Ians Porridge

[alremkin]

I got my copy of the North American Hunting Clubs October 2005 issue today. That doesn't say much for Canada post. Thumbing through it on pages 84-85 I saw a familar face, Ian's, and finally got a short story of how he shot that brute of brown bear. It was part of a good general article about shot placement.

It seems we're pretty much agreed about calibers for large bears as I'm awaiting the delivery of my Remington Custom Shop Safari Stainless 416 Remington Mag. One question I have for Ian is why did you choose a single shot 416?

A year and a half ago I had the good fortune to hunt with an outfitter here in BC. I spent 19 days in the bush 10 miles from the nearest road in a remote area in northeastern BC. During that time we had 5 different Grizzlies come within 100 yards of our camp. We had two dogs for warning which is a very good idea, but I also realized that I wanted something bigger than my 338 Win Mag; as in that type of situation a lot is up to what the bear decides. An after thought to Ian's hunt is that one needs to be alert when in bear country especially with the brown bears or grizzlies. Imagine how the story might have read if they were slow to look or passed it off as just the wind... [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img] Fortunately that didn't happen and we have a great bear story... [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[Ian M]

alremkin,
From a commercial viewpoint the primary intent of the hunt was to get a heck of a story for the NRA American Hunter mag. Since I am a Contributing Editor with them I do a certain amount of features and product tests. Obviously the 6 page feature that resulted was significant advertising for the companies that supported me. T/C was a big part of the backing I got, they were going to introduce the Encore in .416 Rigby so that was the obvious rifle to use. My hunting partner had been up there with a Model 70 in .375 H&H the previous spring and he wanted the challenge of the single shot. Me, I would have liked a thirty shot clip but they don't fit anything T/C makes in .416 Rigby [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] I also write for North American Hunter as their Guns, Ammo and Optics editor (does it get any better than that for topics?) and am glad that you enjoyed that piece on shot placement.

That Encore shot really well and I was confident in my ability to place the shot. We had a wonderful hunt and I got some great material for my articles. Still not finished working all the stuff we did, for example I have never done anything with the two Swift A-Frames we recovered. Not sure if you read the NRA story, I popped it here just before Christmas.
There was one very stupid thing I did during the brown bear hunt. I have a freind who markets solar powered electric fences for keeping bears out of beeyards and where-ever. We took a super powerful fence in with us, and never got around to setting it up. Every day we would say - "We've got to get than damn fence up, I never slept well last night.", then promptly forgot to do it. Had a carcass 150 yards from the tents and we were in brown bear heaven, but too dense to setup the big fence. Would have taken about 30 minutes max. I worked on the developement of this technology for the game dept a long time ago so it was not new or difficult, but we kept putting it off. Definitely would suggest putting one up, they are amazing and would at least let you know something was out there. We had a timber wolf come within a few yards of one of the tents one night during our hunt - saw him many times during our hunt.
Thanks for the kind words.