Brent

I got this first sent to me by a friend in Anchorage a couple of months ago and couldn't format it to ImageStation. I took this off of the 24 Hour Campfire site. I don't know anything about it other than that.

Late getting on this thread, but will add my two cents worth.

When I got my brownie, used M 70 .416 Rem Mag (wood and blue ) with 400 gr Swift A-frames, one shot in the shoulder dropped him, 150+ yds. My guide put one more in him which was entirely unwaranted and I was not happy about. Wanted a clean rug! All the advice is good. .375 H & H also could have been my choice, but mine was a M700 Rem and I just felt better with a CRF.

Everyone is right, take the biggest rifle that you can shoot well and one other criteria, at a 100 yds., you should practice enough until you can punch holes in 8 inch max, even 6 is better. In my mine, the first shot counts, put the sucker down before the adreniline starts pumping.

One reason, I liked a heavier rifle was that we hunted along a lot of rivers in thicker stuff, so if one was jumped, just a better choice IMHO before the bear ends up chewing on your body parts .

Weather-really inportant to get expedition quality rain gear as it rains with force, at least in the fall as many of our Alaska friends will verify. Also be prepared to take care of your blue-wood rifle in the wet conditions, ever night I went through it, stainless would have been easier.

Have a great hunt, Alaska is a hunters treasure, can't wait to go back. pmm

Just an additional comment, the 8 inch max was intended to be off-hand shooting, which I felt is necessary for bear hunting in the thicker stuff.
IMHO

I may have missed it but I think someone should point out that the Brown Bear on Kodiak Island are, tempermentally, different from the bear you will find on the Peninsula or in SE Alaska and they are not afraid of humans.

The difference is caused, I believe, by the deer on the island and those who hunt them. Hunting these little deer may well be the most exciting hunt you can do in North America.

The bear have learned, as have many grizzly in the lower-48, that a rifle shot means easy food. You shoot a deer or an elk and the bear firmly believes it is his/hers and you will need to move aside.

Stonecreek, I will argue that bear DO respond differently in every situation and the extra initial shock to the bear the 416's offer over the smaller dia one is undisputable in my oppinion. The question to me is, is the bear on your hunt going to need the extra hammer effect to finish him quick? If he does and you don't have it, or enough distance between you two to get multiple shots off, if he wants to... he WILL get you first. Weather you are willing to trust your guide for back up or not is entirely a personal decision, unpreparedness can get to you when you least expect it, as it did Mr. Moe.

If I hunted brown bear with my 243 and heavy tough bullets I could kill them too, there's really not much doubt about it. Protecting myself or another with the 243 is quite another story, and too high and likely of a situation to think about doing so, although I know natives that do kill them all the time with 223s because ammo is cheap and it still works.

The same guide that shot the bear 11 times, also killed a giant Kodiak bear with his bow on a hunt of his own at 20 feet! He's nuts! The bear was laying on his back on a hill in the sun, he wouldn't wake up for about an hour after he stocked up to him as close as he could in the grass, ya just grass. He finally through a rock at him to wake him up, hit him square. The bear got up looked his way and started walking directly tward him, Bob was now at full draw on his knees. The bear got to twenty feet and his backup guy on the hill behind him with the 375H&H was about to sqeeze of a shot, but saw a white fletching disappear into the bears chest! The bear turned 90 degrees right went 20 yards, still walking and simply fell over dead! The arrow went through the top of the heart and stuck in the right hip. He said his knees were shaking so bad he couldn't get up for nearly a half hour.

What area is your hunt booked for?

Brent Moffitt: I retired from the Air Force a few years back, and have been in Alaska since 1979. I don't hunt bears, since I hunt for meat (moose). I don't like to eat bear, and caribou, to me at least, taste too gamy. But I hunt or communicate with some people who hunt bears in the interior, and see bears while hunting moose, and in past seasons have accompanied bear hunters.

What some people don't understand is that bears are difficult to see during the day unless you are hunting far from people and their vehicles, boats, etc. Guides and outfitters use remote locations to take their clients to, and in those places the guide has a better chance to see grizzly bears. In other words, there is not a bear behind every tree up here.

