Commentary

The 470-yard shot

Idaho hunter Trevor Schneider had quite the story to tell his regional newspaper – the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. – about his “near-death” experience with an Alaska grizzly bear, or was it a black bear?

The newspaper slipped back and forth between the two as if there was little difference, so most likely, the black bear-brown bear confusion was due to the sort of journalistic incompetence that has become all too normal.

Photos of the bear on the Facebook page of  Schneider’s sister,  Tana Grenda, leave no doubt the bear was among the biggest of grizzlies, or what is more often in Alaska called a “coastal brown bear.”

The rest of the story is well summed by former bear guide Rod Arno, now the director of the Alaska Outdoor Council.

“So much of this story is unbelievable I don’t know where to start,” he messaged. “Could inexperienced bear hunters have f—– up a bear hunt this bad? No surprise the bear was only wounded at 470 yards out.

“It only takes a story like this or two to get out to discredit a worthy outdoor experience like bear hunting in Alaska.  The Alaska bear hunting regulation requiring an Alaskan registered guide (for non-residents) makes sense.”

Schneider’s hunting companion in this case was a GINO, his sister, Grenda.

Bears, bears, bears

Grenda is a resident of King Salmon, the site of an old airbase about 300 miles from Anchorage in Southwest Alaska. It is now a rural community home to fewer than 400 people just west of Katmai National Park and Preserve.

Katmai is famous for the brown bears that gather at the Brooks River every summer to feast on salmon.

Tourists come from around the world to watch and photograph them, and outside the park boundaries in all directions, some people come to hunt them. The Alaska Peninsula of which Katmai is part has a considerable number of these bears.

“It’s not like what we’re used to in areas like North Idaho and Washington,” Schneider told Spokesman-Review reporter Eli Frankovich, who dutifully wrote down every word. “You see bears like you see deer down here.”

Well, not quite.

Alaska wildlife biologists have estimated brown bear densities on the Peninsula as high as one bear per square mile in the best of habitats. Good deer habitat in Idaho is home to six deer per square mile or more.

All told, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates the state is in its entirety home to about 30,000 hard to census brown/grizzly bears.

Idaho hunters last year killed just shy of 49,700 deer, according to the official government website,  and it wasn’t a wanton slaughter. This was the number of deer the state’s wildlife managers decided could be harvested at a sustainable level.

Alaska wildlife managers estimate an annual harvest of 1,800 to 1,900 brown/grizzly bears is sustainable. And Alaska is about seven and a half times bigger than Idaho, so go figure.

There are a lot of myths spread about Alaska hunting in the Lower 48 state. The reality is Alaska game populations are small compared to the state’s size because the wildlife carrying capacity is reduced by extreme winters.

What Alaska lacks in numbers, however, it makes up for in size.

Size matters

Schneider and Grenda found a bear so big they could see it from eight miles away, or so the Spokesman-Review story says. An online fitness trainer, Grenda got to “guide” the hunt by nature of her now hometown.

By law in Alaska, for “safety reasons”, brown/grizzly bear hunters are required to be accompanied by a state-certified guide or an “Alaska resident 19 years of age or older who is within the second degree of kindred,” according to Alaska Fish and Game.

Grenda is clearly a world-class guide if she can spot a bear eight miles away.

As one experienced Alaska hunter observed, “they spotted then stalked it from eight miles away? Really? There must some optics out there I’m not aware of.”

Whatever. That’s what the story says. And it must have been some distance to the bear they were after given the length of time it took to get there.

“They left camp at 6 a.m. on May 13 and spent the next 14 hours hiking uphill, picking their way through thickets of alders and devil’s club,” Frankovich reported.

Most experienced Alaska hunters turn back after 13 hours. The hide of a normally big bear – let alone one so big you can see it from eight miles away – will easily weigh over 100 pounds with the skull adding another 25 pounds or more.

A 14-hour hike under a 125 pound or greater load is not for the weak-kneed. And given that the story reported Schneider and Grenda were already carrying 50-pound packs, splitting the hide in half to make it more packable was still going to make for big loads.

