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Bear Hunting on Prince of Wales, AK – We are close!

Jed — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:57:40 +0000

One month and two weeks from now will find the four of us in Ketchikan, Alaska on our way to our one week black bear, deer hunt and fishing trip. The intense anxiety I�ve had in securing the material and ensuring we have the knowledge to pull this off is now much reduced and I�m finding myself excited for this next hunt.

I can picture one of us on the bank of the Karta River surrounded by the noise of the river. It will be thick with vegetation with fir trees, willow, grass and alders. A huge black bear, perhaps over 7 feet, will suddenly and quietly appear. That would be enough for the hunt to be successful, but for us there will be much more. Getting wet, drying off, cooking, eating, skinning, fishing, story telling, snoring. It�s going to be a good hunt.

Here are a few new specifics I may not have mentioned and may be helpful to your future hunting plans.

1. The airlines in general are allowing only one checked on luggage bag. This cuts your weight in half and makes a gun case extra luggage.
2. A single float plane cannot get four of us in without us giving more than we feel we can allow. We�ll take 2 float planes and will have 2,100 lbs (that includes us, motor, food, pots and pans, guns, salt, fuel�the works) Alaska Sea Plane Tours�Ketchikan Alaska.
3. A bear tag in Alaska will work for a deer harvest but not for both.
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4. It was easy to borrow fishing stuff except the lures which must get lost easily.
5. We rented, instead of purchased, a box of cooking items, lantern, stove, small boat motor and life jackets.
6. The price for doing this bear hunting trip has almost doubled from two years ago and is still way less than � the price of a guided hunt.
7. We can get bulk salt from the local taxidermist and leave our trophies with him if we�re impressed with his work.

We�ll work hard, freeze, sweat and get wet, and it�s going to be a riot.

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Bear Knives

Jed — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:33:08 +0000

I just read this review of the Bear Skinner Suregrip Cleaver by Knives of Alaska. I repeat myself in saying, I love knives! When I pack for a hunting trip I have a dilemma as to which knife, knives I pack. It does matter to me what I�m hunting.

Bear Skinner Suregrip Cleaver by Knives of Alaska lopressor

For example, on a moose hunt I know I�ll need a lot of blade and I don’t have to worry about cutting up the hide very much as the hide is so thick. Different for an antelope hunt…frail, fragile skin, hide, with hair that slips easily. This requires a tiny blade and no putting off the skinning or rushing through the job. Bear hides, which I also love, are probably in between moose and antelope somewhere.

If I’m flying or backpacking each day, or go on a hunt from a remote tent camp or hotel room, I choose my one knife to take. With few exceptions, I now, after trial and error, make the knife decision when I pack at home. My advice, take one knife with you on a hunt, and it will never be the Skinner Cleaver

knife.

I own a Knives of Alaska knife, the Cub Bear

. I love it and it ends up on most of my hunts. It is small, handy and holds an edge very well. This knife seems easy for me to put a new good edge on as I�m skinning. If I want a bigger blade as with moose I really like the Grohmann knife in the original design.

Cub Bear by Knives of Alaska

This said, I still love knives and if at home I would want the small, easy blade of the Cub Bear knife, the bigger palm fitting style of the Grohmann and the huge weighty blade of the Knives of Alaska Brown Bear Skinner Suregrip Cleaver. But not in my backpack or even in my suitcase. Here I’ve learned to take the one I will really use.

Mostly I thank the knife makers who provide us with rabbit, coyote, deer, bear, and moose skinnin� toys. Remember as hunters, our hands are different and our minds are way different and we support a huge array of knives, guns, ammo, camo, and the list goes on. Thanks onlyknives.com

for the review and keep it up.

Alaska Fish and Game – Bear Hunting Information

Jed — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:02:55 +0000

The four of us that are headed to Prince of Wales Island to hunt black bear and to fish in September just received a packet of information from Alaska Fish and Wild Life . I�m impressed by the help they sent. Alaska has a large variety of game and fish species so sorting through the paperwork can be a pain. The department put together a leaflet just for bear hunters.

