What do you need to hunt brown bears in Alaska?

Two Pennsylvania men came face-to-face with Alaskan brown bears several times during a May hunt. One of them got trophies and one of them got a huge brown bear the size of a trophy.

Big game hunter John Neilson Jr., 39, of Limerick, Montgomery County, and his guide-packer Frank Barcio, 34, of Erie, enjoyed an incredible adventure that ended with a trophy-sized bear on the Alaska Peninsula.

Clients fly to Anchorage and then take a smaller plane to an airport in King Salmon to meet their outfitter Tracy Vrem of Blue Mountain Lodge and escort Aaron Johnson. From there, the outfitter flies their clients to a lodge. The hunters then fly back to their campsite. “It’s an incredibly remote area,” Barcio said of the tundra.

They saw different sizes of bears every day and some came a little too close to their camp for comfort.

On May 9, while setting up their tent, a large boar walked within 50 yards of their camp. The guide fired rubber bullets and then a 12 gauge loaded with birdshot to drive the large carnivore back into the wild.

“You kind of sleep with one eye half open,” Neilson said of the bears. “But there’s really not much you can do once you’re asleep.”

On May 11, their guide was eating a sandwich when a sow with cubs approached. Fortunately, the bears ran away when he shouted at them.

The next day, Neilson was returning to camp when he saw a bear walking toward their tent. “I shouted ‘Hey bear’ and threw my gun over my head, the bear looked at me, I took off my sight cover, threw a grenade into the chamber and shouted again ‘Hey bear!’” he wrote in his notes of his The bear saw him, slowly turned around and started walking away from the tent. “When I got to the tent, I quickly put on my waders, put on a change of underwear and waited outside the tent.”

Barcio said the campgrounds have heavy steel barrels to put their trash in and an electric fence around the perimeter of the camp. If a bear touches the fence with its nose, they get scared from the shock. “It’s more of a safety net for us to sleep at night,” he said.

Neilson said with a laugh, “I think the bear fence is more of a psychological thing for us. I don’t know if it’ll do much against a bear.”

The actual hunt

Neilson shot his bear on May 14. When the men first saw the old bear, they had to walk about 500 yards through river crossings, steep banks and a thick patch of alders. They stopped within 200 yards of the animal which lay in thick cover.

While they waited for the bear to move, six caribou grazed the area and fortunately the bear did not chase them. “I think he was just tired, it was a warmer day and the sun was shining,” Neilson said. “They literally tiptoed around (the bear) and looked at him and ran past. It was quite fun.”

The hunters watched the area for about seven hours until the big boar started walking. Neilson fired his .338 Weatherby RPM and hit the bear. He shot three more times to make sure the great beast was down for good.

“There aren’t many places in North America where you go and you’re in their territory,” Neilson said. “It’s a completely surreal feeling and you come to a different mindset and state where it’s time. It’s really an adrenaline rush for me. I love it. I find it incredible and of course nerve-wracking. There are so many different emotions flowing through your brain and your body. But when you get on it and it all comes together, it’s just an amazing experience and an amazing feeling. It’s fun.”

Some of the habitat is so thick you can’t see far and you never know where the bears will be. Barcio said, “You can be 200 feet away from a bear at any given moment and not even know it.”

When the hunt takes place, you have no choice but to focus on the task at hand.

“You’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to do it when you’ve got to do it, whether it’s mentally you’re mentally pushing yourself to climb this bank that normally you probably wouldn’t be able to get on unless you have the adrenaline to get through it to push . It’s probably one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve done on my own, even as a packer learning to be a guide. That persistence to get revenge on that bear was a lot,” Barcio said.

The next morning they took the bear’s skin and left about two miles to their campsite. The meat is not taken because there are concerns about trichinosis. Neilson said the main reason the big boars are hunted is for predator control. The large male carnivores may attack the cubs and sows.

“If they see a sow with young, they will try to kill it so that the sow comes into heat so they can breed her. They are also killing a lot of younger boars, the new arrivals,” Neilson said. “It’s a mathematical game of predator and population control to keep everything healthy, from the caribou and moose, and it all has an effect.

More: These beaches, summer attractions, are worth the drive, says the Pa. Parks Dept.

“Alaska does a great job of managing tags and the number of bears they want to take out of each unit, based on population studies and other animals that are in the area, and I think they do a great job of that. So you’re not really hunting meat, you’re hunting predators in the state.”

Neilson, who is involved in land development and property management, has been a serious big game hunter for the past nine years.

“I do quite a bit of hunting. I normally go to Canada or Alaska every spring and fall,” he said. “This is my fourth brown bear.”

He harvested the other brown bears on Kodiak Island, in southeast Alaska near Cordova, and one in interior Alaska.

The bear he shot in May is Neilson’s largest yet. It is similar in size to its Kodiak bear, but the skull is at least an inch larger. The Kodiak Island bear was 30 inches long and this one is “easily 28.5 inches,” he said of its green score.

Skulls must dry for 60 days before being officially scored for the Boone and Crockett Club’s record system. For the Alaskan brown bear, the skull must be a minimum of 26 inches for an award and a minimum of 28 inches for all-time recognition.

“It should easily make Boone and Crockett brown bears,” he said. The bears are skinned where they fall and they cannot weigh the animal. However, according to the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, a large male can weigh as much as 1,500 pounds in coastal areas.

The hide measures a square of 9 feet and 9 inches, which is the measurement from nose to tail and paw to paw of the forelegs added together and divided by 2.

Barcio, who teaches everything from packing planes for remote areas to estimating the size of bears for hunters, said this was an ideal hunt for his guiding training.

“It was quite an experience, from seeing the bear to having to make a few moves, which is an intense walk to get to the next spot, and finally seeing the bear and waiting seven hours for him and finally John (Nelson ) fall. this bear and the whole pack, it was everything a bear hunt could be, plus getting an all-time bear from Boone and Crockett, so it would be hard to get any better,” Barcio said.

Neilson agreed. “It was the complete brown bear experience for me. The outfitter was without a doubt first class,” he said. “This was all done first class and I got the complete, ultimate brown bear experience and I got a Boone and Crockett animal, which is a great hunt. Definitely an incredible experience. I’m lucky to be able to do things like this.”

Report any sightings: Dad. Game Commission explains why you should report wild turkey sightings this summer

Neilson preserves the memories of his hunts through taxidermy and plans to have a full-scale mount made of the bear, similar to what he has done with his other bears and a variety of other animals including deer, elk, moose, caribou and sheep, and smaller animals such as coyote and wolverine.

“I try to make them life-size to do justice to the animals. It’s a great display,” he said.

Both men look forward to future hunts and encourage others to visit America’s wilds.

“I would say that everyone from Pennsylvania should try to see Alaska once in their life, at least once,” Barcio said.

Brian Whipkey is the columnist for the USA TODAY Network in Pennsylvania. Contact him at [email protected] and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter on the homepage of this website under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors.

The actual hunt

Related Posts