35 Whelen
Handloader
- Dec 22, 2011
- 2,216
- 426
Here is some interesting food for thought . Ponder on this .
After recently being in SE Alaska on a Goat Hunt in some of the worst weather conditions I have ever been involved with . I spent some time on a 50ft boat anchored up in a harbor near Admiralty Isle. Guiding in SE Alaska has turned into something very different than how we operated in Interior Alaska for the nearly 30 years I guided up there. The younger guides up there on the coast, have adapted into a style of hunting that sorta took me by surprise. They are literally wading up the feeder creeks, a few hours before dark, and waiting until in gets dark and slowly working there way back down to the coast, with their clients knowing that the older bears will be in the streams by then, working the fall run of Salmon. I imediately noticed they are ALL carrying larger more powerful guns than my era used.
The minimun gun seamed to be in the 375 Ruger sorta horsepower level, and went up from there with fourty something calibers, stuff with huge cases being the norm around the SE area.
They speak of shots that we would never have considered safe or normal. When I was a young buck assistant guide I always remember old "Ward Gay" of Alaska Safari whos experence went back into the 1930s telling us young guys "Never less than Fifty never more than a Hundred yards"
That advise, helped me alot over the years, when combined with some experence, to let me make the call, of weather a bear was 'too close' to the alders,and to let the hunter fire at it; or not. But to think about wading down a salmon stream, in basically pitch dark, to come around a corner and finding a thousand pound plus brown bear in the 10-60 yard sorta seperation from myself and my hunter; seams such a different way of hunting; than what I know of. That I had a huge problem wraping my head around it.
At any rate the guns have gotten a lot larger and more powerful than they used to be 25 years ago, and either the guides are getting braver, or we must not have been thinking far enough out of the box ? But it was an eye opener for sure; and thought some of your guys on here would get a kick outta the info............................ this is not a one off thing . There is a bunch of guides in that area, all hunting off boats, that are using this a "standard pratice" every season to sucessfully harvest brownies and storys of shots under 20 yards are fairly common ???
I dont think I will sell out here and move directly to Petersburg to get a chance to get in on this new style of bear hunting but it certainly raised my eyebrows!
This same style of hunting has been used in SE for years, but the hunters and guides were normally out to the coast; so that they could get loaded into a skiff with some light to head back out to the boat . In todays hunts the guides plan on arriving in the dark and using modern high powered lighting to be able to load up and return to the boat.
I had to wonder, what old Ward would have had to say about all this.......................................
After recently being in SE Alaska on a Goat Hunt in some of the worst weather conditions I have ever been involved with . I spent some time on a 50ft boat anchored up in a harbor near Admiralty Isle. Guiding in SE Alaska has turned into something very different than how we operated in Interior Alaska for the nearly 30 years I guided up there. The younger guides up there on the coast, have adapted into a style of hunting that sorta took me by surprise. They are literally wading up the feeder creeks, a few hours before dark, and waiting until in gets dark and slowly working there way back down to the coast, with their clients knowing that the older bears will be in the streams by then, working the fall run of Salmon. I imediately noticed they are ALL carrying larger more powerful guns than my era used.
The minimun gun seamed to be in the 375 Ruger sorta horsepower level, and went up from there with fourty something calibers, stuff with huge cases being the norm around the SE area.
They speak of shots that we would never have considered safe or normal. When I was a young buck assistant guide I always remember old "Ward Gay" of Alaska Safari whos experence went back into the 1930s telling us young guys "Never less than Fifty never more than a Hundred yards"
That advise, helped me alot over the years, when combined with some experence, to let me make the call, of weather a bear was 'too close' to the alders,and to let the hunter fire at it; or not. But to think about wading down a salmon stream, in basically pitch dark, to come around a corner and finding a thousand pound plus brown bear in the 10-60 yard sorta seperation from myself and my hunter; seams such a different way of hunting; than what I know of. That I had a huge problem wraping my head around it.
At any rate the guns have gotten a lot larger and more powerful than they used to be 25 years ago, and either the guides are getting braver, or we must not have been thinking far enough out of the box ? But it was an eye opener for sure; and thought some of your guys on here would get a kick outta the info............................ this is not a one off thing . There is a bunch of guides in that area, all hunting off boats, that are using this a "standard pratice" every season to sucessfully harvest brownies and storys of shots under 20 yards are fairly common ???
I dont think I will sell out here and move directly to Petersburg to get a chance to get in on this new style of bear hunting but it certainly raised my eyebrows!
This same style of hunting has been used in SE for years, but the hunters and guides were normally out to the coast; so that they could get loaded into a skiff with some light to head back out to the boat . In todays hunts the guides plan on arriving in the dark and using modern high powered lighting to be able to load up and return to the boat.
I had to wonder, what old Ward would have had to say about all this.......................................