Still, the story said they kept hiking until they got almost to within range of what a state-licensed bear guide would think a reasonable position for a shot – almost being the operative word.

“They closed in on the bear they’d spotted from the beach eight miles below,” Frankovich reported.

“‘We were going after a big one,’ (Schneider) said. ‘We weren’t going to shoot a small one.”

“He (Schneider) found his spot, 470 yards away, totally exposed on an open expanse of snow.

“He aimed. Steadied his breath. And shot.

“Once, twice and a third time. The .338 ultra mag (a large magnum cartridge good for long-distance shooting) pierced the bear’s lung, the second high left on the animal’s shoulder and the third through the bear’s neck.”

How the hunters saw where the bullets were striking at this distance was not explained. Maybe they figured out it after they skinned the dead bear.

Pushing limits

Four-hundred-seventy yards is nearly the length of five football fields. Most state-licensed Alaska hunting guides wouldn’t let a client take a shot at that distance, except maybe for the late and famous Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle, if for no other reason than that cartridge performance changes at that range as the velocity of the bullet slows.

Energy decreases as the square of velocity. According to Nosler, an ammunition manufacturer, the .338 Remington Ultra Mag will have lost nearly 40 percent of its muzzle energy at the range Schneider was shooting.

The .338 RUM, as it is often called, is one hell of a cartridge for long-distance shooting. But at 500 yards, its killing power is down in the range of the venerable .30-06 caliber.

Plenty of bears have been killed with the .30-06, but they were shot at ranges a lot closer than 470 yards, which makes bullet placement easier and alters bullet performance.

Bullets are designed for certain impact velocities. There is a trade off between the bullet expanding to increase tissue damage when it hits its target at distance and staying intact to avoid fragmenting at close range.

“Almost any bullet can be made to expand at long range, but the thin jackets and soft cores that promote such expansion don’t support bullet integrity when impact distances are close and velocities extremely high,”  Joseph von Benedikt writes at Rifle Shooter Magazine. 

“Conversely, it’s not that difficult to produce a bullet that will hold together at close-range, high-impact velocities, but the heavy jackets, harder lead-alloy cores and bonding processes used to create such bullets can inhibit expansion when distances stretch and velocities drop.”

Most bullets designed for hunting dangerous game, like Alaska grizzly bears, lean toward the “hold together” category. This sometimes causes problems when shooting at long ranges. The bullets hold together so well they function almost like “full metal jacket” bullets.

Full-metal jacket bullets are those the 1899 Hague Declaration, a global treaty, declared should be used in war to “eliminate the unnecessary injury and suffering associated with very large bullet wounds,” as scientists working for the International Committee of the Red Cross observed in reviewing the declaration in 2002.

The agreement banned expanding bullets because they deposit “their kinetic energy earlier in the wound track than full metal jacket bullets. Full metal jacket bullets remain stable in their passage through tissue for a variable distance before turning side-on; this deeper penetration means they may pass through the victim’s body without causing as much tissue damage.”

When hunting dangerous big game, like Alaska brown bears, what a hunter wants is maximum tissue damage.

Whatever kind of bullets Schneider was shooting when he made his 470-yard shot, they didn’t provide enough tissue damage. They didn’t put the bear down.

Panic

Then Schneider’s gun jammed (though it’s unclear from the story how), and the bear started moving toward him and Grenda. What followed is what might be the most accurate part of the story:

“They started to panic.”

With his rifle jammed, Schneider was left to defend himself against the charging bear with a revolver chambered for the .454-Casull caliber cartridge. It is about as potent a handgun as one can buy.

Grenda, however, was unarmed. Why?

Frankovich reported this: “…According to the (Alaska) rules, she was not allowed to shoot the bear.”

That is simply wrong. Under Alaska law, the person accompanying the hunter is not allowed to hunt the bear, but the moment a hunting situation becomes a matter of life and death that rule goes out the window.

Alaska has a “defense of life and property” law that allows anyone to shoot a bear pretty much anytime and anywhere if necessary to save a human life. Shooting a wounded animal to minimize its suffering or for hunter safety falls in a grayer area, but there are plenty of bears shot by Alaska guides every year after their hunters wound them.

