Part 2, same interview with the hunter. From the Anchorage Daily News, Natalie Phillips reporting.
"It was amazing"
''We watched for a few minutes, I reloaded and Jim brought his gun up on him,'' Winnen said. ''I approached from the rear and poked him in the butt to see if he was going to jump, but he didn't move. He was dead.''
''It was amazing when I got close to him,'' Winnen said.
''I picked up the paw and it was like, 'good God.' The thing was as wide as my chest.''
The two hunters spent a fair amount of time getting photos of the bruin. One photo shows his statement is no exaggeration. The paw is almost as wide as the hunter's chest and sports 3- to 4-inch-long claws.
Six hours of skinning
Master guide Want said he was impressed with Winnen's story.
''Sounds like he did everything perfectly,'' Want said. ''I can't overemphasize how many people screw that up, even after you explain it to them. After the bear drops, they stand up and pat themselves on the back, and the animal gets up and takes off while they are standing there.''
After the kill, Winnen and Urban spent six hours skinning the bear -- and trying to drag its hide and skull back to the Forest Service cabin they had rented. The meat was left behind because grizzly meat is generally considered inedible.
Winnen guesses the bear's hide weighed more than 200 pounds. They took turns carrying it, but eventually put it on a tarp and tried dragging it together. When they were within a half-mile of the cabin, they summoned their hunting partners, Eielson Staff Specs. Ron Lutrell and Jim Scheu, a flight chief based at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.
Winnen spent the next three days at the cabin working with his knife to scrape fat from the hide. He packed the hide with salt for the return trip to Fairbanks.
Once back, Winnen took the hide and skull to the state Department of Fish and Game to get it sealed, as required by law.
Bear records
Unofficially, Fish and Game records show, the skull scored 28 and 8/16 inches. Skulls are scored for size by combining the width plus the length. The skull of Winnen's bear was 10 11/16 inches wide and 17 13/16 inches long. This is called a green score, which is the unofficial score until the skull dries and can be remeasured.
The Boone and Crockett Club, which uses a 16th-of-an-inch measurement system to keep records on the biggest animals shot in the world, requires that bear skulls dry for 60 days before an official measurement is made.
A tooth was pulled from the jaw of the skull by a state biologist so the bear can be aged. Biologist Crowley said he suspects the bear was 15 to 20 years old. He added that the bear was no stranger to guides who know the area.
''One of our local guides has been after it a couple of times,'' Crowley said. ''Its luck finally just ran out.''
Bears are hard to hunt on the brushy and heavily wooded island, Crowley said, because the season doesn't open until Oct. 15, after the salmon run is over. The bears have largely dispersed from salmon streams by then, making them harder to find.
World-class brown bear
The hide measures 10 feet, 6 inches from nose to tail. While it is impossible to know exactly how much the bear weighed, master guide Want has measured and weighed dozens of Kodiak brown bears over the years. Based on the measurements and information he got from Winnen, he suspects the bear weighed between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds.
By any standards, that's a world-class brown bear.
All brown bears taken with skulls that score over 28 inches are eligible for listing with Boone and Crockett, the official record keeper for North American trophy hunters.
In Alaska, the biggest brown bears are found on Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula. The record Alaska brown bear -- killed on Kodiak Island in 1952 -- had a skull that scored 30 12/16. Only 19 bears have been shot with skulls that scored over 30 inches since the early 1900s, according to Boone and Crockett.
''Twenty-eight is the magic line,'' Want said. ''Anything over 28 inches has everyone sitting up and taking notice.''
The fact that Winnen's bear came from Prince William Sound makes it even more remarkable, Want added.
''His bear is exceptional. It's unbelievably unusual,'' the guide said. ''It's safe to say that it is more than double the average size of brown bear coming out of Prince William Sound.''
Between 1970 to 1999, about 600 male brown bears were killed in Prince William Sound, according to state Fish and Game records. Of those, only two had skulls that scored more than 28 inches, Want said. The vast majority had skulls that scored 22 to 23 inches. Bears with heads that size typically weigh 350 to 400 pounds, Want added.
Hide will be hunter's rug
Winnen is having the skull preserved and mounted on a plaque. The hide is with a taxidermist, being made into a rug.
''With the small rooms in base housing, it'll be more like wall-to-wall carpeting,'' Winnen said.
Meanwhile, the e-mails keep circulating. The genesis appears to have been a radio talk show in Fairbanks on which Winnen appeared. Photos from his hunt showed up later on the radio show's Web site. And that appears to have been what got the Internet humming.
Guide Want said, ''I can guarantee you, in a year or two, someone will tell him (Winnen) how big the bear was and it will be up to 1,800 pounds. And when he tries to correct them, they will call him a liar.''
(Reporter Natalie Phillips at 907-257-4461 or
[email protected]. This story appeared Dec. 16, 2001, in the Anchorage Daily News.)
The bear facts
Statistics for Theodore Winnen's brown bear taken on Hinchinbrook Island in October 2001:
• 1,000-1,200 lbs. -- Estimated weight
• 15-20 years -- Estimated age
• 10' 6'' -- Hide measurement from nose to tail
• 10 11/16'' -- Skull width
• 17 13/16'' -- Skull length
• 28 8/16'' -- Skull score (length and width combined)
• 30 12/16'' -- North American record brown bear skull score
• 19 -- The number of bear skulls with a score above 30'' in Alaska since 1904
