by Boone
We headed for Rainy Pass, which seemed appropriate as a steady drizzle streaked the windshield. Between mouthfuls of cold pop-tart that substituted for breakfast and dinner, Rob continually checked with other pilots in the area to determine if we would make the pass in time. We didn’t. When we were close enough to see the V formed by the mountains guarding Rainy it looked like someone had opened the door to a giant steambath on a cold day — no chance. We had to backtrack. Rob figured Merrill Pass might be worth a try. It would mean flying the hour and a half back to Anchorage then swinging North. As we flew up the pass the slot narrowed around us. Rob kept easing the 206 closer and closer to the rock faces to the East while peering at the tiny triangle formed by the upper reaches of the pass and the clouds squeezing down against them. Finally I had to ask, “Aren’t you getting a little close over here?”
“Got to,” Rob yelled over the drone of the engine. “If the clouds close the pass before we get to it, I’ll need all the room I can get to turn this thing around. Look down there. Those are the guys who waited too long to make up their minds.”
Looking out the window we could see the mangled wreckage of at least a dozen light aircraft scattered along the upper end of the Pass. I had been intermittently taping the scenery, but since my wife was certain to see the video I chose not to add the wreckage to my little documentary. I might want to come back some day! We slipped through. For a few minutes the sun shone brightly on the backside of the Alaska Range illuminating the Big River Drainage, home to R&R Guide Service.
Once the plane hit the strip things didn’t slow down. Half a dozen guides and packers converged on the Cessna like an Indy pit crew. Gear out; fuel in. First to welcome us to base camp was Scott Christian, “Chris.” Once again this outfit proved to be all business. Chris instructed me to get my gear stowed in the comfortable two-man guest cabin set aside for Tim and me, pack my backpack, grab a bite to eat at the cook shack, and meet him back at the strip. The pilots would be flying Chris and me out to spike camp before dark. If we could get in on the Middle Fork of the Kuskokwim River northeast of Lone Mountain before dark, the big grizzly might still be on the kill the next morning.
Rob had traded the workhorse 206 for a nifty little 150 Super Cub on tundra tires. He and Billy Ray Vollendorf in his black 150 Cub, the “Dirty Bird,” dropped Chris and me in on a gravel bar about two miles upstream from the moose kill. The “runway” was strewn with rocks the size of basketballs and other assorted river trash. Fortunately the pilots operate the Cubs like flying go-carts, and we landed without incident. I helped Chris make camp, a comfortable four-man “bomb shelter” tent on the gravel bar. Chris has 25 years of guiding experience, 10 with R&R. If the “griz” was still there he assured me, we’d get him.
That night we cooked over a mountain climber’s stove and Chris told me bear stories. The air turned crisp as the sun went down and the cool breeze in the golden aspen harmonized with the flowing river. The anticipation, as I sat there cross-legged in the tent door under the glow of the Coleman was like a thousand opening mornings on my deer stand or in my duck blind. Somewhere out there in the fading light was a big boar grizzly guarding a kill, and in the morning we were going looking for him.
Before turning in, Chris lay a loaded Smith & Wesson Model 29, .44 Magnum, on the gear box between his head and mine. “If you hear anything wake me up,” he said. “Oh, you don’t sleep walk or anything do you?”
“No,” I replied.
“You have to be able to sleep before you can sleep walk!” I must have slept some but I was up two hours before the sun, ready to head out.
Chris was up too, making coffee and frying pop-tarts. “How far are we going to go before it gets light?” I eagerly inquired. The .44 was already in the breakfast chefs’ shoulder holster.
He smiled and said, “We don’t go anywhere in grizzly country in the dark.” After only a moment’s reflection, that made perfect sense. We set out at first light.
The Middle Fork is a braided stream this time of year as glacial melt slackens. We made good time the first mile or so crossing and recrossing the thigh deep rivulets. We weren’t certain where the bear was. We knew he was on the West bank just below a jack pine snag that jutted out 90° over the river. The moose hunter and his guide had told us the kill was right on the bank and the bear had hauled up a big pile of sand and mud to bury his prize. They had walked to within one hundred yards before they spotted him lying ominously atop his cache. They didn’t stick around; there’s a lot of good moose country in Alaska. After the first mile or so we slipped into the brush on the East bank. We made half-moon loops out to the edge to glass as far down the opposite side as we could.
