Ultimate Bear Gun Build, with Alaska Arms' Morris Melani
Backcountry Hunting Podcast
Joseph von Benedikt
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2025
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is the ultimate all-around bear gun? Is there a gun and cartridge that will handle all bears, in all situations? Whether hunting cross-canyon blacks in Montana or baited bruisers in Alberta, or coastal brown bears or interior grizzlies in Alaska? How about personal protection while hiking or fishing in bear-infested country?
We think there is such a rifle, and it's even sorta affordable. Ruger's M77 Guide Gun has all the features a savvy bear hunter wants: controlled-feed action, compact size, powerful chamberings, backup sights, stainless construction, and so on.
M77 Guide Guns are decent right from the box. With just a few upgraded parts and DIY tuning, they become outstanding.
Alaska Arms owner and proprieter Morris Melani—who is a bear-hunting fanatic and custom gunsmith—joins us this episode to discuss how to set up and DIY-tune the ultimate all-purpose bear gun. This was a wonderful conversation, sprinkled with plenty of hair-raising real-life bear stories. ENJOY!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Friends, if you are putting together what you consider the one gun for all bear hunting, |
| 0:06.1 | what's it going to be? |
| 0:08.0 | Well, I have some ideas about that myself and on the line with me today. |
| 0:12.4 | Out of Alaska, I've got Morris Maloney of Alaska Arms LLC, who has a ton more real world experience than I do. |
| 0:21.5 | And he's here to share some perspective and talk through some information on some certain |
| 0:27.7 | rifle components that are crucial to the rifle I'm putting together. |
| 0:32.3 | So first of all, Morris, welcome to the show. |
| 0:34.6 | Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to come on here and talk with us. |
| 0:39.5 | Thank you, Joseph. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. |
| 0:42.3 | Yeah, you bet. Now, for listeners who aren't familiar with Alaska Arms, I'd like to have you just talk through you and give us the high-level viewpoint of you, how you came to do what you do, |
| 0:55.8 | and why you're in Alaska. |
| 0:58.4 | Well, I always loved Alaska, and I was able to move up here about 19, well over 20 years ago |
| 1:03.6 | with my wife, she does an ultrasonographer and worked for a company that made parts for, |
| 1:10.4 | repaired the pumps for the pipelines. |
| 1:12.4 | And a co-worker dropped a big steel beam on me one day. |
| 1:15.6 | And I was now officially disabled. |
| 1:18.1 | And so I just couldn't sit around. |
| 1:20.6 | And I'd started doing custom gunwork in the early 80s. |
| 1:25.0 | And mostly dangerous game rifles. But at the time, it was a lot went to africa and so i had |
| 1:32.1 | been building those and it was just something i really enjoyed and then along the way a customer |
| 1:38.6 | gave me a set of scope rings that were made by tom burges and i thought they so neat. It was a 90 degree throw in the lever. |
| 1:46.1 | They just went on. |
... |
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