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Coastal Black Bear in Southeast Alaska

SC Living Outdoors

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This Hunt was one I had been looking forward to for a while. Not just because I knew it was going to be a lot of fun, but because my wife was going to come along with me. She usually comes on a hunt with me every year and this would be her first time going to Alaska. I love spending time with her on hunts and the fact that I have a wife that supports my addiction to the outdoors and will spend time with me doing it is pretty special.

Our trip started from the Atlanta airport 2 1/2 hours from my house. The Atlanta Braves are my favorite sports team. I watch them more than any other team and I have since I was about eight years old. With that said, I hate Atlanta with a passion. We planned on being at the airport two hours ahead of time. When we got there the parking garage we needed to park in, and all of the other ones were full….on a Tuesday. So we had to circle around and park in a lot where we would ride a shuttle to the airport. Of course, the shuttle dropped us off on the opposite side of the airport from where we needed to be but luckily there wasn’t a line for Alaska airlines check-in. That was the only good break we caught. The line for tsa was insane. The longest line I have ever waited in at an airport. When we got to the gate they’d already closed the door. The plane was still sitting there and continued to sit there for about 10 minutes but once the doors closed the doors closed.

They put us on another flight to Seattle that was supposed to depart at 7:30 PM. It got delayed by over two hours, of course. So we arrived in Seattle about midnight. I booked a super fancy night at the motel 6 that was about 10 minutes from the airport. It should’ve cost about 50 bucks a night, but the city of Seattle is really knocking it out of the park with cost of living and it was $110. Our flight to Alaska was the next day and we arrived around 2:30 PM. We took the ferry across and my buddy picked us up. We swung by Walmart for some supplies, the sporting goods store for locking tags, then headed to his boat where we would be spending the night for a few nights.

My buddy fishes commercially out of Ketchikan, and last year he bought a used 34 foot vessel that he uses to catch salmon. He’s been working on it a lot and he offered to take my wife and I out hunting. We would stay on the boat and use his 14 foot skiff to look for bears and run crab traps. We made it 4 1/2 hours to the location. We got to the spot we were going to hunt without spotting any bears. We saw a lot of deer, eagles and seals. This wasn’t a good sign because he said normally he sees a ton of bears going through this area and we knew that our opportunities might be a little limited due to an earlier green up then normal. Originally we had talked about coming up earlier, but my trip to New Zealand would not allow that. We put out the crab traps and settle down for a short nights sleep because it feels like it’s dark for about two hours this time of year.

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The next morning, we were up with the sun. The first thing we did was check the crab pots and we had some nice keepers in there. My wife and I headed out to look for bears at the head of the bay. We slowly work their way up the creek that fed out and after about 45 minutes I spotted a bear feeding in the tall grass not too far away. The wind was good, so I parked the boat and my wife and I began our stalk. The bear was slowly moving away from us. I got a closer look at the bear and holy smokes was this a good bear he had one of the biggest heads I’ve ever seen on a bear. I honestly did a double take at one point making sure it wasn’t a brown bear. It wasn’t, lol. He was just very large, haha. The grass was tall in there and there was a bit of a depression where he was. The first time we got set up Kaitlin was about to shoot when the bear went behind a big downed log. We took the chance to move up more, and got set up in a great spot as the bear approached some alders. Kaitlin was making sure she felt comfortable when the bear began to sniff around because the wind swirled. “Oh no” I thought to myself. I told her she needed to shoot as quickly as possible, but unfortunately she did not feel comfortable, and the bear slipped off. That happens sometimes and I definitely didn’t want her to take a shot she wasn’t comfortable with. We spent the rest of the morning cruising around up-and-down, checking all the different beaches, but we did not see any more bears. We did see plenty of eagles, sitka blacktail and seals, which was a lot of fun. We headed back to the boat in for lunch that day. We had fresh crab which was awesome.

