I am excited to bring this story to you. Part of why Remote Pursuits was started was to share stories of “Remote Pursuits”. This following story is written by a friend of mine named Louis Cusack. Louis is an avid hunter, and an even better story teller. Louis and his wife Ruth are one of those hunting couples that give back to the sport and their nation. Please check out them out on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AdventuresofLouisandRuthCusack
I hope that you enjoy this story as much as I did.
Introduction
Louis and Ruth Cusack are an avid Outdoors Couple who hunt big game in Alaska’s remote wilderness. They have been featured on several hunting programs and publications. Louis, also known as the “Rajun Cajun”, is originally from Louisiana and moved to Alaska in 1988 in search of Adventure. 
Louis has hunted extensively throughout Alaska and is well known for his experience in remote wilderness hunting. Louis met Mrs. Ruth while hunting white tail in Iowa. Their mutual passion for the outdoors brought her to Alaska in 2006 where they spend every chance they get enjoying everything Mother Nature has to offer. Since moving to Alaska, Mrs. Ruth’s passion for the outdoors has gained national recognition with her most recent accomplishment as being named the 2012 Prois Hardcore Huntress.
Tagged Out! The Alaska Peninsula Brown Bear Hunt
By Louis Cusack
Tagged Out! For many generations old and new, these two simple words have been used to announce the ending of a successful hunt. As a young man growing up in South Louisiana, hunting whitetail deer and turkeys with my father, I remember the admiration others hunters bestowed on the hunter in camp that no matter what the season or circumstances, always filled their tags, and usually well before others.
Mr Sonny Brehamann, a tall dark Cajun who lived down the street from us; and Paul Edwards a lean Mississippi veteran of Vietnam with a look that seemed to see everything around him, who won the admiration of others. both in the field and on the battle ground were two such men. They always filled their tags. They were respected by others. Hunters reached out to them as a source of information and they readily shared their knowledge with them. Members of our hunting group spoke of them like basketball fans would speak of Michael Jordon or football fans would speak of Larry Csonka, hailed for their success and like most good hunting stories, stretched a bit beyond reality.
I looked up to these men. I wanted to be considered a part of this elite group and I enjoyed my time spent as a card–carrying, tag-filling member of this fine group of hunters. Today’s story, however, is about the love of the hunt and the point many of us reach where filling a tag becomes less important than experiencing the adventure, savouring time spent in the wilderness with friends and family and helping others fill their tags.
I’ve always had a thirst for adventure and a passion for remote wilderness hunting and this adventure will take Mrs Ruth Cusack, my good friend Andrew Mueller and I to the southern end of the Alaska Peninsula on a quest for big costal brown bear. Andy’s looking to take his first brown bear and I am on the hunt for a real trophy class bear. Mrs Ruth took a great coastal brown bear in the spring season of 2012 and she is tagged out until fall of 2015. So for this adventure, she will be shooting a camera.
Hailed by some as the land of the smoking giants, the Alaska Peninsula is well known for its rugged beauty, long list of active volcanos, and home to some of the largest salmon runs and brown bear in the world. Each year, tourists travel to the peninsula from all parts of the globe to visit, fish, explore and hunt this beautiful area of our state, and although it is only 350 miles as the crow flies from our home, we’re just as excited to go there as any one of them!
Hunting brown bears on the Alaska Peninsula comes with its own set of challenges and we’re headed back to the land where if you don’t bring it, you don’t have it and if something goes wrong, it’s all on you! This is where the 40-foot waves are seen crashing across the bows of the boats on “The Deadliest Catch”, slam against the shoreline and where the wind can blast you off the tundra.
Our destination is the southern end of the peninsula and we are excited for the opportunity to test our wit and our skills against the best and the worst Mother Nature has to offer.
Hunt Preparation:
Remote wilderness hunting in Alaska requires more than competence with a bow or rifle. The logistics of a hunt like this requires a lot of planning and my motto has always been: “Plan Your Hunt and Hunt Your Plan.”
