You keep wondering when the success rates and the size of the bears on our Russian hunts are going to start to level off or decline. After all, we’ve been at this for 19 years now! (Longer than any other company out there!) But, while most other outfitters in Russia have been seeing their hunts decline, fortunately, our hunts haven’t declined a bit. . . in fact, they seem to keep getting better! The year 2009 will go down as one of the best ever! We had 20 bear hunters shoot 20 bears this spring. But, that’s not unusual. Our hunts are usually 100 percent. What is unusual (well, really not for Outdoor Adventures) is the number of bears that will qualify for the book again. How many of the 20 bears will qualify for the World Record Books? TRY 19 OUT OF 20!!! That’s right; we went 19 for 20 on Record Book bears! Once again, the best in the industry. Nobody can touch these numbers. Never have. Never will. Year after year we turn in the best numbers in the world!

Of course, that’s nothing new for Outdoor Adventures. We have assaulted the Record Books like no other agency in the world! Nobody has more bears in the book than we do. And, we could have a whole lot more in the book if everyone who has taken a book bear with us would enter them. Unfortunately, most don’t bother. Don’t know if that’s because our clients are blasé about the books, fully expecting to shoot a book bear with us, so it’s no big deal, or because they just don’t care about the books. I suspect it’s a little bit of both.

As one of my clients said this spring, after running into another hunter (who had booked with a different outfitter) on our flight back home: “Why didn’t you book your hunt with Denny? You said you looked at his web site and called his references. Couldn’t you tell that he has the best camps and the biggest bears in Russia? Heck, in the world! Why did you book with the other guy?” The other hunter said he had spent 10 hours riding north in a van after landing in Petropavlovsk. He then spent close to another 3 on a helicopter; got stranded in camp for an extra week; and came back with a 7 foot bear. One of only 3 bears out of 10 hunters in the camp.

To top it all off, the guy spent an extra $1,000 on his hunt. The hunt started out cheaper (which is probably why the guy booked with that outfitter . . . he wanted to save a few bucks) but it seems everything wasn’t included as it is with Outdoor Adventures. Among other things, he had to pay a $3,000 fee after he shot his bear. There are no extra trophy fees with Outdoor Adventures.

Anyhow, again, as the bear photos come in (getting clients to send us their photos is almost as hard as getting them to enter their bears in the record books!) we will post them here. One bear photo we have in from Ed Kelso just nailed down the number 12 spot in the books! His bear had a 28 inch skull! Believe it or not, we have several that were larger we are waiting to get scored. We will post them as soon as we can.

Meanwhile, the word is getting out about our Russian bear hunts. We are nearly 70 percent booked for 2010 and 50 percent for 2011. So, if you want to have a chance to shoot a book bear with us in the next 2 years, you need to get with us ASAP! Have a great summer!