The better explanation for the lack of a weapon for Grenda might be explained by Frankovich’s following observation that “the two opted to save weight and bring only one rifle, one bow and one pistol.”

What the bow was for was one of the many other unexplained elements in the story. A bow is not so good against a charging grizzly. A spear would be better.

A bow on a hunt like this would seem even more useless weight than a gun, which is something easy to decide to leave behind. Hiking 14 hours with a 50-pound pack is a pretty stiff workout for most people. A rifle adds significanlty to the load. A .338 RUM weighs about eight and a half pounds, closer to 10 with a scope.

Firearms are heavy. The lightest and most compact .454 Casull weighs more than three pounds and grows to more like four pounds with ammunition.

Schneider and Grenda cut weight, and thus found themselve undergunned with a wounded bear coming toward them. Thus they decided to run for it.

“They dropped their gear and headed downhill, angling toward three boulders, the only cover around,” Frankovich wrote. “They made it to the rocks on the ridge line, but the bear continued to move forward.”

How they ran downhill and ended up on a ridge line isn’t explained, but there they were in the rocks with the bear still coming at them, and then it sensed them. Schneider said it started coming faster.

He pulled out his handgun, “which held five .454 Casull rounds,” Frankovich wrote. “He had five more rounds on his hip. Schneider, trying to stay crouched behind the rock, waited until the bear got closer.

“He fired, aiming for the animal’s face, but crouched as he was, he missed.”

The bear picked up speed. Schneider shot again. This bullet, he claimed, hit the bear in the chest; the next round hit it in the shoulder; and one more was said to have hit it somewhere “broadside” as it continued past the hunters and downhill.

Schneider and Grenda took off again on the run, but when they turned to look back to see what had happened they were said to have seen where “the bear had tumbled off the ridge, starting a small avalanche.”

The bear was dead. The hunters were in shock. But they had survived their near-death experience.

The rest of their adventure was the grunt that big game hunting in Alaska always turns into.

Lessons learned?

“Schneider acknowledged the deadly truth of the situation,” Frankovich wrote. “He and his sister barely escaped with their lives despite all the benefits of modern technology.

“‘We’re nothing compared to these things,’ he said. ‘If you were to throw us out there with nothing, we don’t stand a chance. The only way we stand a chance is with the technology and the tools.'”

This is why there were no Native Alaskans living on the Alaska Peninsula before the advent of modern technology. Oh wait, there were.

The prehistoric record indicates the Alutiiq were there and on neighboring Kodiak Island for thousands of years before white men arrived in the north.

“At that time, the Alutiiq hunted (brown) bears, using their meat for food, hides for clothing and bedding, intestines for rainproof parkas, long bones for tools, and teeth for adornment,” a state Fish and Game history records. “Bears were usually stalked by groups of two or three hunters armed with bows and arrows.

“The bear arrow was about 32 in. long and had a barbed bone point seven inches long with an inserted end blade of slate. If the bear attacked, the hunters defended themselves with spears.”

It was a dangerous business.

“No virtue was more valued than bravery and no act required greater bravery than confronting a grizzly bear. You had to get very close with a spear in order to kill a bear and often a warrior or two was lost in the process of a hunt,” write Katmai Park ranger Russ Taylor. 

There were no Alutiiq popping away at brown bears at 470 yards with a high-power rifle.

Schneider – a YouTube star on the family run “Stuck N The Rut” site – said the lesson he learned from this supposed near-death experience was that both he and his sisters should have had handguns, and she should have had a rifle as well.

Maybe a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), as well.

Obviously the lesson that went unlearned is that you shouldn’t be shooting at bears at 500 yards where it is difficult for the best of marksman to place a shot well, and where bullet performance isn’t what it is at 200 yards or less.

“What a shame to miss the excitement of stalking within 100 yards of a magnificent Alaskan bear,” Arno said, and then making a clean kill.

