It had been, as the saying goes, a dark and stormy night. The rains had come hard, as they can only do on the Alaska Peninsula in the fall, a cold, wet, half-frozen slush that eats right down to your bones, no matter what you're wearing. The winds had blown hard, too, damn near tearing the tent off it's heavy-duty poles. It was not a night of much sleep, and so my partner and I had stayed awake and played some cards, shot the bull, and tried to act like it was no big deal. Heck, this is Alaska, right? 

By mid-morning the rains had stopped, the winds slowed to a dull roar, and patches of blue sky peeked through the leaden canopy. Like all the other critters in the valley, we surfaced to check it out. There weren't even any whitecaps on the lake, so we decided we might as well fire up the boat and go hunting. 

Hunting the Alaskan brown bear, Ursus arctos middendorffi, is anything but a routine adventure. I had hunted both them and their cousin, the inland or mountain grizzly (ursus arctos horribilis) a fair amount over the years, and even more so since moving to Alaska full-time. It was always with a rifle, and though this in itself is excitement enough for just about anybody, for years I'd had a bug to hunt them with bow and arrow. 

Brown bear hunting is a lot like digging for treasure in the Sahara desert. So much sand. So little treasure. For the past four days we'd been searching diligently for a good bear, and though we had seen a couple of smallish males and several sows with cubs, we hadn't yet found "him". You look and look and look, but even though you know it could happen at any moment, it never seems to happen soon enough. 

Until today. We spotted him swimming across the lake, only a head the size of a basketball sticking up out of the water. Bo gunned the boat and I got ready. By the time we'd closed the half-mile gap, the bear had climbed out on the beach, shook himself dry, then ambled into the thick brush, out of sight. 

As Bo beached the skiff, I told him to secure it while I raced after the bear. My plan was to try and spot him moving off -- we were both sure he was heading toward a nearby river that was plugged with a late run of sockeye salmon -- and I'd keep an eye on him while Bo caught up. Then we'd figure out what to do. 

The bear had other ideas. Instead of moving along, I found him rolling in chest-high grass not 100 yards from the beach. The wind was, fortunately, perfect, so I gave it a quick thought. Do I wait for Bo, or move in? 

I chambered a round in my .338 Win. Mag., and moved in. At 30 yards I stopped, knelt down, nocked an arrow and waited, hoping that the beating of my heart wouldn't alert this big old boar to my presence. I laid the .338 at my side, hooked up the release and got ready. 

It all happened in a blur. The bear stood up and looked right at me. How did he know I was there? The grass was up to my neck, the wind was perfect, I was camo'd up and moving. Uh, oh. He threw his nose into the air to try and get a whiff of me. No dice. He popped his teeth and swung his big, blocky head from side to side. He woofed a couple of times. Then he took a big step my way. Then another. 

On the third step, I slowly grabbed the rifle with my right hand. That's when the bear took a big bound my way. Dropping the bow, I threw the rifle up. On the second bound, I fired from the hip, falling backwards into the tall grass and rolling into a defensive ball. Crap, I thought, "this is it!" 

It got deathly still as the sound of the gun shot echoed off the mountain. I waited for what seemed like an eternity, then rolled up on my haunches and jacked another round in. 

No bear. 

I was shaking like a leaf on a strong breeze, head looking 360 degrees like a soggy owl trying to find him. I stood up and there he was, laying not 30 feet away, graveyard dead. Somehow, my bullet had taken him right through the windpipe and broken his neck. Talk about luck. 

Bo arrived right off, knowing that a rifle shot was not good news. After he calmed me down and I told him the story, we looked at the bear in awe. It took the both of us grunting and groaning like stevedores just to roll him over to skin him out. Back at the lodge, the wet hide, with skull and paws intact, weighed 157 lbs. We figured the bear at somewhere close to 1200 lbs. His hide squared an honest 9-feet, 5-inches. 

So, while I had myself a big brown bear at least, it wasn't with a bow. Alaska law only lets you take a brown bear in most of the state, including the Peninsula, once every four years. So, I've had four years to think it over. Will I try it again? 

My wife thinks I'm nuts, but this spring, when the bears emerge from their dens, I'll be looking for another, bow in hand. Spring isn't the best time to get them with a bow, so if I can't find the one I want and make it happen, I'll be after them again this fall, when the salmon runs draw them like magnets to the low-country rivers. The extra insurance made her feel better about it, and so do I. After all, why live in Alaska if you can't challenge the country and the game, one-on-one, bow in hand, the way you've always dreamed of? 
I'll let you know how it turns out. . . Bob Robb