RUSSIA: Kamchatka Brown Bear

[gbflyer]

Crazy. I have an Eastern European neighbor. He hates Russia. However he and the guide/taxidermist must be related. lol.

 

[Raven]

Excellent report. Now you can tell your descendants that you not only successfully hunted in Russia, but also spent time in the Gulag, lol. I've heard about this case, but it's different every time.

I was finally able to find the original source and read the whole story from beginning to end.

What can I say? Yuri should have warned you that for a long time there was a law in Russia prohibiting the rental of weapons. It's been canceled now, but still need to prepare the paperwork for gun. If this is not done, there will be problems. Which is exactly what happened.

But even in this case, there was a way out. You should have said that Yuri shot the bears, and you were just exploring the picturesque surroundings. They wouldn't have believed you, but they couldn't have done anything. However, you confessed. And the police couldn't let you go anymore. They were just doing their job.

And there was no need to try to fly away when the police were waiting for you to talk. The police wouldn't like that in any country in the world.

It's very funny about Dostoevsky's book. You should have brought his novel "Notes from the Dead House" with you – about how he was in prison. It would be more interesting reading, I suppose.

The subtleties of hunting in Kamchatka are that you do not need to contact companies. They charge too much money. And not only from foreigners, but also from Russians. You just need to negotiate with a professional hunter who will offer such a hunt quite cheaply.

There are satisfied customers from Germany, France, and Spain who fly to specific hunters and pay reasonable money for bears. They just never write about it on the forums. It's a secret. At the same time, hunting is quite legal, bears are shot under license.

As for the caliber .30-06, then it is good for small and medium-sized bears. But it is not suitable for Kamchatka. You're a good shot, but you still need a bigger caliber. Personally, I shoot the Kamchatka bear with a caliber .375 H&H. I also have a .470 NE for shooting at close range.

This is not an advertisement. I am a hunter and use the services of professional hunters in Kamchatka. If everything is done correctly, then there will be no problems. I hope you are not very angry with Russia.

 

[medvedhunting]

The hunting part of the trip was pretty straightforward. Bears don’t wake up early, so we also didn’t have to wake up early. That’s the kind of hunting I like. After breakfast we’d load up on the sleds, cross the river, and ride around looking for big tracks and big bears. Sometimes we’d follow a trail for a while and the bear would wander into terrain we couldn’t cross. Sometimes a bear would turn out to be too small. Sometimes we’d find a big bear, and then see that it was a female with cubs. As the days passed, more and more bears came out of hibernation and we ran into more and more tracks.

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On Day 4 of hunting we were lucky enough that a 2nd river was frozen over enough to cross on the snowmobiles and we got into country that usually isn’t huntable. We spotted a big bear above some timber on a hillside, but he dropped down into the woods and it was hard to see where he went. Alexander moved up to where we’d spotted the bear and started following the tracks down into the trees to see if he could figure out where the bear might pop out. Vladimir and my dad took off to see if they could head the bear off in the trees. Vladimir’s snowmobile got stuck and they couldn’t get it dug out. Alexander was pretty agitated, as the bear was getting away. After about 45 minutes, Alexander moved to where they were stuck and swapped the sled over to his snowmobile. A little ways up the hill, Alexander’s machine got stuck. He yelled out in anguish as the bear was getting further and further away, and they began frantically digging that snowmobile out of the snow. It took about fifteen minutes, and Alexander took my dad over to where he thought the bear should pop out. My dad waited and waited, but the bear moved off in the other direction. Alexander picked him up again and this time they were able to catch up to the bear in the woods. I heard a couple of shots and pretty soon Alexander came back to where I was sitting to grab me and take me to the site. My dad had gotten a beautiful big dark bear with a close shot in the woods. The hide squared out at 9’ 1” when we measured it back at camp.

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While Vladimir started skinning my dad’s bear, Alexander took me back out into the valley to scout for another big one. We parked and started scanning a promising hill. Up at the top of the hill we saw a female with two big cubs. They walked around, the cubs rolled down the hill, and they generally did all the cute bear stuff you’d expect from bears. Another big bear came up from the bottom of the hill and joined them briefly before wandering off in the other direction.

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Then we spotted a really big bear on the top of the hill. We decided to circle around and see if we could catch up with that bear on the hilltop. We went up the hill undetected and sat about 800 yards away to see what the bear was doing. He was really close to a drop-off that led into some inaccessible terrain, so we hoped he would move across the flat top of the hill instead of dropping down. After a while, he moved out across the hill and we rushed in on him. When we got about 40 yards away, the dog couldn’t take it anymore and he rushed the bear. I fired once and it was a good shot. The bear turned around and swiped at the dog with his claws. I waited for the dog to clear the bear and shot again. The bear lunged one more time with his teeth at the dog and then fell down dead. He was a wonderful big bear with a giant blonde head.

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Back at camp his skin measured out at 9’ 7.5”, although we probably could have stretched it out to 10’ if we really tried. I guess that’s why the record books use skull measurements instead of skin measurements. You can stretch skins out quite a bit to exaggerate the size of your bear, but it’s hard to stretch a skull. Our bear’s skulls measured out at exactly the same total, with my dad’s bear being a little wider and mine being a little longer.

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On Day 5 we were all hunted out and the broken snowmobile needed repairing so that we could return to town, so we spent the day in camp looking at bear skins and skulls while the camp staff worked on the snowmobile, processed the bear hides, and did other camp chores.

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On Day 6 we mounted up on the snowmobiles and went back to Palana. The broken snowmobile broke down a couple of times on the way back to the truck, but they were able to patch it up enough to get to the truck. Weather wouldn’t allow the flight back to Yelizovo to take off, so we stayed the night in Palana and were able to fly out the next day.

can give us an idea of the two bear skull sizes and pictures of them if you do not mind? thank you