Worth the weight: Writer shares the story of his first successful Alaska bear hunt

If there’s one thing I’ve learned while hunting in Alaska, it’s that things happen quickly. I’ve found that hunting consists of long, excruciating periods of waiting followed by short moments of heart-pounding exhilaration. Harvesting my first Alaskan bear was no different, although the wait was much longer and the critical moments even shorter.

I first hunted spring black bears in 2022 when I became a resident. I had hunted bears successfully in Washington State, but never in the spring and certainly not in the terrain and environments I found myself in here.

I was fortunate to receive an invitation to hunt bears in Prince William Sound on a friend's boat for three days. The owner of the boat harvested a bear and I opted to pass on an opportunity later the same day. I still kick myself for that decision.

On the last morning of that hunt, I had a unique opportunity to harvest a bear that quite literally caught me with my pants down. I remember turning around to see the bear standing no less than 50 yards from me, pants around my ankles. I didn’t even bother pulling my pants up as I shuffled over to my rifle and picked it up. I think the bear was just as surprised as I was when I shot and watched dirt fly over his back. I failed to take into consideration the snow mound between us and realized I had shot through it, throwing snow several feet in the air. Not that that had anything to do with my frantic poor shooting. The bear slowly turned and scampered off into the brush.

And that was how my first spring bear season ended.

That fall during a moose hunt I had an opportunity to harvest a very nice boar grizzly. On this particular day, I remember leaving the airstrip and busting through a half a mile or so of thick alders before breaking out into the open. An hour or so into my walk I caught movement ahead of me and dropped to a knee. I pulled up my binoculars thinking, ‘Dang, that’s the biggest black bear I’ve ever seen!!’ It took a few moments to realize that I was actually looking at a huge grizzly!

I ranged the bear at 300 yards and attempted to close the distance. The bear was directly uphill and the thermals were pulling my scent to him. I watched as the bear lifted his nose in the air. The grizzly turned 180 degrees and took off in the opposite direction.

I continued climbing to the top of the mountain to get a view over the valley. The blueberries were enormous and I happily snacked on the juicy, purple berries all morning. As I glassed the hills adjacent to me, I found the massive grizzly once again. He was slowly moving along the hillside, mowing down berries in his path. I took time to plan a stalk, utilizing the terrain and the wind to my advantage. It took an hour to circumvent the ridge I was on to come out directly on the hill above the grizz.

After dropping my pack before cresting the hill, I poked my head over and looked down. There, 200 yards below me was the bear. I slowly prepared for a shot. As I looked at the bear through my scope, I admired how impossibly huge his head was, like a giant watermelon with a deep valley running down the middle of it.

About then, the bear's nose went straight into the air. I panicked. I thought this was my last opportunity. I quickly found a less than ideal position and fired off a shot, followed by a couple more as he ran off and out of my life. A few minutes later I watched as he was still running in the opposite direction over a mile away, pausing every few steps to turn and look back at me. I never found blood or any sign I had hit the bear.

I decided to dedicate the spring of 2023 to hunting bears. I made several day trips and even several overnight camping trips. I did make a couple of failed stalks on black bears and even one brown bear. I was learning more with each trip and getting closer every time.

In the spring of 2024 I gladly sacrificed my own hunting time to accompany a friend to Kodiak Island to hunt brown bear. It was an absolutely amazing experience that capped off with him harvesting a bear at only 40 yards away from us on the beach.

I don’t remember how I was turned on to Cordova, but for some reason I decided that’s where we should go this year. My wife would be along for this hunt and she surprised me with plane tickets for Christmas. She took a week off from work and we flew to Cordova and rented a vehicle. I had planned our trip loosely. We took our time. We weren’t in a rush.

Our cabin was small and quaint and very dark because of the thick timber. We unpacked and settled in for the night and slept in long after the sun had come up. We slowly made our way down the trail that morning, enjoying the hike. Hunting was our main goal for this trip, but we were enjoying the scenery and the hike too much to focus on that.

The further down the trail we walked, it seemed at any moment a bear might appear on the path in front of us. Our plan was to hike out for the morning and walk back to the cabin in the afternoon. When we decided to turn around, my mind was on stopping at a lake a quarter mile back the way we had come from and eating lunch.

My wife was 20 yards behind me and I was walking fairly quickly with my head down. As the forest in front of me began to open to the lake, something set off little alarm bells in my brain. Perhaps it was a sound or maybe my eyes caught a bit of movement. I froze. I caught a glimpse of something black moving ahead of me. A black bear crossed a small creek in an opening and ambled onto a grassy shore. I turned to my wife, motioning her to stop.

After all of the misses and close calls I had with previous opportunities, I took the time over the last couple of years to become more proficient with my firearm.

Those skills would help me to move instinctively in this situation. The bear was quickly moving away and parallel to us, steps from disappearing into the brush. I flipped off my scope caps as I moved forward to find an opening. I adjusted the magnification of my scope and crouched down as the bear walked into a small window. The bear stopped momentarily and looked in our direction, perfectly broadside at 70 yards. I pulled the rifle to my shoulder, brought the crosshairs onto his lungs, and touched off a shot. Right before I shot I remember thinking, ‘Man, that thing has a huge head!’

It all happened so fast, less than 20 seconds from first seeing the bear to squeezing the trigger.

The bear hit the ground hard and struggled to get up before making a dash into the thick cover. The sound of shot reverberated across the lake and down the valley. My wife hurried next to me and we let the bear settle for several minutes before trailing it.

I slowly moved into the brush, rifle ready for the chance the bear was still alive. We had only gone 20 yards when I noticed a fluffy black bump ahead of me. I worked my way up to the bear and confirmed it had expired.

We had done it!

Three years and countless hours in the field, long days at the range, my own blood, sweat and tears and hours of research and personal reflection had finally concluded in a successful harvest that occurred in less than 20 seconds.

We spent the next couple of hours processing the bear, preserving the hide for a rug and salvaging every edible piece of meat. The bear was large, squaring out at almost six and a half feet and having a skull measuring just over 18 inches. We attempted to pack the bear back to the vehicle in one load, but simply could not due to the weight. Total deboned meat ended up weighing 118 pounds and the hide with skull weighed north of 60 pounds. The packout took two days and covered 12.5 miles through heavily populated bear territory.

Who knows what lessons I’ll learn between this spring and next, or what long-term takeaways I’ll need to reflect on from this trip.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the best things are truly worth waiting for.