Picture from Alaska’s Fish & Game site

The leaflet has a general information section then a good description of the units in Southeast Alaska. We�ll be in unit 2 at the Salmon Lake Cabin

on the Karta River System.

I like the info they have about judging

bears. There are about ten pointers in judging but the new one that make sense is a triangle method. On a big bear they point out the ear to ear distance is the same as the ear to nose distance. (an equilateral triangle) This of course is not true for a young bear who�s features show a greater ear to nose distance than its ear to ear distance.

Also described are shot placement, care of skull, hide and meat.

Included in the packet but separate from the booklet are large diagrams showing skinning techniques and vitals on large black bears. They even have a how to clean a skull handout colchicine and marijuana smoking .

With the added info I think a first time hunter could be greatly helped. The four of us have killed perhaps dozens of bears combines and we still find the booklets helpful and comforting.

Portable Water Filter – Use at your Bear Hunting Base Camp

Jed — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:06:12 +0000

On our first Petersburg, Alaska bear hunting experience we lived with our water purifier. It was an essential part of life.

We have some experience on the water purifiers and came up with what we like and recommend. It’s possible to have each person take a little personal purifier but we did well having a camp, bigger volume, unit and used the filtered water for everything.

Fuel up there is just too valuable to be boiling water. Plus, if it’s raining all the time it makes fires a nightmare at base camp. This Katadyn Base Camp Water Filter

(large for a group) is great and kept us ahead on water.

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This is a simple water filter that can be used at base camp.

It�s a one-gallon rubberized container with a filter at the bottom. You fill it with stream water and the water slowly (over 15 minutes) filters through the filter, down a plastic tube and into a cooking pot or your canteen.

It is a cake walk to assemble except for one part. The filter fits so tight that it might take you a couple of minutes to fit it correctly. Not a big deal though.

It will surprise you how slowly it filters but once we got ahead on water we did great for the 5 of us. On the last bear hunt to Alaska we took two of these filters because we didn�t understand them well. In the fall of 2007 we took just one of these filters on a killer bull elk hunt and it did great! We�ll just take one this trip.

It was easy to have enough to cook and eat. We treated the island water as if it was contaminated and none of us got sick, and we just needed the one as I mentioned. Each morning we would fill our water bottles for the hunt and we did fine.

The water from all the streams off Kupreanof Island two years ago, on our spring bear hunt, was tan in color and the color did not filter out. The color did not seem to affect the taste. I�m interested to see if that�s true on this fall bear hunt on Prince of Wales Island.

As a little side note�one fine June afternoon several years ago I came down with the bad runs! After about one day of that I recalled I had just returned from Kodiak Island where I had been hunting Kodiak Brown bear. At that famous hunting camp we had been assured the water was great�famous last words. Giardia is very treatable but not fun.

Good luck, don’t risk drinking bad water…it’s not worth it!

I do trust this Katadyn filter for this and other gut bugs.

Peterburg, Alaska Bear Hunting Trail – Using the GPS

Jed — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:34:52 +0000

On our black bear hunt on Kupreanof Island in Petersburg, Alaska we carried multiple GPS units with us. They saved our bacon many times, boy are we glad we had them!

Here is a close up view of our GPS trail.

On the way back from the location marked KILL you’ll notice that the return path swerves back and forth multiple times. This happened because the weather at the time of return was quite violent and it was about 11:00 PM. We couldn’t see five feet in front of us, so, Frank held the GPS unit close to his face and would yell to Roger, who was driving the boat, which direction to ago. We attempted to follow a previous path so as not to hit any rocks at low tide.

Here is the same view zoomed out. You can also see where we started in Petersburg, Alaska.

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One of my high priority bear hunting tips is to take a GPS or three with you. It will be critical that you are very familiar with how it works. I personally did some geocaching in preparation for the Petersburg, Alaska bear hunt. It definitely paid off. We used both black and white, and color GPS units. We ended up using the color one as our go-to….it used more batteries but was much easier to see and navigate with.

