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this spring got off to a slow start...little to no bear movement on the first round had me wondering if it was gonna be another hard one...things started looking up around mid may.
mark cuddeback (you bear baiters are proly familiar with his line of trail cameras...he pioneered the devices in the late eighties and still leads the industry) was up with hal gahm from texas trophy hunters tv to film marks hunt(something new and EXTREMELY annoying to me from a guides standpoint...). hal would trade his camera for a gun if and when mark collected a bear.
a solid couple of guys, good humor, good mental toughness, and good attitudes enabled us to weather a pretty bad storm with all the bells and whistles (moving camp in 100 plus mph into a lumpy hole cut into the alders with an estwing is always fun) ...hell the boys were even game to hunt through it...not so with some clients.
i wont go into much details until after the show airs...late fall i beleive.
to sum up, it was a hunt i'll not likely duplicate:
marks bear went 9'6 26+ skull...normally a bear on the upper end of our size in this particular stretch of western alaska.
we killed him on day nine after passing up a couple lesser bears.
hal passed the camera to mark the next day and the hunt continued...
never would i have thought a nine and half foot bear would be the "small" one in any camp this side of kodiak or the lower penn...
hals bear went an inch over ten foot, his skull will be a couple sixteenths shy of 28...my second ten footer i've guided, and only the second bear over ten foot my boss's outfit has collected in the last decade...i guided that one in spring of 09...in general we just dont have very many bears get that big.
i worked hard for both of them, and had we not been sharp when we needed to be and aggressive on both stalks we would have never collected either one. hals bear took me on a low odds goose chase all over the country, i spotted him and around nine am, got his hide back to camp around 1:30 the next morning...proly a ten or eleven mile day at the least. sometimes you just gotta hang it out there and hustle to make it work...we were blessed with good wind at the right time, and good physical shape all around...the difference between success and failure in this instance.
the posted pics are only of marks bear...hals giant will be posted later, as my camera was out of commision at the time, and i need to get pics from the clients...i'll put em up as soon as i can.
what an awsome hunt. i'm still grinning.
as for the filming nonsense...by the end of the hunt hal and i were fast friends, and he's a great guy...but between you guys and me...i'd just as soon huck that ****ing
camera in the bering than ever see it show up in one of my camps again. 
what an annoying endeavor from a guides point of view.
a couple pics...
mark cuddeback (you bear baiters are proly familiar with his line of trail cameras...he pioneered the devices in the late eighties and still leads the industry) was up with hal gahm from texas trophy hunters tv to film marks hunt(something new and EXTREMELY annoying to me from a guides standpoint...). hal would trade his camera for a gun if and when mark collected a bear.
a solid couple of guys, good humor, good mental toughness, and good attitudes enabled us to weather a pretty bad storm with all the bells and whistles (moving camp in 100 plus mph into a lumpy hole cut into the alders with an estwing is always fun) ...hell the boys were even game to hunt through it...not so with some clients.
i wont go into much details until after the show airs...late fall i beleive.
to sum up, it was a hunt i'll not likely duplicate:
marks bear went 9'6 26+ skull...normally a bear on the upper end of our size in this particular stretch of western alaska.
we killed him on day nine after passing up a couple lesser bears.
hal passed the camera to mark the next day and the hunt continued...
never would i have thought a nine and half foot bear would be the "small" one in any camp this side of kodiak or the lower penn...
hals bear went an inch over ten foot, his skull will be a couple sixteenths shy of 28...my second ten footer i've guided, and only the second bear over ten foot my boss's outfit has collected in the last decade...i guided that one in spring of 09...in general we just dont have very many bears get that big.
i worked hard for both of them, and had we not been sharp when we needed to be and aggressive on both stalks we would have never collected either one. hals bear took me on a low odds goose chase all over the country, i spotted him and around nine am, got his hide back to camp around 1:30 the next morning...proly a ten or eleven mile day at the least. sometimes you just gotta hang it out there and hustle to make it work...we were blessed with good wind at the right time, and good physical shape all around...the difference between success and failure in this instance.
the posted pics are only of marks bear...hals giant will be posted later, as my camera was out of commision at the time, and i need to get pics from the clients...i'll put em up as soon as i can.
what an awsome hunt. i'm still grinning.
as for the filming nonsense...by the end of the hunt hal and i were fast friends, and he's a great guy...but between you guys and me...i'd just as soon huck that ****ing
what an annoying endeavor from a guides point of view. a couple pics...
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