Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Minimum 'caliber' for Kodiak Brown Bear?

Marine Hawk is a southerner?

This has been an immensely interesting read, but whilst I know very little about bears I am of the understanding that the calibre and cartridge size required increases in concert with how close the animal is getting.

Further, I am informed that at fifty paces a ma deuce is supposed to be very comforting.

I'm a .270 guy but I would be a little hesitant to take one for brown bear. Maybe with the 160 Partition. I'd still feel better with a 30-06 and 220 Partitions.

L O L !!

I like the way you think.

Hey we are not all asswhipes down here! I've never shot a Griz, either interior or a bigger coastal bear but have been around and close up with a bunch of the big guys. Have skinned and cut up a couple one was a rather beefy critter. Were I back in Alaska or just going on a big bear hunt I'd put a 338-06 barrel on my 30-06 and call it ready to go. Course the 30-06 with a good heavy bullet would be good as well.

This is a very interesting topic especially since Phil has posted. My two grizzly hunts to Alaska were very different. The fall hunt was done from a tree stand positioned adjacent to active feeding sites along streams. The grassy areas were littered with salmon parts and reeked of a badly managed fish cannery. Wide trails through the willows showed were bears walked. They bedded up during the day, usually at some elevation to stay cool and came down at the evening to feed. My first night was in a ground blind and we had bears all around us. Watched an 8 footer walk by down the middle of the stream so close you could hear his breathing. Almost ended it there. Did take one just at 8 feet from a tree stand 3 nights later. Used a 375 H&H Kimber Talkeetna, 48 yards with a 270 TSX.

The prior spring hunt in April, was on snow machines traveling vast distances during the day. we were hampered with constant snow and "flat light" which made spotting harder. Hunted hard for 10 days traveling a couple hundred miles by camper and then by machines. One morning at elevation McKinley popped out into clear sky and sunshine. I have some wonderful photos. No bear but a great trip nonetheless and which showed my snow machine skills to be greatly lacking.
Same Talkeetna, unfired.

Talked to the guide yesterday. They went 50% which is terrible for him. They had tough snow conditions due to high temps which made for soft snow and a dangerous situation with numerous avalanches. This kept them from getting to some bears they could see through spotters.

The guide has become fan of the 300RUM due to the distances the spring bear hunters find themselves in. He had one bear swim a river to his dying rabbit call only to have the wind switch and the bear turn back in midstream.

From yesteryear:

Went and looked up in my Oct. 1958 Outdoor Life a story on Kodiak bear hunting.
A couple of boys you may heard of - Pinnell and Talifson down around Olga Bay
Kodiak Island had two hunters. Both shot great bears on either side of 10 feet. One went 28 inches and the other 30 1/16. I believe the record at that time was 31 inches. Both hunters used 30-06's, one a pump (Rem 760), the other a bolt (Husky) and 220 gr. Core Lokts. One bear at 85 yards on the level and the other shot from above down to a ledge at 100 yards.

Anyway, its all good stuff.

Older Kodiak guides like P&T recommended the 30-06 to their clients in their printed brochures and the 30-06 was THE single most popular cartridge for the majority of all Alaskan guides well into the 1960's. Even as late as the 1990's there were Kodiak guides still using it and one even preferred his .270.

That is not to say those rifles were the "best" but they obviously were effective and with our modern bonded and homogenous bullets they are even better.

Now if we want to start a separate topic and discuss current "best" calibers we could argue about all the larger calibers.

In my opinion it would fall somewhere in the range of the .338 Win, .358 Norma and the .375 H&H or Ruger.

Too many confusing 'minimum' with 'optimum' it seems.

Kind of peripheral to this discussion but certainly related is the kind hunter you get into camp I would think. I've noticed there are those for whom hunting is the focus and the rifle a necessary but mere tool for the job. They are experienced and good hunters But they are not only not gun loonys, they are the ant-loony hunter.

