North American Super Slam – Brown Bear

As my first article in a series about my North American Super Slam for Western Hunter highlighting the different species, I thought a description of the Super Slam and what species are included would be a good start. The Super Slam is the 29 different species of big game in North America recognized by Pope and Young. The first person to take all 29 species with a bow was Chuck Adams, and it was hence named the Super Slam.

Once I learned all the species included in the Super Slam, I considered it to be the Everest of bowhunting. I wondered if I had what it would take both mentally and physically to complete it with a recurve bow. Chuck completed his Super Slam in 1990 with a compound bow, and I finally completed mine 19 years later with a recurve bow.

The Super Slam is comprised of the following 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 ground caribou
• Central barren ground 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

Budget Slam

One of my biggest obstacles, besides the difficulty of the hunts themselves, was that when I began that quest, I was making $19,000 a year working in an archery shop in northern Colorado and supplemented that with a few thousand dollars a year selling hides from my trap line. Without the financial means at the time, my goal was to do as many of the species as I could self-guided. That way I could save money for the more expensive hunts that would require I have a guide with me.

Fortunately, I live in Colorado and was able to do self-guided hunts and take 10 of the 29 species without having to leave my home state. For many of the other species, I went on self-guided hunts in other states. By my accounting, I would guess I did the cheapest Super Slam ever. Most of my animals were not record book quality or even all males. I just wanted to experience taking all 29 of them with my recurve, which meant getting up close on all kinds of species in all kinds of terrain and weather conditions.

During my adventures I was stranded in Alaska due to a bush plane crash, almost drowned when a boat flipped on a grizzly hunt, was charged by multiple species, and was colder, hotter, and more physically and mentally exhausted than I have ever been in my hunting career. I almost quit a few times and questioned my sanity frequently. My hope is that you enjoy hearing the backstory on some of these hunts and that some of the information helps you if you plan on going after one of the species I write about. In the case where I have taken more than one of the species, I have chosen to write about my favorite experience with that species in future issues of Western Hunter Magazine.

Alaskan Charge

My brown bear hunt is a good one to start on for me because of the close call I had while hunting. This one was a knuckle-biter. First off, I chose to go on a super reasonable, no-frills, guided brown bear hunt because it was relatively inexpensive. In Alaska, the brown bear is one of the species you must have a guide for, so I had to hire an outfitter. Since this bear was one of the last ten I needed to complete my goal, and since at that point I was so close I thought I could actually get it done, I had a cameraman with me to try and film it.

We flew into a remote lake via float plane and used a foot pump to air up a raft the plane had dropped off. Our plan was to float a few miles each day on the small salmon stream we were on and stop and hunt when we saw bears or found some fresh sign. We weren’t a few miles into our trip when I spotted a large bear in the river as we rounded a bend. The outfitter spotted three cubs on the shore and things went south really fast from there. As our raft continued downstream, carrying us toward the large sow and three cubs on the left side of the river, the first thing that happened is we all stopped paddling. I was in the front left of the boat, so I was, unfortunately, closest to the bears.

The sow tried to avoid a confrontation and bolted into the brush. The cubs, unfortunately, stayed on the shore on the edge of the stream as the boat drifted closer. We could hear the sow huffing loudly, warning us off, but unfortunately, we couldn’t do anything to prevent the small raft from passing close to the cubs. Suddenly, the sow charged. It happened so fast that I had to watch the video in slow motion later to see what actually happened.

In her mad fury to protect her cubs, the sow actually ran over one cub as she charged the boat. I had no weapon other than my recurve bow that was taken down and stored in my dry bag in the middle of the raft. Braun, the outfitter and guide, managed to barely get his 500 Smith and Wesson revolver out of his holster before the sow was on us. He fired in front of her when she was only 8 to 10 feet away.

The sow, fortunately, turned, deterred by the large hand cannon being fired in front of her as well as being hit by the gasses from the round and the splash caused by the bullet hitting the water. The same current that had drifted us close to the bear also carried us past her and her cubs, but she still turned almost broadside to look back to see if we were leaving. I have no doubt had she thought we were still an immediate threat she would have charged again.

Weapon Malfunction

To say I was freaked out a tad wouldn’t quite describe the situation. At that moment, you couldn’t have gotten a greased BB in my ass with a hammer. We went around the bend and pulled over to gather our nerves. While pulled over, I asked Braun why he had not shot the bear. His calm response was that the only place he could have shot that bear to drop it instantly was the brain or spinal cord.

He went on to say that the odds of him hitting the brain or spinal cord on a charging bear with a handgun out of a moving boat were slim, so he was hoping to deter the charge with a shot in front of the bear. He went on to say that if that had not worked, he was going to use his second shot to shoot the bear off of me since I was closest and it probably would have mauled me first.

The only problem with this was that as he was explaining it, he was fiddling with the handgun. Apparently, he had attempted to pull the hammer back and couldn’t. He couldn’t because the gun was jammed. Now, I know what you’re thinking, revolvers don’t jam, and that is why they make such great self-defense weapons. The problem was this revolver was jammed. He handed it to me and I couldn’t cock the weapon either. It took a minute to realize what had happened. The round he was shooting was a hot reload. The primer had backed out of the shell and the firing pin, which is located on the hammer, had stuck in the primer making it impossible to fire the weapon because the cylinder would not rotate.

With a pen knife and some force, we freed the hammer and were able to get the gun back in working condition. The problem was not with the firearm but with the hot load that created enough pressure to blow the primer out of the case and form it around the firing pin. I shudder to think what may have happened if the sow had continued her charge or charged again. With that incident behind us, we continued to hunt. I certainly had a new appreciation for how fast things can go south with a provoked apex predator and had that in the back of my mind for the rest of the hunt.

The good news is that I did end up taking a beautiful brown bear on that hunt with my recurve. I was hidden by the edge of the salmon stream when a brown bear came down the other side on a well-used trail, looking to fatten up on some king salmon. The bear had no idea I was there, and I shot as it walked past. The bear spun quickly, bit at the arrow, and, fortunately, ran into the brush. We waited a few hours and slipped in to find the bear dead. I was more than a little excited, and despite the huge adrenaline rush of harvesting a beautiful brown bear with me recurve, I would have to say the charge is what stuck in my mind more than the actual hunt.

See For Yourself

I have included a QR code with a link to a YouTube video of the charge. It will help you realize that I didn’t exaggerate the story and will show how fast things can go south when you don’t expect them to. This was a case where, without a handgun, we may have all been seriously hurt, or worse. Some advice to take away from this hunt: Don’t sit in the front of the boat, and don’t run hot reloads in a revolver that your life may depend on!