Region 2 bear down

[Gone_Fishin_]

Had some time to post this up so thought i'd share a buddy and mines recent Black Bear from April 11th, Region 2.

Did not get permission to post his picture so theres one of mine, team effort but he pulled the trigger. Sorry for blacking out the background, this is a spot we have busted our a**es to find and being region 2, the back ground mountains one could put in some time figuring it out then next weekend i have 10 guys glassing an area i've never seen one person before. Overlooked area with old logging. Doesn't make for the nicest picture to show everyone but had to share this beast of a boar we got. Well in our opinion he's big.. and even bigger after shooting him about 4km from the truck.

From the beginning:

Friday evening have a chat with my hunting partner, figure our game plan out and set the alarm. Well a couple soda pops down and late eveing i awake to see its 9:35... not the 6:00am i was expecting. No missed calls on the phone so thumbs up, he slept in too, lol. We make it on the road by 11:00 and head towards Hope, our intentions are to work some FSR's in 3-14 and check for some sign and see how things are growing. As we pass Yale it turns into a monsoon in the canyon, we figure while we are here may as well check it out, i have a few locations where i've actually ran into bears on trails in the past so we want to check out how things are growing and if anyone is awake yet. Get to our designated spot and i can tell right away its a bit too early yet i think. No clover, no grass really, and no scat. Old deactivated loggin road with a bridge washout, so no access besides on foot. Usually this road is just littered in scat but nothing as of yet, just old stuff from last year. We decide to move on and work the are hard and fast looking for sign, we try creek bottoms where some skunk cabbage is starting to grow, no signs, nothing tore up or messed around with yet. Move on to the next area and decide to see if we can maybe get up a little higher to some south slopes and see whats going on. After several switch backs were now a top some mountains and the rain has turned into snow, sideways snow to be exact... hard to glass when you can only see 50 yards and blowing directly into your bino's. We move back down in the bottoms and are finding nothing for sign. Make the decision to drop back down hit the hwy and head a little further up the #1. Well pouring rain, no grass or clover with hopes now dwindling, we think its a bit too early so lets head back to Region 2 and check some areas to see how things are going.

Fuel back up in Hope and head towards home, its about 3:30 now and we figure we have enough time to check out an area we found last year on google earth that the only access in is by foot. We figure we will have enough time to get in there, sit and glass for 2 hours and head out at dark. There are a few large south facing slopes, some are old logging cuts and a couple small slide areas with some creek washouts. As we make our way in we come to the first decent area that is slightly open, within minutes we spot 6 blacktails haning out grazing. Rather than pushing them out hard with our precense, we let them notice us and move off at their own pace. I figure right on, thats a good start now wheres Mr. Bear. Another km in and we come to another open are with a nice greened up area, to my suprise there were between 12-20 Blacktails hanging out together grazing, i could not believe it, now if i can only find them come season. Little buggers must have updated copies of the regs because this place was dead last year during open season.

We finally make our way into our location (about 3kms) and find a nice log to sit on and start glassing until dark, there is a bunch of area to look at that a Black Bear could be hiding or just standing out of sight so we want to sit and take our time looking up and down all the hillsides and logging cut.

Its about 5:30 in the evening, we've been staring for a little bit now and don't see anything out there besides a few more Blacktails about a km away. As i'm sitting giving my eyes a break i see my buddy start to work right to left again with his bino's, we try and work as a team so i start glassing left to right, now here's where the story should get a little better for you guys...

[Gone_Fishin_]

I notice that my buddy is doing the "binos up, binos down, squint, up/down up/down, squint" and he says "bear" instantly my heart starts thumping, my mind starts racing and i say where, are u sure? He says "yes man bear" i pan over to the right and right away see the same black lump he is looking at. Just when i was about to say "man i've looked at thing a dozen times it hasn't moved" i see it take a step and turn around... we both look at eachother and have the exact same expression, a smile right from ear to ear. Within seconds this smile turns into a ... how are we going to get over there and get that thing back. We are about 3kms from the truck and have about 1.5 to get in order to even make a shot. As were both sitting here wondering what to do for a second we decide to take another look through the bino's and see what we actually have going on way out there in the meadow. A few minutes goes by as were both looking through our binos, its head on towards us and from the distance hard to even tell if its a decent bear or not. A few seconds go by and we see the bear turn broadside, takes a few steps and i notice the swag in his step and OMG those front shoulders... both of us drop our binos and without even saying a word or looking at eachother my buddy was picking up his gun and i was taking off my bag. The stalk was on, game time...

