Guest Post: Loni, the Sportsman’s Wife

Something I don’t tell many people (especially men) is that I have shot a bear.  And tanned it’s hide.  In Alaska.  

 

Girls usually think its weird and it intimidates most guys.  But whatevs…  If your from Alaska, its just another day at the office.  

 

I was digging through my Alaska pictures the other day and came across my black bear hunt pictures.  It was a memorable trip.  A time when I truly fell in love with the rawness of Alaska.  So I thought I would share it with you all.  

 

I think it was way back in 2005.  Yup, sounds right.  My newly Alaskan family was working and playing alongside another family, in the process of figuring out how we could make a go of living up North.  We decided to take a break from working life and try our hand at some Southeast Alaska Black Bear hunting.

 

Now, Southeast Alaska is made up of mostly islands.  Many of which are very hard to access.  We went by boat.  Then trucked around on logging roads to our hunting locations.  It was not easy and was very much a team effort.  It took a couple days to find our bears.  Yes, days!  I say bears, my brother shot one on that trip as well.  We spent a lot of time fixing flat tires and making the logging roads passable.  

 

One evening as we were about to give up for the day, we saw a beautiful black bear with a hide that was so full and thick it looked almost blue through the binocs.  The guys said he had probably just come out of hibernation since his hide was not rubbed off at all.  So I took a shot with my brothers .270. He’s left-handed so I have no idea how my right handed shooting was so accurate on his gun.

 

The bear ran into the woods and mooed like a cow for a few minutes then silence. Kinda creepy. Bears have very hard heads and their vitals are located in a bit of a different location as a deer so I was unsure those first few minutes after I fired of just how lethal my shot was. I had aimed like they told me, as unnatural as it felt.  

 

We waited, it got dark. And cold. And rainy.  After forty five minutes we cautiously investigated. Not ten feet in from the edge of the woods lay my bear. He was beautiful! And it was a clean shot.Right through the heart folks.  Definitely a hunt I will never forget.  We salted up the hide and with my good friend Haley’s help I learned how to tan a bear hide.  Good times.