Yesterday afternoon I caught a brief glimpse of a bear but couldn't call him back out. After reading the recommendations on this board, we went back to the same area this morning.
We sat on a point overlooking the area where yesterday's bear had gone. We ran the call with fawn distress for quite some time. After a while the wind really picked up and we both started to worry about our way out of the area considering the chainsaw was tucked away nicely in the garage. Oops.
As we rounded a corner on the way out, we saw a bear walking away from us through a clearcut. He was almost in the middle of the cut and grazing slowly along. He didn't hear the pickup, mostly I think due to the wind.
I jumped out of the truck and moved up on him until found a place to sit down with a clear shot.
185 yds and 1 shot with the .300 WSM he tumbled about 10 feet down the hill.
This was much a bigger boar than I expected when I first applied for the spring Monroe hunt. Without a scale on the side of the hill, we figure he was around 275 lbs.
We figure the calling last night must not have affected him and he had continued to graze all night. He was about 1 mile from where I saw him last night and had just followed the base of the hillside around the knob.
Thank you all for your help and recommendations. This is both my first spring bear, and my first Washington state bear. Here are a few pictures.
