trade a hunt results, year 2 back after alaska bears again.

[jrchambers]

some of you may remember last spring where two good ol boys from tx came up to hunt with me, blackies in exchange for some hogs and deer,
after the first spring bear hunt we had such a good time i knew i would be hunting with matt and tom,  pigsticker and tstott "handles" for many years to come,  i had a great time last fall down south and we were already planning this years spring hunt,  destination cordova ak.


for me the trip began at 2am thursday morning the 14th of may, i had to make the only whittier tunnel opening at 5 am due to a big rockslide cleanup,  well my boat wasnt leaving untill noon that day.  i had 7 hours to kill in whitier which i must say is alot of hard killing,  i managed to spot 2 bears up on the mountains while trying to sleep.
after that i had a 6 hour boat ride to cordova,
lets skip a head a bit,
i was to pick matt and tom up at the cdv airport at 4pm the day after i arived, that day while waiting for thier arival me and a friend from there were cruising around looking for possible bait locations and glassing the hills for bears, we saw a few,  at 230pm we were headed back to town to get my truck when we saw a little black spot at the base of a slide that we have never seen before after a miniute of looking at it with the binos i said "must be nothin, hasnt moved"  but he insisted he hadnt seen it before, he set up the spoting scope and told me to take a look,  it was a bear, and it was sleeping,
holy crap, what a chance, but did i have enough time to get it done and retrive my buddies from the airstrip,  haah of course i didnt, but owell, a sleeping bear, i couldnt take it,  
we went in and skirted the base of the mountain and came out in to the hill side that the bear was on but we couldnt see it.    arow nocked we began weaving up the verry steep and willow thickened hill,  after saying hes gone many times we saw ears and close,  my buddie said 30yds, then he blew the preditor call and the bear stood, i thought oh crap 30 yards but this was my best spot and stalk chance in years,  i remeber raising up a hair before the release and right over its back flew the arow.  oh man its only like 20,  the first arow actualy helped as the bear stoped and looked at where the arow entered the turff, and here came another stos tiped ad trad weighing 670 at 180fps, SMACK a little forward but looked ok, the bear hit the ground got up verry slow and turned the other way stumbling with every step, i didnt think i needed to but i put another clean through it double lung, 5 seconds later the bear was down and moaning. game over
we quickly haha packed the whole bear on my shoulders the short half mile to the truck and imediatly headed to the airport,  they were already on the ground when i arived, they fliped when the saw the critter in the back of the truck where they had to pile all thier gear,
after getting some grub we went to skin and found that my shot forward had struck square in the stiff ridge in the shoulder blade the shoulder was split but the arow had not penetrated, with all that power i couldnt belive it, the third shot did it all as far as killing, realy made me think twice about all the talk of weight,  but the job got done eventualy, here is a pic of the hide, me on the left john on the right.
 

[jrchambers]

oh we are both tall fellers well over 6

[jrchambers]

the 10 days had just begun, more to come

[Steve H.]

Nice bear Jason!  We saw three from the porch at Avalanche Acres last night.  First blackies spotted this spring, about time.

[jrchambers]

hey steve congrats on your brownie thats high on my todos, i went for one but came up a few hundred yards short.

[jrchambers]

day two started with sunny skies and a 2 mile drag of bait into the area we would be camping,
we did a greease scent trail and a small handfull of trailmix, we built a groundblind and took off for the trailhead that would take us to our camp,  we packed way more than we needed but we ate like kings.
 
on our way we stoped at a creek for some water and to do some glassing,  we saw a few blackies and one very large brownie which i had a tag for.
we kept packing and set up camp,
 

[just_a_hunter]

Looking forward to more....

Todd

[jrchambers]

the next morning we went back to the creek to glass, and saw many many bears.
 
we quickly decided that we couldnt do anything from the creek so we began to climb, straight up a avalance shoot.  we gained 1000 plus feet in not much horizontal distance,  the snow was capping a ever growing stream, here and there were some holes that showed exactly how unforgiving a fall could be.  
while on the mountain face we found where the brown bear had been the night before,  no luck finding him though,  we took in the view for a while and played the rabbit squeeler,  after a while we spotted a real big black bear not 200 yards from camp, it was getting late and we still needed to bushwack our way to our bait from camp.
here is a view of the valley with the copper river and delta in the far back
 

[jrchambers]

the trip down the shoot took only miniutes,  as we were able to slide all the way down as long as we stayed away from the holes,

tom with a wet but happy rear end
 

[jrchambers]

that night we went and checked our bait, and pushed what i think was a small brownie off, hard to tell just caught a glimpse of movement when we aproached,

the next morning we hunted the little nob behind camp where we had seen the big backie,  we found where he had been pooping for the last couple days not 60 yards from camp,  while above camp hunting we managed to glass a couple dozen bears on the surounding hills, all while slowly stalking over the unusualy crunchy dry ground,

these pics are from the nob behind camp looking at the surounding hills and glacier.
 
