SUCCESS! AFTER 11 DAYS OF HUNTING, I GOT A BEAR!
We hunted a total of 11 days over three different trips. The season definitely got better as spring went on, and this turned out to be one of my favorite trips I have ever been on. The scenery is beautiful and it is a great time of year to be out.
Like I said before, I am totally "green" at bear hunting. I absorbed all the great info from you guys and watched every bear hunting video that I could find trying to learn how to judge a bear. It turned out to be easier in real life than I had feared. It is true what they say, when you see a big bear... you know it.
My wife and I started Saturday night hunting on mountain bikes. It turned out to be a great way to travel quickly and quietly on closed roads. We saw a bear about 1000 yards away feeding up a meadow towards the top of a ridge. Instead of taking the time to get out the spotting scope, we just hurried around the mountain and rode our bikes to the top. A quick jog over the summit and we were on the top of the meadow the bear had been feeding in just minutes before.
As we worked our way down the meadow, the wind was blowing stiffly in our faces, but we still couldn't see the bear. Fearing he had sneaked out of the meadow, I had about given up when I saw black ears slide through the thigh-high bushes only 20 feet below me. I got my wife to quickly sneak up next to me to help me judge whether or not it was a big bear. Eventually it fed to our left at about 15 feet. It was only then that we could see it was a sow and decided not to shoot.
Right at that time, she stood up on her back legs and started grunting at us. She didn't know where we were and the wind was at her back, but she must've caught a faint smell and knew something was wrong. As she grunted, her three previously-unseen cubs climbed down the tree right next to us... and we started to get a little worried we would have to shoot the bear in self-defense. Obviously a black bear is no grizzly, but I still didn't want to be 5 yards from a sow and three cubs. She took a step towards us and we both stood up tall to make ourselves known.
I had my gun to my shoulder and my wife was holding her pack over her head to look big and we slowly backed out of the area. It wasn't until we got back to the bikes that my wife realized in all the drama that she had put down the shooting sticks in the meadow before we retreated. Neither of us wanted to go back down there and risk upsetting the sow and her cubs. We really didn't want to be forced into shooting that bear if we upset her again.
Sunday we took the truck to an area we had hunted a few weeks ago and saw one small chocolate that we decided to pass on. Right before dark we were heading to another glassing area and spotted a bear right below the road. It was only 200 yards away, but the light was fading fast and the wind was terribly at our backs. I jumped out of the truck and tried to get set up for a shot, but without shooting sticks and no tree nearby to shoot off of, I had to settle for a kneeling shot and flat-out missed. I was rushing the shot to beat the scent down the hill and just pulled to the left. The bear dove into the thicket and I was truly dejected. This was a big chocolate boar with a giant head and shoulders like a grizzly.
We went out on Monday to a new area that a Forest Ranger told us about, but didn't get a good feeling about the area. We ended up using the map and getting back to the same area as Sunday with a few hours of hunting left. All of our "honey holes" were totally void of bears and we committed ourselves to staying in this area for the rest of the evening hunt. No matter what. We have a habit of getting restless, but tonight we were staying put until dark.
After two hours of glassing the same hillsides over and over again we spotted the big chocolate from the night before. This time we were a little further away, but the wind was better and I had time to lay out my pack and get set for a shot. One shot, and the bear dropped like a ton of bricks. He laid still for a split second and then started rolling down the hill... gaining speed as he went. We counted six rolls before he disappeared into a tangle of thorn bushes at the bottom and we could hear sticks break as he crashed down the cliff-like mountain face.
We had done it. A big color-phase bear was down.
After walking around to where we thought he was when I shot, we found it really difficult to judge depth on the steep hillside without any landmarks. We couldn't find any blood or tracks. Not even a broken flower. It was as if we had dreamed the whole event. A search through the thorn-tangle proved useless in the low light. It was now getting very dark and we decided to pull out for the night.
Early Tuesday morning found me back at the site of the shot with my wife and her parents (who had joined us on the trip to play camp-hosts) at the position of the bear so I could point them to the last known position. With little pieces of toilet paper, we marked the hillside and knew where the bear had been standing when I shot. It was an area about 30 yards across.