Then again, with a clean kill there would have been no exciting “near-death” experience to talk about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

45 replies »

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  2. You can spot bear tracks in fresh snow with sun on it in the alpine from unreal distances. When there is a track in the snow that goes to a black dot and the tracks stop that is a bear in our location but it’s obvious the writer of this article hasn’t been on a peninsula brown bear hunt before.

  3. Most of the hunt was on video and will be posted to YouTube soon and will make your article look like a joke haha. Just because most Alaska hunters don’t do something doesn’t mean it’s not possible, 14 hours of hiking is not unrealistic I’ve killed caribou, dall sheep, and that bear where we hiked well over 14 hours in a day with large packs on to do what has to be done. Also we did not split the cape I had 150 pound pack with gear for the next day as it will be a full mount. Itll all be on the Stuck N The Rut YouTube soon. We are some of the most extreme non-guided hunter on the internet, anyone who follows our stuff on Instagram or YouTube will vouch for that.

      • Craig, You already mentioned in the article that it’s legal to be accompanied by resident kin – that means non-guided.

        Why are you like this?

      • Actually, no. The law considers resident kin a defacto “guide.” To be non-guided, he’d have to have ditched the kin somewhere, which is illegal for some species in Alaska. Sort of like hiring a guide and then leaving the guide behind in Anchorage.

        Why do I think people should obey Fish and Game laws? I don’t know. Silly me.

      • That’s great but the sister isn’t a licensed guide.The “law” might consider her a guide but no reasonable hunter would. You don’t sound reasonable – you seem quite unpleasant and have an axe to grind for some reason. That’s why I inquired “Why are you like this?”

      • She doesn’t have to be. Ever heard of the word “defacto?” She was your defacto guide by natrure of being within the second degree of kindred. The intent of the law was to ensure someone with Alaska experience accompanied neophytes like yourself in the field so they didn’t hurt themselves.

        You might think your sister a lousy guide, but it doesn’t matter. And the law really doesn’t care what hunters, reasonable or otherwise, think.

        That said, you would have been well-advised to hire a licensed guide. When you decided to take a 470-yard shot at a grizzly bear, he would have simply told you “don’t be a dumbass. This isn’t the movie ‘The Accountant,’ and you’re not carrying a .50 BMG.”

  4. Just another exercise-hunt by mindless millennial/GenZ types. Alaska needs to clamp down on this sort of garbage.

  5. Just saying but you wrote tht very dramaticly compared to the actual story! You almost do make it sound like bs but if u wud have wrote like they did it wudnt!! But I guess wat can u expect with the internet nowadays! Some people jus can’t handle wen other people get fame!

    • Cannot believe I’m actually responding to the extreme illiterate here, however The Spokesman Review was the one that interviewed him using his own words telling his Own Story. Fact is, if that’s the way it actually happened, they showed bad judgement, and publicly showed it off.

  6. Once heard a story about a soldier named Jessica Lynch. Slayed a hundred dragons while wounded until her ammo ran out. Quite the heroic tale until reality won the day.
    But, on a different note, agree, a .338 can kill a bear at 470yds from an experienced shooter.

    • Byran: I would agree someone can in the Hudson Stuck sense of everything going fine as long as it goes fine; if the air isn’t too dense; if the wind doesn’t shift the point of impact too much; if the hold is steady; if the bullet hits the heart….

      I would credit your average “experienced shooter” with that shot. The average “experienced shooters” I’ve around seem to have a problem putting a shot in the chest of a moose, although I was once hunting with a gun who dropped a moose dead at something beyond 350 yards.

      Deadly brain shot. He was, however, aiming for the chest.

      • Oh, my compliments to Tana for shooting her bear with a bow. If I remember correctly her husband takes 500+yd shots regularly.

