A pardner and I found a set of bear tracks in the north valley walking along the Chewuch river. They followed the river for about a half mile then crossed. It’s in an the area where the Chewuch is basically a creek and the BC border is close. Those prints were larger than a dinner plate. We never did see the bear, the tracks were fresh and we both know what a grizzly track looks like and these looked like the ones we would see in Alaska. That was back in the late 80,s.
Then in the 90,s in a different area another buddy and myself spotted a big bear sitting on a log facing us at about 3-350 yards away. It sat on that log like a human sitting on a park bench for about 5 minutes as we glassed him hard, both of us not wanting to shoot because something just didn’t look right. From time to time the bear would turn its head where we could catch his profile, we both concluded the dang thing had a dished face! It was huge for sure, but both of us could not squeeze a trigger because we were convinced it was not a black bear. It soon plopped of the log and walked into a thicket, sure as heck, it had a hunch back. We reported that one and were told, “ no grizzly around here, probably just a big black bear”.
I agree with wolfbait, I think there are more grizzly in this state than most know about, I also think they have been here for awhile.
