Girls Like to Hunt Bears Too!

By Fern Rivers-Spaulding

I was nine when I first asked my Dad if I could hunt a brown bear.  He was sitting in his reading chair looking at the morning paper.  His reading glasses were propped on the end of his nose like Santa when I slipped up beside him and asked: “Dad is it ok with you if I hunt a brown bear?”

I said it sort of in the tone I would use if I were asking; “Can I go outside and play?”   I hoped he wasn’t paying any attention and would just mumble something like “Sure Fern, have fun and be sure and tell Mom where you are going.” 

I should have waited until he was really tired, because he didn’t even look up; he just flipped the page and replied: “Fern, you are too small to hunt brown bear, why don’t you ask me again when you are twelve?”  It wasn’t really a question; it was more like a statement.   After that I tried everything, I did my homework without his asking me to, I sort of dusted the furniture once when company came over, and I even made the ultimate sacrifice when I cleaned my room without being asked.  As you can see, I really wanted to hunt a brown bear.  All of that work, and it didn’t even seem to have registered on dad.   It was like he was blind to my efforts.  Finally I changed my methods…one morning I walked past his chair and asked “Dad, can I get a tattoo?”  He froze in his seat!  I had his attention now!  He spoke in a cold, steady, firm voice.  “No Fern, you can’t get a tattoo.”  Perfect! Now I was ready to set the hook.  “Well then, Dad, can I hunt brown bear instead?”   I saw just the hint of a smile as he looked up at me and replied: “Well, since you put it that way, let me reconsider on the tattoo.  I’ll talk to your mother about it when she gets home.  Frankly I think if you tattooed a swarm of bees on your back coming up out of the crack in your butt, it might look real interesting.”   Dad!  When was he ever going to get serious!?

Well, that’s pretty much how it went until December when Dad won a new .375 H&H in a raffle.  He already had a .375 that he had carried as a Professional Hunter for years and years, he certainly did not need a second one!  He was back in his chair when I sat down on his knee and started to point out what a waste it was and that I knew someone who could sure use it.  He looked up, took off his glasses, and asked: “And just who would this poor needy person happen to be?”   I knew right then I had my opening.  If Dad takes off his glasses he’s either ready to talk business or preparing to give me a lecture.  I didn’t wait to see which it was. “Dad, you know you want me to be able to handle firearms like an adult, so it’s probably a good time for me to start shooting a real rifle like that .375 just in case you ever need me to back you up on a brown bear or something.”  He just looked at me. I thought he had not heard a word I had said, but finally he folded the paper and laid it on the floor.  Then he looked me right in the eye.  “Ok Fern.  If you can shoot that rifle without it knocking your head off, we will go brown bear hunting in the spring.”

For three or four minutes after that I was absolutely elated, and then a certain amount of sanity started to show up in my little head.  I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to shoot that gun!  It was taller then I was, weighed nearly as much as I did, and I was pretty sure I could sleep inside the barrel if I had to. Dad has a rule of thumb for a brown bear caliber.  He says if you can stick your thumb down the bore, its might be big enough. Well, it looked to me like I could put my whole arm down that bore, and I wondered why I had not noticed that before.  I looked up the loading data in my manual and saw some big numbers, but they were not nearly as impressive as was the size of that cartridge when I held it in my hand.  I started to think about that tattoo once more and now it didn’t sound like such a bad idea.  Dad must have seen the worry in my eyes, because the very next day he borrowed a .375 with a muzzle break for me to test.  After school we went out and I shot a round.   It was BAD!!!   But I knew I couldn’t show it.  I bit my lip, chambered another cartridge, and said something like “Hmmmm… not all that tough, is it dad?”  He smiled just a little as shouldered the rifle for another shot.  For some reason it took about a minute to get the trigger back this time, and the muzzle was waving around like it was as much afraid of the impending recoil as I was.  After that Dad took the rifle and put it away.  “OK, Fern, you proved yourself.  We will have Stan put a muzzle break on that new .375 next week, and I will call McCoy Armor tonight and see if they can do anything to keep you from breaking your shoulder.” 

That was it; I knew I was headed brown bear hunting.  I lay awake at night thinking about it, I do that a lot. But this time it was not the hunt I was thinking about, it was that gun.  I had thought that my 7mm-08 was loud, but when you shoot a .375 it’s not just loud, it shakes the earth.  I was impressed.

