Basically the first day of the hunt went how hogsniper said in his 5-8-09 thread. Friday we looked over a lot of country, saw some elk, clipped a yote and took a hike and even found a couple piles of bear crap.
We got a late start on Saturday and were on the road by 7am. After a quick stop for coffee we went to check out an area that was pretty close to town. It had some potential but no fresh sign. I did find and pick a gallon bag full of Oyster mushrooms though.
Oysters
Verpas
I drove down the highway without any idea where we were going while killbilly talked on his cell phone. Both hogsniper and Jerome had told killbilly about an area and I had a slight idea where it was but I wanted to take a look at a small unit just north of there.
We stopped for a minute and looked at this small unit and decided it would be best to come back in the evening when the sun was on the westside of the knob.
We headed back down the highway and pulled up to a gated road that we thought we had good instructions for. We were told to go in and follow the road to a swamp…. but we apparently didn’t follow the right road.
We saw a little sign from the year before and it looked like it could be a good spot. We continued passed a small swamp and around a few corners until we came to a fork in the road. We had not seen much old sign for a bit so I suggested we go back to the first spur road but we decided to continue and not knowing which way was the right one to take (neither were according to our source) we to the left fork and headed downhill slightly.
At just over a mile killbilly mentions that it looks like we bottomed out but we didn’t seem to find the grassy area we were told about. We decided to continue for a little bit and we came upon a swamp.
At 9:29 I stepped about 10 yards off the grade to take that pic. I took a couple and as I turned to step back up on the grade…BOOM!
I look up to see killbilly ejecting a round. Being a smartass, I started to say something and BOOM! Now I am up on the road and I can see the bear at about 80 yards and it is trying to get up but it looked like it’s back end was paralyzed. Then it turned to head into the brush and I told killbilly to hit him again.
After the third shot the bear started to moan and I turned my camera to the movie function and ran up to it. Killbilly hollers to me, “be careful, I am out of bullets”. The bear is moaning but barely moving and by the time I got up to it, it was all over. I kick the bear in the ass and look up from my camera to see killbilly standing a few a couple yards away with a knife in his hand.
We moved it across the road to a clear spot for photos.
The pic doesn’t do it justice but you can barely see the gold stripe down it’s back.
Healthy teeth.
Pale claws.
I then left killbilly to gut the bear and I went back to the truck for the game cart and tarp. When I got back I took more pictures of him finishing up the gutting.
It’s stomach was full of grass and in the last day or so it also ate a bunch of Salmon Berry flowers.
We then rolled it up in a black mesh tarp, strapped everything to the cart and headed out the 1.4 miles to the truck.
Killbilly & Catwithboost butchering.
