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Hunting the Coastal Brown Bears of Alaska
- pantheonhunters
- Sep 21, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 2, 2025
Trophy rooms fulfill many purposes, and perhaps none is more proper than to glorify the power and grandeur animals hunted in fair chase. While it’s gratifying to experience the awe felt by gazing visitors to a trophy room, it’s particularly interesting to see what attracts the most attention. The sight of a big life-size coastal brown bear seems most imposing, if not terrifying, as they reflect on the command that a monster bear has over its remote and totally wild domain.
It could be argued that a brown bear hunt along Alaska’s coast or the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia qualifies as one of the Top 10 hunts worldwide. In listening to hunters’ stories of their brown bear hunts, it’s apparent that they had truly hunted, that they gained a huge measure of respect for big bears, and that they had a hunter’s version of an out-of-body experience.
Big bears don’t come easy. In fact, seeing one and getting close enough to one for a shot are two different things altogether. Sometimes you get all the closeness you never wanted! A client recently experienced what that’s like. He hit his bear badly and the bear went into a thicket and found a hole. Crawling behind his guide on hands and knees, the bear’s head popped out of the hole as they approached. One shot straight into the nostrils with a .458 at point blank range thankfully ended their drama.
If it’s true that one kills an elephant with his feet, that also applies to taking a brown bear. But what happens beforehand — locating the animal — is the difference. Bear hunting requires a lot of time dedicated to glassing big country. Plan to sit, look hard and long, and look again. Prepare for the worst where the weather is concerned. Relentless 20-50 mile per hour gusts of wind coupled with driving rain can take the joy out of just about anything. And prepare to come back the next day and start the process all over again.
Regardless, hope springs eternal when hunting brown bears. Where there was nothing just moments ago may now be a small dark speck at 3,000 yards that is moving. It could end up being the holy grail — a 10-footer. But, what lies between the guide and hunter and the bear is likely hell on earth. Dozens of streams to cross. Alder jungles to fight. Rocks. Mud. Slippery slopes. Meanwhile, the bear is likely to be moving at a speed that amazes. It’s typical that the bear will move in and out of sight during the stalk, and the hunter’s heart will rise and sink many times along the way.
One of our own hunts on the Alaska Peninsula begins with the airline delivering our guns in Anchorage but off-loading the rest of our gear in Salt Lake City. We had planned to overnight in Anchorage anyway, but were now desperate to buy new gear during our short overnight layover. We certainly did not want to head out from Anchorage gear-less, or worse, miss the daily flight down to Sand Point for the sake of waiting for the gear to arrive the next day.
So, that evening we scoured the phone directory for sporting goods stores just hoping that one would open early enough to buy the basic gear needed in time to catch the flight down to the Peninsula.
We had exactly one hour between a store opening and our flight departing. We commandeered a wild cab driver who happened to be a sportsman. When we told him how the airline put our hunt in jeopardy, she tore off at the speed of a New York City cab. He was a real character.
When we got to the store, it was still closed, but there was a clerk dressing a manikin in the window with a hunting coat exactly like the one sitting in my luggage in Utah. Recognizing the hurried look on our faces, the clerk came to the door and I asked “what size is that coat on the manikin?” “Large”, he replied. “Good, we’ll take two, and we’re in a bloody hurry and need your help”.
Alaskans are great people, and this guy could not have been more helpful. He rounded up 3 boxes of .375 ammo, socks and liners, shirts, pants, hat, and gloves. Luckily, we had the sense to wear our hunting boots on the plane, so we were tricked out as far as footwear was concerned.
In our peripheral vision we could see the cab driver admiring a pair of hip waders. So, we asked him if he needed a pair. “Yeah man”, he excitedly replied! “Well, you can thank Delta Airlines because they are buying you that pair of waders. Now, let’s get to the airport”. Our knuckles went white as we held on and made the flight with no time to spare.
We were met in Sand Point by our guide, an ace pilot who ended up scaring the hell out of us several times in his re-built (many times) Super Cub. He could take off and set it down without any semblance of a runway.
We were confident that we had landed in big bear country. After a quick change of clothes and paring down our backpacks to the bare essentials, we were airborne again and headed out to spike camp. We landed on a sandbar of an inlet well below the cabin which was set into the face of a hill far above. It was purposely camouflaged so that the crews of ships staged for porting in Alaska’s harbors would not find it while waiting their turn to dock. It was a plywood structure with just enough room for 3 people to lay side-by-side; guide, packer and me. At one end of the small structure was the door and the other was a Coleman stove. It was a pretty comfortable alternative to the backpacking tents we used in other parts of the area.
A mink had found the cabin equally comfortable. The guide reached over to light the Coleman when the tubing ignited. A mink had bitten the tube in multiple locations and the perforations leaked gas that flamed instantly. That blaze got us up faster than any alarm clock could have done.
Days are very long during Alaska’s spring, and it was not uncommon for us to get up at noon, and hunt until midnight. Our morning routine involved walking the ridges high above the beach and glassing for bears in all the depressions and canyons as we moved. We would walk the beach late in the evenings hoping to catch a bear coming down to nourish on kelp or a beached carcass.
We started to see bears right away. But what amused us more were the fresh brown bear tracks circling the cabin. While we were out hunting every day, a bear would chew on the cabin walls and lick the glue that fused the layers of the plywood walls.
Uncharacteristically for the Peninsula, the sun appeared and the weather turned stellar for the entire hunt. Could this actually be the big, bad, inclement Alaska Peninsula that we were hunting? One must accept everything and anything that a brown bear hunt dishes out, and in this case, it was some unexpected great weather.
We were up high above the beach one day and saw two moving specks well out in front of us. We quickly set up the spotting scope and could see that it was a boar and sow. He was trying to mate with her, but she was resisting. His advances kept them occupied with each other and stationary. After a 2-hour stalk we were able to close the gap to 50 yards. As we peered around a rocky ledge, the bears were laying down, nose to nose, apparently exhausted from their struggle.
When the boar was alerted to us, he started to climb a ridge and was now 100 yards away. A .375 on the point of his shoulder and another into his chest as he reacted to the first shot. He rolled downward and disappeared into a gully. As we cautiously approached from above, the sow surprised us coming our direction not more than 10 yards on our flank. She appeared happy to be getting away from him.
There he was. Most of his massive body was lying in a creek, so we had to skin him there. We could see that the wind currents down on the beach below were too stiff to plan on a Super Cub coming in safely to collect us. While we skinned the bear and contemplated what to do we heard the outfitter’s plane approaching. He had come over from base camp to check on us and happened to spot us below. He, too, noticed the white caps hitting the beach. So, he landed on a small clearing 800 yards directly above us and came down to help us finish skinning the bear. A wet hide on a bear that big would easily weigh 200 pounds, and we felt every bit of hit as we took turns packing it up to the plane. Once we reached the plane, we cleared some rocks and made a short runway. A couple of shuttle trips got us and the trophy back to camp.
The skin measured 10 feet and 4 inches square, and surpassed hopes and dreams. With all the interesting animals available to hunt worldwide, a brown bear hunt is one of the select few hunts that we would do again.
That’s why we hunt them on the Kamchatka Peninsula, too. Look for that story.
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