 

[Friends call me Pac]

I enjoyed my time in Alaska so much.  My only regret was as an E1 (lowest military paygrade for those that don't know) and with a new wife and child I didn't have any money to spend to go very fair to hunt and fish.  Most of my hunting was right on the base at Eielson AFB near Fairbanks.  

I did manage to get a bull moose with my bow the very first day I went moose hunting.  I thought to myself this is going to be easy hunting.  Ha! Never got another in the next 3 years of trying.

We had cariboo about a 4 hour drive away but on my limited funds it might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

Treasure what you have because I had it and now I don't and wish I still had it.  I do have my memories though.

[jrchambers]

that evening we headed to the bait early to ad some goodies and fix up the groundblind with a log seat and better cover, we decided that all three would sit there that night,
when we got there we spoted a nice blackie on it, tom atempted a stalk but due to the days of sunshine the ground was much to loud,  
after adding to the bait and blind we got settled in 1 blind 1 log 3 bows 3 guns and 3 yahoos stacked  on the 1 log,
long into that sit we heard a strange popping in the woods, we finaly deducted that it was our missing jug bieng popped full of holes,  another hour wend by and matt began to hear foot steps, and in this area they could be three things, one of the two kinds of bears or a porcuipine.   well it was the right kind of bear,  he snuck right up to within 10 yards, when he saw the remodeled blind, he let out a woof and ran, not away but right up to it and stuck his nose in,
there we were nothing but grass and twigs between us and a eye ball sizing us up, at 3 feet he decidied he didnt like the new hut or the smell from inside and proceeded to sneek off, 5 min later he was 20 yards behind us milling around but would not come to the bait,
around dark we left and ran into a bear bedded in a clearing, again tom tried a stalk no luck.

the next day we decided to pack out and go check another bait that my friend had set,  good thing because the very unusual nice weather was about to end for good.

[bowhunterfrompast]

Jason..congrats    on your bear

[jrchambers]

the next day was spent showering, cleaning clothes and eating some real food, then headed to the baits that evening,  tom went to sit in a place called the skeeter farm,  while matt and i hiked to our groundblind, we saw nothing and heard nothing but tom saw 2 bears and when we went to pick him up found out he shot one but was afraid the hit was a little forward, he did the right thing and backed out for the night
the next am we were at his bait and looking at a bit of blood, we folowed it up the mountain, while sparse at times we were able to find enough to keep us going.  sadly after 5 hours and 1500 foot of elevation we lost blood, and the terian we were in was a little too dangerous.

that evening we split up again matt and i were in the ground blind for two hours when we saw the same bear that rushed the blind up on the hill side working its way tward the bait,  he took no time to get to the log cabin syrup we had spread that evening,while matt could not see i was able to let him know that the bear was not looking and he could move, well on his way up his broadhead nicked a branch, the  bear jumped did a 180 and latched on to the tree, and just that quick the arow was already in the dirt on the otherside, it was a perfect snap shot under pressure, right through heart and lungs, the bear was dead in 7 seconds and only 20 yards.
 
the new challenge is to get it to the truck before dark,  
this is our tradition, how big can you go, of course we gutted it first,  cant you just see the joy in his face,   this is less than a half mile from the truck
 

[jrchambers]

i have more pics but would like to add them to the proper places,  mods why cant i edit?

[jrchambers]

well the next couple days consisted of some skinning fleshing and a little bit of hunting,
tom sat the same skeeter farm and saw many more bears but declined to take another shot,  we went and saw the sights and had a very relaxing last two days,  
ill post many more pics
this is miles glacier on the other side of the copper river,  
 

[bohuntr]

Cool story and pics!!! Keep em comin!

[mwmwmb]

cool story and great pics. I spent a couple of weeks in and around homer, ak. Just fishing would have loved to done some hunting

[plentycoupe]

Great job! Congrats on the bears. Pics are great as well. Looks like the three of you had a really good time hunting those black bears. I will have a chance to take my daughter in a couple week!! Can't wait.

[Kingwouldbe]

Awesome hunt guys, thanks for taking us with ya