Up in Alaska part 3

My brain was in warp drive, and I'm sure the bear's was too. Telling the story takes much longer than actual real time happenings, I imagine maybe 1/2 second elapsed from the time the bear stood up and woofed at me until I had my 44 magnum out of the holster and put 6 special Alaska bear loads in the bear. Now remembering that prudence was the better part of valor, I quickly scurried up the closest tree to reload my pistol. Bears are really hard to kill, especially with a handgun, the short barrel does not build up a lot of muzzle velocity. The long barrel of a rifle puts a lot more punch in the bullet. The bears skull is shaped much like a football, and bullets tend to glance off the thick skull bones, the only real place you have of stopping these giants with a pistol is aim for the heart / lung area and hope one or more of the slugs hit the area between the ribs and penetrates inside where enough damage will be done to stop him in his tracks ( the bears rib bones are very thick and a bullet hitting them dead on may not penetrate far enough to do anything more than piss him off ). He may die in a few hours or days but in the meantime he will do serious damage, probably fatal, to you!

Any time you enter an area inhabited by large predators, you must know enough about their habits to have a good idea about how they respond to different sets of circumstances and what your response should be in order to have the best chance of survival. In this case I had unknowingly snuck up on the bear and startled him / her, if it was a male it would attack me because I was intruding on his turf which he would defend from all intruders. If a female and she had cubs nearby, she would attack to protect the cubs, in either case I was going to be attacked. I had to shoot the bear in self defense, if I saw the bear 40 yds away, a shot fired in the air will usually frighten them away, farther than that, you just quietly go in the opposite direction.
Read more!

Up in Alaska part 2

This part of Alaska was open to bear hunting, and the bears were wary of humans, and usually ran away fast when a human was detected, either smelled or heard. I usually did not fish alone in bear country, but I had heard from some friends that the King salmon had arrived in force, but all of my friends had to work and could not get off to go fishing.

Imagine, putting work before fishing, how ridiculous is that?! What could be more important than fishing?

So here I was in bear country, where I had broken the two most basic rules: Don't go into bear country alone! Always make plenty of noise to warn bears you are here! Now I was in a dangerous situation, make the wrong decision, and I would fish no more.
Read more!

Up in Alaska part 1

It was a beautiful day in Alaska, the sun was out, it had finally quit raining after 4 days of drizzle. I was hiking up Sheep Creek for a day of salmon fishing. I was about a mile from the road, and had already caught three nice silver salmon on my fly rod. I released them knowing the deep hole just about a quarter mile upstream usually had some nice King Salmon up to 30 lbs holding in its deep water.

Anticipating the larger fish just up ahead I was in a hurry and forgot one of the cardinal rules of hiking in bear country, make lots of noise as you hike because the bears are here for a salmon dinner too.

I was hurrying through an alder thicket, trees about six feet tall that grow thickly in creek bottoms, when it happened. A very large bear that I had wakened from his snooze in the alders stood up not 20 feet in front of me. Had I been making noise the bear would have heard me and slipped away into the woods before I got there. Now I was in a very dangerous situation, nowhere to run before the bear would be on me.
Read more!