My brother who lives up in Soldotna put us in for brown bear tags on Unimak Island next spring - and we got them.

I have hunted once for brown bear not too far to the west / southwest of Anchorage, but this next hunt seems a lot more intimidating. Anybody out there with experience on this island?

.....Been by it sevral times.. But it is very simular to the Penninsula and Kodiak,s south end.....Lot of bears lot of rugged country... Very isolated...If I were you I would start getting in shape now....It will REALLY pay off when the time comes ....

I haven't been there since the 70s, but I doubt that it has changed much. It is fairly easy walking, but it is mountainous. No vegetation to hide behind either. There are a lot of ravines too. Remember, a calm day will have 50 mph winds blowing! Have a good time. Jim

I had a successful bear hunt on Unimak in Oct of 06. I chose to go with an unguided hunt due to the high price (and lack of) available guides in that part of the world. That being said, I did use a guide service as a base of operation out of Cold Bay, and as a transport on and off of the island. I was very pleased with the service and knowledge of the guide and will provide details if requested.

Hunting on Unimak in the fall involves rain, wind and walking. I imagine the spring season will involve at least the wind and walking, with the strong possiblity of rain and/or snow. Many bears are shot in the spring season feeding on dead whales that have washed up on (I believe) the south shore of the island.

Premium, weather resistant gear is a must on this island. The less you have to worry about your tent blowing away in the occasion 70 knot wind that kicks up, or the less you worry about your gun rusting in the salty, moist air, the better.

If you would like, I will write up a detailed account on the logistics inolved and details of the hunt.

11S2G,

Thanks, I would appreciate any logistics, and other, info that you are able to provide. I figure the more info, the better. My brother has lived up in Alaska (Soldotna) for 5 - 6 years now and does a lot of hunting and fishing up there when he is not drilling an oil/gas well somewhere in the world. He put us in the drawing for these tags. He already has a few good connections up there and has talked to some about flying us in. We are leaning towards self-guided for the satisfaction of it, though we have not fully ruled out a guide. I did a guided brown bear hunt just a little W/SW of Anchorage a few of years ago. Passed on a couple of smallish 7-7.5' bears the first day and never saw another. That was fine with me - not out to kill a lot of bears - one good / mature coastal brown bear will do - and maybe an inland grizzly some day.

Where to start? First, I guess, is too say congrats on the tag. DB375/376 is not to easy to come across, and for good reason. Unimak is not as well know as Kodiak or the Peninsula, but I don't think it gives up anything in terms of quality or quantity of bears.

The logistics trail will probably start at Anchorage. As far as I know, short of flying to Cold Bay in a private aircraft, Pen Air is the only ticket in town that provides regular service to Cold Bay. The round trip tickets for myself and my friend who came along as a backup gun ran baout $800 a piece. You can book thru Alaska Airlines or go to the source at http://www.penair.com/. I thought their service was good, and was pleased to note that the ladies working the counter at both ends were kind enough to overlook the facts that my bags were slightly over the 50 lb maximum, and we were not charged for the extra weight.

For the operation in Cold Bay, I used R&R Guide Service, specifically Rod Schuh. They don't advertise much, but thier number is (907) 346-3983 or (907) 272-6739. Rod was competent in the extreme, both in his recommendation where to hunt, his (and his staff's) help to us before and after the hunt, and most importantly, his piloting of the Super Cub he used to get us on and off the island. I am a military pilot with quite a bit of experience in short-field operations, and I was very impressed with the way Rod could fly that little plane. Finding an outfitter in Cold Bay is a bit of a crap shoot. If there is a concurrent Brown Bear season occuring on the Peninsula, you will probably hae plenaty of choices. In the fall of 06, there was no bear season on the Peninsula, and R&R was the only game in town. Rod was just finishing up the caribou season on Unimak, and had a couple of non-resident bear hunters getting ready to go out on guided hunts. I won't quote what I remember the price of a guided hunt at, but it was significant - on par with the top end hunts on Kodiak and the peninsula. We cut a deal where we paid $1750 per person for the ride out to Unimak and back. Even though it was not part of the deal, R&R allowed us to spend a night at their lodge on both ends of the hunt, fed us several times, and they were extremely helpful in the process of shipping the hide back to ANC. I would highly recommend them, if in fact you are in the market.

