stretched the snow-covered peaks with a saddle between them, with the leftmost peak being the one the bear had traversed the day before. As the sun rose and its rays fell across the snowy mountainside, the bruin’s tracks were exposed as shadows spilled into the massive prints leading into a drainage between the peaks. No tracks could be seen leaving the drainage, leaving only the assumption that somewhere tucked out of sight in the blanket of alders was a brown bear.
At 3:30, I noticed something dart across my binoculars. I glanced and saw two pair of mallard ducks flying out of the bog between us and the closest foothill. As an avid waterfowler, this was a welcomed surprise as greenheads were the last thing I was expecting to see on the island and the pairs almost made me feel at home. I snapped out of the trance as my gaze fell back to the mountain and immediately noticed a dark spot in a clearing to the right of the drainage. “I think I see a bear...” I told Karl. Then it moved. “Yes, that’s definitely a bear.” Karl swung his spotting scope in the direction of the bear, which piqued his interest immediately and didn’t take long to confirm as a mature boar.
“Are you ready to climb a mountain?”
We made our way across the bog, our boots sinking every step of the way as we trudged across the mossy floor. The foothill that looked innocent from 400 yards away became increasingly menacing as we approached. Upon reaching the bottom, I saw Danny gazing up to the top of the foothill as we began our ascent. “No, no, no, don’t look any further ahead than Kiche, take it 10 feet at a time,” I told him. I knew that focusing on the slope in its entirety is the fastest way to demoralize someone as I had seen many strong men become overwhelmed doing the exact same thing on the mountains of Camp Pendleton. As overwhelming as seeing the whole slope can be, forcing yourself to only see 10 feet at a time can turn an impossibly steep route into a challenging, but traversable trail. As we neared the top, I told Danny, “Just one more push and we should be real close to him,” but I knew deep down that we were still a long ways from the snowline where the bear was located.
We summitted the first near-vertical slope and found ourselves looking at the same view we had from the initial glassing point. A long boggish bowl with another foothill the same distance away, neither of which were observable from our initial glassing point and this foothill being just as steep, if not steeper, than the first. As we quickly scanned the clearing the bear had entered, that still seemed to be a world away, he was gone. We glassed for over an hour before I glanced to the left and again saw a peculiar dark spot next to the drainage. The bear had shown himself, and once again, our hunting party was in pursuit.
One more foothill between us and the bear soon turned to two, which then turned to three. I’m sure Danny was incredibly annoyed with me as at the base of each foothill I assured him, “He’s gotta be right at the top of this one,” only to summit to yet another view identical to the one we had at the bottom of the mountain. We eventually made it to a summit and found ourselves staring down on a huge grove of alders in a deep bowl beneath the drainage. We dropped pack as we knew if it happened that it would happen fast. After a few minutes of confusion as to how we lost the bear yet again, I glanced to the left and saw the blonde-tipped bruin cruising up an adjacent foothill about 400 yards away. I got Karl’s attention and pointed toward the bear; the pursuit was underway once again.
On top of the final foothill, we were staring at another hill a mere 75 yards away with a little valley between us that led into a thick alder drainage. Past the alders was a mossy meadow that stretched for about 400 yards. Suddenly, Kiche began waving frantically and pointing toward the grove of alders to the left of the valley. Danny got in position as Kiche began blowing a deer call. I turned my attention to the far meadow, assuming that’s where Kiche had seen him, but couldn’t see any movement and definitely no large silhouette that resembled a 10-foot bear. As my hopes began waning, over Danny’s shoulder no more than 60 yards away emerged the blonde-tipped bear out of the alder patch and moving our way in a hurry. As he turned towards the sound of the call in hopes of an easy meal, Danny’s .300 erupted.
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