I regularly wish that I had already taken the time to jot down notes about different adventures I’ve been on. Memories fade and once they’re gone, if there’s no one around that can refresh your memory, it’s gone. And while all adventures end up being noteworthy for one reason or another, there are certain creams that rise to the top; the Amazon, Greenland, Alaska, the American West, the Andes…
I want to share a little bit about a recent adventure to Alaska, just a couple of weeks removed, in fact. I shoot photos between 50 and 70 days a year for Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Club, going all over the world to document real hunters and anglers on their dream trips. It is quite the gig for me. If I were single and didn’t have a beautiful wife and daughters at home, there would basically be no downside to these jobs. On a bad day they’re good and some days are too special to put into words. In recent years I have also taken on hosting duties for some of these trips, which basically means I’m another layer of problem-solving in case there are any issues, and I enjoy that role, as well. It’s an honor to be trusted with such things for two powerhouse outdoor brands like that, and with lifetime trips for the guests. I don’t take that stuff lightly.
A bunk bed on board that boat nestled inside that picturesque cove was home for the week. Not too shabby.
One of my shoots this year, perhaps the one I was looking forward to the most in 2024, was a spring coastal black bear hunt off Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. I’ve been to the Kenai before, but not the rugged east coast, chock full of mountain goats and black bears and Sitka blacktail deer. And because my personal favorite trips of all time are the mothership trips with Nomadic Waters in the Amazon, the fact that this black bear trip, outfitted by Alaska Safari Unlimited, would also be a mothership trip added that ultimate layer of adventure to it all. Alaska… bears… boats… Battlestar Gallactica… Sorry, spontaneous Office reference.
Alaska Safari Unlimited’s mothership and skiffs moored in a beautiful backwater.
Before I give you some of the highlights of the trip, I did want to answer a question that undoubtedly some of you will have (especially since I shoot for quite a few clients outside of the hunting and fishing world, I know that some of you might instantly react to even the thought of killing an animal as incredible as a bear): Why hunt bears?
To answer that, I’m going to take you back to 2015 and the news phenomenon that broke the internet wide open: American Dentist Murders Cecil the Lion. The press jumped all over it. How disgusting that a rich American would go over and murder this majestic king of the jungle. Well, here’s the actual truth: Older male mammals, regardless of species, breed less than their younger counterparts, and they’re grumpier. For humans, this just means the old guy on the block might yell at you to get off his lawn. For lions, tigers, and bears, this means that if a younger male enters their domain, that younger male is pretty likely going to die. Hunting an old, wary male is actually the height of sporting pursuit. Their instincts have kept them alive for a long time, so a successful hunt is no easy proposition. And since they aren’t going to breed as many females, and thus create as many offspring, as the younger males, it is actually (generally speaking) a net negative thing for the population for an old male to keep on living. Combine that with the fact that the local wildlife preserve sold that hunt to the American dentist for six figures, allowing them to employ rangers from their own people to guard the land and wildlife against poachers (which have devastated African game populations in many areas), and really the only negative of the whole story is the actual death of Cecil. But guess what? He was going to die anyway. And I don’t know how you picture animals dying in the wild, but they don’t die in their beds, surrounded by loved ones. It is almost always a gruesome, agonizing, drawn-out death (in comparison to the bullet that killed Cecil in just a few seconds). In short, I’m not asking you to hunt if this all doesn’t resonate with you. I’m just asking you to consider not being anti-hunting until you really understand how it all works.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the Alaskan coastal black bear hunt. These bears are beautiful, bigger than their peers in other parts of the continent because of their summer- and fall access to salmon runs, and carry instincts with them that make them formidable quarry. Their sense of smell, for example, is many times more sensitive than that of a bloodhound. If even the slightest breeze or the thermocline carries some of your scent their way, they’re gone.
And do they ever live in some beautiful country. Black bears, unlike brown/grizzly bears, are forest creatures (brown bears tend to like more open country), so seeing one mozy out onto a beach or gravel bar to feed on mussels or kelp is just special. Identifying their size and maturity level, for me at least, is a real challenge. I think in part because they are so dark in color it’s difficult in most lighting scenarios to spot the tell-tale signs of a mature male, like the big crease in their forehead that develops as they age and gain weight. They don’t develop the big hump in their shoulders like brown bear boars, and I know their ears are telling as to their maturity, but again, for me, it’s just not as easy to decipher as the obvious story a mature brown bear’s ears tell.
