It was the twelfth day of my ten-day Alaskan grizzly hunt, and I had yet to see a bear. A few of the guys in my camp had scored, but each shot the only bear they saw. As is typical for me, I had yet to see so much as a track and was starting to accept that a grizzly bear was not in the cards when we spotted the fresh tracks of two big bruins from our morning vantage point.

The tracks led from two freshly-excavated bear dens in neighboring valleys--a sure sign the bears had just awakened from their winter slumber that morning. Both tracks appeared to belong to big boars, and neither could have gone far. My motley crew of guides, assistant guides, and hangers-on debated the merits of each track for the better part of an hour. We weren't sure which one to follow, and there was no good way to figure it out. We were at an impasse when Tommy, one of the assistant guides, walked over to get our attention.

"Dat bur is still in da valley," he said, pointing toward the closest set of tracks.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Trust me. He's der."

Tommy closed his eyes for a minute, then snapped back to attention.

"He's sleeping under a tree in da bottom of dat little valley. Let's go, Greg. I know he's der."

Given my poor track record with grizzly bears, I had no right to be optimistic, but I knew I was going to shoot a bear when I hopped on my snow machine. We dismounted in the bottom of the valley to hike up to the den, Tommy's prediction proving eerily true.

The author and his guide followed these prints for miles before reaching the boundaries of their hunting area.

Seventeen Days
I've dreamed of hunting a hump-back, blond-tipped grizzly bear my whole life. Like many hunters, budget considerations, work and family obligations kept me from realizing my dream until last year. In the preceding years, I managed to scrimp and save enough to book a ten-day grizzly hunt with an outfitter friend of mine in British Columbia. He has an excellent area. In fact, on previous hunts there for mountain goat and black bear, I saw many shooter grizzlies. Filling my tag, I thought, was a done deal. Unfortunately, the bears didn't get the memo.

I hunted my tail off from sunup to sundown every day. Despite my efforts, I didn't see a single grizzly, even after extending my ten-day hunt to seventeen days. Apparently, spring had come too soon and the big bears had already moved to the back country in search of sows. To add insult to injury, I passed up a pair of possible Boone & Crockett black bears in hopes of catching up with a prime example of ursus horribilis.

I was hoping for better results this year when I booked a grizzly hunt with my friend, Virgil Umphenour, of Hunt Alaska. Virgil has an enviable success rate on bragging-size bruins. In fact, during the previous season all his clients shot bears early in the hunt, with several making the prestigious Boone & Crockett record book. Were I a betting man, I would have put my money on Virgil. However, I know better than to bet on me when it comes to the great bears.