Another shot at hunting adventure

Rarely do I get the opportunity to write about two different hunts in which I participated in two different columns running back to back.

My friend, Dan Jeffery, has a friend who owns some property up in Unit 14B. Somebody recently trespassed on this person’s property and poached a moose after the season was over. The poachers took only the hindquarters and left the rest to rot in the woods.

Both black and brown bears are looking for all the food they can find this time of year to put the finishing touches on their winter fat supply to see them through hibernation. A chunk of meat the size of a moose left in the woods, missing only the hindquarters, is the equivalent of hanging a “Free Buffet” sign on the front door of the local smorgasbord restaurant.

A brown bear moved in on this feast and settled into the area for the duration.

One of the neighbors to this particular piece of property raises cattle, sheep and other livestock and wasn’t real warm to the idea of a brown bear moving into the area. I don’t know if the neighbor intentionally went looking for the bear, but he did have an encounter with it and killed it.

The brown bear hunting season is currently open in 14B, so the neighbor made a legal kill. However, when a second brown bear was discovered working not only the moose carcass but the first brown bear carcass as well, Dan got a call wondering if he was interested in helping remove the second bear.

He was!

Dan asked me if I was interested in backing him up, if and when we found the brown bear. I asked him not to twist my arm too hard before I had a chance to say yes. We paid a visit to the area last week. Dan wanted the brown and I was interested in any black bears we might encounter.

Dan was carrying his 375 Ruger caliber rifle and I had my custom 35 Whelen caliber bolt-action. Either caliber would be quite adequate for harvesting a brown bear or a black, if we found one hanging around.

We arrived in the area and headed off into the woods, following the directions Dan had been given on where the moose kill was located. It was just starting to snow when we locked up the truck and headed out.

These woods are a mix of birch and alder with some scattered spruce covering small ridges and valleys. There is even a little “devil’s club” found in places too. The birch/alder growth would fall into what I have heard called “dog-hair” brush, being very thick with young growth mostly under a couple of inches in diameter.

As we progressed out the ridge on which we thought the moose kill was located, Dan flushed a grouse which flew directly over my head. Had I been carrying a shotgun instead of the rifle, the situation would have made for a classic wingshot at the grouse. I watched the bird flying through the dense brush and land in a tree top about 30 yards from our location.

We went quite a bit further out the ridge than the directions indicated we needed to and yet found no kill site. We began to wonder if the directions were perhaps a little unclear – like “100 yards past the driveway.”

Whose driveway, the neighbor’s or Dan’s friend?

To make a long story shorter, we never did find the moose kill, even after walking probably a mile or more around in the wooded area. We moved fairly quietly and watched and listened for bird activity, specifically magpies and ravens, figuring they would be scavenging the remains from the kill sites. A couple of different times we thought we had a location pinpointed, only to find nothing in the immediate area after making our way to the location.

The second time, Dan caught a glimpse of a coyote leaving a site on a trot and looking back over its shoulder. We figured it might have been scavenging too and had to make a hasty retreat to avoid the bear. No such luck.

The snow stopped about an hour before we arrived back at the truck. There was a light covering on the ground, only a dusting really, and it had already started melting. We drove a ways further out the road to see where it went and turned around and headed for home.

Many folks would have been disappointed with the way this trip turned out. I’m not one of them. Spending most of the day out in the woods, seeing grouse and coyotes and feeling the adrenalin “rush” when you approach an area where a bear might be lying in the tall grass all contribute to making the day a success, even if we went home empty-handed.

Having to kill something to make the hunt a success has held no fascination for me for a long time. Enjoying the experience, the companionship, the weather and the area are the important things to me now. Bagging an animal would be the frosting on the cake.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.