Okay, I've figured a work around using Image Shack, so it should be all good!
STORY (with pictures in the middle):
I feel like I've put in 20 individual days of hunting (I consider going out for 4 hours after work one of those days), not seen a single bear in the Monroe area yet. Saw some peels, one nice scat pile, but pretty slim pickings overall. D-Rock and C-Post unofficial guide services were a great help pointing me in the right direction multiple times. Tried calling to no avail, I think all that did was make me concerned I might get jumped by a cougar.
D-Rock and myself decided to take a trip up Sultan Basin (
yes.. I said roughly where we were, nobody else hunts sultan basin or has ever heard of it... please oh please don't take my special honey hole
). Checked some gates, looked for some new area since my old area hadn't been working out. Noticed a bobcat cross the road in front of us, pretty neat to see (it was hauling azz). Was getting late and we were quickly glassing the last clearcut. I'm guessing it was ~ 9:00 pm, kind of the last check for the evening. All but given up hope, I was already planning the next days hunt, little did I know, DRock was busy spotting bears!
Down on the flat of our clearcut was a bear poking his nose out looking up at us. Not entirely sure how long he'd been there looking, but he was in the thick stuff right next to the timber and I didnt' think he'd be around too long. Found a half shaky rest, believe it was somewhere between 150 and 200 yards and let one of my 168 grain .308 Ballistic Silvertips fly from my sporting rifle, a Kel-Tec RFB. It was both of our agreement that this bear was sitting and looking up at us (later to be determined a misjudgement on our part).
I've shot a lot of deer, elk, and various other things, I expected this bear to die within 20 yards. DRock told me to reload (its an automatic) but I was determined to watch my work and this animal die. With much shouting and a bear running in a weird U shape, he finally cohersed me into taking another shot... which I missed. I know I'm kind of glossing over a lot of what is usually the exciting part... but this was far from it.
I nimbly bounced down there in excitement (first bear I'm thinking, and it must be dead in this thicker stuff that we were looking at). D-Rock holds post up top to watch for movement and then joins me. We get down there (as dark is seriously considering coming down on us) looking for the bear. All we found was blood in a neat little trail that sounds like it should be good ("hey, I hit it!") but really is more like "ah crap, now i have to track a wounded black animal in the black of night, oh and it has claws and teeth". We followed it into the timber, than goodness I brought flashlights down when I went. Bout 50 yards away from the shot i came over a stump to see boo boo sitting there. Now as a deer hunter, I'm not too worried about the alive or dead part as long as the animal is down it is usually on its way to dying, no need to waste a bullet or cause a mess on the insides. At first I couldnt tell if it was dead (flashlights at 3/4 night in the timber its hard to tell) and then when I saw it move I thought that maybe it was on its last dying quivers. Apparently DRock disagreed and he ever so calmly (not) strongly advised that i shoot it again. I hesitated and the bear jumped up and turned (thank goodness not towards us) and i fired a hopeful shot.
We tried to comprehend what was happening, and then made the maybe ill advised decision to follow it further. We arrived at a creek bottom that was very thick. Poked our noses in along the blood trail with flashlights and decided it was a death wish to head in there. We backed off and decided to wait half an hour and return to where he'd been laying. This is what we found that we hadn't seen the first time:
Turns out he left not only a blood trail, but an intestine trail. Good news for us. Intestines are a lot easier to follow than blood.
At 10:00 pm we decided it was okay to go in looking for him where we'd last seen blood at the creek, but we went around a short cut way to see if we could find him laying instead of following the direct trail. THERE HE BE! not 10 feet from where we had poked our noses in and decided to wait for half an hour, was his final resting place, really dead this time. So many emotions, too hard to describe. Came home and am determined to have a rug so I took great care in skinning. 10:00 found him, 11:30 with two sticks, rope and a lot of taco bell power we got him to the truck, pictures and such to follow, home at 1:00 am after a late night fast food stop, figured out how to hang an extension ladder from our garage door guides to hang a bear from at 1:30. D-Rock bedtime... I finished up watching instrucitonal videos and skinning/cleaning the thing at 4:30 am. Bed at 5. Long day. My neighbor was up heading to work when I dozed off. Pics on the next post cause I feel like this one is getting too large.