Hunt preparation begins almost a year before departure, where the logistics of getting gear, food and flights must be coordinated well in advance to ensure that everyone and everything arrives on location.
There are many ways to plan a hunt like this and one of our first decisions is route and transportation to the field. We choose to route our hunt through Kodiak Island via Sea Hawk Air which has an excellent safety performance record. From airport pick-up, to shoppingm to transportation in the field, they run a tight ship and provide excellent service. On Top of that, Roland and Joe are great people and we simply love flying with them.
We’ll be using a base camp, inflatable raft/motor and other bulky items which cannot be checked as luggage. These items must be shipped via air cargo several weeks in advance and on these trips. I find the use of a hunt planner an absolute necessity. I use a simple excel spread sheet to plan all of my hunts. I use it for everything from a check list, to a tracker, to an emergency contact list. Over the years I have found that leaving a copy of the list with each party’s family members can be a great resource and source of comfort for those not joining the trip. There’s just something about a good plan that gives everyone a good deal of confidence, knowing that you have taken everything into consideration. Heaven forbid it is ever needed, but in a real emergency, providing a list with each person’s emergency contacts along with the flight service provider and emergency services contact information can become a life-saving necessity.
The Hunt:
Our hunt begins on May 8th with the flight from Kodiak Island to our hunt location. It is a clear windy morning and just the scenery on the plane ride in is worth the price of admission. We arrive at our bay, where Roland makes a smooth landing in the mouth of the bay where we are quickly off loaded and start setting up base camp.
The Peninsula, which is well known for its costal winds and frequent storms, makes picking the right base camp location as important as remembering to bring ammo. This could mean the difference between having a great hunt, and chasing your base camp down the beach. I usually do my best to find a flat location with some sort of a wind break to protect our camp from the predominant wind directions, usually a bluff, mountain side or clump of alders. We find our spot and after a few branch trims, and tent and bear fence setups, we are home sweet home and ready to begin searching the area for bear signs.
We wake up early the first morning to clear skies. After a quick cup of Starbucks and a bowl of oatmeal we are headed up the bay to scout the area. About two miles up the bay we find a ridge which offers a good viewing site and after a short climb we are setup and glassing.
I use three well known methods for hunting brown bears: glassing, glassing and more glassing! My theory is pretty simple: if you’re not glassing, you’re not hunting. We hike and cover a lot of ground, but mostly just to go from one glassing area to another.
Andy is the first to find a bear – a sow with two cubs; they are just above us on the same ridge. She appeared to be just out of the den and in no hurry to walk down to the beach, where defending her cubs against aggressive boars looking to mate will become a frequent event. They provide us with a bit of entertainment for the next several days and we had a grand ole time watching the antics of her two cubs, while Momma limbered-up for the trip to the beach.
Note: Brown bear boars will often kill a sow’s young cubs to force the sow back into estruses, where they will sometimes breed with the very same boar that killed their cubs.
I spot a decent boar walking across the bay and bear sighting #2 is on the board. We’re finding lots of sign and even a few bears, but not wanting to place all of our eggs in one basket, we pack our gear to head to the coast to scout another location before tomorrow’s opener.
Evening finds us on the edge of a bluff glassing a long strip of coastline where we have spotted fresh sign. We are not there long before a lone wolf steps around an outcropping walking in our direction. We setup to make a shot on him, but the wolf catches us flat handed, scrambles up the bluff and passes in front of us in the brush without giving us a shot opportunity.
What happens next is one of the most exciting hunting moments I have ever experienced. After several hours without any further sightings, we decide to pack it up and head back to camp for a good meal and night’s sleep before opening morning. So far it has been a very productive day, but the tide is in and a leisurely walk down the beach to camp is not an option. It’s time for a little alder busting which we all love and cherish about as much as walking barefooted over a bed of hot coals. If you have ever walked a bear trail full of fresh sign through the alders, then you know that our pucker factor is on full puck! I have personally never been to war, but several of my friends that have experienced both will tell you that doing this and walking point in Vietnam is a close comparison.
