Black Bear

Date: 10/7/2016
Location:

Weapon: 300 Winchester Magnum
Distance: 270 Yards
Ammo: Nosler 190gr. Accubond
Outfitter/Guide: Circle M Outfitters
Score/Size: 5-foot

This story continues from my goat hunt British Columbia. After seeing many black bears over the first 8 days in the back country during our goat and caribou hunt, we moved out base camp on day 9 to look for either a moose or black bear. The evening of day 9, me and my guide Landon started working a burned out area along the river that holds a lot of moose. My other guide Matt took the truck a ways up to watch a south facing mountain side that is usually loaded with bears. He would radio to us if he spotted a good. Not more than 40 minutes into the evening hunt, Matt radioed us saying he had sites on a good bear feeding in a berry patch. He came back and picked us up and we started scoping out the hillside. All of a sudden, we saw 5 bears along that mountain side with a nice looking boar way up towards the top in the berries. We had some weather rolling in and by the time we could start the long stalk up the mountain, we holed up in cover during a downpour, the entire mountain was engulfed in the cloud. Thirty minutes went by and it cleared. The bear was still in place so we went up the hill. The mountain was steep, overgrown with brush, and loaded with deadfall making it a slow climb. We got about half way up and the bear had moved further up and was about to go over the top. With only 30 minutes of daylight, we had to return back to the truck.

The next morning we got back to the same place and again spotted 4 more bears. We saw a nice one, much lower on the mountain. Me and Landon took off looking for it. We lost site for awhile and then spotted a bear in the same vicinity. I set up prone over a fallen log and shot this bear at 270 yards. It looked like a clean shot, but we did not see where it went. We tore up that mountainside for an hour looking for a sign and we finally found some blood and located the bear shortly after. The bear was beautiful, An amazing coat with a small white spot on the breast. In hindsight, the was not the same bear we had initially stalked. The bigger bear gave us the slip and we ended up shooting a 5-footer. It was still a great bear ad would eat really well once I got it home. My second black bear was in the books and the great 10-day hunt had come to a close.

Date: 5/20/2015
Location:

Weapon: 300 Winchester Magnum
Distance: 90 Yards
Ammo: Nosler 190gr. Accubond
Outfitter/Guide: Boulder Creek Outfitters
Score/Size: 5-foot

After my successful moose hunt the prior fall, I wanted to turn my attention to hunting bears. I decided on Idaho and booked a hunt with Boulder Creek Outfitters. They had the best price and you had the opportunity to shoot two bears. I decided to forego staying in their hunting lodge and booked cabin at the Lochsa Lodge. In our first conversations, the outfitter mentioned that we would be hunting only about 20 minutes from the lodge. I thought this would work out with my family coming along. So my wife, 4-year old son, and 2-year old daughter came along. Unfortunately, the first day I arrived at camp, which was about 40 miles from Lochsa Lodge, they said I would be hunting out of the base camp. Anyone that has driven the long narrow windy Highway 12 along the Lochsa River in Idaho knows this is a long, slow, white knuckle drive. Driving back and forth 5 days in a row sounded like hell.

I met with the other hunters in camp and my guide Seth. We mounted up on the horses and we rode about 2 miles through the forest to a bait stand that they called “Asparagus.” The bait was setup around 90 yards across a ravine and up a steep hill. Seth climbed up there and set a little grease fire and then took off. He would be back around dark to pick me up. A few hours into my sit I caught the glimpse of something black. It was a bear! Considering this was only second bear I had ever seen in the wild and that was 20 years prior, I immediately thought he was a giant. I watched him go back and forth across a log over the bait stand. He would disappear for a few minutes then would come back across this log. I started to get setup for a shot on some homemade shooting sticks they left for me. However, these sticks collapsed and I fell back into a weird position against the hillside. I didn’t want to make any sudden movements, so I tried to get out this compromising position. I found a way to sit back and rest my rifle on my knee. It wasn’t the most orthodox setup, but it was stable. The bear came back out on the log and I pulled the trigger, he rolled straight off the log and down the hill. Seth told me if I shot one, not to go up after as another may come in. I waited another 4 hours for Seth to come back with the horses and when he did I let him know that I hit one. We climbed up the hill in the dark and found him laying there immediately. It was a pretty cool to shoot a bear, but I immediately learned what ground shrinkage meant. It took very mm to squeeze 5-feet out of him. We skinned him out and rode back in the dark. During the ride back, I was headed up a hill, only to have my saddle slide out and I ended up stuck sideways on the horse. This kind of freaked me out! Seth came back and was able to get my feet out of the stirrups. We arrived back in camp around 11 pm and I didn’t get back to the family at our lodge until after midnight.

Day 2 of the hunt I decided not to hunt. We got the bear to the check point and took the hide to a local freezer. Day 3 I returned in the afternoon to hunt at the time they told me, only to find the guides had all left to take the other hunters to their stands and I wouldn’t be able to get out. I was kind of mad as I now had an 80-mile roundtrip for nothing. Day 4 I went back and we hunted the evening under thunderstorms, no bears came in to the bait, just a whitetail doe. They let me spend the night that night and so I could hunt the morning on my last day. They had a morning bear on camera, so the other guide in camp, Shane, saddled me up at 3 a.m. and we sat on the stand togther until about 9 am. No bears again and that concluded my hunt. Overall, it was a fun experience. There was definitely some miscommunication and I take some of the blame for that. I got a bear so I was happy with the result. The guides, camp, and dinners were very nice. After doing a baited hunt, I decided that type of hunting wasn’t really my favorite. I’ve got nothing against it, I’d rather be out moving on a spot & stalk style hunt.