BEAR STALKER 2: Black Bear Hunting
January 12, 2010
We have just about completed our new bear hunting DVD, naturally titled Bear Stalker 2. All the hunts are done by stalks or long range spot and stalk. Most of the stalking we do with bows on Alaska’s coastal bear but this year we have some that are stalked and thumped with rifles. During the archery hunts we were able to get very close to a pretty good number of black bear. Some of the bear are huge. The one that could have been the largest we passed because he had rubbed his coat so badly, but we pass him really close. From Alaska we move to Arizona and New Mexico to hunt black bear with bino’s at very long ranges. Here the canyons the bears live in are steep and thick and the country is huge. During the time of these hunts you will see the black bear change their food sources and even change the areas they are living in looking for new food sources.We have a lot of great bear hunting both with a bow and a rifle. All fair chase, all stalks! Release date is June 2010.
BEAR HUNTING, COASTAL BEARS ALASKA 2009, INCLUDES BEAR HUNTING VIDEO
July 30, 2009
Mike Whelan 5-2009 AK
I thought I would never be an addict but now I think of May and all I can see is hunting big black bear on the beaches, maybe add a little crabbing and then throw in some halibut fishing just for fun A good friend of mine Brent Bunger and I went on a six day black bear hunt with Dave Benitz of Petersburg, Alaska. We went the second and part of the third week in May this year. Our goal was to video and hunt a couple of good black bear. On the morning of the first day, an opportunity for a stalk happened very quickly, I hustled on to the beach after Dave, carting my Mathews DXT and decided to to try a stalk. Thirty or fourty minutes later I was thirty five yards from a good black bear. We had two cameras rolling when I managed to slip a Shuttle T-lock broadhead behind the bears front shoulder. He went about seventy yards and piled up just off of the beach. That left Brent with a whole week to play with about sixty black bear that we would see. Both Brent and I wore Advantage Max-1 camo, which works very well for us in the Southwest, although we did have some concerns how it would look on these beaches. We will let the video of Brent stalking some black bear show you how well it works. Brent must have hunted and passed on between ten to fifteen huge bear before he decided, on the last day we had to hunt, to pound a big black boar on a cold, rainy beach. What a great hunt, we single handedly put a dent in the dungeness crab population, caught six halibut, shot two bear and saw over sixty bear. It is hard to explain how much fun the hunt was. I guess the best way to explain it is to say that we already booked for next year. All these hunts and more will be on Bear Stalker 2, this bear hunting DVD, to be released May 2010.
SPRING BEAR HUNTS, Bear Hunting Videos
January 22, 2009
Mike Whelan
Bear Hunting Video Previews
I have already started packing for spring in Alaska, I hope to be hunting some black bear with Dave Benitz. Over the last few years Dave has filmed some of his hunts and they will be on our new bear DVD, Bear Stalker. It will be released in the spring. We have video previews from this DVD available on this page
. Dave still has some openings for black bear hunts this year in May and his contact information is on our Guides page. These hunts are some of the best I have ever been on.
Bear Hunt - Alaska Coastal Bears
July 24, 2008
by Mike Whelan.
I had a great six day black bear hunt with Dave Benitz. Dave runs Stikine Guide Service out of Petersburg, Alaska. We hunted off of his boat the Sandpiper, moving and staying in small bays and inlets along the islands and mainland with in thirty or forty miles of Petersburg. The Sandpiper was our home base and from it, we would use a sixteen foot skiff to motor along the shores and glass for bears feeding. I had at least one archery stalk a day and sometimes more than one on good boars. To me this was great archery hunting, good stalking and big bear. Dave is a great person to be with and a very good guide, plus his cooking is pretty darn good. We saw 50 to 60 black bear in six days, Dave said that is probably low for his hunts and, naturally, he sees all the bear first. Don’t try to spot bears before him, it just doesn’t work, his son Deven and I spent our days discussing cameras, sea otters, humpbacks and halibut. I shot a good boar, had a great time and couldn’t recommend his hunts any higher than just flat excellent.
Bear DVD - Hunting Project
July 22, 2008
We are pretty sure we will finish our first black bear hunting DVD in March 2009. Mike just returned from a black bear hunt in Alaska where they stalked coastal black bears and where he managed to take a very nice boar, you can see some pictures under Current Hunts. We also have filmed rifle hunts in Arizona , New Mexico and Colorado. This production will have both rifle and archery hunts and is mostly spot and stalk hunting. We have been gathering footage of black bear for this DVD for six years.