We arrived in Cold Bay on 29 Sept, and spent the night at R&R's lodge talking with Rod and the other guides about where we should hunt. We decided to hunt an area of upper Urila Bay that Rod said "I can't take the guys paying full price, it's too much work for them." Which was his way of saying the terrain was a bit challenging. He assured us, however, the area was covered up with bears, and seeing as how my partner and I take no small amout of pride in our physical conditioning, we said it sounded like the place for us.

We flew out the next morning, saw several bears and an amazing amount of bear sign on the way in, and were deposited on a strip of volcanic sand close to where we wanted to set up camp. Rod said to give us a call on the sat-phone if we needed help and that he would see us in 10 days, and took off.
We set out to find a flat spot behind a hump in the terrain to pitch our camp. The wind was amazing. I dont think it every fell below 30 knots the whole time we were there. We set up two, two man 4-season tents, one for us and one for our gear. Inretrospect we should have had one, larger 4 season tent. (I bought a Bible Bombshelter as a direct result of this trip.) One of the handiest tools we had was one of those foldable shovels. We used it to cut up large chunks of tundra that we could place around the tents to tie off guy lies too. Trying to sink an 8 inch tent peg into tundra (and get it to stay sunk) is a waste of your time in wind like that, and the large, heavy chucks of sod proved invaluable.

We made sure our rifles were sighted in (I carried a Rem M700 XCR in 375 H&H shooting a 270g TSX, and my bud carried a SS M700 in 300 WM shooting a 200g TSX - both rifles performed flawlessly in the adverse conditions) and struck out for some high ground to glass the area.

To our north (towards the mouth of the bay) was a large marshy area (about 4 miles x 5miles) criss-crossed by salmon streams. It was all very flat, but about 95% of it was under seveal inches of water and the whole thing covered in grasss about 3 feet high. To the south was some higher, dryer ground, but no streams (plenty of caribou though). We turned in for the night excited about the first day of the season, which was the next morning.

That night a strom blew in with what I'm guessing were 60-70 knot winds. I was a bit concerned about the interity of our tents, but everything stayed pretty solid. The next morning, the wind was still up and it was raining hard. We weren't able to leave the tents til 2 in the afternoon. When we did leave, we slipped onto a 30 ft knoll about 1000 yds north of our camp and started glassing the swamp. That evening, I tink we saw 3 bears, only one of which we put a stalk on. By the time we got to within 300 yds, it was obvious the bear wasn't what we were looking for ( it was probably about 7 ft). Still, it was good practice.

Another item I bought as a direct result of this trip was a good spotting scope. I thought my 10x Swaro binocs would be adequate, and they were, but a good scope would have saved some miles on my legs that were spent going after bears that were just a little too small.

Over the next 3 days were probably saw 15 bears a day. We came within 50 yards of bears on multiple occasions. We saw one bear that I could see easily with the naked eye from over 3 miles away. He was huge, dark, and moving in the other direction, and thence, unreachable. If I had to guess, I would say I was looking at a 10ft bear.

The morning of the fourth found us perched on our knoll, glassing. We say several bears, inlcuding one big one, that was headed towards us. We sat tight and watched the bear til it disappeared next to a stream about 2.5 miles away. We figured it had bedded down, and started a stalk. Long story short, about 3 hours later we found ourselves 90 yds upwind of the bear just waiting for it to stand up. When it did, I noted it was definitely big enough, and was almost a blonde color phase bear. That was enough for me. A couple of shots later, the bear was down, but down in a creek that was only about 8 feet wide, but almost 5 feet deep. And cold. Very cold.

Both me and my buddy are fairly large (220lb, and 240lb), strong guys, but it nearly killed us getting that bear out of that creek, which virtually no bank. I was in the water lifting, and he was on the land with ropes, pulling. When the bear an I emerged 45 minutes later, I had a brand new hernia, and was so hypothemic, I couldn't talk well or hold my eyes open long enough to take a picture. Fortunately, I had a change of dry cloths and was able to move around enough warm back up. A fire was out of the question. There was no wood, everything sits in 3 inches of water, and the wind and rain never stopped.