With a Tikka T3 in 7mm RemMag in hand we are off, we have over a km to go and its around 6:00pm now. The wind is in our favour and once we get within shooting distance we will have about an hour to sit and wait for the perfect shot. This was one of the most intense stalks i have ever done, not for that fact that we had no cover or wind was wrong, the adrenaline going, how big he looked, just how everything was working out. As we make our way closer and closer we finally come to the cut we know he's in. We get to within 500 yrds and our cover is down to nothing... there are some stumps here and there, a little hill but not much to work with in reagrds to the way the wind was going. So with wind in our face we went straight at him, only moving when he was looking down or the other direction. Every once in a while he would look up our way so we'd stop and stan perfectly still, so still and quiet i could hear my heart beating, feel my hands trembling and just an intense vibe coming from the both of us. With dead silence we slowly crept our way closer and closer, moving 30 yards at a time and stopping behind eachother, bino's up, yep he's still there and OMG the closer we get, the bigger he got. We've gotten to a setion where we have nothing to hide us, straight flat and hes looking in our direction. The minute we seen him put his head down to eat we would crawl a few more feet, watching his every movement... 300 yards... 270, 260, 250... ok.. one more little push and we came behind a stump. I got buddy to lay down and geat ready, i perched myself right behind him to look down his angle and watch the beat through my binos. As we both lay here trying to calm our nerves and my shaking we watch as the bear steps behind a log and grazes in our opposite direction. We both knew to just stay still and let him do his thing, he will give us another opportunity soon, still have another hour of light to go so lots of time. The more i watched him the more i realized he was a very nice boar, wide head, ears slightly out to the side and could tell by his front shoulders that he was carrying some definite weight on him.

As i'm laying there i kept reminding my buddy, lots of time, don't rush, calm your breathing we have lots of time to get a good shot. About 15 minutes goes by and the bear works his way towards us, i guess and figure were about 240-260 yards. Right as i was about to say to my friend, ok heres your chance hes turning... Booooom !

It doesn't move... looks like he almost dropped down a bit to look where the shot came from. Buddy chambers another lines up, boom ! this time i see impact, perfect front left shoulder without a single movement. Right away i give my buddy a pat on the back and say "congrats bud he isn't going anywhere" First shot went into the front shoulder, blew apart both lungs and exitied the other side. 2nd shot went in a bit high hit the spine and somehow traveled right down his body and stuck into the rear 1/4 just pushing against the skin.

We wait a few and then take a walk over go check him out before heading back to our bag/gear for the process ahead of us. As we get closer it almost looks like we were going to have some ground shrinkage but the way he piled up made him look smaller than he was. Once we rolled him over we soon realized how big he actually was and how the heck are we going to get him out of here. With daylight fading within minutes we only have time for a few quick pics, difficuly prop onto the stump as we wanted to show the pumpkin on this guy and we were headed back to the bag with smiles on our faces but dreading what were about to start.

Now this is where the fun begins.. lol. Back to the bag, start getting ready and soon realize.. you've got to be kidding me. Buddy left the headlamps in the truck. So no what... I decide its best for me to take the GPS, use what little light we have left to get to the bear marking a bread crumb trail while buddy hikes out and grabs the headlamps. This way we could at least have the worst part of the hike (new terrority to us) on the GPS and the other half (we've hiked lots before) we can figure out in the dark with headlamps. I make my way back to the bear and its pitch black, now this is going to be fun. After managing to prop up a cell phone with flashlight on, i started to skin and gut the bear. A few hours later i can see a headlamp way across the cut working to me, thank goodness hes back and safe. Sure is a different feeling working on an animal, pitch black, limited light and hearing all sorts of noises in the bushes around you. Thankfully i brought along my 30-30 lever action with iron sights so i felt a little more safe but still on edge.

So buddy makes it back adn we continue to finish off where i stopped, little bit of diaphram left, rear end and out it comes.. now to finish skinning. This is only the 2nd bear we've ever done and the first time i have ever done this in the field on the ground. Usually if we are far away from the truck we will pick the closest tree to hang, skin, and 1/4 up a deer or like we did with last years bear. Things actually went really smoothe considering, oh and i forgot to mention the rain that started half way through this process ! fun times... not, lol. We start breaking him down into 1/4's, take a king size bed sheet and lay it down, start placing rears, fronts, etc on there. Buddy is working on the tenderloins, straps and neck i decide to try and pick up the 2 rear 1/4's to see how this is going to go. Nope isn;t gonna happen bud.. we going to have to debone this sucker right here. Another hour later and were completely broken down, deboned, nothing left but a spine and ribs. We get all the meat into game bags and start filling our one and only backpack (big mistake) well this bag take two to lift... what are we going to do, i say "well looks like were doing 2 trips" buddy and i start thinking of what we can do, realize is isn't going to happen between logs, dragged, nope.. now hes a faily big guy, not tall but hits the gym 2 hours a day so i hear him say "f**k it" help me load this sucker up. In no way am i going to argue so together we managed to get it on his back and i can't believe he is actually able to walk. I roll the head/hide into a bed sheet and literally throw it up and onto my shoulders across my neck and start walking. After numerous stops.. falls, screams, yelling, pissed off we finally made it back to the truck.

