The Herald-Zeitung

Hunting Texas whitetails in the mesquite pastures and wheat fields of the Texas Panhandle has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember.

My 16 years have been filled with hunting most of the type of game the state has to offer. My family has been hunting Texas whitetails for generations and I was raised to have a somewhat unreasonable obsession with those animals. My dad left me home on his past two bear hunts, so when he asked if I would be interested in an Alaskan black bear hunt, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was thrilled at the idea of walking through a dense Alaskan forest in search of one of those coastal giants. Even more exciting was the idea of hunting these monsters without a guide and without bait. To the dismay of my worried mom, we began preparing for our big hunt.

We carefully planned which week of June would be the best, and we finally decided on June 6. After a long plane ride from Texas, we landed in Alaska and quickly made our way to the dock where we met our friendly floatplane pilot, Dave. Dave flew us to our hunting location where we settled into our rented cabin and prepared for our hunt that would begin the next day. After about an hour-long floatplane flight, we finally arrived at our remote destination. There we met the owners of the cabin we would be renting for the remainder of the week. As we settled into our cabin, countless scenarios ran through my mind. Hoping I would react fittingly, I visualized all the different experiences that could result.

My dad easily roused me out of bed the next morning due to my eagerness to begin our hunt. My dad and I hurriedly dressed and readied ourselves for a morning of stalking black bears. We started along the old logging roads and didn’t have much luck at first. We hunted those roads for several hours until finally I saw my first bear in the wild. Until then, the only black bears I had seen were either at the zoo or at a Baylor football game. It was a smaller bear, probably a sow or small boar, so we continued our search.

We had a quick nap before our afternoon hunt. I found it somewhat difficult to sleep, but due to the long Alaskan summer days, I did my best to take a nap until our afternoon hunt was to begin.

Our nap ended around 4 p.m. and we began preparations for our evening hunt. I was fairly disappointed that we only saw one bear that morning.

Hunting panhandle whitetails, I have always preferred the afternoon hunt to the morning hunt.

We started our hunt a little before 5 p.m. and set out in the same direction we had that morning. We continued down the road until suddenly we came upon a small sow in the middle of the road. As soon as she caught sight of us she ran back into the dense forest.

We watched her until she was out of sight and were pretty excited that we saw a bear 15 minutes into our afternoon hunt.

We hadn’t gone any more than a hundred yards before we topped a hill and there, standing in the middle of the road, was a huge boar. My dad and I had already agreed I would shoot the first bear, so I quickly began preparations to shoot this bear. As my dad watched him through his binoculars, I looked through my new Bushnell Elite scope as the bear swaggered towards us.

Now, as I said earlier, I grew up hunting whitetails and I am used to the big bucks being very cautious and the smaller bucks not being scared of much. The opposite was true with the bears we encountered. The smaller boars and sows would run as soon as they smelled or saw us while the larger boars would stare at us for a while and then begin to walk toward us to satisfy their interest.

That is exactly what this bear did. He continued forward for about 15 nerve-wracking yards as I watched him through the cross-hairs. Now by that time I had what us Texas whitetail hunters call “buck fever,” and I had it bad. It seemed like those 15 yards took hours. So many things could go wrong. I tried to keep my focus as I watched him through my scope.

I decided that the instant this bear turned broadside I was going to take him. He did. Finally this massive boar decided that he was a little too close to us and quickly turned to run back into the woods. He stopped at 50 yards and showed me his left shoulder as I immediately took the shot. Instantaneously, my Browning .300 WSM delivered a 180 grain bullet directly into his shoulder.

Heart pounding, I hurried to reloaded and waited to take another shot just to ensure he wouldn’t run off deep into the woods. He didn’t. He jumped up as the bullet passed through his shoulder and then through his vitals. As he landed back on the ground an extremely loud roar bellowed out from him that could probably be heard pretty far off in that silent forest.

Due to the clean and well-placed shot, he died within 30 seconds.

We waited a few minutes and then snapped a few pictures of me with him down the road in the background. It seemed like forever until my dad decided we could safely examine this trophy bear.

As we got closer, he got bigger and bigger. This was my first bear so I had no clue as to how big he was.

His head looked huge but again we were used to harvesting whitetails that are somewhat smaller than an Alaskan coastal black bear. At that time, we still had no idea how much of a trophy this bear really was.

We took more than enough pictures and then started skinning him. After completing the skinning process and removing the meat, which we later gave to one of the locals, we returned to our cabin with my bear.

We measured on his skull a little bit and couldn’t come to a definite conclusion of how big he was.

We returned home and took my bear skull to an official scorer after the 60-day drying period required by Boone & Crockett. After some careful measuring the scorer proudly announced that my bear scored 21 9/16. All Time Boone & Crockett! The scorer was also certified by Safari Club International so we had my bear measured for that record book, too. After doing a little research we learned that according to their current record book top ten, my bear is tied for the seventh place coastal black bear ever taken with a rifle.

I was thrilled! This hunt just kept getting better and better. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be blessed enough to harvest such a bear, especially when I was only 16 years old. I spent countless hours in a deer stand daydreaming about a Boone & Crockett buck emerging out of a few mesquites across the fence. Now I had harvested an All-Time Boone & Crockett black bear in Alaska with my dad as my guide. I still don’t think it has fully sunk in yet.

Thanks Dad for the hunt and trophy of a lifetime, I couldn’t ask for a better hunting buddy or guide. Oh yeah, Dad killed a big bear, too.