Then we started the hard work. I skinned the bear, skinned the skull out and trimmed as much flesh and fat off the hide as I could under the challenging circustance. I rolled the whole she-bang up, attached it to my pack frame, and we stared back to camp (3 miles) trying to make it back before dark. I am absolutely positive that that hide weighed at least 175 lbs. My buddy and I would switch loads every 200 yds, because neither of us could walk any further thru the marsh with that much weight. I've done some physically challenging things in my time in the military and collegiate athletics, but this was something else. Both my partner and I agreed, if we had had another bear tag, we would not have filled it. One was enough work for both of us.

We stagered into camp at dark, and I threw the measuring tape on the un-fleshed, unstreched hide as it lay flat on the volcanic sand. 8'1" nose-to-tail and 10' from front claw to front claw. The hide was perfect (short a few .375 holes), the hair as long and thick as I have ever seen on a brown bear.

We made the sat-phone call arraging for pickup the next day, and passed out. Rod helped us arrange to have the hide shipped back to ANC by ACE cargo, and it was waiting for us when we left the airport. It is now a damn fine looking rug.

Lessons learned:
1) Good, water and wind resistant equipment. I can't stress that enough.
2) Good rifles/good optics. Stainless steel rifles, synthetic stocks. Swaro binocs, Leupold and Zeiss scopes all performed for us. YOU MUST HAVE SCOPE COVERS ON YOUR SCOPES. The black butler creek flip-up versions work flawlessly. I wish I had had a good spotting scope.
3) Gor-tex is nice, but it is not waterproof. I used Helly Hanson gear and was happy I did. Have a good stocking cap that will keep you warm even when wet. I had a Turtle-Fur cap and dont think I took it off all 5 days. Have a GOOD set of thigh waders. I brought hunting boots, but did not wear them at all.
4) Everything you take out of the tent will get wet. Sturdy ziplock bags kept vital equipment (the sat-phone) dry.
5) You have to be mentally and physically prepared to succeed. This will likely be the hunt of a lifetime, but if you do it unguided, it is also incredibly hard work. Plan on being cold, wet and tired.

There is the strong possiblity that the spring weather will be just as adverse as the fall weather. Hopefully, you will set up camp a mile from a whale carcass, not have to do much hiking, and crush the first two ten footers that stroll down the beach. It has happened before.

If you do an unguided hunt, you have to worry about weight a little more, since you have to provide all the food and equipment. I recommend top quaility cooking gear (I used a little MSR kit that weighs about a pound without the gas that can boil 2 cups of water in about 3 minutes.) Freeze dried food gets old quick, but it the lightest and most space efficient way to get it done. Energy bars are awesome. I prefer Clif's Builder Bars, but to each his own... We carried in enough food so 2 guys could have about 4000 calories a day for 10 days. It weighed over 50 lbs. Between to two of us, we actually took in about 175 lbs of gear for a 10 day hunt. It wouldn't have been comfortable to have stayed for that long, but we could have easily done it. A stong, lightweight tent is a must. Good, synthetic filled sleeping bags that pack down into small stuff sacks and will keep you warm even if they are wet are recommended.

The bottom line is that if you are doing an unguided hunt, you are responsible for your own welfare. If you break an ankle of give yourself a severe cut on a place like unimak, you had better have a plan. You can go from a hunting situation to a survival situation in the blink of an eye. There is very, very little room for error. But that's what makes it so incredibly awesome.

I'm certainly not an expert, but I have been there and done that for this particular topic. Obviously, it's something I like to talk about, so if I have want you with any questions, please ask.

11S2G --- excellent post, thank you for this information.


KMule

Great report! I filled out out my app this past weekend. wait and see....

I almost forgot - For every bear you plan to kill, you should buy a 5 gallon bucket with a good lid, fill it with 50lbs of salt and somehow get it too the field with you. I was able to mail my bucket to Cold Bay from ANC for about a dollar a pound. The bucket makes a good camp stool til the time comes to use the salt.

Thanks. Great information / advice. I may have a few specific questions later. My brother and I both drew tags, and we are both pretty determined to get bears - so planning, conditioning, and teamwork are critical.

11s2g that was an awesome post. i dream of such an adventure and will hopefully one day be able to fulfill it. Deacon how long did it take you to draw?