Pre-Kodiak Thoughts

Nearly every year at some point I open the paper and read about a mauling or attack that ended someone’s life. It almost never fails that the individual was doing something utterly ridiculous or in some fashion, provoking the bear. Having spent nearly eight years camping and hunting in Alaska, I’m constantly amazed by the stupidity of “outdoorsmen” and others such as Timothy Treadwell. In my seasoned outdoor experiences, I have come across numerous grizzlies, some of which quite close but, I have only been confronted by one grizzly that made me nervous. A juvenile grizzly about three or four years of age walked right up to me and my dad trying to get the trout we were carrying. Even then, yelling at the bear a mere thirty feet away managed to make him change his mind. I never even took my rifle off my shoulder (I can’t say the same for dad, for that was his first wild grizzly experience). No doubt, there are indeed circumstances where a bear will “hunt” a human for food, but these are very rare and we have to realize, when in the woods, we are not highest rank on the food chain. I am a firm believer that the vast majority of incidents can be avoided with proper etiquette and knowledge of how bears act and react. Every time I come across a bear in the woods, surely my heart beats a bit faster but, I’m no longer scared as much as I am thrilled that I can share part of my day with an animal as powerful and magnificent as a bear is. You all know that since I spent a good paragraph bitching about how people act and provoke bear attacks that I will probably end up getting eaten by a bear. I just hope that by bringing up this fact, it’s more of a double jinx and that I will get back in one piece.




“There can be no death any more horrifying than one of a bear attack. Even the mere thought of a bear mauling a person sends shivers to the most seasoned and experienced outdoorsman. It addresses a pronounced deep and primal fear within all humans, the fear of death of being killed by a wild animal.”





Jim Oltersdorf of Soldotna, Alaska commenting on Ken Cates (Soldotna) death after he was bitten on the head by a Coastal Brown Bear crushing his skull in May of 1999.





According to the Alaska State Department of Fish and Game, Kodiak Brown Bears are considered a subspecies of the grizzly bear living exclusively in the Kodiak Archipelago in isolation for over 10,000 years. These bears are the largest in the world standing over ten feet high when standing on his hind legs and five feet at the shoulder on all fours. Weighing up to 1,500 pounds, Kodiak’s bears are often touted as the world’s largest land carnivore man eaters. Ironically fatalities from these bears are few in number (likely due to the inaccessibility of the area) however; even with few people exploring the archipelago, maulings occur almost annually. Is it the testosterone thrill that some pay 10,000-21,000 dollars to hunt these massive Kodiak bears? Regardless of the motives, every year, nearly five hundred people from around the world get a chance to hunt these bears and many of them go home empty handed, some with trophies and occasionally one with scars and a story for the grand kids. So what is my motive? To explore a place I have never been and to experience the mecha of bear hunting. Regardless if we shoot a bear or not, I know that I absolutely love being out and about. I know positively, that when I wake up in the morning and crawl out of the tent shivering cold to the bone to start a pot of coffee... I’ll look around, watching the snow capped mountains gain an outline at dawn and at that moment, all the drama, all the gossip, all the work, every mundane day to day crap everyone has to deal with will be gone. I will sip my coffee with a huge smile on my face because this is where I want to be.





I’ve had some opportunities in life to go and do some amazing things... I’ve stalked antelope on the prairie, bear in Alaska and New Mexico, elk on the edge of the Valle Grande, deer in Lincoln National Forrest, buffalo along the Chitina River, dall sheep in the Brooks Range, I’ve hiked through the Rocky Mountains and Sangre De Cristos, fished brook trout in Montana streams, climbed the majority of Colorado’s 14’ers, Fished islands in the Aleutians that probably hadn’t been fished since WWII. Caught 200 lb + halibut while watching orcas swim around the boat in a bay where we could see a smoking volcano only ten miles away. I’ve hooked Tuna trolling off the coast of Vancouver B.C... I’ve stood in the crows nest of a crabbing boat in the Bering sea with thirty foot waves and seventy mile an hour wind. I could go on and on but with every adventure I go on, I return and then I begin to think of yet another that I can’t wait to go on….



This made me laugh... I get an e-mail from my mom... her departing words to me...

"Please be safe and have fun. Are you done with

high risk activiites (not the kind in bed). Please say yes."

love mom

Afognak Island Here I Come…… So I suppose this means that if I don't have a trip report up by the first weekend in May, then uhm, I'm pretty much gonna be spread around Afognak in piles of bear shit.