Before long, it was May.  Mr. McCoy had worked hard to build a set of armor that would fit my shoulder and not put the recoil on my collarbone.  I had loaded up a high capacity load with shinny new Barnes 270 grain Triple-Shocks, and cleaned “my” rifle about 40 times.  After school I would walk around in my new rubber hip boots trying to break my feet in, and I really tried to pay attention to my homework.  In the evenings we packed the Cessna, and made our plans.  At first only Dad and I were going to go, but Mom was pretty sure the bears would get us, and so she decided to come along so someone could call for help.  I was sort of glad because Dad is a really bad cook.  He eats everything dry, even his instant oatmeal!  You don’t need T.P when you hunt with Dad; you only need a whisk broom.

We left Talkeetna on a beautiful Saturday morning and flew to the Alaska Peninsula.  We didn’t even stop until we got to our beach, and then the work really began.  We had to pull the plane up into the salt grass, tie it to logs, level a sleeping area, set up the tent, all the normal stuff.  We got to bed late, slept a few hours and then got up and did it all over again.  With a full day to work we rolled twelve foot long logs up to the airplane and buried them four feet deep in the sand, to hold the aircraft in the strong winds Dad said we would experience.  Then we set the tent up again, this time with more care and tied it down in every direction.  It looked like a fly in the middle of a spider web.  The next day was opening day, and if I had not pulled on so many ropes and dug so many holes, I don’t think I could have slept at all, but the next thing I knew Dad was shaking me and singing “Good morning good morning, it’s so good to sleep in late….”  It was 3 a.m.  I’m pretty sure a tattoo would have been less painful than it was getting up that day.

Long before dawn we were sitting on a sand dune, facing into the wind with blowing sand cutting into our faces.  The wind was like a knife and the rain drove into the little openings inside my hood and between my jacket and gloves.  Dad wrapped me in a blue tarp and put me in a hole.  I tried to keep my binoculars steady in the wind, looking for bear but the rain on the lenses blurred the view.  The morning sun finally climbed into the sky and we started seeing bears through the snow and clouds.  One here, three there, a set of tracks on the far snow slide, a sow and cub on the beach, it was an adventure.  About noon Dad tucked Mom and I under the tarp on the back side of a sand ridge and told us to get some sleep while he glassed.  We slept while the wind packed new fallen snow over and around us.  I don’t remember a thing, I was warm at last, everything was a cozy blue color and I slept.

About two o’clock Dad woke us up.  “There’s a bear on that far mountain, feeding and moving our way.”  I grabbed the glasses, took one look, threw off my camp shoes and grabbed my hip boots.  LET’S GO! I urged… I probably even had my boots on the wrong feet.  Dad made me slow down while he emptied his pack of all the unnecessary items, and Mom moved with glacial speed as she packed a lunch into her bag. I looked askew at that .375 and asked Dad if I could take my 7mm-08 instead, since Mom had brought it out from the tent.  “No fern, that’s a .375 bear if I ever saw one and you don’t want to just make him mad.” Dad said as he continued packing.   In a few minutes we were headed out.  I carried my shooting sticks while Mom and Dad carried the gear.  The valley was all hummocks and bog, but I didn’t even notice it as Dad led the way up the creeks and behind the hills.  My eyes were glued on that big bear, but Mom was thinking about all the really important things we could do if we went back to camp, or anywhere that was away from that bear.

We had two miles to go, and for a long time we could see that old bear moving through the crow berry patches.  As Dad watched, he commented that the bear looked like a Volkswagen micro-bus.  I don’t know what that is, but he sounded impressed, and when Dad sounds impressed its something to pay attention to.  We were running and that old bear was only walking, but he was leaving us like the wind. He just wandered up into a side valley and out of sight.  Once that happened we made a bee line in his direction.  Dad was not sure we could catch him, but we worked high up the hillside until we finally found him lying in a snowdrift.  He had nearly buried himself and was over a thousand yards away.  Dad got out the scope and studied him very carefully.  “Fern, he’s in a snow bed and all I can see is his head.  I’m not all that sure he is as big as I thought at first.”  For Mom that was good enough. “OK, let’s head back to camp!”  she said all too cheerfully “We can look for a bigger bear tomorrow!”  We pretended her words had simply blown away in the wind.  Dad looked long and hard before he mentioned the white edges on the ears. “Fern, he might look little but he’s not, he has big bear ears, lets go.”  Now that old bear was looking right at us, but a small fox had run up and sat just a few feet from his nose.  Dad said “He only has eyes for that fox right now, we have to get across this mountain side while he’s distracted.” and we moved out.  Once we crossed his tracks in the snow, and they were huge!  He had big  bear ears AND big bear tracks!

