On the 27th of August I met up with my buddy - Donnie Vincent - in Fairbanks for a fifteen-day bear and moose hunt. I would be hunting black bear and Donnie would be hunting Grizzly and Moose. Donnie had drawn a special permit on the Koyukuk Wildlife Refuge; possibly one of the best moose hunts in North America.
Our trip started with a 70-mile boat ride up the Koyukuk River, transferred our gear onto a smaller jet boat and we continued up a small tributary to bear camp. We hunted there for 6 days, experienced a few sittings, caught many world class arctic grayling on dry flies but because of unseasonably warm weather and a bad blueberry crop we were unsuccessful filling Donnie’s grizzly tag and my black bear tag. So, we loaded the jet boat and headed back down two and half hours to the Koyukuk, reloaded the gear in our original prop boat and headed up river another two hours to Virgal Umphenour’s main moose camp on the banks of the Koyukuk. There we would camp overnight, get new supplies, and head out the following morning for a spike camp – 30 additional miles up river.
We decided to hunt our way up the river to spike camp. Along the way we stopped and one of our guide’s - Shawn Huffman - secret hunting holes. We hiked for several miles and then found two cows at the back of the meadow, so we closed the distance and couldn’t see any bulls so we went beyond them and Shawn raked a tree, a bull immediately answered and headed our way. As he came closer he was grunting like crazy, we could see his horn tips swaying through the willows, coming closer and closer to our position. He was pushing 70 inches wide, but he had narrow palms, and only a few long brow twines. So, Shawn instructed Donnie to pass this one.
We set up our spike camp and hunted hard for several more days to no avail. In the meantime, I shot some beavers with my Hoyt Katera and we set up some black bear baits with the carcasses. On the fifth day we had an encounter with a huge Boone and Crocket bull, that was coming right to us, but a smaller bull came out of the willows and got his attention –we ran out of daylight before we could get a shot off. This bull was a true monster.
On the final morning of the hunt, I awoke at 5am and heard something rummaging through our camp, just a few yards outside of the tent. I grabbed producer Marc Womack’s 45, unzipped the tent opening to see a 150lb. black bear staring right at me – 5 yards. I cocked the hammer on the pistol, aimed and fired at the bear’s chest and he died 12 yards from our tent. An hour or so after daylight we started investing around the camp and discovered that the bear had ripped out both windows of our tent, where myself and Donnie had been sleeping. We were unable to hear what was going on, we had earplugs in our ears because Marc snores like a bear in heat.
It was ironic that I had spent several days baiting bears with no shows, and then on the last day I fill my tag in the middle of camp just in my underwear! What luck!!! In the words of Michael Waddell, I would rather be lucky then good any day. So, true.
That evening we went back to the main moose camp, we spent the night and headed to town to catch our airplane. Donnie stayed behind to hunt for 4 more days without us, to see if he could fill his moose tag. As luck would have it - the very first morning after we leave, Donnie and Shawn found a small herd of cows and see horn tips sticking out of the grass. They snuck into about 50 yards, the bull stood up and Donnie hammered him with his TC muzzleloader dropping the bull within 50 yards. The best part - Shawn captured the whole hunt on video! Donnie’s bull was a little over 60 inches wide, truly, an awesome ending to an amazing trip in one of the world’s last true wildernesses.
Make sure you catch this hunt on an upcoming episode of Michael Waddell’s Bone Collector only on the Outdoor Channel.
