I'd been away from home so much since we'd moved to Alaska that it felt strange to be around Mary and our children.  This hit me hard because I knew well how Mary felt about my being home with her.  All she has ever asked of me is that I come home every night.  This brief time at home reminded me how much I had failed her.  I didn't know how I was going to change the circumstances to put me on a normal schedule, but I resolved that I would.

While I was home Mary wanted moose meat, so I told her I'd go get one.  Moose are everywhere in Alaska, but the bulls are a little more difficult to locate.  This is especially true during hunting season.  We'd lived in Alaska nearly two years by this point and I had yet to hunt, so I was eager to bag my first big game.  Alaska law prohibits shooting any game within a proscribed distance from the road, so I went to a jeep road I knew a few miles from our home.  About a half mile down the jeep road there was a steep decent and a long level bottom.  I could see a creek running through that bottom, so out of concern about getting stuck down there, I parked the Cherokee at the top of the hill and walked down the jeep road.

A moose is easy to kill, so rather than bring my large caliber and expensive Sako .338 Winchester Magnum, I carried a .30 .30 lever action Marlin.  It was a good deer gun that would work well for moose too.  There was six inches of fresh snow on the ground, but not a single track.  This was disappointing as I was hoping to see fresh moose tracks in the snow.  I figured there would be tracks near the creek.  Thick waist high brush grew so close to the narrow dirt road that it brushed both doors on the Cherokee.  As I walked down the road the brush felt too close.  Half way to the creek I smelled blood.  To my right, about six feet off the road I noticed steam rising into the air.  I investigated and noticed a nearly perfect circle of knocked down brush.  In the center of that circle lay a young moose with it's guts littering the fresh snow.  Blood was everywhere.  The moose had distinctive bear claw marks on the side of it's hind quarter.  The poor thing was dead, but so recently so that there was still enough heat in his body to cause steam to rise into the air.

I observed all of this with a detached clinical interest until something important occurred to me.  This young moose had been killed by a bear.  Recently.  I, like an idiot, was now casually standing over that bear's fresh kill.  Over the bear's hard earned dinner.  First, I backed away from the dead moose until I reached the road. I looked up and carefully took in my surroundings.  Nothing stirred.  I worked the rifle's lever and loaded a round of .30 .30 ammo.  I actually looked at the gun with disgust.  The gun was fine for a moose hunt, but I was no longer hunting moose.  To be clear I wasn't hunting bear, but there was a very real possibility I might have to shoot one.  If so I needed more gun.

Moose and bear have an interesting evolutionary history, one that made what I had just witnessed even more troubling.  Everyone who lives in Alaska notices the time of spring when baby moose are born.  You notice because it happens all at once.  I was told that all moose calves are born within a week of each other.  This is easy to believe because you see them all at once.  To add to this intrigue, nearly every cow moose has two calves.  This is nature's way of preserving the moose.  You see, bear love moose meat.  A full grown moose can be killed by a bear, but it is difficult and dangerous for the bear.  An adult moose is also difficult for the bear to catch.  A young one however, is no challenge for a bear, so the bears kill and eat their fill of moose calf when they are young.  This is evidenced from driving the roads in Alaska because you stop seeing mother and two calves.  Often one of her calves has been taken by a bear.  It doesn't take long before that youngster is able to move it's legs fast enough to out run a bear.  At this point the attrition diminishes and few moose are killed by bear until the next year.  I was told some bear are fast and clever enough to take down a yearling moose, but that was rare.  This rarity was the reason for my high level of concern.

The dead moose I'd just observed was in fact a yearling.  He should have been fast enough and clever enough to avoid becoming any bear's meal.  Yet there he was bleeding out in the snow.  This unusual occurrence suggested that the bear who killed it was both exceptionally fast and clever.  So it troubled me that I had just stood over this exceptional hunter's fresh kill.  It also troubled me that the brush on either side of the narrow jeep road was high enough to hide a bear.  It troubled me that my Jeep Cherokee was so far away.  It also troubled me that I was so stupid as to bring a deer rifle to a bear fight.

