2017 Spring Black Bear
It's been a while since I've posted but I thought I'd share my adventure with everyone.
With exams finally done I've finally gotten a few chances to go out hunting a couple times this month. My girlfriend and I went scouting the first weekend of June and found some nice area. Last Saturday we returned to the same area looking for a bear.
There was plenty of game sign and very few people, perfect in my opinion!
Early in the day we saw a legal size cinnamon bear but I passed up on it because it was starting to rub and I don't like wasting anything if I can avoid it. We covered a lot of area throughout the day and saw 11 snowshoe hares and one grouse during our travels.
Most of the animal activity witnessed was around dusk (unsurprisingly).
At 7pm I decided to start the long drive back to the highway. My rule is not to shoot a big game that is more than 50 yards from the road an hour before sunset, this saves me the trouble of dealing with an animal in the dark.
The sun dipped behind the mountains as we drove out. At 850pm we rounded a corner and my girlfriend pointed out a decent sized bear running across the road. It stopped and stood quartering away from me 10 feet away from the tree line.
In the time it took to grab my rifle from the back seat and get out I decided that the bear was worth shooting. I lined up and fired. The bullet found its mark passing through the spine, dropping the bear in its tracks.
With my girlfriends help the bear was gutted and put in the back of our Explorer in under an hour. It takes an amazing woman to brave the hoards of bloodthirsty mosquitoes while helping field dress a bear in fading light.
By the time we made it back to the highway it was 10:20. I realized then that I had left my axe and ropes on the side of the road where I had shot the bear. So we made the trip back to retrieve them... which added an hour to our trip home.
We finally made it home and got the bear and gear settled by 2am.
The next morning we began skinning the bear in the back yard. This drew quite the crowd, the neighbors all came around and marvelled at the process. One even brought out their five year old son to see!
The interactions were all positive, which is surprising because I live in suburban Burnaby...
Noticed something that looked like an Adam's apple which turned out to be the bullet lodged just under the skin at the bottom of neck throat. The 140gr accubond from my .270 made a devastating wound channel in the neck and didnt make it out the other side.
My girlfirend and I guesstimated the bear weighed 165 pounds after it was gutted, nowhere near as big as my first bear but I've since committed to hunting meat bears rather than big bruisers.
In our rush to escape the mosquitoes we neglected to take and pictures in the bush, but we did get a great trophy shot the next morning.
We cut everything up into "roast", "stew chunks", and sausage meat. I use quotations because I'm a self taught butcher and the cuts aren't conventional.
We portion put the meat to give both of us dinner and lunch the next day. The bear yielded 10 roasts 11 packages of stew and after adding pork probably 30+ pounds of sausage
One heck of a good view up there...
Last edited by Livewire322; 06-08-2017 at 08:59 PM.
If it cant be done with one shot, it shouldn't be done.
"grab large claw hammer - put against butt cheek , pry head out of ass with claws...then go back to school..."
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Originally Posted by nature girl
