Warning:  This is a hunting story.  If hunting is not your thing, don't continue.  

If a blood trail excites you, carry on!!

You've heard the saying, "third time is a charm," well, this was my third attempt at a spring black bear hunt for 2005.  I got the time off work at the last minute.  My wife and hunting partner, Shanna, had work obligations; this was the first time ever she had to miss a trip on the boat.  About 5 days prior to departure, I called my friend Greg, described the hunt and asked him if he was interested.  He said, "I'm IN!"  He flew up from Texas and the hunt began.  
It was the first week of June when we launched the boat from the port of Whittier to hunt in the Chugach National Forest.  We had such a load we had to drop the kicker motor to get the boat on step.  We had 35 gallons of gas in the on board tank in the floor of the boat and an extra 22 gallons in cans.  On the first hunt of the year, we spent hours motoring around at top cruise speed to get to a recommended hot spot for hunting; more time was spent traveling than cruising slow and glassing for bears.  The second trip camp was set up too far away from the area we planned to hunt.  However, this time we set camp up right in the center of the area where we wanted to look for bears.  

We set up camp at an abandoned cache of shrimp pots situated with a small cove on one side and open water on the other.  When the wind came up, we could park the boat on the cove side.  We adopted the bears' schedule and woke up just prior to first light.  We cruised the shorelines until noon, then returned to camp to sleep and eat a meal until it was time to start cruising the shorelines again around 5:30 PM.  By 11:00 we were back in camp for the night.  This schedule proved to be very productive.

Success came on the third day.  We had just finished stretching our legs by hiking up a hill on the lookout for bears and had returned to the boat.  It was several hours into the evening hunt, right at 7:00 PM.  We were cruising away from the beach when I looked back toward the shore line we had just left.  That's when I saw him, a beautiful, jet black, hefty looking bear walking along a brush line.  I immediately turned the boat around and headed back toward the shore.  I pulled the boat behind the same hill we had just climbed, for cover.  Quietly, I stalked my way up toward the top of the gravel slope as a light mist was falling.  There he was.... grazing on grass in the middle of a large field, in the open!  He had no close cover.  I laid down at the top of the gravel slope with my rifle barrel sticking thru the grass line.  I carefully extended my bipod legs and looked thru my scope.  The crosshairs were rock steady on the bear's chest.  I clicked the safety off and as I did the bear immediately looked up and toward me.  He then went back to grazing.  I carefully squeezed the trigger and never even noticed the blast of my Ruger M77 30-06 firing the 180 gr. nosler bullet.  The bear was immediately on his back with his paws in the air.  I gave him one more shot and he never moved again.  I was PUMPED!  This was my first successful hunt ever!  For anything!  We hiked the 140 yards to my bear and determined he had expired.  Neither one of us had ever skinned a bear before, BUT.... we had watched the video over and over, so I went to work.  In the process, I  poked my little finger with my knife and just barely cut the skin on my index finger, so shallow it didn't hardly bleed.  These cuts would come back to haunt me.  My bear was a beautiful, unrubbed  boar that measured at just over 6 feet.  

On the way back to camp that evening, after the sun had set, we saw something in the water ahead of us.  I thought it was a log at first, but then I saw a wake coming from it.  As we approached, I saw that it was a bear swimming across a 5 mile section of open water.  We watched from a distance and considered setting up for him on the shore.  It was just too late and too dark.  He came ashore at a steep cliff and scooted straight up with rocks crashing down behind him, well aware of our presence.

The next day it was time to recommit myself to the hunt.  I got mine, but for the hunt to be a complete success, Greg needed his bear too.  We started out once again early in the morning and saw no bears.  For our evening ride, we went back to the same bays we had cruised over and over.  Greg glassed a particular cove and was moving on to check a new location.  I then reglassed the area he had just looked at and saw exactly what we were looking for.  A bear was emerging from the woods for a snack of fresh green grass.  The bear looked right at us and watched as we slowly motored past.  We went past a rocky point until we couldn't see the bear anymore and it couldn't see us either.  I guessed correctly that this bear was hungry and was not going to disappear if it thought we were gone.  Upon passing the point I motored straight for the shore.  Greg left the boat with his rifle and crawled to a point in the rocks where he laid down in the wet seaweed.  He then froze, didn't point his rifle toward the bear, didn't move!!  Come to find out later the bear was looking straight at him and was sniffing the wind for our scent.  The wind in this location was favoring the bear as it blew toward the beach.   Quickly, Greg put his rifle into position and fired.  He immediately stood up and fired again as the bear was fleeing the beach.  The bear was gone; it disappeared into the woods.  We decided to go back to our camp and wait an hour.  We spent lots of time discussing how sure he was that he had made contact.  Greg thought he saw a limp, but I wasn't as sure.  We returned to the beach.  Greg took the lead with his semi-automatic pistol drawn.  I had my .44 magnum holstered and my bear spray ready to go.  We immediately saw blood on the beach, lots of blood,  I was ecstatic, (remember this is still part of my first ever successful hunt).  Greg followed the blood trail into the woods as I marked the way with surveyor's tape.  Only about 50 ft into the dense brush, Greg spotted his bear.  He quickly determined it was expired and we moved it down to the beach.  I was good at skinning now and took over that job.  Greg took care of his specialty which was quartering out the bear.  It was after June 1, so there was no requirement to keep any of the meat, but we both wanted to try bear steaks.  Greg's bear was a sow that measured right and 5 1/2 feet.

We ran out of cooler space, so we buried Greg's bearskin in an old avalanche.  Because of the available snow, we didn't have to flesh the hides or salt them.

Back in camp for a little celebration of a completely successful hunt.  It's 1:00 AM in this photo.  The tide was so high it was reaching for our tents and the boat was almost in camp with us.   We were able to break camp down one day early, just as the rain was starting and the seas began to build.