I set out on a solo weeklong bear hunt last Sunday. Spent the first three days and two nights in the lower Eagle River Valley, then came home for a day before returning to Eagle River and hiking the 12 mile trail up the upper Eagle River Valley to Thunder Gorge and hunting between there and Eagle Glacier. My hunt was for black bear only - a policy the Fish and Game needs to correct because there are far more Grizzly in that Valley than black bear, and I found out the hard way how dangerous that can be. Thursday night, after finishing the 8 hour hike and setting up camp alone at Thunder Gorge, I headed to the river bed to glass with binos up the hillsides and find a black bear I could stalk. By dark (around 1130 pm), I had only found one bear way up on a mountain, maybe 2 or 3 thousand feet up. Since I had hiked that whole way to get a black bear, I decided to try and make the ascent to where he was feeding and try and take him. About 1000 feet into the climb I hit an area so steep I had to hold onto the alder bushes to maintain balance and decided I had better find an easier ascent path. I turned around to slowly come down, and at the bottom of the path I had taken I saw a huge Grizzly barreling up the mountain, nose to the ground following my exact path. He hadn't seen me yet, but was obviously tracking me, and the elevation it took me over 15 minutes to climb, he was going to cover in only about 15 SECONDS - good thing I looked behind me when I did! I darted into some thick alders about 10 yards away and lowered my rifle towards him with one hand while holding on to the alder bush with the other hand to keep from sliding back down into him. About 30 yards from me, as I was getting ready to fire, he leaped into some alder bushes opposite side of the ravine I was on which is where I had stopped to rest on the way up. He must've followed my scent to where I rested and assumed I had stayed in those bushes instead of backtracking to the ravine like I had done, and he continued away from me for about 300-400 yards, occasionally popping up with his head extending above the trees to try and get my scent again. I slid down the mountain as fast I could in the bushes without breaking anything, took a quick picture at the bottom of the hill looking back up (second pic from last above showing the snow pack where I first spotted him running up towards me - he's in the alders to the right side of the picture but you can't see him) and then I beat feet through the thick woods back to the river. By the time I made it to the river, I could see that he had made his way over to where I had been standing when I first spotted him - so I hurried back to camp and started a quick fire to (hopefully) dissuade him from following me into camp. He was the largest brown bear I have ever seen in person, including the fat ones at the zoos. I would guess he weighed around 1,000 lbs, stood 8-9 feet tall when standing, and was probably around 10-12 yrs old. When I first saw him running full speed up the mountain towards me, the mixture of emotions was partly concern that I was about to be eaten, and partly awestruck at the massive size and power he had to move that fast straight up a mountain. If you kill a brown bear out of season in defense of life or property, you have to skin it and return the hide, claws and skull to Fish and Game - and you can still be fined. And that hide and skull would have weighed more than I could have probably carried out on the 12 mile hike, so I'm glad I didn't have to shoot, not to mention that being off balanced and shooting with one hand could have produced an interesting result if I missed. Jolene asked if I got a picture of it!! Are you kidding!! the only thing I pointed at that bear was my rifle! So after that night, I decided I had best come home. No wonder there are no black bears up there. A black bear would be a small meal for a griz that big...and so would I. Saw plenty of moose, mt goats and dall sheep though, and some incredible scenery as well as some black bear tracks and trees marked up by grizzly's with hair where they scratched their back. It'll be a good hunt for reference, especially if they open the area up for griz/brown bears next year - I'll know right where to go to find one!
