A Glibertarians Exclusive: Bear at Fortymile I
September 1st
You’re not supposed to watch the plane fly away. I did. Maybe that’s why things happened the way they did.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and I was standing on a gravel bar somewhere on the upper stretches of the Fortymile River, watching the little white Cessna buzz overhead. Wayne Johnson, the bush pilot who’d flown me out for a seven-day moose hunt, waggled the plane’s wings once at me before turning back towards Tok.
The river ran through a well-defined valley beginning just upstream from the landing site, with forest of spruce rising away from the banks. Willows lined the river. The sun was shining, and the temperature, while not exactly balmy, was comfortable; I would certainly not be cold while hiking upstream with my big trail pack and assorted gear.
Hours of daylight left, this far north, this time of year. I picked up my backpack and put it on, adjusting the straps carefully, and buckled the waist belt as tightly as was comfortable. Then I grabbed my bow and started up the river.
It was rough walking. The willows grew up thick along the river, and higher up it was thick with brush. I had good maps; about four miles up from the landing site, a small spring-fed creek wandered off to the north. I stuck to the riverbank, walking on gravel bars wherever possible, enjoying the scenery. Colorado had some wild places, but nothing like this.
“You don’t want to camp anywhere along the river out here,” Wayne Johnson had warned me. “The river’s a buffet table for bears. Stay away from it at night. Camp up on higher ground.”
Wayne had also warned me to carry a firearm of some kind, for the same reason. He carried one himself, a big stainless steel .44 magnum in a shoulder holster. He wore several bad scars on one leg from a bear that chewed him up a few days after his eighteenth birthday, and I figured he was just a bit more than normally paranoid. I figured a few normal precautions would keep me safe from bears.
I hadn’t been in Alaska that long.
Four hours, eight o’clock, and I finally made it to the little creek on the map. I turned north there, following it about a half-mile upstream until I came to a little pool. A small bald ridge stood nearby, maybe fifty yards and twenty or thirty feet above the pool; I headed that way.
It felt good to drop my pack at last. I laid my bow down carefully on a lichen-covered rock. My little nylon tent was tied to the pack frame. I removed it, pulled the tent out of the bag, spread it on a level spot and staked it down. Two springy plastic poles went in fore and aft, forming bows to hold the tent up. Then four cords, front and back, ran to four more stakes and pegged down tight to draw the nylon tight as a drum. I got my old down sleeping bag and unrolled it inside the tent, and arranged a few more items from my pack.
A big spruce stood a few feet away. I took a spool of line from my pack – actually, old Army “parachute cord” that I’d had around forever – tossed it over a limb about fifteen feet up, and tied the other end to my pack. Before I went to bed, I’d use the cord to pull the pack up into the tree, keeping all my supplies sheltered up off the ground.
It was starting to get dark. Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf howled, once. Another answered, farther away.
There was one more thing to do. I scraped out a shallow hole in the dirt with a small folding shovel, and gathered a few rocks to surround it. I had to hurry to gather some dry wood, but after about ten minutes of that, I had a nice fire crackling merrily away in the new fire pit. I stuck my wire grill over the fire, and walked down to the pool with my coffeepot to dip up water.
I sat on the ground for a while, waiting for the coffee, watching the fire, and listening to the occasional howling from the wolves. Above, the stars blinked on, one by one.
Silence, all around me, except for the barely audible bubbling of the creek, fifty yards down the hill. I was seventy miles by air from the nearest road, and four and a half miles from the nearest gravel bar big enough to land a plane on. A lifetime in the wilds, and this was the farthest in I’d ever been, my first fall in Alaska.
A sudden hiss: the coffee boiled over, spilling coffee and grounds down the side of the pot into the fire. I laughed. A cup of coffee, I thought, and hit the sleeping bag. I had a big day ahead of me.
September 2nd
I’m a light sleeper. The first tiny beep from my watch woke me up at five, and I scrambled out into the glittering, frosty Alaska pre-dawn. Overhead, the stars glittered like chips of ice.
I was, I admit, as excited as I’d been in years. I’ve always hunted my own meat, but this was my first time in my new home, and my first time trying for anything as big as a moose. I didn’t bother building up the fire, just packed my little butt pack with water and sandwiches before stringing my bow and heading off towards the river.
