North American Super Slam – Brown Bear

As my first article in a sequence about my North American Tremendous Slam for Western Hunter highlighting the totally different species, I believed an outline of the Tremendous Slam and what species are included can be a superb begin. The Tremendous Slam is the 29 totally different species of massive recreation in North America acknowledged by Pope and Younger. The primary individual to take all 29 species with a bow was Chuck Adams, and it was therefore named the Tremendous Slam.

As soon as I discovered all of the species included within the Tremendous Slam, I thought of it to be the Everest of bowhunting. I puzzled if I had what it will take each mentally and bodily to finish it with a recurve bow. Chuck accomplished his Tremendous Slam in 1990 with a compound bow, and I lastly accomplished mine 19 years later with a recurve bow.

The Tremendous Slam is comprised of the next species:

Whitetail deer

Mule deer

Coues deer

Columbia blacktail deer

Sitka blacktail deer

Rocky Mountain elk

Roosevelt elk

Tule elk

Alaska Yukon moose

Canadian moose

Shiras moose

Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep

Dall sheep

Desert sheep

Stone sheep

Barren floor caribou

Central barren floor caribou

Woodland caribou

Quebec Labrador caribou

Mountain caribou

Polar bear

Brown bear

Grizzly bear

Black bear

Musk ox

Rocky Mountain goat

Pronghorn antelope

Mountain lion

Bison

Finances Slam

One among my greatest obstacles, apart from the problem of the hunts themselves, was that once I started that quest, I used to be making $19,000 a yr working in an archery store in northern Colorado and supplemented that with just a few thousand {dollars} a yr promoting hides from my lure line. With out the monetary means on the time, my purpose was to do as most of the species as I may self-guided. That approach I may lower your expenses for the dearer hunts that will require I’ve a information with me.

Happily, I stay in Colorado and was capable of do self-guided hunts and take 10 of the 29 species with out having to go away my residence state. For most of the different species, I went on self-guided hunts in different states. By my accounting, I’d guess I did the most affordable Tremendous Slam ever. Most of my animals weren’t file e-book high quality and even all males. I simply wished to expertise taking all 29 of them with my recurve, which meant getting up shut on all types of species in all types of terrain and climate situations.

Throughout my adventures I used to be stranded in Alaska on account of a bush airplane crash, nearly drowned when a ship flipped on a grizzly hunt, was charged by a number of species, and was colder, hotter, and extra bodily and mentally exhausted than I’ve ever been in my looking profession. I nearly stop just a few instances and questioned my sanity incessantly. My hope is that you just get pleasure from listening to the backstory on a few of these hunts and that a number of the info helps you should you plan on going after one of many species I write about. Within the case the place I’ve taken greater than one of many species, I’ve chosen to put in writing about my favourite expertise with that species in future problems with Western Hunter Journal.

Alaskan Cost

My brown bear hunt is an efficient one to begin on for me due to the shut name I had whereas looking. This one was a knuckle-biter. First off, I selected to go on an excellent cheap, no-frills, guided brown bear hunt as a result of it was comparatively cheap. In Alaska, the brown bear is likely one of the species you need to have a information for, so I needed to rent an clothes shop. Since this bear was one of many final ten I wanted to finish my purpose, and since at that time I used to be so shut I believed I may truly get it executed, I had a cameraman with me to attempt to movie it.

We flew right into a distant lake by way of float airplane and used a foot pump to air up a raft the airplane had dropped off. Our plan was to drift just a few miles every day on the small salmon stream we had been on and cease and hunt after we noticed bears or discovered some recent signal. We weren’t just a few miles into our journey once I noticed a big bear within the river as we rounded a bend. The clothes shop noticed three cubs on the shore and issues went south actually quick from there. As our raft continued downstream, carrying us towards the massive sow and three cubs on the left aspect of the river, the very first thing that occurred is all of us stopped paddling. I used to be within the entrance left of the boat, so I used to be, sadly, closest to the bears.

