The 2018 season started very well this spring with all but one of our hunters harvesting beautiful, 10 foot plus trophy brown bears with us in my Izembek National Wildlife Refuge Exclusive-Use guide area. They were 10’2”, 10’4” and 10’9” with from 27 8/16” to 27 10/16” skulls. The one hunter that didn’t get a bear could have easily shot a 9’6” bear at 50 yards on the second day of his hunt but it was agreed to pass on that bear and then the hunter had to leave early before the end of his hunt for personal reasons – his age of 77 and lack of physical conditioning didn’t help him either as he saw 42 bears, 4 of which were in the 10’+ class but were a mile to two miles away, which was just too far for him to hike. So yet again, we had a fantastic brown bear season and look forward to another one in October of 2019, where currently we have only one opening remaining for this thrilling adventure hunt for world class trophy brown bear!
During our Trophy Dall Sheep season in August, we took a few less sheep hunters this season, as we were one sheep guide short this year due to one of our guides retiring from guiding but will be back to normal, full strength in the 2019 season. Of our six dedicated sheep hunters this season, four of them harvested beautiful trophy rams and that really should have been five out of six but one of our hunters had his Swarovski rifle scope turret break at the critical time when he had two nice rams standing broadside at 380 yards, needless to say he is furious with his rifle scopes malfunction. Two hunters had to cut their hunting short due to physical ailments and/or poor physical conditioning – there is no such thing as being in too good of shape for a Dall sheep hunt so put the sweat equity into training for your hunt and it will likely pay big dividends during your adventure! Two of our hunters also shot Arctic Grizzlies, one of which was a very large 8’ 3” boar shot at 24 yards with a bow, in addition to harvesting a nice Trophy ram with his rifle. Many nice, legal, trophy class rams were seen this year and the prospects in our areas for the 2019 season look very good.
In September we had two hunters in our Trophy Moose & Grizzly Camps. One had a large bull moose as his top priority and the other was focused on harvesting a nice Arctic Grizzly and both were very successful in attaining their dreams, despite the unseasonably warm and beautiful weather we experienced this September. One hunter harvested a magnificent 62” Trophy Bull Moose and the other harvested a great 7’ 6” Arctic Grizzly. Even with the warm weather, which is not conducive to good moose rut activity, we saw about 20 moose and it looks as though 2019 will be another good moose season for us!
