It was a lot of time and evenings spent looking for one. Just wasn't seeing the bears like I did last time I drew the tag in 2012. I was seeing a fair amount of peels probably being caused by a handful of bears. I tied pink ribbon where I was finding fresh peels. I would go at sun up, but not seeing anything other than deer, elk, bobcats and grouse. Most of the activity seemed to be happening an hour before dark and I believe the bears were peeling after dark. I would come back up the next morning at sunrise and several more trees would be peeled in one of the areas I had focused. I think all the logging activity had them sitting in the thick. I talked to another friend that had the tag that focused most of his effort off of HWY 9 and he saw 5 bears.
I saw a huge black one that I never was able to put on the ground. I was burned out at the end. Called the neighbor the last day and asked if he wanted to go with me. Went to one of the spots I saw the black bear. We were walking one of the roads and this color phase brown stepped out in front of us at about 70 yards. I put the crosshairs on it where I was aiming and pulled the trigger. It turned to bite at its side. Spun around and dumped into a drainage. All I could think was oh s**t he dumped into a steep SOB. Luckily I walked over to the edge and he was piled up 20 yards down. Not a big one like the black one I wanted. Filled the tag. I think I put on close to 1,600 miles and hiked close to 70 miles. I earned this one.
The first bear taken, I passed the hunter coming in as I was heading out. The sun was starting to set. He got one shortly after we passed one another. The second hunter shot his bear on the second day of his hunt as he was working his way out for the day. I kind of wish this had been the case for me as I focused on bears vs. lingcod, shrimp and halibut. Drew the tag twice and filled it both times. Averaged 20 days afield both times to fill the tag.