Also, if a bear charges it is usually at close range to maybe 100 yards away on the far side. By close range I mean....a few paces or yards,where most people can't react fast enough to do anything about it.

The fact is that most bears (not all) try to stay from people. There are cases, like the guy from Anchorage recently, where there is too much ambient noise (wind, near the shore, by the river, etc.), and bears can't hear you. Sometimes we are the ones that don't hear well and step too close to bears without warning them. Once one is within those 40 or 50 yards from the bear, anything can happen. Then all the tall vegetation all the way around makes things worst.

Bears I would be afraid of are those that are predacious or in close contact with human activity, dump sites, etc, specially if one decides to pay a visit in the dark when I am sleep in my tent.

By the way, the picture above illustrates one of the things bears do when eating pray. They often dig into softer areas such as the stomach first. I don't know why, but maybe because of all the fat tissue around the intestines. They do the same with moose and other animals

I have to say about everyone is right or at least not wrong. All the calibers mentioned are adequate. It is a matter of taste. Personally, I took a .375 H&H to Kodiak when I drew my permit and made several stalks without backup, though I have to admit to having some trepidation about crawling through alders trying to sneak up close to a big brownie with less than a howitzer in my hands. Certainly bigger is better, but on a guided hunt I don't think bigger is all that necessary.
One of these days for backup and nightime camp protection will probably have a .458 Lott made up.
DB Bill, one comment about your statement that the bears on Kodiak are not as afraid of humans as those on the Penninsula. I have not hunted the Penninsula but a buddy of mine has aqnd tells me that the bears there are not too nervous about humans. I think this is in part due to the fact that they are only hunted every other year. On Kodiak the bears are hunted HARD - I don't know the exact statistics, but probably around one hunter for every ten bears on the island on an annual basis. Perhaps the sows and young bears are somewhat agressive, but the big boars run and right now. If you climb a mountain on a stalk don't expect to see many bears in that area for days. If they smell your tracks they will go elsewhere. I have heard the stories about bears chasing hunters away from their deer, but I would bet big money that these were sows or boars of 4 years or less in age. My deer hunting on Kodiak has always been in late November when only the boars are out and they stay out of my way.
My next brown bear hunt will be with the .375 JDJ in my Contender, but I will have backup nearby. I passed up one this fall I should have taken but was chasing a moose at the time.

I agree Ray. My brother on his last trip to Kodiak walked up on one in the alders, it was about 20 yards ahead of him facing away. He was deer hunting as mentioned earlier. He said he was glad he seen it when he did, all he was hunting with was his FA 475 Linebaugh. He stayed still and it never did see, hear or wind him, but could have startled him easily at that range.

[ 12-11-2002, 14:39: Message edited by: Brent Moffitt ]

A guy about 5 mi down the road from me was getting his goats killed by a grizz on a regular basis a few years back now. One morning he found one of his cows dead, eaten on and half burried in the pasture. That was the last straw. He bought a reletively inexpensive nightvision scope and mounted it on his AR-15, got up on the barn before dark and waited... The bear came back and he got to about 50 yards, he said he aimed for his chest and never stopped pulling the trigger until the clip was empty. The bear made it about 10 feet. He said he was fu%%ing scared to get off the barn for about an hour!

all this reminds me of one of the funniest videos I have ever seen.

A cousin of mine who guided for a few years was with a couple friends fishing a river for salmon.
I guess it was a fairly popular place for bears as well as fisherman.
the video start with my cousin across the river filming a fella who is wading close to the bank on the far side, the river is about 75 yds wide.
there is a bend in the river and from the far side you can see the grizz and the fisherman. But they can't see each other.
My cousin says this don't look good, the guy keeps on moving slowly towards the bear, the bear is moving along the bank towards the fishermen.
They start yelling to warn him but he can't understand what they are saying, he figures something is wrong so he wades onto the bank, and is looking all around.
Meanwhile all the yelling spooks the bear and he takes off, RIGHT TOWARDS THE FISHERMAN.