Needless to say I am on high alert when I drop down in creek drainage and there stands old Willy Wolf locked-up and staring at me with less than 5 yards between us. He had completely circled us and was walking in on the same trail we were walking out on. I am not sure who was more surprised, him or me, but he bolts, I rack my bolt and the war is on. I get a good shot at him as he scrambles up the far bank of the creek where I am able to make a clean kill shot on him. 
One wolf down and two bears spotted and we are just getting started on what will be one of the best hunting trips we have ever made!
Opening Morning
May 10th, the official opening of RB370 brown bear hunting season, finds us up early and back on our spotting ridge, excited about what this day will bring. Right off, we spot mother bear again, along with her two cubs basking in the sun and the little guys provide us with a bit more entertainment, until we spot a bear on a side hill way past the head of the bay. We spent the rest of the day trying to get a better look at him, but he managed to elude us.
The next several days are spent looking at bears and hoping for an opportunity to place put a stalk on. Our entertainment crew has finally left the area for greener pastures, but with the coming of spring we are seeing lots of migratory birds, bald eagles and we even get a visit from a very curious river otter. If you ever get a chance to watch these guys in their element you are in for a real treat. This one spotted us up on our knoll and he climbed up to check us out. Quite entertaining!
On morning number five a bank of fog rolls in that is thick enough to cut and eat for breakfast, but we opted for Mrs Ruth’s breakfast burritos instead. After five days of sunshine, warm weather and tons of hiking, the little delay is a welcome break and we’ll soon find out that this late start was just the ticket for the long long day we have in store for us.
Around 10:30 am, the fog is breaking enough to pick our way back to our spotting knoll. We are not there long when I spot a bear walking into an alder patch on a side hill up at the head of the bay and the hunt is on! We could see the bear crawl into the alders, but with some of the fog still hanging around it is difficult to track his progress. After glassing the edges of the alders for a while, we are convinced that our bear is bedded up in them so we pack up and head after him. We slip around the bay and after a mile and a half we spot him balled up in the alders having a little siesta. At this point, we are 600 yards from him and Andy is starting to get excited about getting a shot on his first Alaskan brown bear.
With the wind in our favour and the old boar snoozing away, we shift into single file to minimize our foot print and start hot footing it from one piece of cover to the next. A method I like to use for a stalk like this is to have one person advance while the other person (two in this case) watches, hopscotching from cover to cover, keeping an eye on the bear to ensure we do not get busted. We manage to get within 150 yards of the bear and setup on the edge of a creek bank to wait him out. The last thing we want to do is to try and place a shot on him in the alders where placing a follow-up shot could be difficult to accomplish.
As the old saying goes, good things come to those who wait, and sure enough here comes the old bruin walking out of the alders and offering Andy a great shot opportunity. Not one to pass up a good thing, Andy is already setup on his bipod and he places a shot right in the shoulder with his .375 H&H magnum dropping the bear on the open side hill.
Now’s when the work begins but not before the ever vigilant Mrs Ruth reminds us that we have only one chance to capture this moment in pictures and video. Over the years I have learned (ok, I’m trying already!) that taking the time to get great quality pictures to capture a memory of a lifetime is as important as any other aspect of the hunt, and with a -1.7 foot tide at 10:17 and 03 sec pm (who’s counting? LOL!) We have plenty of time for pictures, skinning and a bush lunch before making the trek back to camp.
If you’ve ever tried to reposition a 900 lb. brown bear on a side hill, you know what a task this can be and once moved these guys have a tendency to go where they will, but Andy and I manage to get him into position for pictures and skinning. Once pictures are taken we begin the 2-hour chore of skinning and packing our bear up for the 4-mile hike back to camp. We finish in time for a bite to eat, a cup of coffee and evening siesta of our own before we begin the trek back, arriving back at camp in the dark at 1 am, tired and happy from a great day in the field.
