He wasn't exactly Paddington bear.

We had a birthday party for Saramay yesterday, and Anthony was antsy the whole time we were there because it was nice outside and he wanted to go for a hike to scout out places for fishing. I promised him that I'd go hiking with him all day today.

So today, we got our packs together and went hiking. He has a few places that he wants to scout out to see if there's any good trout fishing, but I convinced him to head for a place off Snake Lake Road that we had been on snowmachine before. It's a bit off of the road itself, but it's a nice little valley with a stream where there's usually lots of moose. (Except, of course, when I've been there, but there have been moose every time Anthony went without me before.)

We drove out (Aleknagik) Lake Road towards the start of Snake Lake Road. As we were driving out there, with his dog Sofie happily sleeping in my lap as we drove, we came up over a hill and there was a moose right in the middle of the road. It was huge! It was actually a mother with a calf, which was much smaller. The calf was about the size of a Great Dane and the mother was as tall as any thoroughbred I've ever seen. It was a seriously large animal. Anthony's camera was still in his backpack, so we didn't get any pictures as they trotted off into the woods. It was pretty neat, though, and the closest I've come to a moose yet.

We turned off onto Snake Lake Road and drove up to the overlook point. This is a little area of broken rock to the left of the road. The road itself actually goes up and across the side of a mountain, so there's always mountain on the right and a drop-off into the valley to the left. The overlook spot is on the left and gives a great view of the area. Anthony took a panaramic picture of it.


We got unloaded, both of us with our packs, me carrying my single-shot shotgun and Sofie bounding along beside us. The stream we were headed to is about 2 miles down from the road. First we had to get down the hill through a lot of brush. It's really slow going through this stuff, but we made our way from clearing to clearing and got down into a wooded area with alders and spruce. It was easier going then. We saw a lot of moose scat. At some point we came across some scat I didn't recognize as moose, and there was a lot of it. Our educated guess was that it was bear scat, so I put a slug round into the shotgun, which I had been carrying empty.

As we came down through the trees, we could see open country to left, so we weaved out there. It was really marshy tundra, though, so we moved back into the trees a bit. After a few minutes of walking like this, we came out into the open again and it was less marshy. I had Anthony wait up for me and as I caught up to him, I turned around.

A flash of brown caught my eye, and I pointed it out to Anthony. It was a grizzly bear. I would have estimated from memory that it was about 300 yards away, but we measured with Google Earth as well, and it said it was more like 1/4 mile. No matter what the actual distance was, it felt close. We were in the open, with trees to our back, and the bear was across the open area.


He was lumbering along as he was coming down off of the ridge between us and the road, and while he was travelling parallel to the road, he wasn't walking perpendicular to us. In fact, as he was coming off the ridge, he seemed to be pointed straight at us.


We immediately froze, and Anthony took off his backpack and clipped Sofie to it. He started his camera rolling in video mode, and unholstered his .45 pistol. I held my shotgun ready just in case. The proximity of such an enormous, powerful animal made me really nervous, and he kept lumbering along mostly perpendicular to us, but closing the gap slightly. Anthony and I were immediately afraid that he would run into the trees that we just came through that were now to our left as we faced the bear, and then we would lose sight of him.

The wind was in our faces, so I don't think that the bear actually knew we were there, so the first thing we did was yell really loudly to try to get its attention. On the video Anthony shot, you can hear us yelling, but the bear doesn't even seem to notice us. He is still just moving at the same angle to us, towards the trees. Anthony suggests that I fire a shot into the air to startle him. I tell him that I'm switching to buckshot, so that I don't waste a slug in case the bear comes towards us. Then he says that he could fire a shot from his pistol. I really didn't want to waste any ammunition for the shotgun or his .45 pistol, though, so I tell him that I'll fire off a round from the .380 pocket pistol that I was also carrying.

In the video, you can hear Anthony say that he's going to cover his ears. Then I pointed the little pistol into the air, cover my closer ear with one hand and fire off two rounds in fairly quick succession. A split second after the first shot, the bear's head snaps up and he looks in our direction and then begins running full tilt perpendicular to us and into the woods. I had to recock the pistol because the magazine slipped out a little, and then I fired a third shot into the air. The bear just keeps running for the woods.

(Anthony got a video that's about a minute and a half long, from the time we see the bear, yell at him, and then finally shoot into the air and scare him off. It's about 30 megabytes, though, so I made a shorter clip (3.5 mb) that starts when he suggests shooting in the air, and ends when the bear hits the treeline. It's a bit shaky, but watch the bear's head snap up as it hears the first shot, and look how fast it runs.)




As soon as the bear hits the tree line, we decide to head in the exact opposite direction, through the open tundra where we can keep a good eye behind us. Anthony let Sofie loose, and she immediately began running towards where we last saw the bear. We both yelled for her as we headed the other direction, and she quickly realized that we weren't going to follow her towards the bear, and ran back to us.

Anthony looked back as we were moving across the tundra and said that he saw the bear heading back the way it had originally came, up towards the road. That didn't really leave us any good options for turning around and going back to the car right away, so we headed further out into the bush towards the stream.

We found the stream easily. Anthony took a nice panoramic shot of it.


We planted ourselves down in the valley next to it. Anthony scouted around for some good fishing spots while Sofie and I relaxed for about an hour.


When Anthony finally got done looking around, we packed back up and headed back out of the valley. At the top of the ridge, there was a game trail and we saw some fairly good-size bear prints, but the camera battery was dead, so we didn't get any more pictures.

Almost as soon as we got into the trees to cross back over to the open tundra, Anthony found a giant moose antler that had been shed. We looked around a little for the other one, but there was just one. He lugged it all the way back to the car. It was a pretty good find--definitely an Alaskan touch to decorate their house. Apparently people find them in the woods all the time when the moose shed them.

We kept to the open tundra for the entire trip back to the car, except when we got to the mountain itself, where we had to crawl and scramble our way through brush that even a bear would probably avoid. I was exhausted by the time we reached the car again, and very happy not to have seen our friend the bear twice.

I think our little episode with the bear was scarier when it was happening that it really needed to be. Like I said, when we checked the distance on Google Earth, it said it was actually 1/4 mile away, but it sure didn't seem like it at the time. Also, if the bear ran 30 mph, which I understand they can when they're charging, it could have reached us in less than half a minute. That would not have given us much time to shoot and reload a single-shot shotgun, if it became necessary. Then again, even brown or grizzly bears are usually skittish around people unless they have cubs or you surprise one by walking right up on it in the bush. We were in the open, so that was probably the safest situation. Nevertheless, it was both scary and pretty amazing.