By Bernie Barringer

One of the best parts of going to a hunting camp is the people you meet. This is illustrated by my hunt with Canadian Wilderness Outfitters a few years ago when I found myself sitting around a campfire with an ordinary guy who I would really love getting to know. If you were to meet Scott Kiefner, you’d like him immediately. He’s a soft-spoken guy who drives an older S-10 pickup to his second-shift job as a welder. Friendly as all get out, and just the kind of guy you’d want to sit around a campfire with and talk about hunting. I know because I have. But behind that Carhart jacket and three-day beard stubble is a guy who’s passionate about hunting, especially bear hunting. And he has the means to do a lot of it. He has dreams. Big dreams. Most of these dreams involve hunting bears with his favorite gun, an Armalite AR-50 .50 Caliber.

That’s just where the surprises start, and they’ll keep coming. Scott is just a few animals short of the North American Super Slam, the feat of taking all 29 North American big game animals. He needs a musk ox, three of the four species of sheep, and one of the five caribou species. And of course, he totes the 36-pound .50 cal on every hunt. “I never turn down anyone who wants to help carry it,” he laughs. “I created a challenge for myself. As a youngster I used to read about hunters who traveled to amazing places for amazing hunts and the desire was planted.

“I’ll probably never complete the slam with the .50 because Canada has recently banned many guns and made it basically impossible to use that rifle now. Plus, the cost of the sheep hunts has gotten out of reach.” At $30,000 to $50,000 per hunt, sheep are out of reach for almost anyone these days. “I have been spending more time in Africa where hunting is amazing, more affordable, and I can use my .50 on anything.”

So how does this humble, professional welder from Toulon, Illinois who is single and working an hourly job travel North America—and the world—hunting? “I invested early in life in some lower end rental properties,” he says. He’s been frugal and responsible with his finances and has a moral objection to debt, so he has the freedom to do those hunts.

But this story is about bears, so let’s not get too far off course. Scott set out to harvest all four species of bears: polar bear, black bear, grizzly bear, and brown bear. He wanted to do it with a pistol, so he put together a rig with all the bells and whistles—a .44 pistol with tripod, laser, and the whole shebang. “It didn’t take me long to realize that if I was going to do this, I needed more range. So I guess I went to the opposite extreme and got the .50 cal. And I was on my way.”

Black bears intrigued him early on because they were affordable, and he was young with a limited income and only two weeks of vacation per year. He had bagged around a dozen black bears when the .50 caliber bug hit him. He killed a couple black bears with the gun, then he found himself in Alaska one day hunting caribou when a guide offered him a spontaneous grizzly bear hunt. “It was a last-minute deal where I was handing him a bunch of cash and signing a contract on the top of a mountain in the cold wind. I think he knew about this particular bear when he offered me the deal.” They went out and found the bear and Scott made a great shot, so the grizzly bear was checked off his list.

Until it wasn’t. When the GPS coordinates were verified, it turns out that the bear was closer to the coast than they realized, which means the scientists consider it a brown bear and so do the record-keeping organizations such as Boone & Crockett. “It gets real iffy,” he says. But technically, he had added a brown bear to his list. He has no interest in entering his animals into record books, but for his own peace of mind he now needed to shoot a grizzly.

But first came the polar bear. The thing he remembers most about the hunt was the harsh conditions. “It was brutal, brutal, brutal. The conditions are horrible.” The unbelievable hardship stays in his mind. He was being pulled behind a snowmobile in a Kamotik, an enclosed sled made for hauling equipment and sometimes people. “There was camping gear, tarps, and all kinds of gear in there bouncing around with me. I chose to hold my gun because I didn’t trust it any other place. I covered up with everything in that sled and held on for dear life. I still can’t believe I didn’t freeze to death.”

Miles and miles out on the ice, polar bears are hunted by snowmobile and sled dogs. Bears are always on the move and these long-legged beasts can cover a shocking amount of ground at a fast walk. When a bear is spotted, the dogs are turned loose to corner the bear so the hunter can get in position for the shot. “This bear was a male and they got me within 100 yards of it. The white giant had some large bloody scars on its side and face from fighting with other bears, including a 10-inch tear on his side. They asked me if I wanted this bear and I decided this was the one.” Over half a ton of bear is a lot to bring down, but Scott says none of his bears have required a second shot and hardly ever a blood trail. This bear was no exception.

After all this, he was once again back to square one on the grizzly bear. A grizzly would complete his grand slam of all four North American bear species. He was off to Alaska, where some areas now allow baiting of grizzlies. Being around a bear bait being used by black bears is adrenaline-charged, but think about baiting and getting in and out of the treestand when there are grizzlies around (especially considering the way grizzlies tend to become possessive and aggressively defend their food).

Scott and his guide walked through three miles of mostly swampy stuff with Scott carrying his 36-pound rifle to get to the bait. Day after day it was not being touched. “The guide said it was too warm, and all we needed was a break in the weather.” The weather during this spring hunt was great for their tent camp, but bad for bear movement. “It was afternoon on the last day of my hunt when a thunderstorm started rolling in. He said, ‘Let’s go; the bears will be there!’ The guide was right. It was late in the afternoon, and I had to leave that evening to catch a plane the next morning. We were sitting under a tarp in the downpour when the big male rolled in. When the guide confirmed that it was a male, I shot it.”

And it was a giant—the largest grizzly the long-time, experienced guide had ever seen after being in on over 450 kills. “We had to cross a river to get to the bear, but I was soaked to the skin already so I didn’t even care that I was wading in the water. We couldn’t move the bear at all, so we shot a few photos and started skinning.” Scott regrets that they didn’t get more pictures or better ones, but the conditions just wouldn’t allow it. The guide once again remarked that it was the heaviest skin he had ever carried.

With that bear, Scott had accomplished his goal of shooting the Grand Slam of all four species of bears in North America with a .50 cal. He’s certainly the only person to have ever done it, or likely ever will be. At the very least he’s the first, and you can’t take that away from a person.

Scott is back to welding in Illinois. Few people he meets in his daily life at work, or collecting rent, or fixing the plumbing in one of his rental properties, will probably ever have a clue about the things he has accomplished, but I doubt if he minds. It’s not in his nature.

So where does he go from here? “Maybe I’ll go for the big five in Africa. I have a lion and a cape buffalo, so I will need a leopard, a rhino, and an elephant.” I have no doubt that Scott and his .50 cal are capable of fulfilling that dream as well.