Most Alaska guides won't let a bow in camp. Call ten of them, tell them you're coming with a compound instead of a rifle, and nine will tell you to call somebody else. Hard to blame them. They've watched too many hunters wound an animal they'll never put hands on, and up there a wounded brown bear isn't an inconvenience, it's the guide's life on the line.
Gavin Leonard came with a bow anyway.
This past spring he flew into Iliamna, the hub where the main lodge sits, then climbed into a bush plane and got dropped at a remote camp on the Alaska Peninsula. No service. No roads. Garmin’s that barely work. The kind of country where it's just you, your guide, and a whole lot of nothing in every direction. And somewhere out in it, a brown bear he'd come a very long way to find.
The guy behind the bow?
Gavin is no casual bowhunter. He's an ASA Open Pro, shooting 3D with the very best in the country, and this year he was close enough in the Shooter of the Year race that he nearly skipped Alaska to protect his standing. A man who weighs a brown bear hunt against a points race is a man who shoots constantly, at a level most of us never reach, and who knows exactly where his bow hits at any distance he's likely to face.
The rest of the year he runs a real estate agency, so the hunt itself was a last-second yes. His outfitter, Tim with Bushwack Adventures, had called and bumped the dates from early May to the last week of the month because the weather was shaping up better. Good thing he did.
Day seven.
The first couple of days, there were bears everywhere. Then it dried up, the way it always seems to right when you'd rather it didn't.
Every evening, Gavin and Tim climbed to a glassing spot near camp and picked the mountains apart. Spring on the peninsula gives you close to twenty hours of light, so "evening" still meant a nine o'clock session with plenty of day left. On the seventh day of a ten-day hunt, the patience paid off. They spotted him, and went after him.
It led them a couple miles up the mountain, through alders so thick you can't see ten feet past your own hands. Picture the worst brush you've ever fought through, then make it harder to move and impossible to see into. That's the country this bear lived in. He came out above them and worked downhill, nose going the whole time, scent-checking every step. The only thing that held the stalk together was a creek below them pulling their wind off in the other direction, a break they were glad to take and honest enough to admit they didn't fully earn.
When the bear finally stepped into the open and turned broadside, Gavin ranged him at 93 and put the arrow through both lungs. It passed clean through. The bear was dying on his feet before he knew anything had happened, spinning a full circle and biting at the wound, never placing where it came from. With a bear, you shoot until he is down, so Gavin sent a second arrow through the heart at around 90. It was over.
Then came the part nobody photographs. Quartering a brown bear down and packing him out of that country ran them deep into the night, and they didn't make it back to camp until around 4:30 the next morning, much of the walk done in the dark.
The bear squared right around eight and a half feet, with a front pad close to nine inches across. He never weighed him or scored the skull, so those are field numbers, not official ones. The photos show the size. What they can't show is what a bear that big looks like standing in a room.
So, what was he shooting?
A shot like that comes down to the shooter first. But it also takes an arrow that flies true and components up front strong enough to drive through heavy bone at distance and stay intact.
Here's Gavin's setup:
- TAC Vanes LRP Gold Tip Arrow Package
- Gold Tip Pierce Platinum .166 shafts
- TAC Driver 2.25-inch Vanes (Four Fletched)
- The patented LRP Threaded Post and Terminal Collar
- Swhacker #287 100 Grain 2-inch
- 74LB Draw Weight
Here's what makes that list worth a second look. Gavin didn't build a single one of those arrows. He runs a business, he was deep in 3D season, and by his own admission he's OCD and usually wouldn’t trust any archery equipment someone else put together. He's the last person you'd expect to trust a pre-built arrow on a hunt like this. He shot the LRP package anyway, and couldn’t believe the accuracy out of the box. He admitted he couldn't find any difference between those arrows and the ones he built himself. In his words, "Y'all are obviously doing it right." He gained confidence in the LRP system from last deer season.
If you've looked at the LRP system before and weren't sure what you were seeing, you're not alone. Gavin says that nearly every time he shoots around other people, someone points at the red practice tips and asks if those are his broadheads. They're not. They're a big part of why the system works. The practice heads are designed to replicate the flight of the broadhead, so you sight in and tune with them, then move to the actual broadhead knowing it will land in the same place. And the LRP's threaded post and terminal collar run about twice as durable as a standard screw-in insert, which is one reason a broadhead can pass through a brown bear at 93 yards instead of getting deflected on the way in. NOTE; With a massive 3” cutting diameter!
That's the setup Gavin trusted on the animal of a lifetime. Eight and a half feet of Alaska brown bear, taken with a bow most guides would have turned away at the door.
Take a look at how the LRP system is built, and decide for yourself.