      • Bryan, i looked at that video of her shooting a bear with a bow . I really wish they had kept the camera rolling to see if the bear died from the arrow of if someone finished it with a rifle. Imo listening to her statement of shot placement ( the shoulder) and looking at the video ( the shoulder) then looking at the skinned out body of the bear something doesn’t add up . She claims the arrow was pushed through? Well there was massive damage / bloodshot on right side shoulder area like a projectile (maybe arrow) had spent its energy in that specific spot. Not a pass through . Imo an arrow doesn’t cause widespread blood shot in. Muscly animal. Damage is more from cutting and moovement except when hitting something it cant fully penetrate like bone and then disperses its energy. I saw blood around its mouth / muzzle on one side and there was significant blood blood near or on grass . It’s possible it was lung shot . The question is why did arrow appear to spend its energy on the shoulder muscles yet also appear to have lungshot blood. If an arrow expends its energy due to bone hit its hard to do a pass through and get the lungs . That combined with the video cutting off and her approaching the bear without a nocked arrow makes it look fishy from an experienced point of view . It was clearly edited heavily and unless she was incredibly foolish she would have either approached a shoulder hit bear with a nocked arrow or a loaded rifle. From an experienced point of view imo someone had already confirmed death of bear with a rifle. But hey there are stupid people who would approach a brown bear and poke it in the ass with a hand held arrow. Truth is often stranger than fiction. So who knows! Only the people on site. Every one likes a good video right!

      • DPR
        Her brother claimed in the Spokesman Review interview that he poked the recently killed black/brown bear at least 30 times with his hand gun to check status of fatality. “haha”. Might of just as well poked him with his finger 30 times. Might run in the family

      • Zip , so it seems! Imo a fairly definitive way is to see if the eyeballs have glazed and touch them to see if they twitch . Just as good as checking for pulse or nearly so . Safer though! Hah ! After im sure the animal has passed, i thank their spirit for allowing me to have the body then i put a ritual bit of their natural food in the animals mouth. I try to treat them as respectful as is possible after death. We sure are lucky to have such amazing creatures on earth.

      • DPR, cannot dispute what you say as I agree with a lot of what you say. Plus, I didn’t dissect the video as much as you did. I to also assumed approaching without a rifle or unnocked they already knew the bear was dead. Again, I just figured it all was for show and video. I’ll have to go back and look more closely at the video as far as shot placement. As you know, a well placed broadhead can be devastating. I’ll admit when I saw the video that I was impressed being her first bear, etc..
        As you say, some things aren’t always what they seem, but who knows…they have a nice plane to pay for.

      • Bryan, yes – expensive planes . Reality show type video. Ugg. Ive been involved in inner workings of a few . Always a bad taste . Always manipulated for efect . “lets do it this way or add or change that” “can you do that again this way?” What helped me examine the video in question was to take multiple still/ screen shots and zoom in for close examination. That said, maybe there was some unique variable im unaware of . Cutting out a huge section of the video made it impossible to determine any thing for sure . Just like the multiple of manipuated “news” videos we saw last year. News – yeah right. How about fake reality propaganda videos.

      • DPR, I went back and looked at the video..Again, I don’t know all that went into the filming, but looking at the skinned carcus, Tana’s shot placement was excellent and definitely in the kill zone. Again, I commend her for an excellent hunt and shot placement in windy conditions. I am not going to get into editing this or that.
        YouTube “World Record Archery Brown Bear”. Impressive. Again, I don’t know what editing went on.

      • Bryan, id like to agree with you for a feel good story but the facts suggest otherwise. She stated she hit the bear in the shoulder ( not a kill zone unless its back or behind shoulder a little bit ). Then on close examination of skinned out carcass on right hand side if you take a screen shot of it and zoom in you will see all the bloodshot is ahead of the arm bones of shoulder. ( not a killzone shot at all – wounded bear only.) hitting in front of shoulder with The bear mildly quartering away / broadside so that means the arrow most likely missed the killzone lungs snd heart ( missed killzone= bad shot placement) yes its impressive she stalked the bear and bravely took a shot. Many men flake out at that point. Ive seen incredible marksman change their mind at that point. Either she got super lucky and bled the bear out / hit an artery or the bear was finished with a rifle. Which appears most likely due to edits of video. Congratulations / kudos to her for her bravery but technically it’s probably not an archery kill . If you have access to pope and young extensive records let me know if it was listed in pope / young. That might tell a little more accurate. They don’t allow bullet holes . So if its listed , it suggests an archery kill but even that’s not always accurate. Obviously because its a smaller brownie it didn’t make top ten but the question remains,was it entered in pope / young ? If not then thats more evidence. If so then it points to possible archery kill. Id like to go with feel good “ girl kills brownie with bow”( but apparent facts point against) only her crew knows for sure . Take a close look at where the blood shot is on the skinned out animal. Snap a couple still shots and zoom in . Its not in killzone. Something unusual is at play . She said she missed typical killzone and hit in shoulder. Yes kudos to her bravery!!!

