Jim's Blog
Russian Brown Bear Hunt Begins
We got in on the helicopter day before yesterday. Big huge giant helicopter. Monster Russian Mi8 helicopter. Flew across snow and basically just trees and mountains for an hour and 45 minutes til we got to our camp.
There's a ton of snow, like four feet of snow here by our camp, and the wheels just disappeared. The pilot actually bounced it to sink it to the belly. Unloaded and took off. Beautiful little camp. Six little tents and a plywood shack. Went out hunting yesterday in the snow, but still saw four bears. Two I could have actually shot. They had 7-inch pads, so I figured they were 7- to 8-foot square bears. Nothing big for brown bears, big for grizzly, but not for brown bear. The guide said they were medium. So they're still beautiful and one boar was following a sow about 100 yards from us and didn't even know we were there.
Visibility is not good enough to see the distances they want to see for glassing. My guide got sick, so we came in early yesterday. Just hunted half a day. The other guys in our camp, two guys, I feel bad for them because they are hunting together ... a 2 on 1 hunt and I don't know if that's what they bargained for. The one guide had to push his old snowmobile most of the day yesterday; it's an old 1965 model. So nothing yesterday.
Today we're not going out yet because it's foggy. They can't see the hills again. I think they basically wait for good weather and then go and get the bers. If we can get some visibility we will go and hunt, but not looking real good right now.
5/7/2010