It was a beautiful day for a hike. Were it not for the bow in my hand and the quiver of arrows on my back, it would have been easy to forget that I was out there with a purpose this time. I prefer wild meat, and a moose would last me a year – more than that, in fact, I’d probably end up giving some meat away. I’d been given to understand that was something of a tradition in Soldotna, my new, adopted home.
The bow felt good in my hands, too. It was a hand-made English-style longbow I’d had for twenty years or so, built by a Michigan craftsman I’d met a long time ago. My arrows were cedar, fletched with real feathers, tipped with four bladed razorhead points – the only part of the rig, in fact, that you wouldn’t have been likely to see on an English bow at the Battle of Hastings. I liked the traditional rig, and it had helped me bring in quite a few deer and elk over the years – even a couple of antelope. This year, my goal was to bring down an Alaskan moose with that old bow.
About noon, I saw the first track, in the sand near the riverbank. It wasn’t a moose track, though; it was a bear track. A big one.
Living in Colorado as many years as I had, I’d seen plenty of bear tracks. But this one was different. I laid my hand in the track, and there was room to spare on either side, in front and back, too. The marks of long claws were plainly visible, inches in front of the pads. It was the track of a grizzly, and a big one if I was any judge.
More disturbing was the pile of bear droppings I suddenly noticed, about ten feet ahead. They were still steaming in the chill morning air.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up suddenly. The sun somehow lost its warmth; every tiny rattle of the willow leaves in the breeze seemed carry a threat.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I reached over my shoulder for an arrow, nocked it. I started to back away, back down the way I’d come. Fifty yards, a hundred, I crept backwards, watching my footing, trying to stay silent while keeping my eyes focused on the brush.
After about two hundred yards, I turned and walked quickly back down the river towards my camp. I saw two cow moose on the way, both at some distance, but my tag was for a bull, so I didn’t even slow down. At the last bend in the river before the creek that led to my camp, I finally sat down on a large boulder, and gave in to the shakes.
All right, Nick, old boy, I told myself after a while. You’ve been around bears before. You’ve been alone in the wilderness before. That bear would probably be more afraid of you than you are of him.
I pulled a sandwich out of my pack, and after a careful look around, ate it slowly. Gradually, I stopped shaking. Pulled myself together. Even managed a little chuckle at my own expense.
Downstream, I thought. I think I’ll hunt downstream from camp.
And that afternoon, that’s what I did. I found plenty of moose sign; saw one small bull, explored lots of beautiful country. I almost managed to forget about the bear track. About nine o’clock that night, an hour after dark, I finally made it back to my tent.
Wolves were howling again, in the distance. The creek bubbled softly in the cold, still night. I made my supper, brewed coffee, and built the fire up high. I sat for maybe an hour, sipping my coffee, staring into the fire.
Alaskan outback nights are amazingly silent. Growing up in Minnesota, I used to camp by myself in the woods along the river near Prairie Ridge; summer and fall nights there were full of sounds, from crickets to owls and whippoorwills. Colorado mountain nights are quiet, but the silence is regularly interrupted by coyotes, owls and in the all, elk bugling. But this Alaskan night was the quietest I’d even experienced; only the crackling of the fire and the soft bubbling of the creek broke the stillness.
Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll go back to that meadow downstream where I saw the small bull. There was a lot of sign right in there.
I looked at my watch. Ten o’clock. Time to sleep. I crawled into the tent, took off my shoes and pants, and crawled into my sleeping bag. It had been a long and tiring day; I went to sleep quickly.
***
I grew up doing just such things Animal. I am very much at home in the woods. I have not done that sort of thing for a long time but I still miss it.
We have only recently restored the bear population here. They have always been in the Atchafalaya basin but now they are statewide. Damned things breed like rabbits. The last time I camped out just as I was falling asleep in a tent with my arm against the wall of the tent a rather large nose poked against my arm through the fabric. “Snuff snuff snuff”. Then nothing.
Needless to say I did not sleep that night.
I’m afraid I’m just a suburban pansy — never even really been camping. I can appreciate the story and the conceptual idea, of course.