The brush was thick, and it was tough going. We had all day though, and we were moving cautiously. As we passed two and a half hours into the stalk, it hit 9:30 a.m. The sun was high, and I figured the bear would feed at first light then lie-up until afternoon. Our strategy was to find the kill and set up an ambush from our side of the river. If that didn’t work, we’d look for him in the thick brush near the kill. I’m sure you understand why that was plan B. At about 10 a.m. and after a half dozen half-moons, Chris eased out to the edge of the river. He scanned up, down — then stopped. By this time I was certain that we were just looking for the kill, not the bear.
All Chris said was, “He’s on it.”
Boom! Instant adrenalin rush. I was light-headed as we maneuvered to the thin brush on top of a cut-bank. There he was, 150 yards distant, diagonally across the river. He was standing on the kill, angled away from me.
I was using a Ruger No. 1 Tropical in .375 H&H Magnum. I knew I would have to place my single shot perfectly and in part, that’s why I opted for this rifle. I’d practiced hard and had the bruised shoulder to prove it. As I slid into a half kneeling position I found a stout sapling with a convenient fork.
The bear looked huge through the Swarovski 30mm tube. As the crosshairs settled behind his right shoulder I knew the angle should take the 300-grain Failsafe bullet straight through the joint on the far side. It was classic “Field & Stream,” the kind of mental image that rivals the covers of outdoor magazines. There stood a mammoth boar grizzly over a moose at just the right angle 150 yards away across a beautiful Alaskan river. The crosshairs had stopped moving.
I squeezed the trigger. The recoil of a .375 H&H Magnum does not allow you to watch for bullet impact. When I relocated the bear, he had spun back toward us and was favoring his left leg. He lunged up the bank on three legs and disappeared before I could reload.
Chris called the shot. “Looked good, broke the offside shoulder.” We waited. Chris had a smoke and I a chew. I dug out my video camera and did a bit for the folks back home. After a half-hour we crossed the river, and as we neared the place where we had last seen the bear, Chris provided one of the most memorable moments of my hunting life.
I had met Chris only 18 hours earlier. He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. But standing on that gravel bar, for better or for worse, we were going to become a team engaged in some potentially very tricky business. “I’ll go first,” Chris said.
I thought, so far I like this plan. “You follow 10 yards behind, move when I move, stop when I stop. I’ll be looking for sign, you’ll be looking for the bear. Look ahead of me 45 degrees on both sides then behind us. It’s awful thick in there and he might try to backtrack on us.” The thought of a wounded grizzly sneaking up behind me dissipated the enthusiasm I had first felt for the scheme. “If you see the bear,” Chris continued, “don’t yell, don’t point, just shoot.” As he gave these directions Chris was staring me straight in the eye as a man does when he wants to emphasize his point. “Don’t yell, don’t point, just shoot. I’ll hit the ground at the shot and locate the bear. Got it?”
I nodded and hoped the old bear was dead. We moved slowly up the bank. Chris was looking down for blood. My little prayer had been answered. The bear lay stone dead ten yards in.
He was a tough customer in
bad shape. His spine was clearly visible, like someone had draped a bearskin rug over a sawhorse. His hipbones stuck out six inches. His hump was exaggerated and made his long frame look out of proportion. After a congratulatory handshake we looked him over more closely. His teeth were all but gone. Both lower canines were broken off and three of the upper incisors were hanging by a shred of gum. We later learned that he had an abscessed molar in his upper jaw. The infection had eaten a quarter-sized hole through his palate and into his sinuses. This torment must have been with him for several years. As if that wasn’t enough he was missing a toe and a testicle. The Fish and Game biologist in Anchorage estimated his age to be between 20 and 25.
His hide measured nine feet from front paw to front paw and was eight-feet two-inches long making him close to a nine-foot square interior grizzly. We taped the skull at 10 inches wide and 17 inches long, bottom jaw included. The official score was 26-7/16 points; tied for 13th place all-time as of the close of the Boone and Crockett Club’s 23rd Big Game Awards.
