When nothing goes right, g̶o̶ ̶l̶e̶f̶t̶ go bear hunting

[whitespringer]

You on the right track 45freezer. Kids can't get that kind of life experience playing video games, and your bush craft grows with every trip. Keep it up!

[caddisguy]

Awesome pics and write-up about your trip out. Hot weekend to be out hiking around in steep country like that. I'd be complaining and taking lots of breaks to cool off and hydrate lol ... good on you both.

I am interested to see what the grass looked like. Sometimes it's obvious but other times not so much. It doesn't necessarily look like a lawn mower but if you find lots of clumps of grass missing a lot of blades it is most certainly a bear. If there is a lot of tasty looking grass but only the odd nip, it could be a hare. Deer will occasionally hit grass but I have only observed that in very early season.

Regarding the berries, I usually don't start to see seeds turning up in scat until mid July to August.

Was the scat you found still moist looking, have a green tinge to it or mostly black? Wondering how fresh it was and if you found multiple piles close together (ie: within 100 yards)

Edit:

I just had a second look at the pictures on a real computer. I like that spot where your son is eating horsetail. Is the pic of him eating horsetail from the weekend? Is it where you saw the bear scat? It looks like a little creek running through there int he background as well? It seems to have decent cover, shade and a bit of a snack bar. If you did find sign around there, it's probably a spot a bear holds up at times while waiting to hit a major feeding area near by in which case you could be close to a major hot spot. What's on the other side of that timber where it's bright? Whenever I come across pockets like that, there is something good around. All speculation though... for all I know that picture is in Stanly Park lol

The grassy road and the place he is having a nap look decent too. They don't jump out at me as gold (though I don't have a 360 degree video of everything you are seeing so you never know) but it looks like a good starting point. At this point you could either hunt over the scat or keep scouting around to unlock the mysteries.

Another thing to look for now is stumps getting worked over, bark torn off and things like that. Not sure about your area but right now I know from experience the places I hunt as well as the lake I was at on the weekend, the carpenter ants are becoming very active and bears will be working over logs/stumps/etc to get at them.

I will probably be working on a bear video a little this weekend. It will have a lot of things that might help. More grass stuff, video of the bear eating the grass, torn up stumps old and new, more roughed up saplings... some with single hairs and one with pretty big pile of fur from at least 2 bears (like a handful for your son) ... it will also feature a variety of poop from practically steaming to a few days old to a week or two old, tracks in the timber. It will show hot feeding areas and near-by "hold up" spots in the adjacent timber then of course the shot, tracking, recovery, etc. the video probably wont be compiled/completed this weekend but I should have a bunch of little clips here and there that I can upload as private and link you to.

[walks with deer]

good job looks like a good weekend...

i love the pic of your boy sleeping on the pack...awesome.

[45freezer]

Ya it was a hot one, definitely burned through a lot of water. I did take a photo of the grass but must have had some serious glare on my phone screen, was going to include it but upon further review it was out of focus. Did look more like a few blades here and there than huge chunks but I've never seen any hare up there. My co-worker said they're Saskatoon berries and they'll be ripening up in the next month or two but I'm taking that with a grain of salt.

Yes, that's kind of a part time creek behind him, waiting to see if the water levels rise enough this year to become a legit body of water but usually it's more of a creek bed with a few puddles. My trail camera is to the right about 15 yards down the creek bed, one pile of scat was between my son and the camera and one was about 20 yards behind the spot I took that photo from. That creek bed seems to be somewhat of a predator travel corridor, have gotten multiple bears, one being the belly dragger I told you about, plenty of wolves and a bobcat as well as a few cow elk coming through there. On the other side (where it looks bright) is actually pretty dense woods with some horsetail in the undergrowth, that's where he picked it. We bushwhack it through there to the river and I've found quite a few elk trails and rubs as well as a small black bear skull in there. Think that place will be prime in the fall as the muddy spots leading up to that creek bed were covered in tracks in October, some huge ones too. The scat that was behind me was under a big old growth tree canopy that looked like a perfect bedding area for a bear but the weird part is this is all within 50 yards of a popular campsite that generally doesn't have the quietest campers set up there, however this doesn't seem to keep the bears away all the time. Campers or not the spot has all the perks you mentioned and is certainly a travel corridor for the bears but I think they hole up in the thick timber behind there and travel through there to get to their food.

I am very curious where the grass buffet is and want to dial in where exactly all that grass in the scat I found is coming from, the best source of grass I found was right where I parked and it was 100% untouched. Felt like a heard a bear crashing through the thick stuff before bed but also could have been an elk. Looking forward to the footage of the stumps, these things probably seem second nature when you've been doing it a while but these details are key for a noob learning things on his own.

The spot where he's napping was exactly 20 yards from a very grassy patch that was also right at a curve on the road about 140 yards from the biggest pile of scat we had found, seemed like a good ambush spot and we had perfect wind so we sat that spot Saturday evening but yogi never showed up. I know they can move very quietly, how much does that still apply on crunchy gravel logging roads?