Because this hunt is primarily a late-afternoon or evening hunt - morning or midday can be productive, but not typically - and because the hunting guides would be up late most nights skinning out a bear, cleaning gear, etc., we were tasked with keeping quiet on the mothership until about nine each morning. So for most of us, that meant sleeping until about 8:00, getting up and tiptoeing through the galley to get a cup of coffee, and having some breakfast. As someone who has never been a morning person, this was pretty dang great. At maybe 10:30 or so, we would load up - hunters, guides, and the camera guy (me) - into 17-18-foot skiffs and head to one of two different hunting grounds that the outfitter had permission to hunt (from native Alaskan tribes). The hunting style - spot and stalk - is just enjoyable no matter what happens. One of the things I don’t like about still hunting, like we do in treestands in the South, is that you’re still. I mean, for a couple of days a year, I do like sitting still in the woods. It’s good for you. But there’s a reason so many Southerners head west each fall to hunt elk or mule deer, and why so many people prefer spot-and-stalk hunting over the agonizing blind-and-decoy “hunting.” Spotting an animal on its feet, then having to consider where that animal is going to go, the wind and thermocline, how much daylight is left, etc. - in short, strategy - is one of the things that makes hunting, well, hunting. So in these skiffs, we would glass (scan the beaches with binoculars) for black bears. When we would spot one, which we didn’t for the first two days, we would then have to figure out if it was a mature male and also if there would be a potentially-successful way to approach the animal without being detected in order to get close enough to make an ethical shot; ideally no more than 200 yards, as, unlike a deer, if a black bear gets wounded and makes it into a den, well, do you want to go in to check if it’s dead?
With one hunter, Rob, and our guide, Todd, what appeared to be a really big, mature boar (male bear) was upstream of us, grazing beside a creek that flowed into a bay just outside of Cook Inlet. It was several hundred yards up the creek, feeding in a grass flat, so we would have to hop out of the skiff in shallow water - it rains so much in this area and you’re in and out of boats so much that you actually hunt in waders - then use the landscape and the wind direction to stealthily creep to within shooting distance. When we got about 150 yards from this beast, there was a huge old drift log, complete with a huge old rootball, roughly halfway between us and the bear. We were able to use that to block his view of us and get a much more favorable shooting vantage point. Todd talked Rob - a well-traveled, very skilled hunter - through the process, not because Rob didn’t know it, but because in these high-adrenaline scenarios, even rote memory can go out the window and mistakes can be made. So it’s always best to slow down, calm down, and remember the process. Rob got his rifle onto a sturdy tripod and made a perfect shot at probably about 150 yards. The big bear went down, but was still moving around a bit, so Rob quickly got another bullet in the chamber and put another perfect shot into him. Unlike how this animal would die if it were of “natural causes” (ie - another animal like a big brown bear or a pack of wolves or coyotes) if it did live long enough to get old and sick, Rob’s expert shots had this bear expired within probably 10-15 seconds.
Even though we were sure that this bear had expired, you still always want to be cautious when approaching an animal like this. Todd got to him first and gave his rump a quick shove with his boot, ready to peel backwards if the animal wasn’t fully dead yet. This one was probably close to 400 pounds and when you know that an animal like that - with four-inch claws - can pull all that weight up a tree faster than you can run, well, you exercise caution.
One thing non-hunters probably don’t realize is how many hunters truly love the animals they pursue. It seems paradoxical, counter-intuitive, even hypocritical, but it’s true. I’d venture to guess that out all the hunters alive today, maybe five percent are jerks who are just out there for their own egos and who really don’t value the animal. I’ve seen alpha males in their own niches in life break down and cry as they walk upon a worthy opponent they have just felled. I’ve seen friends stop and pray together, genuinely thanking God for the experience, the meat for their families (high-quality, organic, cage-free!), and the animal itself, torn between the exhilaration of the hunt and kill and the reality of taking a life.
When Rob got to the big bear, he knelt down and put his hand on its shoulder, then its head. He spent a few minutes just sitting with it, admiring it, respecting it, and soaking it all in. It’s no small thing to kill, and in a place this beautiful with a creature this substantial, it can really be an overwhelming moment.
We spent probably 15 minutes shooting photos together. I like seeing my work published in magazines or on the home page of some brand’s website or up on a billboard, but far better than that, to me, is the thought that, for Rob, I can hopefully get some photos of this moment and achievement that his grandkids and great grandkids will be looking at some day, maybe even keeping them hung up in a frame on the wall of their George-Jetson-like home in the sky, far ahead in the future.
The next half an hour was a memory I’ll never shake because it was so unique. Since the bear fell within just a few yards of the creek it was feeding beside, we were able to drag him into the cold, crystal-clear water and float him all the way down to the bay. This whole scenario was simply a photographer’s dream.
When we got the bear loaded up into the skiff, we went around a corner and spotted another mature bear feeding up another creek, and I got to go with Todd again and Rob’s friend Donald to pursue Donald’s bear. We had a very similar (ie - awesome) hunt and another go of floating a bear down yet another creek. It was just spectacular.
With both brutes loaded in the skiff at my feet, we transported them back to the mothership to prepare the bears for transport to a taxidermist back in civilization. I have two regrets from this trip: one is that I wasn’t present for hunter Mike’s kill - He was my roommate/bunkmate on the boat and just a great guy, and the other is that I didn’t get someone to film me helping to skin out these two bears so that I could show them to our daughters. I’ve processed a good number of deer over the years, but I had never skinned a bear before this photo shoot (ha!) and it was a cool experience.
Don’t wait for the chance to explore Alaska. It lives up to the hype. This was my sixth trip there and it has yet to become normal to my senses. It’s just spectacular. And if you ever get the chance, don’t pass the opportunity to experience a bear hunt like this one. It’s a true adventure.
