The effects of that first hard press were evident the next morning. Stan made a great breakfast of eggs and bacon and we loaded up for another long hike - this time upriver. Determined to find some fresh bear sign we crossed the Johnson River on an ice bridge and walked the opposite side this time.

We spent many hours glassing each day

It was a cool morning but the sun came out for a while and it was good walking weather. We spent many hours glassing the hills on our side of the river but only saw more sheep and caribou. Three miles upriver we crossed back onto our side on another ice bridge and glassed some more. Then the word I was waiting:

"Grizzly"

I quickly asked Stan for landmarks since he was glassing distant high mountain hillsides thousands of yards way.

video of this scene (470k)

"Follow the snow patch as it curls off that high peak, now look into the scree slope just below it" Stan said. There it was, a grizzly was working its way along a high mountain pass nearly 3000 feet above us. We put the doubler on my pair of Swarovski binoculars - turning them into a spotting scope and watched the bear as it made its way along the steep high-mountain crags. At one point he came upon two dall rams that followed the big bruin around. To the untrained eye it would look like they were taunting the bear - but like the caribou often do, it is safer to keep an eye on the bear than to turn your back on him. The bear at first did not notice the sheep but when he did he shrugged them off and continued on his way. Stan's assumption was a good one. This grizzly was looking for sheep carcasses killed on winter avalanches.

Our first fresh grizzly track

Eventually the bear hit a snowfield and began digging frantically - we moved on upstream. The rest of the day was spent looking for more bears and more sign. We found our first set of tracks from a decent-sized bear. Our guess was it was the one up on the mountain, We returned to camp shortly after eleven and just in time for Stan to cook up two rib eyes on an alder campfire.

Fresh Rib-eyes over an alder fire - now this is hunting!

So why didn't we go after this bear? Two reasons - first is that it was probably out of reach. The bear was literally above the sheep country in areas that looked more like Mt. Goat habitat than bear habitat. It would have taken us hours to climb that high and the bear would likely have been gone by then. The second, most important reason is that we were hunting on the boundary line of Stan's guide use area. Any game on the opposite banks of the Johnson River was in a unit that Stan was not legally allowed to guide in. This caused us both some concern but there was little we could do about it. Swarovski 10x42 EL with doubler Quality Optics One aspect of this hunt which was stressed to me by many people is that for grizzly and brown bear you will literally be living behind a pair of binoculars. So this past spring I asked many people their advice on optics here on Bowsite.com and overwhelmingly the response was Swarovski EL 10x42. While they are very expensive, I can tell you that after hours of glassing I had no eye fatigue whatsoever. In addition to the binocs, these glasses allow you to add an additional lens called a "doubler" which effectively turns your glasses into a low-power spotting scope. This system worked fantastically for identifying objects without having to lug around an additional spotting scope.