I am intersted in booking a hunt in the spring of 2009 for bear, preferably in the Yukon.
Spring because I assume the weather is more like to be pleasant, and Yukon because it is reputed to have the most beautiful scenery. But it seems that most of the time people are going for a combined hunt in the fall.
It seems like more people go to BC for grizzlies, or at least I wasn't able to turn up much info about it on the forum. Why so? Cost? Size and numbers?

I want a horseback wilderness hunt, which I understand is pretty much the norm for Yukon anyways, right? More concerned with hunting country that takes your breath away rather than shooting the biggest bear. Spectacular location and reasonable weather are the priorities, not like a Kodiak 10 day rain n fog trip where all you want is that damn bear.
My Dad would be along on the hunt too, he's going to be 62 and while he is in good shape, he would rather avoid being wet, cold, uncomfortable, exhausted and scared of nover getting back home for the whole hunt, done enough of that, so a sound outfitter that can look after clients is a must.

Can anyone suggest an outfitter or give any advice? I've run some searches on google and they all have pics of big bear and promises that everything'll be great. But I don't trust that anymore...



I did a moose hunt in Alberta with High Ridge outfitters - they promised we would hunt on horseback or from quads in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. There was 1 quad in camp, camp was 1km from the highway(I kid you not) with not even a hill in sight (though the GMU was called foothills) and all we did was drive around from morning till night in competition with the locals to shoot a moose off the side of the road. Never again.

I don't know of alot of outfitters that have spring horseback hunts for bear in the Yukon. I however know of some outfitters the have great areas for bear in the Yukon for spring hunts. Dan Reynolds has a good population of bears and a great sucess rate. The scenery is great and you will be far from any roads and will not see a soul. You can look up the yukon outfitters association and there are several there that might interest you.

There may be lots of snow in the spring--takes a long time to melt. Early fall would likely be better weather.
I've had two good hunts with the wilkinsons at Ceasar Lake in the past.
http://www.ceaserlake.com/

The snow does linger, but most of the boars are out in early april.The snow in mtn's makes them easier to spot.I second the advise of looking at the outfitters assoc, many good areas for spot and stock spring bear, probably not any horse back hunts as most of the rivers aren't passable to take horse into the backcountry that early.