By Doug Burkman

I have looked forward to an Alaska Brown Bear hunt for over 40 years.  I finally realized that goal this spring when after nearly a year of planning my friend Cody Davis and I boated to the north end of Revillagegado Island to hunt brown bears. As we arrived in the area we planned to hunt we saw what appeared to be a beaver swimming a small channel.  We looked through our binoculars only to find that what appeared to be a beaver was a brown bear swimming the channel.

We watched as the big bear climbed out of the water onto the grassy tidal flat and began to forage on the lush springtime grasses from a few hundred yards away. He was oblivious to our approach by boat.  After he moved off about a hundred yards from us, I climbed out of the boat to see if I could sneak on him with bow in hand.  Cody stayed in the boat with camera and 375 mag back up. I pulled off a perfectly executed stalk to within 30 yards of the unsuspecting bear.

When the bear was heading straight at me from the other side of the log, I decided to back off to the pine tree to my left so I could screen myself with some of the branches and still be able to silently draw my bow and hopefully get a shot at this large bear.  The bear came around the opposite end of the log and offered me a 28 yard broadside shot which is well within my capabilities.

I shot and missed my intended target about 8 inches to the left which turned my perfect double lung shot into a marginal diaphragm and liver shot. To make matters worse the arrow clipped a rib which deflected the arrow to the rear even further exiting his left flank.   The bear did not know what hit him. He soon resumed feeding.  I thought that two arrows would be twice as good as one and proceeded to silently pulling another arrow out of my quiver to finish off this bear. I was successful getting another arrow out undetected but when I drew my bow the arrow chattered as I pulled it across the two prong rest.  This noise was readily heard by the injured bear and he instantly glared at me with a less than a loving look. I figured at that point that things were going to get crazy real fast and wished my “back up” were standing beside me looking over my shoulder. I inadvertently left my Ruger Redhawk 44 mag in the boat in my haste to stalk the bear (I don’t think I would have had time to draw my pistol out of the holster, aim, and shoot at the charging bear).

As the bear briefly looked away I released the second arrow.  The bear heard the arrow coming and tried to get out of the way but the arrow caught him high in the shoulder while the broadhead cut nothing but muscle above the back bone.

The bear did not like being hit by two arrows and came at me like a runaway freight train. There was no way I was going to stick around and see if it was a bluff charge so I tried to out maneuver him around the tree to my side. (The bear did not fall for that maneuver.) I ran as fast as I could and made it about 3/4’s of the way around the tree. Branches from the tree knocked my hat off while running through some bushes. I looked over my shoulder as the hat fell on the ground just as the bear closed the last ten feet. He looked awful big and terribly upset. He was on me in seconds. I knew at that point I was going to get the whuppin’ of my life and I braced for what turned out to be a minor encounter. The bear bit me hard and ran off as fast as he came.  I watched as he ran two hundred yards away before disappearing through some brush. As the bear caught me, he tripped me (I have scratch marks on my right leg below the knee) and bit my left butt cheek hard enough that I’m still bruised and swollen almost three weeks after the fact.

Cody, upon seeing the bear charge, put down his camera, grabbed his rifle and exited the boat getting wet to his chest crossing a side channel. He shot in the air to try to frighten the bear away but the bear had already left me by then. The bear caught me in a depression where Cody could not see me or the bear, so a shot in the air was the only option he had at that time.

We tracked the bear until dark, winding through the woods for about a quarter mile. We took up the trail the next morning but it had rained during the night and washed away most of the dwindling blood trail. We progressed a couple hundred yards the next morning to no avail. After we lost the blood trail we circled for a time and gave up at that point. The Fish and Game went up a week later to look for the bear but did not find anything in the area indicating a dead bear. I hope he is still walking. I plan on going there this fall and trying to find him again.

No one can explain why the bear did not finish thrashing me. Cody and I determined that the prayers we said before and during our hunt is what protected me from a sure mauling. We spent a couple more days hunting and sightseeing before returning to Ketchikan. Cody shot a nice Brownie at 50 yards with his .50 cal. revolver. Upon returning home, I reluctantly went to the Doc at the urging of my loving wife. I have garnered a lot more attention from many more people than I would like, but I guess that goes with the territory in an incident like this. Everyone wants to hear the brown bear story and I’ve told it a hundred times.
And a little side note;  three weeks after this incident my wife, Trish, shot a 5- foot black bear with her 30-06 at 215 yards. She shot it through the heart. She had never hunted before, so this was quite an unforgettable experience for her as well.