Couple photos of the scat, first one I broke apart with a stick to see if I could make out anything other than grass. 2nd one looks older but had more moisture to it when I flipped it over, neither looked crazy fresh but fresher than what I was finding higher up, that could have been due to cooler temps and less sun exposure though. None had much green left, guess the first photo was the greenest I found, I've heard it oxidizes very quickly though.





Thanks walks with deer, that one earned a spot on my wall at work.

[Ohwildwon]

Excellent post and pics! Way to get your son out there, must be an awesome feeling to do that...

I believe those are Salmon Berries, this isn't Saskatoon...

[caddisguy]

If there are campers frequently in the area, any bears utilizing nearby resources within ear shot or line of sight likely knno how to play the game. It could be a first light / last light show. Hopefully the area is holding bears and these aren't just passing through. I would check everywhere in 2km radius. If there is a rich food source, bears will spend a lot of time feeding there and holding up near by.

Maybe google earth would help a little bit too. Look for brown spots anything 30 to several hundred yards. Sometimes they are cuts, burns and sometimes they are useless slides. Often these spots are not really brown wasteland like it would appear on the satellite, but rather rich and green. It will let you have a good look at the terrain too so you can make some good guesses about how bears are utilizing the area and what their movements might look like. I think you mentioned doing some satellite scouting before, but it's always worth staring at a little longer.

As for bears being quiet, they can be. On gravel roads they are very quiet. Their pads are surprisingly soft. On grass and even in some cut blocks they can be quiet too. In the timber and thick stuff as things dry out and become more brittle, you might think there is an elephant walking around. Bears will plow through stuff in there way and no matter how soft their pads are, they will step on sticks and crash right through them. It's actually quite exciting. More than a few times we have just been sitting in feeding area and sound alone gave us a moment or two notice. As you know last year after I had walked out of my spot I heard the snap from around 80 yards away as the crow flies and walked back in. The sow last year that was hanging around the area... I would hear her before I saw her as well. And FWIW my hearing is not very good. The pesky bear that charged me, we could hear him a few hundred yards away... it was also the reason I know exactly what was happening when he charged me from the timber and that gave me plenty of notice. It is also what woke me up when he came down from the reprod. I did hear his steps on the road that time between the reprod and the jeep. It sounded like human steps. I would consider that an exception though. I remember another bear surprised caddisgirl on the gravel while she was eating breakfast. She heard nothing. All of a sudden "**** a bear!" and I turned around to see them a couple yards away having a stare down. Another time she ran into one in a provincial park that "followed her" (in hind sight it was just doing a bug run in the same direction) all the way back into our camp sight. She opens the door and wakes me up "hey this bear followed me back to camp) ... it was walking around on gravel and I could hear nothing. In the same park last year we had (probably) the same bear and 2 cubs in our campsite around 4am. I could hear them in the timber just fine but not on the gravel. Anyway, I think you get the idea. Timber and dry, noisy... cutbocks/reprod depends what they are doing and what they are stepping on. Gravel, soft ground, stealth-mode.

You might very well have heard a bear. Another thought I have been having since yesterday is that I think there is a reasonable chance you could be on to a sow and maybe a cub. Often this time of year they will stay up a little higher. From the ones I see on my cameras they, seem to love old growth and when I do see them in person in a feeding area it's always around a tree line or other good cover. Keep your ears open for any clacking or popping sounds. You might think it's a drunk woodpecker but the sound and timing is different. You can find examples on Youtube. They do this to let you know they are there and that they would prefer you don't get closer. I had a sow doing this to me for almost an hour last year while I was working on the boar. I don't interpret it as aggression at all but rather a heads-up.

That's all I got for now. Me and caddisgirl are watching this thread and cheering for you and your boy.

[45freezer]

Ohwildwon looks like you're right, I've wondered about this guys credibility for a while which is why I was taking it with a grain of salt, thanks for filling in the blanks.

Caddisguy I think it may be a sow or younger bear hanging out by the creek, did find one fairly old track in the mud that was pretty small but really doubt it could be this years cub, maybe last years though. Was listening hard for tooth popping every time we were walking through the thick jungle up there after dark, good thing the drunk woodpeckers had already gone to bed. Will definitely take a closer look at Google maps/earth and get back up there to explore some more and see if any bruisers walked by the cam asap, this weekend though it looks like I'll be checking out a new area with someone who certainly knows what they're doing and made the very generous offer to take me and my son out so hopefully I can add some new pics to this thread sooner than later!

Appreciate all the help big time!

[caddisguy]

That is excellent news. Thank you to the generous HBC person for being awesome. We're looking forward to the trip report and pics!

I'll be spending the weekend hibernating, waking up once in a while to hydrate... much needed bed rest. I'm living through you and any others venturing out. Good luck!