Ballistics, cartridges, and rifle platforms hold no or very little interest to them. They hunt with a rifle suggested a long time ago by friends, a clerk, or perhaps acknowledged by the general outdoor culture as the way to go. This hunter may be as deadly as a sniper with his deer rifle but if he has moved up recently to a big Wby medium as suggested by the experts above, he may find himself in your bear camp tentative and lacking confidence. This is not good.

Then there is the "Hunter" who is in camp with his new 340, 375, or 378 Wby and who is not even an experienced or good hunter but, by golly, he is on a brown bear hunt and all his friends and family have heard about this for months now. The rifle was chosen based on the it's rating on the machismo monitor and ratified by ten onlookers at the counter. Not good.

Then there is the guy who is a genuine, and far gone gunny. He lives in the Midwest, has no plans for Africa or elephants but has a 458 Lott. He hunts and loves it but shoots ten times more than he has hunting opportunities. He has gone through the mediums, the 40's and can handle them effectively. He hand-loads and can shoot very well from field positions and has probably fired his chosen rifle and load several hundred to a thousand times in preparation for his BB hunt.

Of course, these are a few and simple, artificial categories with many folks falling by various degrees into more than one camp.

In any people oriented business, one learns to size folks up pretty quickly, sometimes in minutes, but certainly in a camp over several days spending twelve hours a day together or more. I would think that the type of hunter the guy is as a pro like Phil is determining from the first phone call, and face-to-face, goes more to comforting him, or not than what's in the gun case; what's in the gun case then can become a much greater or a lesser reason for concern depending...

Phil, It'd be interesting to hear of your impressions and evaluation process as you meet a new client, whether it's a conscious, gradation process or just a feeling and how you do proceed differently based on your client.

I'm sorry if this is too much off topic but it certainly seems that the type hunter one has would greatly determine how you'd feel about his armament and where in the cartridge continuum you'd like him to be. You might suggest the guy bring his 30/06 or even 270 just as you might say to the affirmed gunny, "bring that 340".

My first response to a hunter who asks what rifle to bring is to ask what they have and which is their favorite ? If they are comfortable with their 270. 308 or 30-06 I recommend they buy some premium ammo and bring that one.

Unfortunately only about half of them follow that advice, but the ones who do usually use a lot less lead to obtain their trophy.

Interesting thread. I'm no expert on brown bear shooting.......at all.

However........I get sooooo tired of know-it-all outfitters assuming that every client is a derelict dude who can't shoot. This schitty, selfish, arrogant attitude ain't limited to grizzzz guides.....and is also VERY prevalent among elk guides as well since elk are hard-to-kill animules as well. While elk guides are optional..........grizzzz hunting for non-residents ain't. You outfitters have that market cornered with your BS legal lobbying. Consequently.......you WILL BOOK some competent, experienced hunters along with your dude ones. We competent ones have no choice but to use you if we want a griz. This doesn't mean that you have to treat us like idiots!

I own a .375 as well as a .338 RUM that I posted here a while back along with my ability to whack big bull elk with it same as I can with my .22-250 for 'yotes. I practice a lot and would not take a rifle on a hunt that I cannot shoot accurately.

You outfitters should somehow find the intelligence to size up your clients before recommending a cartridge instead of assuming the worst. Assuming some of us can't shoot a big rifle accurately is the same as us assuming you that you can't supply us a decent camp and chow and even show us a bear after many $$$ paid you for our experience.

As an experienced western trophy big game hunter (and I've posted the pics here many times) for pronghorn, muleys, bull elk, Shiras moose, eastern whitetails, and Coues' deer........I know a few things about doing it successfully.

For high dollar landowner tags hunts, or Utah conservation tag hunts............or once-in-a-lifetime hard to draw tags..............or high dollar outfitted hunts.....you need to shoot the biggest cartridge that you can shoot accurately. Cuz if you get the chance to get some lead into a great animal......you don't want him to get away. Period.

