Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Appropriate calibres for Grizzlies and/or Coastal Brown Bears

Have you ever considered the concept of the Legacy involved in putting those two together? OOhhhh wait! Never mind!

😉

Is "Old Nan" open sighted, or scoped?

David, that is a generous offer and plan! You certainly take after your father in many good ways. 😎

Will Phil be taking it in the original rifle case too? On dad's last bear hunt, pops took one of his own rifles now that I remember it. When Phil comes out with the story on this event, I will be sure to toast both Hal and David Sr. 🐻

I think the appropriate cartridge for Grizzly bear's pretty much depends on the individual. If your carrying a 458 Win and mess up the bear could still eat you. On the other hand if your carrying a lot less and place the bullet right, the bear dies. I think people tend to over think cartridges and under think their own abilities! If it were me hunting the bear, at this point in my life it would be with my 30-06 and probably a 200 gr bullet. Gave up shooting magnums years ago, can't stand the recoil of them and that will effect my ability to make a good hit. But truth be known I suspect the 338 magnum, if I could handle one would be my choice with a 250gr bullet, couldn't handle one. A common trait between grizzly bears and sage rats is a properly placed bullet that get to the target and game over. It's just easier to hit "a" target on the bear even if not a good target. And, on the sage rat the target is about the size of the rat. At this point in my life I'd simply shoot the bear with my Nikon!

I'd not hesitate to shoot a brown/grizzly bear with my 30/06 loaded with 168 grain TTSX bullets.

Mark Phil has the seal skin scabbard with him now. It still has the name tag on it with Hal's name. They just belong together in my mind.

Can't fault you for your caliber choice, and if someone offered me a free brown bear hunt with the condition I bring my BDL in 270 (150g Partitions at 3000 fps) I'd do it in a heart beat. I'm sure you know this, but they seem bigger when you're within 15 yards of them.

Growing up my father had a good friend who was an Alaska Native. At some point Alex told my dad he was going home to hunt a polar bear. Dad wanted to know what gun he would be using. Alex said he would use a 243. Dad was worried for him and offered him his choice of a number of other guns. Alex said no he was good with the 243. He said look how much better off he was than his father had been. His dad hunted them with a stick! The animals of today are no bigger or tougher than they were hundreds of years ago. If you have the nerve and skill to place your shot in the right spot they all die.

The sling is also a classic and I am leaving it with the case in main camp

I also have Hal’s Win M12 20 ga shotgun that I bought from his son Dan when he was moving out of Alaska. It’s still a great ptarmigan gun.

Nice, Phil! Back in 61 or 62, we moved from Nome to Anchorage. My dad was invited to shoot trap at the old range over on (l believe) 36th. He shot 98 out of 100, and won the event. The prize was a new, "trap grade" m12 in 20 gauge. Older brother has it now. Learned to wing shoot at twelve. Shot many grouse, ptarmigan, and eve a brace of "rib-eye in the sky" (sandhill crane for the layman) with it. What a marvelous shotty you have! Cannot wait for the article/story to come to print...

This thread has been an excellent and enjoyable read. Many thanks to all of those that have participated in the original thread in '05 and then in the resurrected thread this year! Really looking forward to hearing about Big Nan's upcoming adventures with Phil this year. Many thanks and much respect to the Waugh family for enabling this to happen.

Best Regards,
Tim

OK .... so you're talking about 200- 400 yards max, right ? And your 30-06 is such a grand killer of bears !

My plan this fall is to get on a high vantage point overlooking a massive bay on Afognak Is. with several salmon creeks , a place where you can see 10-20 bears during the day ...

The plan is to glass for several days until the biggest bear is identified and set up for termination !

Shots will be from 800 yards minimum to 1800 yards max due to the elevation of shooting position and cartridge effective killing power

My cartridge of choice has more velocity/energy at 1000 yards than your 30-06 has at 400 yards ...

Sounds like a solid plan !

800-1800 yards to shoot a bear? What a doofus loser you are. Real skill would be stalking up to one as close as you can and killing it cleanly with one well placed round. There is no honor in a sniping assassination of such a majestic beastie. Real hunters rely on their woodcraft and the tool for the job not a man child who is more concerned with his hyper sonic whizbanger from way out there. What a tool.

both techniques require practice and skill.

458, it’s neat that you’re going to carry Hal’s rifle this year. I read everything I could get ahold of by and about him, seemed to be an interesting gentleman with a dedication to “fair chase” back when that wasn’t so common.

Does anyone know the whereabouts of his 358 Featherweight? He seemed to like it in his later days guiding.

I always thought the sealskin case for Big Nan was cool. Used to be an older fellow at some shows and functions who was always wearing a western cut vest made of sealskin that was a neat throwback to the pre MMA days.

Are you using a 300gr Partition in the 375 Wby or something else?

Other than bragging rights , what is the point of a minimum distance ?

It certainly has nothing to do with hunting skills

A bear certainly could move enough to spoil the shot in that time of flight. That assumes a correct wind call, exact range call, etc. That's the risk you run with these extreme range shooting stunts. You can observe animals and try to predict what they will do, but you are introducing another factor (time of flight) into the equation whenever you start shooting at further and further ranges.

Skill aside are you implying this falls within the sporting ethic of gentlemen?

All hunting is a combination of skill and luck. The difference between stalking up and shooting an animal at 200-400 yards versus sniping it at 800-1800 yards is that in the sniping situation a little bit of bad luck is more likely to result in a wounded animal. Of the likely outcomes to hunting, the worst possible outcome is to wound an animal and fail to recover it. While sometimes a hunter will inadvertently wound an animal for a variety of reasons, an ethical hunter would seek to reasonably minimize the chances of wounding an animal and not recovering it. We cannot control every factor, but we can control some of them. The longer the time between pulling the trigger and bullet reaching the target, the more that can go wrong.

Think through the scenario and consider the outcomes before you make a judgment call as to whether or not it is ethical to shoot at a bear at 800-1800 yards.

Getting closer might mean that the wind shifts, the bear gets alerted, and it runs off. Not the best outcome for the hunter, but far from the worst. Getting closer could also mean that the bear gets alerted prematurely and the hunter finds himself in a snap shot situation, for which he may or may not be prepared. If you are proficient at shooting at moving targets, this may be quite a simple proposition. If you are not proficient at this kind of shot, then you should not be considering it. But even if you are generally good at taking shots at moving targets, that does not mean you should always do so. There will still be situations where an experienced ethical hunter will choose not to pull the trigger.

In the sniper scenario, even a slight shift in the bear's position can mess up the shot. A lot can happen in a second or a second and a half. A gust of wind, a movement by the animal, etc. can alter the plan enough to turn a clean kill into a wounding shot. Those are factors that the sniper cannot control - and a lot of the goal in ethical hunting is to control as many factors as possible to reasonably minimize the likelihood of a bad outcome. You can have all the skill in the world as a sniper or long range shooter, but you cannot control what will occur for the second to second and a half that your bullet is in the air. My ethical code limits shots at that kind of range to inanimate objects or other humans.

What is the plan if you wound a dangerous animal at 800-1800 yards?