Kodiak--It's Not For Wimps

Day four dawned cloudy and cold, and with fresh snow carpeting the bear trails, we set off up Bear Creek again, hoping the calmer weather would get the deer moving. After sitting on a few high points and glassing, we weren`t seeing anything worth a stalk, so we continued up the drainage towards the head of the valley. A big grizzly was way up near the summit of the largest mountain, and I wondered what he was finding to eat way up there. Everything seemed to want to be high; most of the does were well above the snowline, and so the bucks were there too, hoping to get lucky. One buck we watched did win his prize, breeding a doe on a slope so high and steep, it was amazing they stayed on their feet.

In their constant travels in the peak of the rut, the bucks did have to come down to cross to the next mountainside, and that was where we saw two very nice bucks meeting in the valley and sizing each other up before continuing their search. They were the nicest bucks we`d seen, but they never slowed down, making a stalk from our perch on the opposite hillside a bit tricky to plan. With the grass being three feet tall, the bucks easily slipped from view as they traveled, but I did catch a glimpse of one of them as he headed down the valley, hot on a trail. Desperate to stop him, I started bleating, then grunting, taking a guess at what sounds they might make (no doubt I sounded like a cat caught in a grate). The buck paused, and actually turned around and headed back in our direction, stopping a few times to thrash the brush and sound impressive. He looked large, dark and impressive, but very small way down there on the valley floor. He started heading away again, initiating more frantic noises from both Jake and me. When he finally stopped in a tiny opening, I shot, dropping him in his tracks.