We then rolled big rocks down the hill to see where they hit the thicket and marked that area off as well. Now we felt like we knew where the bear went in. We didn't know if he had been hung up in the trees and thorn bushes or had crashed to the bottom, but we knew the last place we had seen him.
Two hours of searching a grid-pattern and marking with toilet paper turned up no blood or track of any kind. I really thought we would find where he rolled through the bushes, but they were so thick that I think he really just rolled across the top of them and didn't break them off as he went through.
During this search, we turned up what can only be described as a "bear nest". I don't know if this is common or not, but he had piled pine needles up and you could clearly see where he spent most of his time. The area looked like a pig-sty with bear scat literally everywhere around it. This was cool to see.
As we finished our grid at the bottom of the canyon without a single piece of blood, we were getting dejected and I was about to start calling around town trying to find somebody with a bear dog that would come help me track it.
I took one last Hail Mary attempt and circled about 100 yards downhill and dropped into a dry creek bed to search for sign. There it was... Blood!
It was dried, but bright pink and frothy.
Out came the toilet paper again and the tracking was on. My wife, unbeknownst to me, is pretty much 1/2 Ninja and 1/2 Indian. She was on her hands and knees finding pin-sized drops of blood on small rocks as we pressed forward.
The dry creek bed turned into what can only be described as a "bear tunnel". It was surrounded on all sides by thorn-bushes and wasn't even tall enough to crouch inside of. We had to stay on hands and knees with me leading the way and crawling forward only to have my wife slide my rifle up to me and we would find blood and scoot again.
This took two hours to travel 100 yards before we found the bear. It was a beautiful chocolate with a giant head and great big front paws. I was totally elated. And definitely relieved.
The area where he finally expired was too small to roll him over for pictures so we don't have any "trophy shots", which is really too bad. It was so thick that we couldn't even back up for a decent picture. This is the only picture I have of him whole. Skinning him out was difficult because of rigor mortis and the confined space, but we were able to get his hide off and it was still in great shape. Luckily being at the bottom of the steep canyon had kept wind blowing on him and he was shaded so there was no bloating or spoilage.
The pack-out was only 500 yards, but took two hours because it was so thick and steep. I've never cussed like that in my whole life, and I probably never will again. We estimated his hide, with paws and skull still attached, weighed about 120 pounds. It was a tough crawl on hands and knees through the thorns and I was bleeding everywhere from small cuts by the time we got out.
Just making memories, right?
It was now late Tuesday afternoon and we were an hour from camp. By now, I was really worried about losing the hide to spoilage. We stopped at the first gas station for ice and the few pictures that I have of the bear and rushed to get the cooler in some shade.
As I said in my earlier posts, I don't know how to judge bears. Of course I hoped he was a good bear because I wanted to take full advantage of the tag, but all I knew was that I worked hard for him and felt like I earned him. Regardless of what he scored, I was truly happy with my bear.
Wednesday morning found us cleaning up camp to make the drive to the Game & Fish office for the Mandatory Check-In. We stopped at the Jerome office on the way home, and it wasn't until this point that I knew what a trophy we had.
When the biologist at Game & Fish says it is the biggest bear he has ever seen, you think you might have something special. He ended up going through the whole building to bring out everybody from Conservation Officers to Secretaries. Although score really doesn't matter, I was on Cloud Nine knowing he truly was a really nice bear. With all that work done, it was off to the taxidermist in Pocatello.
The taxidermist squared him right at 7 feet, with 6'8" nose to tail and 7'4" paw to paw. (He wasn't being too kind to me when he laid the bear out to measure. I think he'd go about 7'2" if pulled tight so there weren't any wrinkles in the hide.) His skull obviously hasn't been "beetled" yet, but with the hide off it looks like he will make B&C at over 20". The pictures really don't do him justice, I guess I should've backed up like some guys before we took the pictures. His head nearly fills up an entire 70-quart cooler.
The taxidermist guesses he weighed 400 pounds when I shot him and probably weighed close to 500 pounds in the fall before hibernation. He had a pretty major infection on his neck and cuts across his face from a fight with another boar. They truly are amazing animals and I am so grateful that I got to hunt them. Thanks so much to everybody that helped me on the way.
It was an awesome hunt and the bear of a lifetime.
Grizzly