      • DPR, not to drag this out as it isn’t what the story was about, but if you look right behind the right shoulder you will see the arrow penetrated right in the lungs for what looked like a double lung shot.. This would explain the blood you saw around the mouth. I would encourage you to go back and enlarge the still frame of the right side of the carcus. What I think you are seeing front shoulder isn’t wounds at all. If that arrow hit forward of the shoulder with a side or quartering away shot as you say, it wouldn’t have even fazed that bear.. The shoulder looks untouched..IMHO, but we know what opinions are worth..

      • Bryan, thanks for Discourse. You may well be correct. Im just going off what she said and where the trauma is apparent. Perhaps you have better eyes than mine. I will bow to the potential that you could be correct. I would have to be at the site for examination to be 100% certain. ( I think the discussion of her shot is parallel to the article because its discussion of accuracy in stories)

  7. Hey Craig: I’m pretty sure all brown bears taken still have to be sealed, why not check ADF&G records for this immense bear and see how big it really was? Must be a record book bear to be seen from 8 miles, from a beach no less. Would also be interesting to know the kill location, in my 30 years around King Salmon and Unit 9 I never remember hiking through any devil’s club.
    I’ll be waiting to read your follow up to this fairy tale.

  8. My opinion only- This expansion/fascination in extreme long range shooting is a cancer. Tana Grenda is a seriously experienced Alaska hunter. Check out their Utube channel, “Stuck in the Rut”. This was not her first barbeque. So how did she, with all conventional thought going towards a 100 yard shot, permit this to happen? Was it filmed, and if so, did they have the required permits for same?
    And off the rails a little bit- Why are these filming permits granted to a limited entry resource that is fully subscribed? For the most part they are for profit enterprises leaching off public lands at the publics’ expense. In the case of Outside they are famous for “burning” spots. Have seen a few sheep honey holes burned in Alaska with too much scenery giving the locale away.

  9. These guys are the real deal. I grew up in the same neck of the woods as them and they know what they are doing. If these guys “barely survived” this encounter, most other people would have been dinner. Besides the fact that 470 yards with a 338 RUM is nothing.

      • Donald smith, I think that was Medreds point. He and you are right in general terms . Though I don’t completely agree as to specific situations. Certain people with certain equipment can probably shoot 1” groups at 500 yards occasionally off a bench. People who specialize in getting the twist of barrel, powder , bullet, optics , wind and other variables to work together correctly do get 1” groups . Its all about the equipment , and training to use it while having lots of patience. Can anyone get such results with specialized equipment and training ? No. It requires someone with a calm heartbeat and nerves that do not cause involuntarily muscle twitches.

    • Ben French, if these guys are the real deal then why did the girl take a bow and arrows as back up ? Is she a poor planner or just foolish? Why didn’t she stick that bear with a few arrows in defense of life ? If they are the real deal why didn’t trevor drop the bear where the bear stood? Is he not getting a good rest for his rifle or is he flinching when he shoots ? Perhaps he didn’t site his rifle in very well or adjust adequately to the wind or distance? He put his foolish sisters life in danger with poor shooting. A .338 should have put that bear down so apparently someone doing the shooting was incompetent . If these guys were real deal why did trevors rifle jam after 3 rd shot ? Is he not keeping his action clean? Is he using sub par ammo? Cheap rifle? Yeah i agree a decent shooter could put down a brown bear at 470 yards with a .338 . Trevor didn’t. What does that tell you ? Someone had poor planning which points away from being the real deal . The real deal could have taken a small caliber and put that bear down waiting for an opportunity real close up . Trevor couldn’t do it with a top end caliber until it became a face to face drama . Whats that tell you ? Ive seen a few people who have put charging grizzlies and moose down with a .22 . Thats the real deal . Skill with your weapon. Some people do it with a knife or spear in a pinch .

