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Sheep Hunting in the Brooks Range, Part 4

September 18, 2008.

Continued from Part 3

John Peterson's hunting area on the North Slope of the Brooks Range has a lot of sheep. It seemed like every mountain we looked at had sheep. We even spotted two legal rams walking through the river bottom near his base camp, at a laughably accessible elevation. In the 48 hours that followed the harvest of my ram, guide Randy Piper and I probably spotted 150 unique sheep.

The problem, of course, was that my sheep tag had been filled and we were now looking for grizzly.

We saw cow caribou, we saw ptarmigan, we saw a pair of wolves. We even saw a raft load of eco-tourists.

But we could not find any bears.

We glassed many, many miles of creek bottoms, and glassed who knows how many square miles of tundra and mountainside. But although this area is known for its good bear hunting, there just weren't any bears to be seen.

This went on for days, wearing down our confidence. We kept at it nevertheless, even though it started to feel like we were just going through the motions.

Days 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 passed without much excitement. Day 8 was about to end the same way. It was 9:30pm (still plenty light) when Randy suggested that I take a look through his spotting scope when I had a second.

I dutifully dropped my binocs and wandered over to the scope.

"Which one of these brown dots am I supposed to be looking at?" I had grown jaded by our lack of success, and had looked over more than my fill of bear-like bushes the last few days.

Then one of the bushes moved.

My jaw dropped.

The bear was about 3 miles away, walking away from us along the river bank. Even at this distance, it was clear that he was huge. He had the swagger of a truly enormous bear, and it was almost like we could see his coat swaying in the evening sun.

Randy guides brown bear hunters in the spring and later in the fall, and he felt this interior grizzly easily compared in size to an 8 and half-foot fish-eating coastal bear.

We both became instantly obsessed with bagging this bear.

Unfortunately, our growing pessimism from the last few days had left us under-prepared. To make a go at this bear, we'd have to run back to camp, grab our hip waders and some extra clothes, then recover ground to where we had first seen him, then go after him. We were looking at a long night ... which didn't cause us to hesitate for a second.

We returned to camp, re-geared, crossed the river, and hiked towards the massive bear. By the time we got to where we had last seen him, it was about 12:30am and a storm was moving in. Visibility was pretty bad, and we didn't want to risk moving around without knowing exactly where the bear was.

We were tired from the long week and from the dash we had just made, and struggled to rest as it grew colder and colder.

Randy and I were standing side-by-side, too cold to lie down and sleep, when I actually fell asleep on my feet. I woke as I started to collapse, and managed to whip my sock-covered right hand (I had lost a glove a few days earlier) out of my pocket and catch myself just before I hit the ground. Randy was too cold and tired to laugh.

Then, it started to rain.

In our haste to get after the bear, Randy had failed to pack his rain jacket. With the temperature in the 30s, he was about to find himself in big trouble.

In an effort to keep him from getting soaked and hypothermic, we had him curl up in a ball on the tundra. I covered him with my emergency space blanket, and watched him shiver until he fell asleep.

I stayed awake all night, wound up on adrenaline from falling asleep on my feet, the imminent hypothermia my guide was facing, and the thought of a massive 8 and a half foot grizzly wandering around in the half-light.

After a couple more hours of cold, rain, and dark, the sky started to lighten. Randy stirred and popped out from under the space blanket.

"It's getting light," he said. "Let's go give him hell."

With that, my hypothermic guide got up and we started hunting. To say the least, I was impressed by his toughness.

Unfortunately, despite our efforts, the bear was gone. We tried for a while to find him that morning, but eventually had to go back to camp in defeat.

When we woke the next afternoon, we didn't talk about it too much, but we were both depressed about missing out on such a tremendous bear.

Today was the last day of my hunt.

We headed out to glass in the same general area where we had spotted the monster. We were glassing all over, looking for any bear, but it was clear that we were both still thinking about the bear from the night before.

I was glassing the hillside right in front of us when my mouth suddenly went dry. "There's a grizzly on the same hill as us. 400 yards, smaller, blonde."

