Spring Bear 2022

[Livewire322]

I've finally finished unpacking from my trip last weekend, so now it's time for the write up.

I'll start by saying that I haven't gotten out as much as I might've liked to this spring, but what outings I've gotten have been fantastic in their own rights. In total I've managed 6 days in the field, with 5 bears sighted...

Well, on my last trip the stars must've aligned, because I managed to connect with a dandy chocolate-tipped boar.


With a favorable forecast for Saturday/Sunday, my wife and I headed out for a camping trip. I haven't taken her camping yet this year, so a trip was well past due.
But, being the hunt-aholic I am, I brought my .30-06 and hunting kit along so that I could tag a bear if we happened to cross one.

We left home late, around 730am, stopped for Starbucks and gas, and hit the start of the FSR around 930am (which speaks to how casual I was taking things, as I normally hit the FSR before sun up).

On our way to the planned campsite, we took a detour up to a nice vantage point that I planned to glass the surrounding area from. It was 1130am, and I thought it might be nice to eat lunch with a mountain view. We didn’t make it… because a bear was walking the road. We first spotted it from about one hundred meters away - I think we both saw it at the same time - my wife's exact words were “oh s***” because I was already half out the door, and she knew what was going to happen next. The bear rounded a corner and disappeared from sight as I was getting out of the truck. I fast walked to get around the corner and was thankful to see the bear still walking along, again probably 100m away. He's moving along the road with a narrow clear cut downhill for 50m and thick timber immediately uphill.

In my haste, I must've made some noise because the bear stopped and looked back at me. He obviously wasn’t too concerned though, because after a half second glance, he continued on walking down the middle of the road. Not feeling pressed for time, I start looking for a suitable spot to go prone so that I could take a stable shot. I found a suitable patch of dirt to lay prone and got ready for a shot.

The bear was now 150m away, quartering away from me, and still moving at a slow-walk pace. I started leading my target and timed my first shot as he was bringing the leg closest to me forward. It hit and he spun broadside, biting at his shoulder. I sent another round into his vitals, and at that point, he really put the afterburners on and was heading down the road edge (60 degrees, loose gravel and dirt with a 40’ drop) for the clear cut. As he started to hit flat ground, I shot again and he stopped - I’m not sure if it was because he’d taken a third hit to his vital organs, or if he’d simply gotten hung up in the burn pile, because there were holes that I fell into there that were waist deep on me (I'm 6'2" and all legs...). He still looked mobile thought, with all four legs still under him and his head up, so it took one last shot, aiming this time for his head - he dropped. All told, from the first shot to the last, maybe 10 seconds had passed.
My magazine only holds four bullets, so I quickly loaded the three rounds from my sling and chambered another round. I still wasn't entirely convinced that the bear was dead after the performance I'd just watched, so I settled in to watch for a minute. Thankfully, it didn’t move again, so I put the safety on, shouted to my wife to bring the truck up, and started walking towards the bear.

When my wife caught up to me her first reaction was to ask “that was a lot of shots, what happened?” - she's been present when I've taken big game animals before, and has never seen one take more than a single shot. I explained what happened and we cautiously proceeded to the bear together.
Once we got up to the bear I poked it with my gun to make sure it was truly dead, and the size of it finally set in. No 'ground shrinkage' with this bear. Not huge, but a respectable bear...

After the tag was cut, it took us 3 hours to cape, remove the edible portions, and load the meat into the pickup. With some loose cuts in our camp cooler with ice packs and managed to stand the game-bagged quarters up in a 68L Rubbermaid tote (not ideal, but I hoped that fast moving air on the drive home would cool them off some). I kept a small square of hide to practice fleshing - if it pans out I might try tanning it at home - I also kept the skull to make a euro display. The mosquitos went to town on my right ear while I was breaking the bear down - only my right ear though, not my neck or face, both of which were also exposed ... My ear was swollen and twice as thick as normal the following day.

Interestingly, we were visited by a lever gun wielding gent when we were part way through processing the bear. He walked up the way we'd driven and chatted with us for a short time. If you're on here, howdy! Hope you made out alright.

We made a bee line for home. On arriving, we set to prepping our apartment for the large butchering task we had 'cut' out for ourselves. We filled a bathtub with cold water, ice, and icepacks and put the cooler and meat-filled tote into the water to help keep things cool. It was 630pm by the time we started making the first cuts. The meat was wrapped and in the freezer by 4am ... The yield was 80# of meat - there was a surprising amount of fat on him for a spring bear too.



I hope by sharing this story I can remind people, new hunters and veterans alike, that it is important to keep on an animal after the first shot and to be ready for a follow up. I was shooting .30-06 180gr Federal Fusion soft-point, which evidently is not the be-all end-all for bear (or at least it wasn't for this one...). I recovered one bullet from the bear - it had stopped just under the hide on the far side - retained weight was 153gr and it expanded to ~.5"x.8"
Time to do some load development with some TSX or TTSX bullets me thinks!

And because hunting ain't all about the killing, here's a nice photo of a swampy lake we stopped at on the way to the bear.