The Case for Patience
T
TRAIL’S END
By E. Donnall Thomas Jr.
88
he year after I moved to Alaska, a friend and I both drew resident spring
brown bear tags for the north shore of Kodiak Island. That unit wasn’t one
of Kodiak’s hotspots, but there were plenty of bears there as I subsequently
learned during return trips in the fall to hunt Sitka blacktail deer. I didn’t
kill a bear that spring, and in fact I never even saw one. New to the North,
I just didn’t know what I was doing, and in retrospect I know that I spent
too much time hiking up mountains and not enough time parked on my butt
glassing. The hunt proved to be a learning experience anyway.
WESTERN HUNTING JOURNAL
Not long after we flew in to
another friend’s summer fish
camp, one of Kodiak’s old time
master guides arrived on our
heels with a client. He was
unhappy about our presence
in “his” area, but we had every
right to be there and he knew
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