Benefits of having a good GPS were:

1. The ability to mark locations that we scouted out beforehand. For example, we had never been to this part of Alaska and, therefore, didn’t know how to get to our cabin. We locked the location of Breiland Slough Cabin into our GPS and it directed us from Petersburg straight to our destination.

2. As I mentioned earlier, the precarious nature of the rocks at low tide required us to follow previously taken paths. This was fairly easy with the GPS….we just followed the trail.

3. Similar to marking locations beforehand, when we found a location we wanted to remember we locked it into the GPS for easy return later.

4. Upon returning from our bear hunting trip we loaded the GPS trails onto Google Earth for later use and memories! The use of Google Earth is also noteworthy and is a handy tool for scouting out an area if you don’t have the ability to scout beforehand.

5. Withstood the weather. If you are going to the coast of Alaska bear hunting or anywhere similar that rains a lot make sure you purchase a quality GPS unit that is waterproof.

Cons of a GPS:

1. Loading a bunch of batteries.

2. It is too easy to get comfortable with the GPS. You can become reliant.

Old Feet – Bear Hunting Boots

Jed — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:12:05 +0000

For many years I’ve tried to find the best pair of hunting boot. I can remember as a 13 year old going on a two-week elk hunt in the wilderness of Idaho and wearing my canvas gym shoes. I couldn’t do that now. While I lived in Pocatello I purchased perhaps my first pair of real hunting boots. They were a leather work boot and I have many fond memories while in those boots. Now I’ve tried, Danners, Lowa, Schnees and the list goes on. Usually into about the third hunt with a pair of boots I start to like them.

I think my feet aren’t as tough as they used to be. The canvas gym shoes were nicer for the 13 year old me than anything is now. If you happen to worry a lot about your feet with the upcoming hunt I’ll bet you’re as old as I am, or you have bad luck.

I try and spend time taking care of my feet when hunting. Good boots will never do that by themselves. I like thin(silk) socks with heavier ones over them depending on the weather. I use a lot of band aids before the blister is there. I have to use the boot every day but I change socks at least daily. By the way, it’s easy to wear out a couple pair of socks while hunting.

I found some excellent advice on how to prevent blisters. Take a look, the article provides some simple steps that work whether you are bear hunting in Alaska or just hiking at a local area.

If you’re still 13 or have really good feet than I envy you, but warn you to be careful.

Some hunts require odd conditions for the feet. Kodiak Island required that we wear tight thigh rubber boots all the time. It was a killer! Africa is hot but every bush will eat your feet alive and requires light leather.

Some pre-thought and work and most of us will do OK. Many of us that get in trouble just haven’t spent the time breaking in boots or thinking about our feet.

Bear Hunting Tips – Identify Bear Tracks

Jed — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:45:41 +0000

There are subtle differences between black bear tracks and grizzly bear tracks. Knowing how to distinguish between the two will definitely help if you are hunting in an area that may have both types of bears. After you’ve looked at a few examples you should have no problem identifying which is black and which is grizzly.

By far the easiest distinguisher for me are the length of the claws. I remember when I saw my first brown bear track on the coast of Alaska. It was in some wet clay on a river bed and my dad pointed out the length of the claws. There is a tremendous amount of difference. The grizzly bear claw will extend almost 2 inches on the front paw while the black bear claws are about an inch and a half. You’ll also notice that the claws on the grizzly bear have a more pronounced bow shape compared to the black bear.

A backup bear track identifier for me is the wedge in the rear paw of the black bear track with the rounded heal. The grizzly doesn’t have a wedge and their heal is pointed.

The key point of the above diagram is the location of the toes. The grizzly bear has the toes forward and straight. The black bear has one toe back. Remember, one toe back means black.

I hope this bear hunting tip helps. If any of you have identifiers that help you tell the difference between and grizzly and a black bear track, please leave a comment.

The top is a grizzly bear track. The bottom is a black bear track. Can you tell the difference?