So last year on the Saturday of the May Long Weekend my college age son and I went bear hunting and he bagged his first bear, and a nice size one at that (5 footer). So this year we went out on again on Saturday of the May Long to try for a repeat performance. We are blessed to live in an area that has lots of game and many locations to hunt. We talked about where to hunt and figured we had 6 viable locations within 1/2 hour drive or less that we could hunt, but we couldn't decide where. So my son wrote each location on a separate piece of paper, put the papers in a hat, and had his little sister pull out a paper. Cool, we had a location and it was very close by. We headed out mid to late morning. The area we were going to is a place I got to know really well last fall while moose hunting, so I had a map in my head of some spots I thought would likely produce a bear.
We parked at the beginning of the FSR and unloaded the ATV, it would be much easier getting to spots on it. I glanced at the clock as we headed off, 10:18 am. We putted up the hill for a couple kilometers keeping an eye out for the fuzzy creatures. Then we hit our first grassy road and we turned up it. A few yards in we spotted fresh scat, a good sign. A few hundred yards later we rounded a corner and my son says, "theres a bear". It was on the road ahead of us about 50 yards, it immediately started running up the road. I stayed with the machine while my son quickly got his gun loaded and then took aim. The bear slowed up and stopped at around 70 yards and turned it's head to look back at us. He aimed right below the base of the head and let one fly. The bear dropped like a ton of bricks. Woohoo! Bear down. The time was now 10:30am.
I left my son with the bear while I turned around to get the vehicle and trailer, I could literally pull up to this bear with the trailer to load him. While I was gone, my son walked up the road about 70 yards or so and turned around to notice a bull moose walking up the road towards him. He crouched down so the moose wouldn't see him and just watched as it made it's way up the road towards the bear browsing along the way. It was practically standing over the bear when my son and moose both heard my approach with the vehicle. The moose got nervous and started trotting up the road. Not wanting to get stepped on by a moose, my son stood up and waved his arms and yelled "Hey". The moose made an about face and started galloping down the road. I was just about to the corner when all of a sudden this moose doing mach 1 runs right in front of me and into the thick stuff. Fun times. On the way out of there we saw another young bear in blonde color phase. A good day indeed.
Anyways, we got the bear home, skinned him out and ground him up right away. We found this guy to be physically longer than last years bear at 5' 7" nose to rear. But we got around the same amount of meat out this one, and this bear was incredibly lean. Last years bear was shot within a mile of a large corn field and he was incredibly fat for a spring bear. We have yet to get a skull measurement on this one, so we are anxious to see if its bigger than last years. Enjoy the pics.
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, congrats.
Originally Posted by Knute