Randy got his binoculars trained on the bear. It was very, very pretty, with a coat so light that it looked almost like a Dall sheep when you first saw it. We circled to get closer, but the bear winded us and bounded off. Although it was beautiful, it could not compare to the bear from the night before, and neither of us took it too hard that we had spooked this bear.

We went back to glassing, hoping to see the bear we were really looking for.

It was a beautiful day in the Brooks Range, sunny and mild. I had had a great hunt. Despite the disappointment of the night before, I felt great about things. As 8:30pm approached on the last night of the hunt, I prepared to tell Randy that we should call it quits and go back to camp.

As I thought about this, Randy suddenly dropped his binocs and hurled himself through the air, covering the 10 feet that separated him from his spotting scope with a single bound. He plastered his eye to the scope and waved hard at me.

There, in the middle of the wide river bed, about a mile further than from where we had seen him last night, was the massive bear.

This time, though, it was an hour earlier. This time, we had all our gear in our packs and ready to go. And this time, he was heading towards us instead of away from us.

He was still about 3.5 miles out, but he was ours.

We threw our packs on and started on an intercept course for the bear of my dreams.

We were men on a mission as we changed in to hip waders and moved directly up the riverbed towards the bear. Randy, with far more bear hunting experience than me, was particularly hell-bent on killing this bear of a lifetime.

We stayed low, watching the wind, and catching only occasional glances of the bear's back as we moved towards him. I got a good look at his broad back at one point — a giant mass of dark fur with golden guard hairs. Whispering as loudly as one can whisper, I stuck my arms out in a Fat Albert imitation and hissed at Randy, "He's huuuuuuuuge."

Randy was in the lead as we continued to close. He was still catching occasional glimpses of the bear to confirm we were closing in, but I had lost sight of the bear.

I rarely hunt with a guide, and feel much more comfortable when I'm calling the shots on a stalk. As we closed on the bear, I was not really in "the zone" yet. I hadn't had a close look at the bear, I didn't know exactly where he was, and I couldn't really help plan the stalk. I didn't feel like I had the focus I needed to take a poke at a monster like the one that was just up ahead.

Randy was dialed in however, and we started stalking very, very carefully to avoid blowing our chance at this bear we had been pursuing for two days. We moved through the water as quietly as humanly possible, then started to crawl across one of the many islands that broke up the wide river bed.

Randy was on the bear, but I still felt clueless about the details of what was going on.

Randy dropped his binoculars.

"He's going to come out on that bank. 250 yards."

I still had no idea where the bear was. There were several islands in the river bed. "Which one?" I whispered, like some kind of whiny tourist. I wasn't even sure which bank Randy was referring to.

"The far bank," hissed Randy.

I was still confused as I poked up my head like a prairie dog to figure out what was going on. I felt like an idiot, but I really needed to see the bear and get my head in the game.

"He's coming! Get ready!" Randy whispered.

Still clueless and still feeling very unfocused, I decided I had to see this bear. I rose a little higher, risking exposing myself and blowing all of our efforts. I could tell Randy was losing patience with me.

I raised my binoculars instead of picking up my rifle, and glassed towards the farthest bank of the river. Finally, I got a look at the back of the monster.

He was huge, far bigger than I had realized when we saw him from a distance. The distance from his hump to his rear made him look longer than my pickup truck.

His hair rippled across his massive humped shoulders as he walked.

I dropped my binoculars and swallowed hard. When I shot my ram earlier in the week, I felt like I had ice water in my veins. Now, faced with this insanely large predatory machine, I found myself unready to act.

The tension of the moment, the fear of blowing a 2-day-long stalk, the sheer size of this beast, and the idea that he could tear us both apart all overwhelmed me.

This was the moment of truth, and I could just barely take the pressure.

I looked at this monster that we had been stalking as he started up the bank, then raised my binoculars again for one last look to get my head straight and prepare to shoot.

He had moved up the bank, and I could now see him in all his glory. Two days of relentless pursuit, hypothermia, a cold night on the open tundra. It all came down to this.

I dropped my binoculars again and looked at Randy.

"Dude," I said, in a voice way too loud for the situation. "It's a f*cking musk ox."

Continued in Part 5

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