Disastrous Bear Hunt

It was actually a fun bear hunt - with a little bit of disaster thrown in at the end. Me and an Army friend from my office who got back from Iraq earlier this year left late Saturday night to drive down to Homer (~5 hours) to catch the ferry across Ketchamak Bay to a small town of ~100 people called Seldovia. You can only reach Seldovia by boat/ferry or plane - no roads in or out. I borrowed a four wheeler and put it in the bed of my pickup and pulled a trailer with the friend's Polaris on it. We left my truck on the spit at Homer and drove the ATV's on the ferry with all our gear to survive in the "bush" for three days (tents, chow, extreme cold weather sleeping bags, rifles, ammo, etc). We drove the ATV's right off the ferry, through the little town and out about 20 miles towards Red Mountain to hunt Black Bear. The pics show the trip, some places we stopped along the way, our campsite showing my tent set up, the clearcuts in the mountainsides that we hunted, a bull moose that came out to say hi to me on day 3 (first pic on third page), and the damage to the truck (I'll explain later). It snowed two days on us, but mostly melted during the day...rained some, but overall the weather treated us nice. Neither of us had made a trip down there before, so it was a good chance to try out new gear, see the area, and learn where/how to hunt black bear. To make a long story short, out trip was about 1 or 2 weeks too late and the bears had started to den after several early snow falls - leaving only a few small ones out scrounging for food. I saw 2 bear while hunting - but didn't get a shot at either. One coming towards our campsite the first night (he bolted away through the woods after seeing us and prevented us from getting a shot). The second day I sat up on a hilltop and glassed over a clearing all day before finally seeing one small bear walk into the clearing and then disappear back into the brush before I could get a shot at about 5 pm. The third day I only saw the one bull moose (already took my bag limit of moose for the year - 1), but no bear. Also found some good late season fishing holes where the silver salmon are still running. Learned to survive on melted snow and blueberries if I had to (and a good minus 25 degree rated sleeping bag doesn't hurt either!!). But I didn't bring home a bear this year. I think that spot will be good for a spring hunt though, or a September'ish fall hunt next year. Tons of bear sign in those woods (second picture on page 2 is of one of the hundreds of bear trails through the woods I hunted near) and plenty of salmon and berries for them to eat. Now for the disaster - It snowed a foot in some areas along our drive home from Homer and we hit some black ice that caused us to jack-knife and nearly slide off a hillside before recovering it at the last minute and keeping it on the road. But the damage was caused earlier when I loaded the 4-wheeler in the truck after returning on the ferry to Homer. Our ramps we had in Homer were too short for that tall of a truck, so we tried to load the machine from the trailer into the truck bed using the short ramps, but after the front wheels were on the tailgate, the rear wheels spit the ramps back off the truck and I had to gun the machine to jump it from the trailer to the truck bed to prevent the machine from falling off backwards with me on it. I gunned it enough to jump it into the bed, but didn't have the brake power to stop it from slamming through the front panel of the bed and into the back seat of the cab, bending the back wall and shattering the back glass. So now my new truck that doesn't even have permanent plates yet is in the body shop with a $4400 dollar mistake being fixed! Alaska is expensive! Couple of lessons - I won't haul a 4 wheeler in the bed anymore (it also bent my tailgate going in), and I don't think I'll plan any road trips after Oct 1st around here - too much chance of icy roads. With May-June being spring bear season, June-August being salmon season and August-September being Caribou/Moose season - I'll have to learn that the hunting fishing trips need to be over by October (unless someone else is driving!). Three good hunting trips to learn from this year - no bear or caribou to show for it, but at least I did get a moose to keep the freezer full through the winter, and we have plenty of salmon and halibut saved as well. Maybe by next year I'll have learned enough from the hunts to make them all successful.