Hello Marcos and others,
In advance I apologize for the length of this rant.
But it’s raining all day here where I live and I can’t get outdoors to work around my house.
So, I’m drinking espresso and typing (lucky you guys). LoL.
Calibers for Alaska:
I like very much the .375 H&H for both Alaska and Africa alike.
However, the good old .30-06 is very popular in Alaska (in Africa as well) and it has been reliably taking all species of Alaska game animals for over 100 years.
I have used both calibers here and over in Africa, with perfect results.
Alaska Bears:
I have lived in Alaska for just a tic over 40 years now and I have had many “close range” encounters with grizzly (aka: so called “brown” bears), black bears and a very few polar bears.
Close range in this case being under 100 meters, many times way closer than that.
Most of my close range bear encounters have been with grizzly, due to my love of fly fishing for trout and salmon.
This of course involves camping near and walking along remote rivers and creeks, with fly rod in hand.
Also, I’ve been dispatched to quite a few problem bears (grizzly and sometimes polar), during my years of being a bear guard on the oil field.
My employer sent me to a school to learn about bear behavior and how to interact with problem bears.
Likewise, I have bumped into grizzlies, while deer hunting and while caribou hunting both.
Once a grizzly took a caribou away from me that I had shot, out past the village of King Salmon, Alaska.
Furthermore, I have worked as a bear guard on photography and research ships, voyaging to Siberia and the far north, true Arctic environment.
I would go out in the ice with photographers and biologists, armed with pepper spray, flare gun (issued by my employer who maybe had never seen a bear).
I prefer the flare gun as a less lethal option, instead of the pepper spray.
And my firearm of choice was always my .375 H&H, iron sights and 300 gr A-Frame ammunition.
But on one voyage, my employer (on the South Korean ice breaker Aaron), insisted that I carry a shotgun instead of my rifle.
So, I carried a Remington Model 870 Magnum, 20 inch barrel and iron sights, loaded with a single 2&3/4 inch, rubber buckshot cartridge for the first round and then, all cartridges following were 3 inch Brenneke rifled slugs after that.
As for pepper spray, I like the idea of having more than one tool in my kit, when dealing with bears.
However as mentioned, the flare gun is my choice instead of pepper spray.
Last but not least, my house is although inside the city limits of Anchorage (300,000 to 350,000 population), it is in the woods.
As such, we have black bears visiting several times each summer and occasionally grizzly too (less commonly but also wolf, wolverine and lynx as well).
The point of this long tedious rant is that, I have not yet had to kill a bear.
My multiple experiences with them have left me with the opinion that, bears are very similar to dogs.
While walking about your neighborhood, most dogs will not attack you.
In fact most dogs probably don’t really care about us passing humans, unless we have food they can smell or, if we behave in some offensive way toward them.
A very unusual exception might be if we encounter a starving dog, so desperate that it could be willing to risk death by attacking us to eat our flesh (highly unusual but remotely possible).
However, it is the odd angry “criminal mindset” dog or bear that attacks without provocation, because that’s what criminals do.
In my many experiences with bears, they seem to regard us about the same as neighborhood dogs.
Most (most) have little to no interest in us.
I have stood in knee deep water, catching char (a type of trout) and silver salmon (aka: coho salmon), where the O’Malley river empties into Karluk Lake, on Kodiak Island, with multiple grizzlies also in the water, catching fish on either side of my location.
They paid little to no attention to me personally.
But each time I caught a fish, I had to play it gently, in hopes it wouldn’t splash very much.
On Kodiak, Afognak and other large Alaska islands, as well as along various streams on mainland, Alaska, I have either had bears take splashing fish from my line or from fishing companion’s lines, before we could bring the fish to hand for a photo and unhooking it to release.
If one or more bears are close while I’m fishing, I do not try to retain and carry a fish back to camp for my eating.
It’s likely to arouse the bear’s instinct to take it away from a lesser animal (me).
Also, I always begin gradually fishing my way from any bear/s that want my fishing spot, no problem.
Anyway, after all is said and done, do not lose sleep worrying about being attacked by bears in Alaska.
It could happen but it is not very likely at all.
You’re probably more likely to be struck by lightning while hunting or fishing in North Dakota, eastern Montana, etc.
Just study up on bear behavior and if you see one, act accordingly polite in bear terms, up here in the far north.
Also, bring at least a .30-06 and 180 grain or heavier bullets for whatever you are hunting here.
If you are unlucky enough to be the exception to the rule and a bear actually tries to bite you, (again, very unlikely), do shoot your .30-06 straight (brain or spine) and I predict that you will prevail.
That said, although I am not particularly afraid of bears, nonetheless I have huge respect for these pre-ice age monsters ability to snap me like a stale bread stick, in the event I bump into the odd angry “criminal” bear one of these years.
Therefore, my favorite rifle for Alaska is the same as for Africa’s so called plains game.
It is the .375 H&H.
With 300 grain bullets, it is a lot less destructive on meat when shooting smallish animals, such as duiker and black tail deer.
Yet by reputation, it will crumple charging grizzly and lion alike.
Unfortunately, Winchester has quit making their stainless steel / plastic stock model 70 which, was possibly the best affordable to all hunters, rainy / snowy weather and sea spray resistant hunting rifle, world wide.
They might still make it in .338 Winchester caliber which, indeed is another wonderful cartridge for Alaska, Canada, Africa, etc., etc.
The stainless steel Ruger that 1dirthawker uses here in Alaska while guiding bear hunters is another great rifle for our often wet.
I’d like to see Ruger start making that rifle with an H&H length action.
Cheers,
Velo Dog.
... if folks have questions, I'm happy to try to answer. There are certainly folks who have a lot more experience, but I'm no greenhorn. Even with living here, I've done a fair amount of fly-outs to hunt stuff, so I feel like I have some notions about how to go about that.