We must have slept a lot harder than we thought because the following morning we wake to find the largest set of bear tracks I have ever seen within 10 yards of the tent! Walking towards the head of the bay. 
From this point forward nothing less than this old boy will do. We spend the rest of this day glassing and hoping we can get a glance of this big old bruin. Unfortunately, Lady Luck did not shine on us this day and we find where his tracks head all the way into the drainage at the head of the bay, so we plan to spend the next day working beyond the bay and looking at new country.
We begin early the next morning, putting in 12 miles with a lot of glassing time in search of Big Foot, but just like the legend of “The Boggy Creek Monster” we believe he is, he vanishes without a trace.
Walking out that night we spot a bear across the bay and although he is a really good bear, I decide to pass on him. As we round the corner, we bump into yet another bear. This guy’s on our side, but the wind is not in our favour and he winds us about the same time I spot him. Like many good sized boars he’s used to owning his territory and he only climbs about 50 feet then locks up and turns to check us out. About this time, we’re all scratching our heads wondering why we’ve been walking all day only to discover two great bears waiting on our return and we spend the next hour stalking, watching and taking pictures of them. By now I have had a good look at both bears and I convince myself that neither is the bear I am looking for, so I give them both a pass.
May 16th, the final day of our hunt, begins with clear skies and warm sunshine. We usually bring enough goodies for a special meal celebration on at least one night of our hunt, and tonight being the night, Mrs Ruth hangs back at camp to dig for little neck clams at low tide, a treat we are all looking forward to.
With Mrs Ruth staying in camp, I break out the two way radios and leave one with her in case of emergency, which comes in handy a few hours later when she gets a visit from The Alaska State Troopers. They had spotted Andy’s bear, salted and drying in the sun, so they land their super cub on the beach by our camp. The next thing I know, Mrs Ruth’s calling us on the radio and Trooper Joe Wittkop is asking if we would like to have our bear and wolf sealed. Heck Yeah! So we beat feet back to camp where they check our license, registration permits and seal our trophies, saving us a trip once we return home. Heck, what more could you ask for? We would like to thank Trooper Joe Wittkop for his help and for his service to our communities. He was a great guy to visit with and treated us with courtesy and professionalism.
Radios: Remember, it is against state regulations to use any radio communication to assist in stalking or hunting big game animals.
Now that the troopers are gone, and since we are back in camp, Andy starts gathering wood for the grill while Mrs Ruth and I work on cleaning the clams she dug at low tide. It’s celebration time and collectively we grill New York Steaks, steam fiddle heads and sauté’ little neck clams for a feast as good as anything you will ever find in any 5 star restaurant!
That evening, stuffed to the gills, we work our way back to the glassy knoll for my final shot at filling my tag. We end our last day of the hunt placing a stalk on a boar that is working the head of the bay. He’s another fine specimen, with a good hide and colouring but I opt to spend some time enjoying the opportunity to watch him, and walk away in hopes that he will be around next season and all the bigger for me having let him walk.
When it’s time to go, it’s time to go
Our pick-up morning begins, like every day we’ve experienced this hunt and like the ride out, the plane ride back to Kodiak is filled with sunshine, clear blue skies and beautiful scenery.
As I sit back with Roland at the helm, I have plenty of time to reflect back on our hunt. Even though my bear tag filled count = 0, if helping a good friend take his first brown bear, spending time with Mrs Ruth on the Alaska Peninsula, and ten days of great weather do not add up to a trip of a lifetime. Well then, I guess my calculator must be broken!
If there’s one sure thing in the world that you can bet your 401k on, it’s that if the Good Lord is willing, we’ll be back come the fall of 2015.
Seeeeee Yaaaaa!
Louis A. Cusack
For More on this hunt check out Louis on YouTube!
2014 Alaska Peninsula Brown Bear Hunting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRV8isp_Uqw
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