We made the long hike back to camp and settled in with a few “Swift River screwdrivers,” vodka and Tang. The first day of my hunt was over, but not the trip by a long shot. I also took a decent moose and a nice black bear.
Like I said, all hunts are special. I’ve hunted harder and not seen game. I’ve had opportunities and missed. I’ve spent days in the back of a truck snowed-in in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. They are all good memories in their own way. This time everything came together. The timing of the hunt, the weather, the skill of the pilots and the guide, the wind, the quarry, and the shot. I’ll remember these things as my “Perfect Hunt.”
Image from B&C Archives
Original score chart for Jon D. Seifert’s grizzly bear, which scores 26-7/16 points.
Photo from B&C Archives
Grizzly Bear, Scoring 26-14/16 Points, Taken by Eugene C. Williams near Kala Creek in Alaska, in 2001.
Dark Timber Grizzly
By Eugene C. Williams
25th Big Game Awards Program
LOOKING INTO THE FOREST SHADOWS, I COULD SEE A FORM THAT LOOKED OUT OF PLACE AGAINST A BACKDROP OF THICK SPRUCE. I SHOULDERED MY RIFLE AND PEERED THROUGH THE SCOPE. THE IMAGE OBSERVED THROUGH THE RIFLESCOPE ELECTRIFIED ME AS I REALIZED I WAS ONLY YARDS FROM THE MONSTER GRIZZLY — AND I WAS CLEARLY THE FOCAL POINT OF ITS ATTENTION.
This hunt started days before, on April 28, 2001, when local area Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Glenn Stout and I went on a snow machine ride into the Kaiyuh Mountains south of Galena. Our day’s adventure was driven by the notion that we wanted to see some new country. Spring thaws had settled the heavy mountain snow pack, opening up some backcountry that is rarely visited. We each carried rifles with us on this occasion, just in case we spotted a distant wolf or possibly a bear, though it was a bit early for bears to be emerging from hibernation.
Breaking out above the line of timber and onto the open alpine tundra, we were met with snow flurries and low clouds that blanketed our intended destination with a thick carpet of white — so dense that to press on would risk getting us lost or driving off a cliff.
Backtracking to lower elevations near the upper tree line, we came across a several-days-old track of a large grizzly bear. The bear had moved up out of the timber of one drainage and slipped down into the head of another. We guessed the bear’s destination to be the bottomlands along the Yukon River, approximately seven miles to the northeast, where the monster would likely stalk and pull down a moose to feed what had to be a ravenous post-hibernation appetite.
As the day’s plan was no longer workable, we elected to satisfy our immediate curiosity in the enormous track by following it a short distance into the heavy timber. Glenn joked that he would defer any bear shooting that day to me, as I was carrying a .30-06, and he was packing his .223 varmint rifle. The direction taken by the bear put it on an intersecting course with the Yukon River. Curiosity in the tracks quickly vanished as the deeper, unsettled snows of the steep timbered slopes caused our snow machines to bog down and us to perspire freely and often in digging out mired machines. With the excitement of this game now gone, we retreated back the way we had come.
Thoughts of the monster bear haunted me for the next two days. On the evening of April 30, I gave Glenn a call to see if he was up for another trip to the bush to look for the bear. He declined, electing not to waste a day of his vacation time to pursue my fanciful notion of finding a large bear in the thousands of square miles of roadless wilderness south of Galena, Alaska, where we lived.
My wife was reluctant to allow me to go on my own, fully understanding the risks of snow machine failure, weather, and terrain — not to mention risks associated with confrontations with bears. What probably worried her more than anything was the notion of me crossing the Yukon River on a snow machine this time of year. It was spring. Snow pack was melting. River ice had to be thawing. She signed off on my plan for the solo trip, but only after I promised to wear a life jacket while on the river and grilling me as to the contents of my day pack in case I had to spend a night in the woods. I left her a topographic map, on which I defined the area where to look for me should I not return. She was also advised that Glenn would know where to begin to look for me if need be.
