Part 2:
Well my buddy Ryan and I made it back east for a 3 day weekend. We left work on Thursday June 3 and drove into the night. We got camp set up around midnight with the alarm set for 4am. First thing in the morning we drove up to the main lookout point in the area to glass for bears. Not 5 minutes into glassing and Ryan spotted a nice black color phase about a mile away feeding on some onions. Of course I had never been to that specific knob and we ended up at the wrong knob on our first try. Finally about an hour after spotting the bear we were at his feeding spot but he was gone. These bears are tough to find!
We headed back up to the same glassing point and not 5 minutes into glassing I spotted the cinnamon bear I stalked 2 weeks prior in roughly the same area it was hanging out last time. Again we made a move and were to the right hillside within 45 minutes but she was no where to be found. Again we glassed and glassed and glassed.
This is the typical country that we are glassing and hiking to:
This is actually sitting in the spot we spotted the cinnamon bear looking back at our glassing point from that morning.
From that point pictures above, we glassed back towards our glassing point and at about noon on an 80 degree day we saw one of the biggest bears I've ever seen walk across the entire hillside. He was all of 7 feet and 350-400 pound spring weight. He waddled and had a huge crease in the middle of his forhead. He was a true monster, probably a Booner. But of course, he never stopped walking and never gave us an opportunity to get close.
For the first 36 hours or so I had my bow with me but it was clear the bears still weren't feeding. After the 3 bears that first morning, we didn't see another bear for over 24 hours. We hiked and glassed literally MILES of country and weren't turning anything up. We hiked into where the big cinnamon bear had walked through and tried predator calling but no luck there either. At this point I decided it was time to pull out the rifle. Ryan had brought his long range set up Tikka T3 300 Win Mag (which I had never shot before) and I started carrying that around. You know how they say never hunt with someone else's rifle... well keep reading.
On Saturday the heat had really moved in, we were getting temperatures above 90 on the truck thermometer. We started covering other areas of the units and glassing a ton of country from the truck. We had one spot about an hour away that I had hunted before (if you watched my video from my last hunt, it's the spot I called in the sow with cubs with the predator call.) I hadn't been up there yet this year so thought we'd give it a try. We drove to a point where we could glass that meadow and at about 1:30 in the afternoon spotted a blonde bear feeding in the 90 degree heat. She was about 1200 vertical feet below us and about a mile away.
We literally through our packs on and took off RUNNING down the hill at full speed. We got set up at 440 yards but it was open hillside between her and us so we decided it was time to take a shot. Ryan got his rifle set up for the 440 yard shot, adjusted for the wind, and all that stuff I don't understand. All I knew was hold right on the bear. I finally got set up but Ryan wanted to get his camera set up. It literally took him about 5 minutes to finally get the tripod steady and on the bear. You'd think after shooting 10 bears (this is my 11th) that bear fever wouldn't get me. But by the time Ryan had his camera set up my heart was beating so fast and hard that the scope was literally moving with every single heart beat! I finally squeezed the shot only to shoot right over her back!!! She didn't know exactly where we were so started running at an angle that actually brought her closer to us. I squeezed off 2 more shots when she was about 300 and 250 yards way but ended up shooting about 2 feet over her back as I forgot to adjust for the 440 yards we had sighted in for. Remember what I said about not using someone else's rifle?
Here are some video screen grabs of the whole instance.
So now it's like 2:30 in the afternoon and 90 degrees. We hardly had any food or water with us but we were determined to wait this bear out. We hiked around a bit and had a coyote come out if its den about 100 yards from us but not wanting to spook the bear did not shoot it. About 7:30 in the evening, the sun had gone behind the ridge so we started still hunting the meadow we had missed her in. After about half an hour we came over a little rise in the hill and spotted her at 80 yards feeding. She stood up on her hind legs to look at me and I pulled up to take an offhand shot. Of course I had forgot to change the scope from 16x zoom back to 4x zoom and shanked the shot and missed her clean! (Remember that thing about not using someone elses gun?)