The bear comes tearing around the bend in the river and isn't 10 yards from the guy, I swear you could actually see the back side of his waders expand!! so what does he do, he drops everything and runs like the fires of hell are burning his heels. the bear catches him in about nothing flat, (ever try to run in waders?)
reaches out with one paw and trips the guy, then instead of mauling him all the bear does is put both front feet in the middle of the guys chest and bounce up and down about 4 times,
Meanwhile everybody on the other side of the river is yelling and throwing rocks trying to get the bear off the guy, the bear takes a couple steps towards the river looking across where all the comotion is, the guy takes the oportunity to flip over face down. as soon as he moves the bear jumps right back towards him, raises up about half way and comes down with both front legs right in the middle of the guys back, You can just feel it when he comes down WOOOF, just absolutly squishes the guy, then he just kinda stands there looking down at the guy. finally he climbs up on the guy with all 4 feet in the guys back and bounces up and down about 4 or 5 times. then the bear slowly saunters off never even looking back.
The bear never clawed him or bit him just squashed the shit out of him.
It took my cousin and the guys he was with awhile to get across the river to help the guy. He was hurting pretty good. They helped him out to the road and got him to a hospital where he was treated for broken ribs, and bruising.
I'm sure he also needed a change of underware and a shower.
Funniest thing I have ever seen.

[ 12-11-2002, 20:22: Message edited by: michaelr ]

Rob...I should have made a better choice of words. I found the brown bear on the Peninsula to be "indifferent" most of the time but of course you can run into a bear with an attitude at any time.

With respect to hunting on Kodiak I didn't mean to imply that all you needed to do was fire a rifle and a 10' boar would run up.....and quite frankly trying to stare down a sow with cubs when she is intent on your deer isn't something that anyone in their right mind would want to do and we both know if you shoot in self-defense the burden of proof will be on you.....and remember a sow or young boar is still a big and potentially dangerous animal.

Yeah, Bill, unfortunately many of the sows are habituated, and the greenies want to close a 100 sq. Mi. area on the S end of Karluk Lake for bear watching so they can really habituate them to humans. I commented against that in the Kodiak Bear Management Plan process, and I hope they don't do it. I drew Karluk Lake and that is the jewel of the island for bear hunting. It would be a shame to see the area where Bill Pinnell had his Spring hunting cabin become some eco-tourist trap.
I handgun hunt for deer on Kodiak and I always feel more comfortable once I have shot a deer. It gives me something to give to the bear so he doesn't come after me instead.
A lodge owner I know has to deal with quite a few brown bears especially in the off season. He swears that it is the young boar just kicked out by his mother that generally causes the majority of problems for him. In his "compassion" for them, he tries to "educate" them with a load of 6s in the ass at about 25 yards, and by chasing them with 4-wheelers.
Personally, I don't worry much about bears attacking me. Just try to avoid doing anything too stupid to create an atractive nuisance for them - i.e. don't fry bacon inside the tent, etc. - and carry a .45 LC revolver so if one gets me down I can stick it in his ear and pull the trigger. Think I am more likely to die in one of the small planes while going hunting than by the paws and jaws of a bear (knock on wood).

A friend of mine Roger drew a permit for Karluk lake last fall after many, many years of trying. He got a huge sow on the beach with his bow. He had a quad bypass heart surgery just two months before the trip, so he couldn't shoot his rifle yet. The guy's in super shape or he never would have been able to make the trip. F&G said it was the biggest measured sow ever taken off the island. Derrick said they saw 8 groups of bears around the beaches on the lake when they flew over it, every group had more than 6 bears in it too. Very big bears there, and the has highest density of them on the island I'm told. Two permits per year given out, one has to be lucky to draw there though. My friend Brian went with him to help him out on the hunt, he got two deer with his bow that were both bigger than any in the local competition held by a local gun shop, Boondocks. The grand prize was a Remington titanium rifle, only catch was you had to be registered before you left on the hunt, Brian never knew about it. Big deer in that area though.