Bearpaw Season - Spring 2022

[bearpaw]

Scott from South Carolina sacked up his second bird yesterday, they shot and hit a coyote too but couldn’t find him.

[bearpaw]

Matt doubled yesterday on the first morning of his hunt, excellent shooting Matt!

[Machias]

Nice!!

[bearpaw]

Joe from Georgia with his first bird taken two days ago and his second bird taken this morning, good job Joe and Zach.

[deerhuntr4885]

That second one is gorgeous!

[bearpaw]

Sam from Georgia with both his washington birds, nice going Sam!

[bearpaw]

We started spring bear hunting on Monday, it has been a real challenge getting baits out this year, every single mountain road has been closed by downed trees. We’ve been cutting out roads for two weeks and we have another two weeks of cutting to get to other bait sites. The revised Toyota has been nice, three guys can go in one truck, it’s the only rig we have that can get through the deep snow to get baits started.

Because we were late getting baits started I was really worried if we would have bear to hunt on this first hunt. A few days before the hunt all we had was a couple yearlings and one was probably only 60 pounds soaking wet.

We have been picking up new bear each day, yesterday on the second day both hunters nailed bear in the afternoon about 5 minutes apart.

The first bear was shot by Luke from Colorado, he tipped the bear over but it took off downhill with no blood trail to follow. This was on southern exposure so there was no tracking snow either.

Brian took up Chewy the Jack Russell, he is about 5 pounds of fury with a great tracking nose. Chewy tracked the bear a couple miles through thick reprod zig zagging from the top of the mountain nearly to the main stream in the bottom with Brian following. The bear finally bayed up tight in one spot and another guide with Luke came in from a much closer road and finished off the bear.

Chewy was the hero of the day, without a good tracking dog this bear would not have been found. We have hounds too, but we have found that a single blood tracking dog works out best in these situations.

Luke with his bear:

[bearpaw]

Trail cam photo of the bear, yes, a pretty lean bear, it's been a fairly long winter in the high country.

[bearpaw]

Gentry from Louisiana scored on two birds, here he is with his 2nd Washington bird

[bearpaw]

Sean from Washington nailed the other Idaho spring bear we got yesterday, Sean anchored this blackie on the spot.

[bearpaw]

In spite of lower turkey numbers in most of the areas we hunt, we’ve been having a great season. We have noticed an uptick in turkey numbers in one location, that just goes to show how variable populations can be, down in some areas but up in another area.

Phillip from Texas was hunting for two birds, he nailed his first bird the first day and got his second bird the second day, I love it when a plan comes together.

[bearpaw]

Another Tom down! Cleaning time!

[bearpaw]

Just got this photo, we are ready for the next turkey hunters. 

[bearpaw]

We are ready for the next bear hunt too, Brian located a pretty decent bear he will be trying to get. The knife is 4 1/4 long.

Did I mention a lot of our area is still under quite a bit of snow! 

[Twispriver]

Thanks for the frequent updates  I'll bet that knife has some history