I was completely discouraged but we went to look for blood just in case. We had been looking for about 20 minutes and Ryan was about 100 yards away from me when all of a sudden a different chocolate phase bear decides to walk right by me at about 30 yards. He hears me as I raise the gun to shoot and he is 15 yards away. The sun is directly at my back so he stands on his hind legs to try to figure out what I am. I pull up to shoot and again the scope at 16x zoom. (Doh!!!) I pull the gun back down, switch to 4 time zoom, pull back up and hold my breath and squeez the trigger only to hear "Click." (DOH!!!!!) I figured I must have forgotten to jack another shell so quickly tried jacking the shell back in only to see that the shell was not coming up out of the clip and feeding into the chamber. I tried about 3 times to jack the shell in, then pulled the clip out and put it back in but nothing was working!!! This whole time the bear is just standing on it's hind legs trying to figure out what I was. So then I pull out the clip and start trying to yank the shell out of the clip with my fingers but it's good and jammed. (I later came to find out these were hand reloads and Ryan had reloaded them a bit to long. We actually had a few shells get jammed in similar fashion.) After about 90 seconds of fiddling around the bear slowly walks over the hill. I could not believe it!!!!
We climbed back to the truck completely defeated. I seriously considered packing up and driving home that evening. But the image of that blonde bear just kept sticking with me. We made it back to camp around 11:30, packed up as much of camp as we could and set the alarm for 3am to finish packing up and head back that direction.
The next morning we get back to the parking spot and can't see anything at first. After dropping down into the meadow we spot the blonde bear in the next meadow over feeding in the grass. (We also spotted the chocolate bear that morning and in hindsight, I'm really glad the gun jammed as the bear was a lot smaller than I had realized when he was standing 15 yards away from me. Maybe a 4 foot bear at most!!! I guess God does have a plan, jammed clip and all!)
Here are some screenshots of the blonde bear from the morning. We didn't bother to film the chocolate.
We quickly stalk in on the blonde bear and this time I'm not letting bear fever get control. We got to 340 but she was in the sun and were in the shade so we figured we could get closer. At 280 I got set up but had too much brush in front of the gun. Finally at 250 I had a good set up and felt comfortable for the shot. This time though I didn't wait for Ryan to get the camera set up, I just took the shot when I felt comfortable. My first shot took her quartering away and blew out her vitals and took out her far shoulder. She was down immediately but after about 20 seconds got back up. Ryan got the second shot on video as I hit her a bit far back but she kept going. I missed on the third shot right as she fed into the trees.
Knowing we had hit her good we didn't give her much time and went to find blood. There was a good blood trail going right into the thick, brushy timber so we started following it. Shortly after moving into the timber I came around a tree to see her standing up and lunging at me from about 4 yards away. I picked up the gun from the hip and just pointed it at her and shot and she sort of roared and then started running back down the hill. She didn't seem to be going fast so we kept working down in the timber. I finally got up on a log and was able to get a good shot down into the brush at her and finish her off. She was seriously one of the toughest bears I have ever seen! I have never seen an animal go so far with broken shoulder and vitals completely blown out, but she just kept going.
She was an old boar with a great big blocky head but probably only about 200 pounds. We've shot one other bear like this in the past that looked big and blocky but wasn't actually that large. In the end that sow was tooth aged at 19 years old. Based off the teeth and melon on this bear I would guess she's probably roughly the same age.
This is the best picture we could get with both of us in it!
Some with just me:
Luckily we shot her at 6:30 am because by the time we finally got back to the truck it was nearly 90 degrees again. The temperature broke 100 on the truck thermometer a couple times on the way home.
Overall, this was a really tough hunt. I did see 10 bears but all but this one and the chocolate were seen at 1-3 miles distance and none fed in the open for more than 10 minutes at a time. Definitely not long enough for me to even have an opportunity. I believe it's by the grace of God that I was able to find this bear in the middle of the day on my second to last day of the hunt and by the grace of God that I never wounded her on my multiple missed shots (4) and had a perfect shot on the last morning. I'm sure everyone knows hunting sure has it's ups and downs and this hunt was no exception at all!!! Can't wait to get the meet processed so we have bear burgers for spaghetti, chili, and hamburgers!
Hope you all enjoyed following along!
