This story starts about 15 years ago when I went off to college. I met a dude that turned out to be one of the best friends I've ever had. We've kept in touch over the years and have always tried to hang out once in awhile even though he headed to Alaska right after college and I've bounced around all over the western US. Well now that we both have careers and some money we finally made a big trip happen.
I've been wanting a Bear for awhile and just haven't had great luck with actually killing one so we decided on a combo spring black bear and fishing trip on Prince William Sound with my buddies neighbor. I booked my flight back in January and finally left Phoenix on Friday May 13th. I was able to travel really light on the way up with only my small Kuiu 220 pack as a carry on and my daily use backpack as my personal item. Of course I had to check my rifle case which along with having my rifle in it also had my spotting scope, knives, ammo, and bipod. The thinking was to be able to check two 50lb boxes of meat and fish on the way home if our trip went according to the plan.
I got to anchorage a little after 4 and collected my rifle which went smoothly before my buddy picked me up at the curb. We made a quick stop at the sporting goods store in anchorage and grabbed some shrimp bait and frozen herring for bait along with my hunting and fishing license and lock tag for bear. It's kind cool that AK still does those lock tags. From there it was a quick hour drive to the house. We didn't get to bed until around midnight that night because it turns out when it never really gets dark outside that your body has trouble telling you to go to bed.
The next couple days we had chores around the house and getting gear together for the trip.
Monday morning we were up early and loading the boat at the neighbors and we made the trip down to Whittier. We had the boat in the water by 12.
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The first afternoon we made the run to area we wanted to go to and dropped in a couple of shrimp pots to soak for a few hours and then ran out and picked up a couple of halibut.
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After fishing until dinner time we ran back toward home bay, pulled shrimp pots and reset them collecting maybe a gallon of shrimp. Once we got anchored up in home bay for the night we made a dinner of fresh fried halibut and shrimp. The whole time we were hanging out and cooking and eating we were glassing for bears off and on.
Of course this time of year it never really gets dark so around 10pm my buddy spots a bear on the beach. We take quick look and it looks like a nice bear. So we pulled anchor and motored across the bay. We jumped in the raft and quietly paddled to the beach a couple hundred yards around the corner from Where the bear was stuffing his face on fresh green grass at low tide. Once we beached the raft we quickly scrambled along the rocks on the beach towards the last place we saw the bear. Peeking around the corner we found the bear exactly where we left him. A quick look confirmed that it was indeed a nice looking bear with plenty of space between his ears. I hit him with the rangefinder at about 180 yards but I didn't have a great rest and could only really see the bears head and back so we moved up to a big rock about 50 yards in front of us which ended up putting us 129 yards from the bear who was still shoving grass in as fast as he could.
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I got setup and we waited for the bear to stand up. After a couple minutes the bear stood up and presented a perfect shot. I put the crosshairs about 3" behind his shoulder and tripped the trigger. The hit was perfect and the audible report of the bullet hitting the bear was undeniably loud. The bear spun a couple times and flopped onto his back dead 15' from the point of impact. I stayed on him for about 5 minutes just to be sure he was down. Walking up to the bear we immediately saw he was better than we originally thought.
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We took some pics admired him for a few minutes but we now had a race against a quickly rising tide. And in our rush from the boat we didn't have the gear to deal with the bear. So we quickly paddled back to the boat grabbed knives and paddled back to the shoreline. By this time the bear was in a foot of seawater that was rising at a rapid rate. So we quickly dragged the bear over to a rapidly disappearing dry spot and gutted him. Since it was already after midnight at this point we elected to simply stuff the bear under a log above the high tide line and deal with breaking him down in the morning. We finally got to bed around 1 am.
The next morning I got up and headed back to the beach to finish up the bear. I skinned and quartered him and got him hung up in the trees surrounded by snow while the other two guys went and pulled shrimp pots.
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The rest of the trip consisted of more halibut, rockfish, cod and shrimp. It was a blur of activity with the daily boat chores, long runs to fishing holes, cleaning fish, shucking shrimp. We saw a couple more bears, watched porpoise, seals, sea otters, humpbacks and killer whales.
It was without a doubt one of most epic trips I have ever been on. I got a huge dose of Alaska in a very short time. Hung out with a great friend and made some new ones. Headed back home this morning with a big cooler of halibut and a big cooler of bear. The head and hide got dropped off and the taxidermist. His skull taped out at 18 8/16" and his hide squared at 6'6".
Note: For all you gear guys and since this is LRH I used my trusty Browning x bolt hells canyon long range in .300 win mag topped with a Zeiss conquest V4 4-16x44 and loaded with 199 gr. Hammer hunters over H1000 in ADG brass and touched off with a Fed215m primer. Muzzle velocity 3090 fps meaning at 129 yards the impact velocity was 2944 fps with 3829 ftlbs of energy. The bullet performed as usual with a hammer meaning a .30 cal entrance hole a 1 1/2" exit and lungs that looked like raspberry jam.
