Thursday after work I took a drive and hike into a hellhole to scout for bear sign. Have you ever forgotten a great spot and then want to kick yourself when you “re-discover” it? That is how I felt. It has been a few years since I entered a portion of this swamp and though I always planned to go back, I never did. Such a shame.
On my way into the swamp I noticed a small bed of sorts. It was on the hillside but it did not look like a deer bed. I looked for bear hair but I didn’t find any. As I was leaving I noticed an old pile of bear crap. It was not very big and at least a month old. After getting through a tangle of brush I made it to the edge of the swamp.
This place is loaded with Bear Grass and Skunk Cabbage. I found a couple different sets of bear tracks and signs of feeding.
This average sized bear track seemed to follow an old trail and fed on some grass in the past few days.
This larger track was about 5 inches across the pad and seemed to hang out more than the smaller track. (I am hoping this track belongs to a whopper I saw in the area a couple years ago. That bear was in the 400 lb range.) I found a couple spots where it dug up Skunk Cabbage and if I lost the track I could easily see where it was going by the short grass where it had fed.
I also found some broken Cascara trees and a couple of alders where some smaller bears had clawed and climbed.It seems that this area is a potential spot in both the spring and the fall.
