Grizzly Bear Hunt

[RB]

I knew Scott by name only.

I hunted Nakwasina, Halley Is, and stayed at Allen Point more than a few times!  Great area up there!

Have hunted Deer out of Nakwasina, Fish bay, Redoubt lake, Necker Bay, North Arm and other assorted hole in the wall beaches. My brother and his buddies never wanted to hunt Bear just left them alone and up until this year never really thought about it, but the way hunting is going I think it would nice to have a rug from there before it is not available any more. 

[TeacherMan]

I lived in Sitka a number of years and killed two of my own brown bears and was on a few other hunts, before and after the kill. I ate parts of at least 5 different bears killed in both spring and fall on fish streams. None that I ate was worse than some rutty bucks I have eaten, and some was downright good. I have had the same experience with black bears up there. I think the turned up noses to bear meat stems from mainly here say (so-an-so says bear meat is bad so it must be) and a general dislike of the idea of wild omnivore and carnivore meat by most people.

Save the meat unless there is a good reason not to.

To clarify, spring brown bear is recommended to be saved and you have to retain spring black bear in most areas. Only fall bears are exempted from salvage.

I like that AK lays out in the regs what is mandatory to be salvaged.  It really kind of disappointed me about the ambiguity of what needs salvaged in WA and that in ID only the main muscles needed salvaged.

Can’t remember about the AK squirrels and marmot regs, but you can shoot cormorants and crows as long as you keep some feathers.

Meat does need to be salvaged on black bears if harvested prior to 6/1. And generally is very good. With that said all the blackies we shot last season were from 6/10-6/25. Both brownies that I've eaten where Fall bears. One shot in unit 15 (the meat even smelled fishy) the other was out of 13 and the meat on that was was just strong tasting. Rutty is a good analogy. the one out of 13 was a very old sow. 15yr old+ bear. I'm sure that didn't help. I have eaten polar bear when I was working up in the Arctic and honestly it was better in my opinion than brown bear lol. Still a little fishy and extremely dark meat. If I shot one in the Spring I would salvage the meat. In the Fall (only brownie hunts I put in for, Kodiak because I can turn it into a deer hunt as well) I'll let the other bears in the area enjoy it.

[Skyvalhunter]

Funny thing about Kodiak bears. When I asked my guide about the meat and told me that the eagles are the ones that take care of it, Sure enough the day after when we were fleshing out the hide the eagles had eaten half of it and the next day when we left to get a blacktail there was hardly anything left. Those eagles are all over the dang place there. They had to of eaten 2X their weight in bear.

[Calvin Rayborn]

Good Luck!