Had some time to post this up so thought i'd share a buddy and mines recent Black Bear from April 11th, Region 2.
Did not get permission to post his picture so theres one of mine, team effort but he pulled the trigger. Sorry for blacking out the background, this is a spot we have busted our a**es to find and being region 2, the back ground mountains one could put in some time figuring it out then next weekend i have 10 guys glassing an area i've never seen one person before. Overlooked area with old logging. Doesn't make for the nicest picture to show everyone but had to share this beast of a boar we got. Well in our opinion he's big.. and even bigger after shooting him about 4km from the truck.
From the beginning:
Friday evening have a chat with my hunting partner, figure our game plan out and set the alarm. Well a couple soda pops down and late eveing i awake to see its 9:35... not the 6:00am i was expecting. No missed calls on the phone so thumbs up, he slept in too, lol. We make it on the road by 11:00 and head towards Hope, our intentions are to work some FSR's in 3-14 and check for some sign and see how things are growing. As we pass Yale it turns into a monsoon in the canyon, we figure while we are here may as well check it out, i have a few locations where i've actually ran into bears on trails in the past so we want to check out how things are growing and if anyone is awake yet. Get to our designated spot and i can tell right away its a bit too early yet i think. No clover, no grass really, and no scat. Old deactivated loggin road with a bridge washout, so no access besides on foot. Usually this road is just littered in scat but nothing as of yet, just old stuff from last year. We decide to move on and work the are hard and fast looking for sign, we try creek bottoms where some skunk cabbage is starting to grow, no signs, nothing tore up or messed around with yet. Move on to the next area and decide to see if we can maybe get up a little higher to some south slopes and see whats going on. After several switch backs were now a top some mountains and the rain has turned into snow, sideways snow to be exact... hard to glass when you can only see 50 yards and blowing directly into your bino's. We move back down in the bottoms and are finding nothing for sign. Make the decision to drop back down hit the hwy and head a little further up the #1. Well pouring rain, no grass or clover with hopes now dwindling, we think its a bit too early so lets head back to Region 2 and check some areas to see how things are going.
Fuel back up in Hope and head towards home, its about 3:30 now and we figure we have enough time to check out an area we found last year on google earth that the only access in is by foot. We figure we will have enough time to get in there, sit and glass for 2 hours and head out at dark. There are a few large south facing slopes, some are old logging cuts and a couple small slide areas with some creek washouts. As we make our way in we come to the first decent area that is slightly open, within minutes we spot 6 blacktails haning out grazing. Rather than pushing them out hard with our precense, we let them notice us and move off at their own pace. I figure right on, thats a good start now wheres Mr. Bear. Another km in and we come to another open are with a nice greened up area, to my suprise there were between 12-20 Blacktails hanging out together grazing, i could not believe it, now if i can only find them come season. Little buggers must have updated copies of the regs because this place was dead last year during open season.
We finally make our way into our location (about 3kms) and find a nice log to sit on and start glassing until dark, there is a bunch of area to look at that a Black Bear could be hiding or just standing out of sight so we want to sit and take our time looking up and down all the hillsides and logging cut.
Its about 5:30 in the evening, we've been staring for a little bit now and don't see anything out there besides a few more Blacktails about a km away. As i'm sitting giving my eyes a break i see my buddy start to work right to left again with his bino's, we try and work as a team so i start glassing left to right, now here's where the story should get a little better for you guys...