That afternoon we headed back out to the same area in hopes of seeing that same big bear and getting another chance at him. He did not come out, but another bear did in the same area. We got set up again, but the grass in this bay was really tall. Which was part of the problem in the morning. We could see him and then we couldn’t see him. Unfortunately, he slipped off to before Kaitlin felt comfortable with a shot in the couple of windows we got where the grass wasn’t quite as tall. I know she was frustrated, but I’m proud of her for not taking a poor shot and wounding a bear.

The next morning, the weather turned poor like it often does in southeast Alaska, so Kaitlin decided to take the morning off to get more than five hours of sleep. My buddy and I headed out but we struck out. Zero bears sighted. We began the trip of heading back to town. My buddy had set up a charter to catch halibut, salmon, and rockfish with a friend of his the following day so we would hunt closer to town for the remainder of the time. We glassed for bears all the way back, but did not see any. He continued to remark on how disappointed he was, because he usually see so many bears.
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Big bear in front of me.
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That evening after a few hours of down time we set out to check out some secluded bays where my friend had seen bears in the past. Our time was getting short. The next day we would be fishing and our plane left the following afternoon. Kaitlin was still on the gun, but I was going to be the backup in case things didn't go as planned if we found a bear. We looked in many different areas and saw some seals and deer. Finally we arrived in the main cove my buddy wanted to check out. The whole area was surrounded by lush green grass. We set up on a little point glassing all around. After 30 minutes or so of glassing I snuck around to the back side of the point to look in shaded corner that wasn't visible from our other location. There was a bear! It was feeding in the thick grass just like it was supposed to be. We got in the boat and slowly began to idle in that direction. The bear was busy feeding and didn't know we were there, but we did notice 2 deer a few hundred yards away across from the bear on the opposite bank. We quietly beached the boat out of sight and worked our way to a shooting location. To get to a spot to shoot we had to ease through the woods a little ways because of a downed tree. I don't think the bear would have picked up on us if it weren't for the deer, but the deer weren't happy about our presence and alerted the bear. As we got into the shooting location the bear began to take off. He was in the edge of the woods and walking quickly away. Kaitlin couldn't see the bear and I knew she wouldn't feel comfortable taking a moving shot so I sat down and shot him off my knee. The whole thing happened in just a couple seconds.

We were happy to have one bear down. Kaitlin confirmed she didn't see the bear so she wouldn't have been able to kill it. We worked our way over to the area and 30 yards into the woods laid a pretty black bear with a white blaze on its chest. It wasnt a giant, but it was a nice bear with a perfect thick coat. No rubs or blemishes. We began to carry the bear the 60 yards to the boat when all of a sudden my buddy jumped back. This immediately made me jump back (where I'm from when someone jumps back like this its because of a rattlesnake). Obviously it wasn't a snake, it was way cooler. 5' in front of us hiding in the grass was a baby Sitka Blacktail. It was tiny. Only a few days old I would guess. The small fawn was only 15' or so from where I shot the bear. I don't know if I saved that fawns life, but I like to think I did. We took some pictures and left, but I know I won't ever forget that moment.

The next day we went out fishing. We caught our limit of halibut, rock fish and even a bonus chum salmon (Kaitlin caught). We caught about 20 kings also, but the season wasn't open so they all were released.

We didn't end up hunting any more. I worked on the hide and the meat for the remaining time. All in all we had a great trip and Kaitlin had fun and saw a big bear pretty close up. I am a bit disappointed Kaitlin didn't get her first bear, but I don't know anything I could have done differently. Hopefully we'll head back again next year a few weeks earlier this time.

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What a fantastic hunt. That's terrific that your wife was able to go with you. Nice days in Ketchikan Alaska are few and far between, but a nice day there beats anywhere else I've ever been.
 
What a fantastic hunt. That's terrific that your wife was able to go with you. Nice days in Ketchikan Alaska are few and far between, but a nice day there beats anywhere else I've ever been.
I really enjoy SE Alaska. I'll be back up there again this fall. I'm glad my wife got to come and experience it too. Hopefully we can head back again next year.
 

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