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Well there ya go ... looks like the new Smith & Wesson .460 XVR is good enough for bear protectionMan shoots big griz while answering nature's call
By TIM MOWRY
Staff Writer
Friday, June 23, 2006 - It's one of those only-in-Alaska-type stories that is almost too unbelievable to be true.
But Chris Yeager swears it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and he has the hide of a trophy Interior grizzly bear to prove it.
It was May 30 and Yeager was driving up the Elliott Highway en route to a black bear bait station he had set up in the woods about 140 miles north of Fairbanks.
After stopping at the Hilltop Cafe for "one of those big breakfast omelettes that are about 18 inches wide and 4 inches deep," as he put it, Yeager pulled over on the side of the Elliott Highway at Mile 97 to answer nature's call. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper and slung on a shoulder holster containing his .460-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun.
While Yeager was planning to use the pistol to shoot a black bear if he saw one from his tree stand, he basically takes a gun with him everywhere he goes, which is not unnatural behavior considering he is a bona fide gun nut who works as a range technician at the Fort Wainwright firing range and moonlights as the manager of Alaskan Gun & Ammo on Sixth Avenue.
Besides, he was walking into the woods in Alaska and Yeager is the type of person who believes anyone going into the woods in Alaska should be carrying a gun.
He is also the type of person who believes that when you stop on the road to answer nature's call, you should do so a considerable distance off the road, so as not to offend any passing motorists.
Or as the affable Yeager put it, "I like to walk far enough off the road so people see a whitetail when they go by, if you know what I mean?"
Yeager was about 250 yards off the road, searching for a suitable spot, when he heard what he said sounded like a horse running.
"I thought, 'That's strange; who would be running a horse out here?' " said Yeager, a disabled veteran who served two years during the Persian Gulf War.
It sounded like it was coming from behind him so Yeager turned around. When he did so, he was shocked to see a big grizzly bearing down on him, literally and figuratively.
"He was really close," Yeager said. "I was smelling his breath."
There was nothing Yeager could do but react. He pulled the pistol from its holster and fired three point-blank shots at the bear, hitting him all three times.
"When I turned around I wasn't even sure it was a bear," said Yeager. "I just seen something brown coming at me.
"It happened real fast," he said. "The first shot turned him, which is a good thing because he was four feet from me. The second shot went in the left side and out the right side. The third shot was an aimed one. I was pulling back for a fourth shot when he collapsed."
The .460 Smith & Wesson is set up for hunting and Yeager is planning to use it to hunt white-tail deer this fall in the Lower 48.
After making sure the bear was dead, Yeager called friend Robert Nash on his cell phone to tell him the news and solicit his help in skinning and butchering the bear.
"It's not really the way I envisioned getting my first grizzly," admitted the 43-year-old Yeager, who has lived in Alaska for 15 years.
The bear turned out to be a big one as Interior grizzlies go. It measured 6-feet 3-inches from nose to tail and squared 6 1/2 feet. The skull measured almost 21 inches.
"Its a nice looking griz," confirmed taxidermist Kevin Hickman of Alaskan Precision Taxidermy, who prepped the hide for tanning. "It'll make a nice rug."
The bear's hide had six holes in it, as each of Yeager's three shots exited the animal, said Hickman.
Fortunately for Yeager, he had picked up a grizzly bear tag at Fred Meyer the day before he shot the bear or else he would have had to turn the hide and skull of the bear over to the state as a defense of life and property shooting. Yeager said all the hoopla surrounding a pair of grizzly bears that were seen a week before on Farmer's Loop prompted him to pick up a grizzly tag.
Based on the fact the bear was coming up behind him, Yeager figures he probably passed the bear at some point.
"I had to have walked right past him," he said.
Yeager suspects there was a bait station somewhere in the vicinity that the grizzly had been visiting.
"(The grizzly bear) had dog food and some kind of meat in its intestines," he said. "I think he was close to (a bait station) and I picked the wrong trail to go on and he thought I was going to his food source."
Instead, the grizzly turned out to be a food source for Yeager. He dropped the meat from the bear off at B-Y Farms and had 100 pounds of Italian and breakfast sausage made out of it. The meat tastes good, he said, even though grizzlies are not known for their meat.
"I am a meat hunter," proclaimed Yeager. "If I kill it I eat it."
In all the excitement, Yeager never did end up going to the bathroom.
"I've still got the roll of toilet paper in the front of my truck," he said.
That's his story and he's sticking to it.
News-Miner outdoors editor Tim Mowry can be reached at 459-7587 or [email protected] .