The sow tried to keep away from a confrontation and bolted into the comb. The cubs, sadly, stayed on the shore on the sting of the stream because the boat drifted nearer. We may hear the sow huffing loudly, warning us off, however sadly, we couldn’t do something to stop the small raft from passing near the cubs. Abruptly, the sow charged. It occurred so quick that I needed to watch the video in sluggish movement later to see what truly occurred.

In her mad fury to guard her cubs, the sow truly ran over one cub as she charged the boat. I had no weapon aside from my recurve bow that was taken down and saved in my dry bag in the midst of the raft. Braun, the clothes shop and information, managed to barely get his 500 Smith and Wesson revolver out of his holster earlier than the sow was on us. He fired in entrance of her when she was solely 8 to 10 toes away.

The sow, thankfully, turned, deterred by the massive hand cannon being fired in entrance of her in addition to being hit by the gasses from the spherical and the splash attributable to the bullet hitting the water. The identical present that had drifted us near the bear additionally carried us previous her and her cubs, however she nonetheless turned nearly broadside to look again to see if we had been leaving. I’ve little doubt had she thought we had been nonetheless a direct menace she would have charged once more.

Weapon Malfunction

To say I used to be freaked out a tad wouldn’t fairly describe the state of affairs. At that second, you couldn’t have gotten a greased BB in my ass with a hammer. We went across the bend and pulled over to collect our nerves. Whereas pulled over, I requested Braun why he had not shot the bear. His calm response was that the one place he may have shot that bear to drop it immediately was the mind or spinal wire.

He went on to say that the percentages of him hitting the mind or spinal wire on a charging bear with a handgun out of a transferring boat had been slim, so he hoped to discourage the cost with a shot in entrance of the bear. He went on to say that if that had not labored, he was going to make use of his second shot to shoot the bear off of me since I used to be closest and it in all probability would have mauled me first.

The one drawback with this was that as he was explaining it, he was fidgeting with the handgun. Apparently, he had tried to tug the hammer again and couldn’t. He couldn’t as a result of the gun was jammed. Now, I do know what you’re considering, revolvers don’t jam, and that’s the reason they make such nice self-defense weapons. The issue was this revolver was jammed. He handed it to me and I couldn’t cock the weapon both. It took a minute to appreciate what had occurred. The spherical he was capturing was a scorching reload. The primer had backed out of the shell and the firing pin, which is positioned on the hammer, had caught within the primer making it unimaginable to fireplace the weapon as a result of the cylinder wouldn’t rotate.

With a pen knife and a few pressure, we freed the hammer and had been capable of get the gun again in working situation. The issue was not with the firearm however with the recent load that created sufficient stress to blow the primer out of the case and kind it across the firing pin. I shudder to assume what might have occurred if the sow had continued her cost or charged once more. With that incident behind us, we continued to hunt. I actually had a brand new appreciation for how briskly issues can go south with a provoked apex predator and had that behind my thoughts for the remainder of the hunt.

The excellent news is that I did find yourself taking an attractive brown bear on that hunt with my recurve. I used to be hidden by the sting of the salmon stream when a brown bear got here down the opposite aspect on a well-used path, seeking to fatten up on some king salmon. The bear had no thought I used to be there, and I shot because it walked previous. The bear spun shortly, bit on the arrow, and, thankfully, bumped into the comb. We waited just a few hours and slipped in to search out the bear lifeless. I used to be greater than slightly excited, and regardless of the massive adrenaline rush of harvesting an attractive brown bear with me recurve, I must say the cost is what caught in my thoughts greater than the precise hunt.

See For Your self

I’ve included a QR code with a hyperlink to a YouTube video of the cost. It’ll show you how to notice that I didn’t exaggerate the story and can present how briskly issues can go south whenever you don’t count on them to. This was a case the place, with no handgun, we might have all been severely damage, or worse. Some recommendation to remove from this hunt: Don’t sit within the entrance of the boat, and don’t run scorching reloads in a revolver that your life might rely on!