Glacier Mountain Outfitters Grizzly Hunt

By: Mike Stroff IV

My annual trip to Alaska had us going with a new outfitter. We had hunted for Caribou in the Brooks Range in the past, but this year we were going with Glacier Mountain Outfitters and Greg Jennan. We had been planning this trip for the last two years and I had always wanted to go on an inland Grizzly Hunt. I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a hunt last year in the Wrangle Mountains for sheep and was lucky enough to harvest a Grizzly, but this would be the first trip I had ever been on where Grizzly was our only target! After talking with Greg off and on over the last few years he had told me the area we would be hunting is one of the best areas for Grizzly in the world! I couldn’t wait to get there.

We arrived in camp two days before the season started and were ready to get into the field. The weather was so bad when we got there we ended up spending the next 3.5 days in their base camp of operation (Kavik).  We were disappointed we couldn’t get out in the field, but our guides were doing the right thing by waiting for the weather to get right so we could safely be flown into our hunting area.  In the past years the hunters they had taken to this camp had took their bears the first or second day of their hunts. After our long wait in camp the weather finally broke enough to get us into the field.

Once we were all set up we started the next day hunting. We had to wait our time after flying before we could get out looking for a bear.  We ended up hunting hard for about three days and not seeing much of anything. We saw a few passing caribou, but they were even very spotty at best. We still had plenty of hunting time, but we were all dyeing to just see that first bear. Our guide Randy had took us up to a great lookout point the day before and on the 3rd day we headed straight up there again. Once we got up high and started to glass the river bottom I had to get my boots off to dry them out, I had gotten wet crossing the river. So while I was tending to my soaking wet feet, our guide Randy said I think I see something way off that looks like a bear. He pulled the spotting scope out and sure enough it was. Randy had spotted the first bear of the trip. You have never seen someone put wet socks and boots on so fast as I did so we could make a plan and head off after that bear.

The bear was about 4 miles away walking down a creek bank that led into the river. We picked a hill out about two miles out to go to and try to relocate the bear to see if we would have a chance of getting on him. About an hour later we got to our hill and glassed the entire bottom out and couldn’t find the bear, until we looked up the super steep hill leading out of the creek bed and we got to watch the bear about 2 minutes as he topped the hill and headed out of site. We sat around for a little while and decided that we had given him enough time to get over the hill and gone. We took off across the flat and climbed the hill and started to glass again to see if we could spot the bear. It took us about 30 minutes after moving to a second glassing spot to see the bear again. It had crossed the tundra about two miles and was working along another creek bed.  It truly is amazing how fast and how much country these animals can cover in a short time. We had to make a decision did we want to take off after this bear or did we want to set up to try to find another bear? Even though it was going to take us about five miles away from camp and we had already walked about 7 miles we didn’t think about it long and we were off to the races. One thing was for sure; we did not want this bear to get any further ahead of us. To close the distance we had to double-time it across that terrible tundra.

Once we got to where we expected the bear to be we got set up and realized that we were going to have to be patient and wait until the bear showed itself, so we didn’t spook it.  We knew the bear had to be close. Our guide slipped around behind us to take a quick look down the river in our blind spot from where we had set up. I turned around and saw him chamber a round. I knew then he had found our bear. We took off toward him and when we got there he said the bear was just below us coming up the riverbank.  We got into position and sure enough the bear walked right up the bank to us about 80 yards away.  I took the shot and he only ran about 30 yards before falling down the steep hill going back down into the river. We had done it after walking over 12 miles through some rough terrain! This was a true wilderness hunt and a trip of a lifetime!

If you want to do a true Alaska Adventure hunt give Greg Jennan and the guys at Glacier Mountain Outfitters a call!