One thing I don’t get though — exactly what is his plan for dragging (I’m assuming he’ll construct a travois or something?) a bull moose’s worth of meat down to where he can catch the plane through hungry bear country (much less the wolves… I don’t think he has the launch rate sufficient to deal with a pack if it takes an interest in him…)? I mean — I would think that amount of meat would be tough to draw up each night, he’ll go slowly enough it will take at least a day to drag it down — and the blood smell will draw the predators…
But what do I know… suburban pansy as mentioned.
Some people field dress and cut into smaller pieces then haul it out on their backs one trip at a time. Sometimes they get it all, sometimes they dont.
I shot a nice buck once near dark. I thought, fuck it, I will come back in the morning and drag it out because I was already tired.
Next morning there were bear tracks but no sign of my game. Oh well. Bears gotta eat too.
I noticed there were 13 peach pits in all of the bear droppings I found. I guess that was how many he could eat in one go.
I left a deer once for retrieval the next day. No bears, but the coyotes completely cleaned it up. We found one scrap of hide.
Heh. There is a housing and food shortage out in the wild. They. get to gettin’ when the gettin’ is good. Every bite could be the last one until who knows when.
Only weirdos drink coffee before bedtime.
He deserves to get eaten by a bear.
At least he didn’t bring a kayak.
…AND THAT’S WHEN HE MET STEVE SMITH, RAPESQUATCH.
Loving the story. It’s building tension.
Nothing but a bow? That is past damn near foolish.
I know a Kraut that wants to kayak down the coast from Alaska to Washington. He says he will camp on the beach. With no gun.
I figure he has about a 0.001% chance of not being eaten.
Has he never heard of Grizzly Man? “You muss never, never listen to this.”
We are not the top of the food chain.
We are, but only when armed.
““Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him.” – Pascal
I tried to explain to the idiot that the brown bears we have are quite different than the ones they have. To the ones here he will just look like a Snicker’s bar on two legs.
Bears have niches even within the bear community. Some of them specialize in roaming beaches at night.
https://i.redd.it/t97lsn4rzmia1.jpg
‘Bears have niches even within the bear community. Some of them specialize in roaming beaches at night.’
Is that a gay joke? :p
I would not go into bear country without an appropriate firearm on my person.
I feel the same way about people country too.
^THIS X 1000^
Absolutely.
https://www.sportsmans.com/shooting-gear-gun-supplies/handguns/smith-wesson-model-329pd-44-magnum-412in-matte-black-revolver-6-rounds/p/318212
My bear gun. 25 oz unloaded. I wear all the time when I fish or bow hunt
The hunter teams up with the grizzly to fight off space invaders and saves the planet.
Independence Day 3?
Supposedly Moose in Maine are covered in so many ticks that occasionally one of them is killed. Are AK Meese the same?
A number of years ago, 20 or so, one on the deer hunting crew shot a tick infested deer. We didn’t realize it until we started skinning it. We were just careful and got the skin and trimming to the garbage pile as fast as we could. Carefully inspected myself at shower time. Not a problem Often I’ll find tiny, tiny ticks when I walk to my deer stand, pick off a half dozen or more. Not walking anymore and the trail is wide enough to take a lawn tractor out and I have seen any ticks the past 3 years.
DEET is a very good friend to have.
It was a hand-made English-style longbow
Now that’s hardcore.
Great start to what I am sure will be another great story.
So this is Animal hunting Moose. Was Squirrel not available for this episode?
Was left back in Colorado with family. The Rockies.
Sigh. Well, I thought it was funny.
Some days y’all are just a damned tough crowd.
It was.
Heads-up for small business owners:
The Coming Deluge for Small Business
I wonder if the Biden’s are ready.
They do more than $5Million/yr in business.
Right. I forgot. No review for those guys.
F them hoes.
And hello Mike!
To sum up Ozzy from the last thread: This government is at war with the American people.
I have been screaming that to the crickets for 30 years.
We are all criminals until proven otherwise . . . which is an unending process*.
*Certain connected people are exempt from all investigations.
Big business will make damned sure to strangle any potential competition in its crib. Between this as the economic shutdown Wall Street could handle but Main Street got decimated, I don’t think anyone can argue with your or Ozzy.
Fuck Congress.
Surprise!
Bone and muscle density of bears is 10X that of a human. Some of the origins of their muscles are as big as your hand with outstretched fingers.
Even a small bear can crunch you up like you crunch potato chips. I wish I could find it…I saw a video once of a bear taking the rear sliding door off of a minivan to get at an ice chest.
