Jim's Blog
With 2 Russian Bears Down, Decision Time
Calling from inside my tent today. Kelly Grahmann from Texas, he only wanted one bear and he came in yesterday with a monster, a giant ancient old bear, teeth worn right down to the gums had to be at least 20 years old. Magnificent huge bear. Kind of a long shot on it. Matt got the shot and the recovery so it's really cool. They apparently got up to it and it still had enough energy to charge and they had to shoot it again. Tough animals; toughest I've ever seen, these mountain bears up here.
We got issues with the helicopter coming to get us out, so I might ... they've got extra tags left over from this season ... they haven't sold all of the bear hunts which is just amazing because it's gotta be one of the greatest bear hunts along with Vancouver Island black bears on the planet. So, thinking about going for a third one. Four more days we'd just be sitting around camp.
And the other camp they've got all of their six bears out of that camp, and the other camp they haven't gotten any, so it's just kind of weather ... they're moving to a different camp now so they'll be a little higher, better snow.
The Next Day ...
Beautiful day cold though but sunny. We went all the way past the place we call Witch's Mountain, all the way to the shoulders of a smoking volcano. All together we saw 21 bears. We actually got fairly close to one, about an 8-footer; most of the rest were too far away to get over to them.
Then finally toward evening spotted what looked like a monster bear way up high literally on the peaks of a mountain where we didn't have enough time to get there. So one of our guides went up on his own snow machine and got part way up and climbed and got within where he could see how big it was and he says it's ancient and big so we're hoping that today he's going to be up on that peak.
Unfortunately it's snowing now just waiting for it to hopefully clear. This is the last day, so if it's clear enough for us to see, we're going to head back in to that mountain and try to spot him up on that peak and climb up there and try and get him he's pitch black and ancient. That's what's going on here.
Standing in camp here and we have five hides on the hide poles. Beautiful, all different colors from blonde all the way to really dark black silver-tipped. Everyone should try to get here if they can. For more information about booking your own Russian bear hunt, contact:
Corey Knowlton at (214) 417-0111 or Bob Kern (540) 955-0090; or visit www.huntingconsortium.com
5/13/2010
