Alaska Brown Bear Hunting Guides and Outfitters

The Brown Bear: Ursus arctos, this big game animal have been successful in the plains and forest of the North Temperate Zone, and in the Alaska landscape along with the Alberta, Canada area. Their range is dangerously reduced in the lower United States and laws have been passed to protect the brown bear from hunting guides and outfitters, but they are surviving and hunted in Alaska and western Canada because of the much larger wilderness area. Hunters plan trips and guided hunts offered by guides and outfitters for this big game every year.

Variants of the brown bear include the largest bear, the Kodiak bear of Alaska, which can weigh over 1700 pounds and can be over ten feet long. The closely related grizzly is named for its white-tipped fur as is the same reason that the brown bear has its name, from the color of its fur. Remnant populations of European brown bears live in scattered mountain regions. Laws in each of those countries protect the brown bear to some degree from hunting outfitters and guides in different areas.

Communication among Alaska brown bears depends on a signaling system from the sense of smell and sight that is effective for such widely dispersed animals, because a brown bear may need to move as much as 90 miles to exploit the changing seasonal foods in its home range in Alaska. This wide area that the brown bear hunts in makes it harder for an Alaska brown bear hunting guide or outfitter to find this big game animal. Thus a hunter may have to pay a higher dollar amount for a trip in this region.

Brown bears appear to sense and avoid each other at a distance. Within a home range, trees may be clawed, bitten, and rubbed to serve as communicating signposts. You can find these markings throughout the woodland areas where you find the Alaska brown bear. Although little firm data exist on the function of marking behavior in brown bears, smelling such sites could provide other bears with information about the range’s occupant. Large resident males disperse subordinates, so the signposts could elicit fear and avoidance by intruders and provide a basis for territoriality for the brown bear in Alaska.

Conservation of wide-ranging generalist carnivores is difficult because of the large areas of relative wilderness needed to sustain them in the lower United States, but not in Alaska or the providences of Canada. The challenge is more difficult with brown bears, because their olfactory ability permits detection of new orders over large distances. They are drawn as if by magnets to these odors, they lose in the inevitable resulting conflicts with humans. Better knowledge and management of such indirect impacts on brown bears may hasten the adverse effects of mineral and fuel exploration and development, but concerned efforts are needed in many parts of the world. The following links to information on Alaska brown bear hunting can be very informative and helpful in planning a trip or guided hunt to Alaska. The hunting outfitter or guide you contact should have more information about the area they conduct trips and hunts in.

Alaska Hunting Season Schedule

Alaska Hunting License

United States Weather

Bear-Baiting: This former sport consisting of a contest between a brown bear, grizzly bear, or black bear chained to a stake and a pack of dogs. The brown bear was almost invariably town to pieces by the dogs. In England the sport was known as early as the 12th century, and during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it achieved such popularity that the queen herself attended bear-baitings. Brown bears were kept and baited in public arenas called bear gardens. Bear-baiting and similar sports, bull-baiting, were both prohibited by Parliament in 1835.

One other form of Bear-Baiting was to capture a female brown bear then chain it to a tree during the mating season. Then wait for other male brown bears to come to the area looking for the female. No longer used, but was popular for hunters to easily get the fur that they were seeking in Alaska and other parts of the United States.