I thought all these things as I looked at my dark blue Jeep Cherokee faithfully parked at the top of the hill.  At no time had the truck been out of my sight, but it seemed a long way off.

Slowly and carefully I began walking towards the Jeep.  I walked down the center of the lane with my gun low and ready.  I remembered a story the old guide had told me about a hunt he'd guided where the bear turned and hunted his party.  He didn't know he was being hunted so he had his customer in front ready for a shot at the bear he knew he was close to.  Completely unexpected the bear charged out of the bush to the guide's left.  The man was right handed, so the barrel of the rifle was pointed to the left.  He fired without aiming and killed the bear that fell on him in its death.  To prove this story he showed me a big brown bear's well reserved hide.  The hide had only one bullet hole.  In the forehead.  The area around the fatal wound was scared with gun powder.  So much gun powder that the barrel of the rifle was nearly touching the bear when he fired.  The old guide told me that had the bear come from his right, or had he been left handed, he'd have lost that fight.

Recalling this story I tried to point my rifle directly in front of me, but realized it wouldn't help, so I held it naturally and prayed that if the bear did attack, he would be corporative and attack from my left.

I had walked thirty feet up the road when I spotted the first set of bear tracks.  Because the snow was fresh, and because I had been looking so hard for moose tracks, I was absolutely positive those tracks had not been there a few minutes ago when I passed.  To punctuate this fact one of those large bear prints was stamped across the print left by my size twelve boot.  As if the bear print itself wasn't enough, the paw print was nearly as large as my boot print.  This was a big bear.  The area I was in had far more black bear than grizzly bear.  I wasn't a tracker, and didn't know enough to tell the difference between a black bear or grizzly bear, but the size of the print left no doubt that this was a grizzly bear.  Or, as Alaskan's call them, a brown bear.

It didn't take a great hunter/tracker to deduce what had happened.  I had interrupted the bear's dinner when I parked at the top of the hill.  Likely when I closed the Jeep's door.  The bear had backed off his meal and moved towards the noise to investigate.  He stopped thirty feet from his kill to sniff the air.  While he was doing this I walked by oblivious to the big brown killing machine hidden in the bush.  Then he watched me stand over his dinner.  While I was looking down at his hard won yearling he crossed the road.

His prints showed that he crossed from the left side to the right.  Knowing this I moved to the left side of the jeep road and pointed my rifle in the direction of the tracks.  Walking sideways I began moving towards my Jeep.  Slowly and cautiously.  I kept looking behind me, figuring if he came it would be from the direction of the fallen moose he was protecting.  I had gone fifty feet when I spotted the second set of tracks.  It was clearly the same bear, but this time he crossed my right to my left.  I sprang across the road and faced the opposite side.  It was difficult to maintain control.  I don't panic, but this would be the time to do so if I did.

Again I moved cautiously towards the Jeep, which was closer with every step.  The third time I cut that bear's trail I gave up all pretense of caution and ran towards the Jeep.   Not an easy thing to do up hill in six inches of snow, but I managed pretty well.  When I reached the front of my Jeep I saw yet another set of bear tracks, this time from right to left, just in front of the bumper.  The jeep was unlocked and the keys in the ignition, so I jumped in, locked the door (don't ask me why) then started the engine and began to back out.  After a few seconds I stopped and looked out the front window fully expecting to see a big angry black bear.  There was no bear in sight, but I did see another set of tracks.  These were behind where the jeep had been parked.

This caused me to revise my earlier scenario.  It was now clear that when I parked, the bear had come up the hill through the woods and went directly to the jeep.  From the tracks around the jeep he had checked it out.  By that time I was walking down the hill with my back to the jeep so saw none of this.  The bear had to have seen me walking down the jeep trail so he stalked me down the hill.  Rather than walk straight down the jeep trail, the bear moved through the high brush, crossing the road several times as he did.  When I stood over his dinner, that bear would have already crossed the road where his tracks were closest to me.  Thirty feet from where I had stood over his kill.  When I got back to the road he very well could have been close by in the high brush.  It's possible.  If so the smell of the fresh killed moose would have covered the bear's distinctive smell.  I'll never know for sure, but I believe I was very close to dying that day.