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

Royce
I think he is just mad at outfitters because of the bear he shot... Even working at hiding the size does not work well.

Here is the bear Riley shot last week... Not a big bear by any means but he is tucked up right behind the head to keep from making it look like he is hiding anything.



At 20 with his second brown bear he was not fussy about size and the hide is gorgeous. Oh, and this is by way of saying I mean nothing against shooting a small bear, just when someone is trying to make it more than it is.
art

SD,

You are a wannabe AK man.........you phony fawk. Getta kick outta you............you tremendously phony fawk who cannot do what a Rocky Mtn man has done. You can't kiss my ass on Main Street in downtown Grand Junction..............you candy-ass.

Not the first time you've been told this here....is it?

Might want to re-read your own tag line!

Confucius say: He who angers you......controls you.

MCH,

Not at all angry here...........you fawkin' limpdick.

Everybody here already knows better than that.

I'm just correct-o-mundo.........you drunk.

If you can find a person on this planet that has seen me drunk I will hand over to you everything I own.

Good luck!

Oh wait you can't buy that.

Just because someone says something does not make it true, especially on an internet site. I have posted more than enough photos and stories of things done with 24hr posters that you have zero chance of making any point.

But, you are completely correct, I cannot kiss your ass anywhere, ever. None of my time is wasted contemplating your sexual predilections.

But you may want to be careful making claims you have no clue about. Take a little peek at the Kodiak bear hunts I posted last month and the spring of 2012. Look at the photos and get back to me.

No one is sitting behind the bears' asses to fool anyone into thinking they are bigger than they are... they are simply very big bears.

While you are at it there are at least a dozen bear hunts I have posted about.

Look closely you may even see a post or several about Booner deer... or caribou. There may even be pictures.

Please keep your fantasies intact though, without them you would clearly be lost.

WOW, this thread is degenerating quickly from the minimum caliber rifle to the minimum caliber hunter.

I understand he has been booted from more than a few websites for this kind of stuff...

I hope that a comment from a deep south hunter won't offend anyone on this forum. I just wanted to say that I have a alot of rifles and have owned many calibers. I was shooting my 300 weatherby yesterday off the bench. Took along my 06 and fired a few through it. I can honestly say that both with heavy bullets kick like young mules (6.5/7lb max rifles). I really prefer my 220 Swift for large hogs with a 50 grain triple shock. It shot through 2 standing side by side last year . Great penetration , 1 was drt and 1 ran 75 yards. I seem to be able to shoot it better because recoil is not anything one has to worry about. A 50gr tsx at 4200 fps will ruin most animals day. P.O. Ackley said it killed better than a 06. But I dang sure wouldn,t hunt a grizz with it. I have a 300 wsm that I shot an honest 2 inch group at 600 yards of the bench (20Lb rifle)easy because no recoil. Most deer and hogs I have shot only took 1 round. I was told Eskimos had an affinity for the 22 high power back years ago.Don't know what they did about Polar bears. After visiting Alaska and seeing those big bears and thinking about it , I think I would lean toward my 300 Dakota( 10 LB rifle) with a heavy bullet and feel more comfortable. At 69 and fat also , I will leave the Big Bears for Others. I will just carry my Camera again.

Well, it took 8 pages to get this topic headed in the wrong direction thanks to StripBuck. But he does have a point to make albeit in condescending manner. I'm sure Mr. Phil would agree that he has seen quite a few hunters come into camp with 300's on up who were masters with that cartridge. But as he alludes, modern bullet design and recoil shy hunters have brought him to still recommend the 30-06. He certainly wouldn't do this if it put the hunter/guide at risk or the bear to endure an unethical harvest. No one can question his ability to know and understand the abilities of the brown bear.
If a guide recommends cartridge "X", that is an excellent benchmark. If you possess something "bigger" than "X" and are a legitimate master with it, then that is great too. But there is no reason to get off on the wrong foot. The guide bases his recommendation on his years of observations. The guide has no idea as to the first time clients abilities other than to write the check and sound confident. If you can truly handle a bigger caliber, great. If not, you are a fool.

This same scenario is played out when someone from the eastern US heads out west for their first elk hunt. They perceive the need for a 300+ because of all that they read or heard. They ignore reality when there is plenty of info showing that the .308/.270/30-06 is plenty adequate.

I think many here are surprised when a master guide recommends the 30-06 for the big Kodiak species. Who knew you had "enough gun" all along?

I'm not Alaskan and have never hunted the great bears that live there, but were I to do so my personal minimum would be my 9.3x62mm Mauser firing 320 gr Woodleigh round nosed bullets at 2400 fps.

Gunner

I wouldn't hesitate to use either of my Sharps rifles.

Keep in mind that it�s at least as easy to wound a middling sized bear with a 33/37 caliber rifle as it is to readily dispatch even a big bear with a �standard� type cartridge.

Lots of folks have found how lethal the Swift is. In his book "Alaska's Wolf Man" Frank Glaser was quoted as saying he thought stuff died faster with the swift than any other cartridge, and he had used a bunch. And that was with bullets up through the '50s.

He did say, like you, that it was not a good match for the big bears. My son's bear last week died from an 80gr TTSX from a 25-06. But he was fairly close and the bear was fairly small... The first shot was nearly perfect and the follow-up on a running bear was within 2" of the first.

Not many are fortunate enough to be able to hunt brown bear with their sons- Got to be right up there on a list of "best of".

3 years ago I purchased a 338 Win Mag as a Bear gun. Hunting Brown Bear is part of my Bucket list!. After shooting it some I sold it.

Other than shooting it at the range I had no need for it. I did not enjoy shooting it from the bench so off it went.

When I do go North to hunt Brown Bear I will just use a 30-06 with a heavy bullet.

The number of hunters who go on high dollar hunts doing not much more than whacking a few rounds from the bench at various distances(if that), is pretty astonishing...I have seen it too many times.

Apparently so have many guides and outfitters. On some hunts,most "rifle checking" sessions are really "client checking" sessions to see who can handle a rifle, and who can't. It isn't hard to spot the guys who aren't really ready for anything....they act as if the rifle is some strange implement with which they are completely unfamiliar. If I were a guide or outfitter I would find this pretty unnerving.

Add on top of this that the rifle is some bucking, bellowing howitzer(compounding the problem),and it's no wonder outfitters seek the lowest denominator in cartridges,hoping the client at least hits well even if the rifle is on the light side.

These people don't practice much,and maybe best served with smaller cartridges

I agree with Marine Hawk that folks can learn to shoot bigger rifles than they think, but this takes time, discipline,high round count,and exposure with short range sessions, spread out over a long period of time to maintain familiarity while minimizing exposure to too much recoil.....short, but frequent range sessions are key for me.But I stop when it isn't fun anymore.

After a layoff from 375 level recoil my reaction to the first shot at the range is always "WTF was that!"....Wow! But after 3-4 shots things settle in, My mind figures I'm not going to get killed,and shooting gets easier....the perception of recoil is worse than the real thing.

I recall the sensation of recoil on both my bears with the 375...there was no recoil sensation at all;it was so trifling I might as well have been shooting a woodchuck with a Swift. I was pretty focused on more important stuff at that point.

Most?

Klik: OK......"all"