I have only hunted once in Alaska, A caribou hunt in 1999. We saw more grizzlies than you could shake a stick at in the 7 days we were there hunting. Interestingly enough we were told by the flying service we used that we wouldn't see any bears where we were hunting and they recommended we leave our handguns at home. We saw 17 total, not a handgun in sight. Lesson Learned. Now some of those could have been the same bear on multiple occasions but never the less 17 sightings. To get to my story. I had killed two nice caribou, using 140 Grain Remington Core-Lokt bullets in a 7mm STW, so I had the pilot of the flying service bring in my 12 gauge so I could do a little Ptarmigan hunting which I did. This brought me to my first up close grizzly encounter, very special for me as I was hoping to at least see a grizzly while I was in Alaska, just not at 50 yards with a 12 gauge and birdshot in my hand. I got out of there post haste without incident. I'll Jump to the end to try and keep it short. My friends dad shot a caribou roughly 400 yards from camp roughly 45 minutes after I had the first up close encounter. While we were getting the caribou cleaned up and packed up for transport back to camp, the grizzly I had encountered earlier while hunting birds, came running in. The dinner bell had been rung. I had three guys with me with high powered rifles and I had a twelve gauge with #6 shot so I figure no worries, right. I jump up grab my shotgun and ask the guys, "can you believe this sh&t" no answer. I turn and look and the three of them are running the other direction as fast as there little feet can carry them. You know the old adage, you don't have to outrun the bear. Pretty clear here. The bear was running in from about 100 yards or so at a trot, I figured I was going to have an up front seat to a extremely close encounter or worse. I leveled the 12 gauge several feet over his head and fired off three rounds, he immediately spun and ran away. Was I lucky, your **** right I was. I only had two shells left and I am pretty sure unless I got the barrel in his mouth the six shot wasn't going to do much. There is much more to this story and I love telling it but the point I am trying to make is out of 17 encounters and 4 caribou taken we only had the one instance where the bear was a problem. In every other encounter the bears ran like the dickens when they saw us. We have grizzlies in Montana and more an more encounters happen each year. I doubt very seriously that the majority of guys hunting in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, throw in the western Provinces of Canada as well, hunt with "made for Grizzly encounter bullets, just in case. At least no one I know does. We either cay an handgun or bear spray. Use the bullets that you have confidence in and shoot well, take the time to make a clean and *Rule 1 Violation*al kill shot, keep your hunting buddy close to watch your back and carry bear spray. You will have a great time. Just my opinion.