He nonchalantly took the door off like it was the lid of a shoebox.
Their strength is unbelievable.
The appropriate firearms I carry: Winchester 94 chambered in 450 Marlin/ Ruger Blackhawk in 44 magnum.
I watched video from a guy making suggestions about bear guns. He said that he liked to carry the Henry Mare’s Leg chambered in 44 magnum.
Hard cast lead with gas checks.
In the 44 I use flat nose 250gr at around 1400 fps. (17 grains Accurate #7)
In the 450 I load 415 gr to around 1800 fps
It is a lot of recoil but if I ever need it in earnest that will be the least of my worries.
Jacketed soft noses/hollow points just dont. have the necessary penetration. They cut the hair and skin and sometimes stop in the fat before they enter the body cavity.
You could use that .45 Winc Mag. It’s 1 bigger than a .44.
yes, I could. Ha! You remembered that?
45 win mag, 44 mag, 45 colt +P, 41 magnum.
I have all of those calibers in both double and single action pistols. They give a nice solid satisfying thump in the hand. Shooting them it is hard to tell them apart..
Anything bigger and I want a carbine.
*Just for a fun story: I cast a lot of .45 in 0.452, round nose 230s for the 45ACP. I also load them in 45 long colt to +P speeds. I get about 1600fps out of the lighter bullets.
My brother and I have matching Uberti SSA with brass frames. More fun to shoot than you can believe. I gave him a few hundred of those fast loads. We went out to shoot the first time with those. I challenged him to hit a beer can at 100 yards with his gun (5″ barrel.)
“Shit! I will have to aim like this….” *raises pistol up about 20 degrees*
Me: “Nope. Aim right at it let’s see how far it drops”
BLAM!
He hit the can on his first try. He gave the gun a puzzled look then turned to me. “Jesus boy! What did you put in there?! That shoots like a 44 magnum.”
Me: “Magic”
I carried a .41 this year for deer season, didn’t need it, no deer. Couple years ago the .41 did the trick. I thought about using a 6.5mm X .223, just because I haven’t shot that very much and I’m curious.. Just don’t shoot much anymore, brothers are gone, old guys are old guys.
<– .45 Colt, hard-cast Keith-type semi-wadcutter over 8 grains of Unique. Blows a fist-sized chunk of wood out of the back of a railroad tie and easily (from personal experience) will lengthwise a big corn-fed Iowa whitetail.
Excellent choice, bullet and powder. Unique, AA#5, AA#7 are my favorite powders for that caliber. They burn clean and cool.
https://www.sportsmans.com/shooting-gear-gun-supplies/handguns/smith-wesson-model-329pd-44-magnum-412in-matte-black-revolver-6-rounds/p/318212
300 gr hardcast
The required data collection is “beyond anything the Federal government has ever attempted outside of the Tax Code,” the small businesses write. FinCEN is expecting to collect 32 million new reports in 2024, and millions each year thereafter. The legislation requires reporting for all “beneficial owners,” a term that encompasses not only a business owner but anyone with a more than 25% stake in a company.
The war on small business continues. Fascism is so much easier with big companies which dominate their markets.
Yep, that’s the fascist model.
I tire of the ignorance of people who claim we are a democracy, the science is settled and disagree with me makes me a fascist. Words have meanings. Those idiots are unaware of that.
The science is settled….*snort*….the very definition of an oxymoron.
A cup of coffee, I thought, and hit the sleeping bag – caffeine before bed can make your sleep worse.
I’m a light sleeper. – because of the coffee
damn beaten to it
I am not man enough to go alone in a wolf and bear wilderness. Simple as that.
This reminds me of being dropped off at a fishing cabin in Katalla, AK. The pilot handed us a bottle of bear spray, and my dad’s navy buddy asked, “Do we really need this?” The pilot said, “Oh, no probably not” and then added in a deadly serious voice, “But take it.” By the door of the cabin were a couple of shotguns which we were advised to take when going to the outhouse. That kind of discouraged me from exploring the remains of the town.
does the old joke about shark repellent apply to bear spray?
Bear spray won’t do anything about sharks either.
Soldotna is a city in the Kenai Peninsula Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. At the 2020 census, the population was 4,342, up from 4,163 in 2010. It is the seat of the Kenai Peninsula Borough. – how are the wine bars there?