We had closed to about 150 yds. when that bear climbed out of his bed and headed up the mountain side, just swaying back and forth and walking like an elephant.  We dropped the packs, shooting sticks, and everything else as we crawled and ran after him.  Dad would get me into prone position for a shot and that bear would just flow out of sight. We would jump up and move in again but he was walking up a gully and I could only see the hair on the top of his back when I was in shooting position.   We got close, I mean REALLY CLOSE!   Once we were about 20 yards away when he lifted his head and looked in our direction.  Dad and I hit the dirt, but mom froze in her tracks.  As that bear turned his head and looked toward us we heard mom say a naughty word right out loud and I knew that bear must have heard her.   You didn’t need binoculars to see his brown eyes looking past us into the distance.  I guess he was both deaf and blind because he didn’t notice a thing.  He turned and started up the mountain again.  Dad lifted me by my belt and set me on my feet, and we were off.  There was a small dip in the edge of the gully and I was going to have only one chance.  I dropped back to the ground, slipped off the safety and pulled the rifle into my shoulder.  I tried to steady myself but my feet were shaking so bad they were each digging a hole.  “Dad, step on my feet and hold them down, I can’t aim!”  Holding his rifle in one hand, he stepped on my left foot and put his hand on the other one, while talking to me to calm me down.  Just then I could see the top 1/3 of that bear came into sight.  There was no time left, I aimed for his spine and popped the cap.  That old bear flipped right over and disappeared into the ditch.  I couldn’t see what happened to him, but Dad was reaching down to pump my hand and congratulating me on a great shot.  That’s when Mom started hollering “HE’S UP, HE’S UP, HE’S UP!”  She was jumping up and down and waving her arms all at the same time, reminding me of an injured raven trying to get in the air.   Dad had a funny look on his face, like he should have known better, but there was no time to talk.  I had already chambered a second round and Dad was yelling something about running across the hill.  I did, and saw that bear come walking out of a different gully about 90 yds. away.  Not running, just walking like nothing had happened.  I hit the ground again and this time I took my time.  When I pulled the trigger not only did that .375 shake the earth, but it also shook that bear right off his feet.  He hit the ground, did a summersault in the tundra and never moved.  The first shot had been at 32 yds. and had gone just under the spine, and the second shot was at 112 yds., a clean heart shot.  I never felt the gun go off, but I do remember hearing it roar…. It’s really impressive.

The rest of the day we spent taking photos, skinning the bear, and getting back to camp before dark.  The next morning we climbed into the valley again to get the hide.  Dad lashed it onto the pack so that he could carry it about 300 yds. to a small creek.  It about killed him, and we learned later that the hide alone, without skull or anything else, weighted 197 pounds.  Once he got it to the stream he used an old guide trick… he took the hide out, put a rope through the mouth and tossed it into the water.  There it half floated and half sunk, but as the water built up behind it, and as we tugged on the rope, the rising stream would push it down the ravine.  Eventually we reached the river, and floated him down to camp.

I only hunted brown bear one day, but it was worth every minute of it.  The hide measured out at 11’ 8” green, and even after drying for a couple of days was measured at 11’ 4” when it was sealed by the state.  The green skull measurements were 30 3/16” including the lower jaw, and 29 1/16 official B&C measurement, which will place it well up into B&C records.   I think I want to have it mounted life size but Dad won’t promise anything, he says I can’t bring it home because we would have to build a new house.  I think it’s because he shot a little 10’ 4” brown bear back in 1976 and his will be the smallest brown bear in the house when I get mine back.  Mom is happy to be home and wonders out loud why we brag about the long shots we make on sheep and caribou, but when we hunt dangerous game we brag about how close we were able to get.  I will let you explain that to her if you wish, she really does not have an open mind as far as this subject goes.  I know one thing for sure…I’m going to enjoy that bear in our living room a whole lot more then I would a swarm of bees tattooed on my back….. “Dad, can we put my bear over there by the light where you reading chair is?”

Fern Rivers-Spaulding

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