  10. With the bear having to pay the price for bad judgement shots, it pretty much sounds like the blind leading the blind and then telling their blundering coastal black oops brown bear story to the ignorant. What ever happened to journalists research, or is going above and beyond just not a thing anymore (can’t be bothered), and people trust these people to report the facts on other such subjects.
    I wonder if they were using those step counters to figure the 8 mile distance, because those are so accurate you know. In 14 hours that bear didn’t move from it’s post?? I would ask for them to be a little more explicit, however my hip waters are already at their limit as of now.
    Meanwhile, Marlin Savage is a thinker and seems to be onto something with the salt. “Excellent”

    • Actually, my first sentence is factual. Went from a 30-30 to a flintlock for a few years……

    • It was a GPS’d 5 miles as the crow flies but a 8 mile hike as tracked on the OnX tracking app on my phone, not a step counter. Humans aren’t birds obviously and have to go up, down, and around geological features so it extends the distance but this guys article is ignorant and doesn’t specify those detains. The youtube video is going live in the next 3 weeks so you can see all of it for yourself! Along with the $10k 75x Swarovski spotting scope and phone scope footage where you can see how far it is and we explain all you could see is tracks in the snow and a blob bedded which given the area was obviously a bear but unknown size and as will be seen on the youtube video that the closer we got the better look we got also.

  11. Sounds like an entertaining story. Sounds mostly bs . Yet there is remote possibility its 99% true . Truth is often stranger than fiction. So ive heard. People do stupid stuff and make stupid decisions. What I gather from the story is unqualified people should not be relied on to assist with bear hunts or any large game especially if it lives in the mountains. That idiot should have hired a guide to reduce the risk of the bear suffering unnecessarily. Yeah I know alaska statues allow second degree of kindred to pretend to be guides. Maybe there should be an extensive qualification and experience test for that act just like guides go through as well as requirement to be overseen by a registered guide just like assistant guides must be . ( most hunting guides are truly a cut above most civilians in regard to wilderness experience and knowledge of hunting ) time to change the law . While im on the subject i say its time to abolish bear baiting especially from tree stands especially for grizzly/ brown bears . Not only are you training bears to eat garbage but you are totally using a despicable non sportsman method of take on a truly majestic species. Shame on all you (“ hunters”) unless you are using that method to feed your families its just despicable. ( “I’m such a brave hunter i shot a grizzly from a tree”) such a hunt should only be allowed for subsistence food or maybe people who are registered handicapped. Theres my 50 cents .

  12. Reminds me of when I was younger and used to hunt whitetails with a flintlock rifle. I’d sometimes have to add salt to my black powder load on extra long shots so the deer meat wouldn’t spoil before I could hike to the kill location………

  13. Pretty amateurish all around. And as Rod Arno intimated in different wording, not much difference as far as fair chase.goes than if they had shot it from their initial (supposed) 8-mile discovery point with some sort of guided, heat-seeking missal.

    One time on the range I asked a man shooting a .50 BMG “getting ready for a hunt” what he saw in such an arm. He spoke enthusiastically of being able to shoot a ram at a thousand yards. I couldn’t hold back the sarcasm in opining that a ram feeling safe in the cliffs might well be expected to stand and watch him from that range as he set up for the shot. In such a case, he could have come straight from never a day’s experience beyond the streets of New York City, knowing nothing of animal behavior, and yet take the ram solely through technology, Some accomplishment!

    A bowhunter education instructor friend of mine took his record book brown bear at 11 paces. He stalked close, then the bear, unaware of his presence, walked up almost on top of him. Gail said he was quaking in his boots as he delivered the arrow. He was hunting alone, but willing to take the risks he did because of his value of such ultimate fair chase, As nearly as he could he was duplicating the experience of Alaska’s pre-contact hunters.

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