I left the house at 6 a.m. on May 1. The temperature was 10°F. With six extra gallons of fuel and a pair of snowshoes, I headed out on my snowmobile. My plan was a simple one. I would follow an abandoned, decades-old dozer trail that started on the south bank of the Yukon River upstream from the village of Galena. One branch of the trail led through the hills and then cut down to and across Kala Creek, about two miles off the Yukon, and terminated at an old military radar site on Ketlkede Mountain. The other branch led up to and across the Kaiyuh Mountains to an inactive mining claim. As Glenn and I had taken the west fork to access the Kaiyuh Mountains on the earlier trip, I decided to travel the east fork of the dozer trail down into Kala Creek. This was new country I hadn’t been in. I reasoned, too, that this course had the potential to put me in a position to intercept the trail of the bear discovered earlier, or at least possibly into the country where the bear might be.
It didn’t take long, once leaving the south bank of the Yukon River, to travel the two miles of old dozer trail into the bottom of Kala Creek. To my amazement and delight, there in the frozen slush atop the creek ice was a lone set of very large bear tracks headed away from the Yukon and back up into the mountains.
There was no way to gauge the age of these tracks. The slush, or “overflow” as it is called locally, could have been the result of any of the freeze/thaw cycles of the several previous days. Overflow can be a trap for unsuspecting snow machiners or dog mushers. The condition typically is hidden under an undisturbed surface crust of snow, where seepage from snow melt, springs, or adjacent wetlands collects. Breaking through the surface crust into several inches (or several feet) of slush/water can ruin your day, particularly if aboard a 600-pound snow machine. As temperatures had dropped into the single digits the previous night, and coupled with settling from the recent warm weather, the overflow here was frozen hard clear to the creek’s surface ice in most places.
I followed the bear’s trail up the creek on the snow machine out of curiosity, with little thought about the possibility of a bear in the last tracks on the other end. But after 200 yards of following the creek, with open water peeking through and gurgling sounds below, I thought more about cold wet feet and the dreadful notion of pulling a waterlogged snow machine out of a hole in the creek ice. I retreated.
Returning to the first point of intersect with the tracks, I headed off on the old dozer trail toward Ketlkede Mountain in search of more tracks. The run to the mountaintop didn’t take long and no other tracks were discovered.
I returned to the creek, electing to follow the bear track on foot as a form of morning entertainment. The weather was crisp and the skies clear. Winds were light and variable. I was intrigued by the meandering course th
e bear had taken upstream. It was interesting to note, as I followed its path, what objects or odors caught its attention. Occasionally, the bear would turn at 90° angles and moving off a few feet to investigate something in its surroundings. At one point, its nose told it there was a shed moose antler buried under two feet of snow, which the bear dug up and bit into. The heavy print of the bear was obvious and easily discernible well ahead along the creek’s course. Occasionally, it broke through the crust into the intermittent overflow or soft snow beneath. In contrast, I was leaving little evidence of where I had been.
After two hours of fanciful pursuit on foot, I decided I should return to the snow machine, as going overland with the machine to this point on the creek was an easy option. I would also be that much closer to a ride home when I elected to call it quits. I returned with the machine, and struck off again on foot on the tracks of the grizzly.
The bear was still sticking to the creek bottom. I told myself that if it stayed in the bottom or turned east into the tundra/open scrub black spruce stands, I would follow. That was, of course, providing the snow crust would carry me. If the bear turned west into the timbered slopes of the Kaiyuh Mountains, where snow was deep and soft, I would give up the pursuit.
The grizzly regularly cut across the points of land in the creek’s many meanders, but sometimes would stick to the creek channel and follow it around the bend. If the bear took the shortcut and I could see through the timber to the other side, I would follow. If it took a shortcut through the trees and visibility was poor, I would follow the meandering channel around and pick up the track on the other side.
Over the course of the morning’s trek, it became apparent to me that the grizzly’s trail here had been made since the temperature had plummeted late the previous evening. Where the animal had walked on snow-free southern bank exposures, it had tracked dirt and spruce needles out onto the clean snow. Had the dirt been tracked out onto the creek the day before, the tracks would have been melted out by the sun’s warm rays being absorbed by the dark material. These tracks were not. I now knew I had a chance for this bear.