Here's my brown bear taken on Chichagof in May 2012 with my .338 RUM. Cuz it's an average sized bear....it didn't require my RUM. A big one might have. But I was sooooo thrilled and comfortable to have it in case I needed it. I was equally happy knowing that I can use it and that it was at my side in the tent camp right there on the beach every night.

Born in San Antonio; grew up mostly in Kansas; also lived in the Middle East, Louisiana, other parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and now Virginia. A transient tramp.

I think the guides are just going off their experience. If too many clients show up over-gunned with too little experience, they understandably get concerned by the next one. But, as I said, everyone is different. And it�s not too hard to break the mold. If you get something as moderate as a .338 Win Mag and practice a lot, you probably can get pretty good with it. On my last hunt, the first night, after we had flown in to a small lake on the beaver (so no hunting is allowed until the next day), we had set up camp, and, out of nowhere, my guide asked me to pick up my rifle and chamber a round. I asked if he was serious. He said so. I did. He then asked me to quickly shoot at a reed about 100 yds away on the far bank of the river. I did. After that, he felt I wasn�t kidding about getting good with that rifle. A good test IMO. He picked me out of many potential clients to go back this year because he believes I will be prepared. I honestly spent hundreds of hours before my last hunt preparing, shooting, getting in shape, thinking about gear, etc ...

It might be different if I lived in Alaska. I might just grab whatever rifle I thought might do. But, for me, not when I have so much at stake on a difficult trip to so far away.

To me there is a relationship between �best� and �minimum.� Especially if it�s a rare hunt, you, even more so, might want to get closer to the �best� and expand your minimum. So, if your rifle is a .270, you might just go with that and do fine, but you also might want to work and get good with something a little bigger if you can; and most can, with practice. If have the opportunity to hunt brown bear on a regular basis 50 miles from home, I could see bringing a .308 or whatever. But, if I�m going on a rare trip 2,500 miles away from Arkansas, I might work to beef up a bit--you've got time. Anyone who hasn�t mastered a bigger rifle and can�t shoot it as well, probably should bring the smaller rifle. It depends on the person. My father is getting older. His minimum is less than mine now. I don;t hunt deer with a .243, because I can shoot something bigger just as well. But my 10-yr-old hunts with a .243, which, for him, is like an adult shooting a .338. Depends on the person. But get as close to "best" as you can, especially if it's a big deal hunt.

[quote=StripBuckHunter]For high dollar landowner tags hunts, or Utah conservation tag hunts............or once-in-a-lifetime hard to draw tags..............or high dollar outfitted hunts.....you need to shoot the biggest cartridge that you can shoot accurately. Cuz if you get the chance to get some lead into a great animal......you don't want him to get away. Period.


This has me scratching my head.

Stripbuckhunter
Know it all outfitters?? Schi**y arogant selfish attitude? Treating others like idiots? That seems to describe you much better than it does any outfitter posting on this thread.
And "Get some lead in an animal"? Sounds like you are the worst kind of rich arrogant slob hunter, no matter how many "trophy" animals you post pictures of to bolster your ego, which apparently is as well fed as the rest of you. I rarely get in a beef with anybody on here, but you are just more than I can tolerate in silence.

I understand your dislike for the out of state hunter regs. To some extent I agree with you too. Having lived in SE AK I do understand the reasoning to a degree also. The problem is it is a flawed system. Because it assumes that because you are now a res you have the experience, knowledge, and common sense to hunt these animals.

You seem to me like why non-res have to have a guide.

Thank you.

My lead (or copper) bullets penetrate heat/lungs. That's what I meant. I'm not a slob...........I'm a responsible, experienced trophy hunter. That's my whole, entire point here. And I've posted quite a number of photos here to prove it.

Where are yours......and post 'em up here for all to see......Royce you chickensheet, gutless SOB?

How do the pictures prove it?

Only shot two deer in my life and that was before digital cameras- And yer right- total chicken [bleep]- still live with Mom Here in Camden, New Jersey