6 Seasons of Griz Hunt - Success!!
Spent 6 years drawing Grizzly tags and finally this May long weekend, I tagged out. I've been putting in for the same MU for years and I've got a good sense of it. Well I went to one of the potential hot spots and instantly came across a grizzly track of decent size and some obvious griz scat. Problem was that the wind was blowing in the wrong direction and it would surely wind me. But I decided to plod on at least to see if I could find more sign. I stepped over a rise, started glassing and saw an ominous brown shape about 1000 yds away! Sure enough, it was a griz. Hard to tell for sure but size and head looked good. Even though the wind was all wrong I decided to try a stalk by coming at him from the opposite side of the cut line. About 300 yds into the stalk he quickly left the area into the tree line. I approached the area closer just in case he was in some dead ground and the wind changed direction nearer his location. After 30 minutes, I called it quits, wanting to get my scent clear of the area.
I met up with my buddy who has a griz tag in the neighbouring MU and he instantly agreed we needed to go there in the early morning before the winds picked up. He thought the bear would be in the same spot. So we did that... made a long and quiet approach to the spot and within a few minutes picked the griz up again, bedded down in a cut line. And the wind was favourable! We still needed to approach about 1000 yds. So off we went, taking about 45 minutes to close the distance. While we were moving through dead ground, the bear moved off feeding and he wasn't where we were expecting. We decided to keep moving forward slowly, my Husqvarna 30-06 (with handloaded 168 gr TSX @ 2925fps) at the ready. We stepped over a small rise and there he was feeding about 120 yds ahead! My buddy handed me the shooting sticks, I sighted standing position on him and waited for him to step out from behind some brush. First shot nailed his shoulders and he dropped hard. We waited. He tried to get back up so I hit him again. Once more, he spun and one last shot put him down for good. I sent a couple shots while he was moving around but know they missed.
We waited for a little bit then walked up. He was done! It was 9 AM.
We went back to the truck to get our packs, returned and got to work skinning and boning him out. (Havalons are great tools btw!) The meat is some of the cleanest I've seen and will make great table fare! Don't believe that myth that all griz meat is not edible. I recovered the 3 TSX bullets and will post those soon with the weight retention data - it will be high! - but this is some food for thought about the toughness of these animals and what's needed for full penetration! We were out of there and back at camp shortly after 12. We figure it's about 325 lbs, 6.5 ft nose to tail. Mature boar. Good specimen of an Interior Mountain Grizzly.
Pics below. Video footage and more pics to come.
Last edited by Ltbullken; 05-25-2017 at 03:27 PM.
Regards,
Ltbullken
Freelance Wildlife Population Manager
Animals - If you can't eat 'em, wear 'em!
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Originally Posted by boxhitch