Bra-VO.
Soldotna is a nice little town with salmon fishing right in town. Probably bears too.
No mention of a side arm, I’m assuming not carrying.
Good story, Animal, I envy you.
Body of missing woman found in storage unit belonging to her estranged husband, police say
FL – Naturally.
So they neither discovered the body or arrested the guy for his wife’s disappearance. However, they are most assuredly taking credit for finding him and her remains.
Using labor theory of value, they did a great job. 16 hour days…
Turning in time slips is the same thing as working, right?
There’s no way any investigative value was being derived in those last 4-6 hours and even 12 hour days, sustained, turns you into a burned out automaton.
It’s possible that is man hours and not individuals.
Now for some real news: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/11/20/the-holidays-push-taylor-swift-and-travis-kelce-to-new-relationship-milestone/
they might gasp start sleeping together
Seems unlikely.
Never believe any of the concoctions of publicity agents about high profile people. They are all bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0
Nobody’s cgoing to comment on the ominous foreshadowing of the first line?
I did! Just in a snarky way. Because I am working and full of pepper.
You’re not supposed to comment on the first line. You did. Maybe that’s why things will happen the way they will.
Chasing the superstitious hypochondriac vote
The Biden administration on Monday said it is offering another round of free at-home Covid tests to U.S. households ahead of the holiday season, when more people gather indoors and the virus typically spreads at higher levels.
Starting Monday, Americans can use COVIDtests.gov to request four free tests per household. Those who have not ordered any tests this fall can now place two orders for a total of eight tests, according to the website.
The administration in September allowed people to request an initial round of four free tests through the site, resuming a federal program that temporarily shut down during a political fight over Covid funding.
Maybe they will distribute free Ukrainian flag plague masks next.
Dark winter! Bodies in the streets!
Woe unto the unboosted!
Those kits have some nice long Q-tips which can clean carburetors, dirty guns, etc… quite well.
I think it is wild coincidence that I dont know a single person that died of the cooties when it killed over 100 billionty people.
My cousin and her husband died of covid (not with covid). He worked in a penitentiary and brought it home. They waited more that a week to seek treatment after falling ill.
My cousin’s daughter had both of them removed from life support on the same day.
This was before the vaccine, but after the HCQ/Zinc/anti-biotic treatment was noted by Trump and disparaged by the establishment.
I consider their deaths to be negligent homicides.
I regard their deaths as depraved indifference homicide.
works for me
But demand for tests, along with Covid vaccines and treatments, has plummeted over the last year as cases and public concern about the virus dwindled from earlier in the pandemic.
Only a small share of Americans appear to be worried about Covid disrupting their holiday plans this fall and winter.
Why aren’t they terrified? It’s inexplicable.
Translation: It’s still going on!!! IT WILL NEVER END!!!
‘but my tag was for a bull, so I didn’t even slow down.’
Oof. Really?
”All right, Nick, old boy, I told myself after a while. You’ve been around bears before. You’ve been alone in the wilderness before. That bear would probably be more afraid of you than you are of him.’
After that pants shitting, I’m not so sure the bear would be more afraid than you.
The Alaskan subsistence hunters can only shoot a bull, under 55 inch antler spread, I believe. My grandson-in-law Just shot a nice bull, gave 2 quarters to the village elders. Antlers had to be defaced by the local DNR so they couldn’t be used as a trophy mount.
Bigger bulls are reserved for trophy hunters and the license is some ridiculous price.
Well, the story is told in the first person, so the narrator doesn’t get completely eaten. But I’m guessing he’s gonna get nibbled real good.
You don’t know. It could get sexy.
Tonio perks up his ears….
Could be a ghost story. Literally.
The sky is falling. Women and minorities hit hardest.
A federal appeals court issued a ruling Monday that could gut the Voting Rights Act, saying only the federal government — not private citizens or civil rights groups — is allowed to sue under a key section of the landmark civil rights law.
The decision out of the 8th Circuit will almost certainly be appealed and is likely headed to the Supreme Court. Should it stand, it would mark a dramatic rollback of the enforcement of the law that led to increased minority power and representation in American politics.
Where did you get, “You’re not supposed to watch the plane fly away.”
I remember a movie from my youth, might have been a Disney movie, that said if you watch someone out of sight, you would never see them again.