Shot at 7ish and back to the truck by 2:30, home by 4:00 and bed at 5:00. Next morning got up and went to buddies to finish the process. Trimmed up, majority of the fat removed, cut into pcs ready for the butcher. Weighed on his bathroom scale at home we got 68lbs of straight meat with little to no fat. This bear could have stayed in hibernation a little longer with the amount on him, about 1-3" across his rear and back and lots around his entire body. Some spots on the hide were 3" thick and needed serious trimming just to cut down weight when hiking out. buddy weight his bag when he got home and it was 102lbs, the hide we figure was around 85ish mark. Not easy 4 kms through the bush i tell ya.

Buddies uncle who got us into bear hunting always told us: you'll only ever shoot one down hill and one away from your truck. After that, if you can't jump out and shoot it within sight distance of your truck just look the other way. We always joked and said ya right, we can do it no problem, he uses to just laugh at us and say yeah you can, but i'm tell ya, you'll learn right quick and wish you would have listened.

Well a little long and drawn out, but hey, who doesnt like reading long stories on HBC when there supposed to be doing something else.

Havent measured the hide yet but were positive he will push 6', Also recovered the bullet from 2nd shot
http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/ah226/wrightcody1/11069902_820754404670330_132117636742665170_n_zpsy meueneq.jpg
http://i1381.photobucket.com/albums/ah226/wrightcody1/Untitled_zps3232cdpu.jpg

[Gone_Fishin_]

Sorry wish we had some better pictues to show him off a little more, and to show his hide. Just gorgeous, not a single rub, long and thick, no scars.

Buddy is having him made into a rug head/paws on. Once he gets this back or before we send it off ill try and get a pitcure to post. Also once we measure him or have the taxi measure him i will update it as well.

Some sore backs and legs but worth every minute of it. Something i will never forget and will be hard to beat this one. Hunt of a lifetime for me and even though i didn't pull the trigger i'm happy to have been part of this amazing harvest. Cant wait to get out and do it again, but this time i get to shoot. lol

[metalface]

great story thanks for sharin

[grizzly550]

Nice job guys.

[Quesnel Kid]

Nice!! I carried a whole bear out last year in one trip hide and head included!! Your uncle is right you will only do it once ;). Good story

[Boner]

Nice job guys, every time I see a recovered Barnes bullet, I get converted from Nosler a little bit more. :)

[itsy bitsy xj]

Nice bear!! oh and I reconize that stump the bear is on. I'll see you up there next time.

lol just kidding

[Gone_Fishin_]

Nice bear!! oh and I reconize that stump the bear is on. I'll see you up there next time.

lol just kidding

lmao.. lol

My buddy asked why black out the back ground, i said remember that time where we were hammering cutthroat out of that small creek i showed u? he said "yeah and then those guys we showed some pics too showed up the next day" ... end of conversation as he laughed and agreed. lol One set of power lines and a specific mountain top on the back ground and we had 4 guys fishing the spot when we showed up. Fished here for 5 years never seen a single sole or even a sign of human presence.

i'm sure theres a wack load of pics that don't get uploaded to the web for this exact reason, i know i have a few that without blacking out the background you could pose on the same stump my deer's laying on, lol

[Fisher-Dude]

Woah, nice boar! Good job all around guys, thanks for sharing.

[itsy bitsy xj]

lmao.. lol

My buddy asked why black out the back ground, i said remember that time where we were hammering cutthroat out of that small creek i showed u? he said "yeah and then those guys we showed some pics too showed up the next day" ... end of conversation as he laughed and agreed. lol One set of power lines and a specific mountain top on the back ground and we had 4 guys fishing the spot when we showed up. Fished here for 5 years never seen a single sole or even a sign of human presence.

i'm sure theres a wack load of pics that don't get uploaded to the web for this exact reason, i know i have a few that without blacking out the background you could pose on the same stump my deer's laying on, lol

Its ok I'm nursing a hamsting and theres noway I'm walking 4 kms or dragging a bear out that farcani get my ATV in there? lol .

[HarryToolips]

Way to go nice bear!!

[panhead]

You'd best be learnin' to use Photoshop ... nice bear.


Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned… or told she is wrong.

[Steeleco]

Nice bear for sure, no point going back to that spot, you got the brute!!

[bcriverhunter]

beauty!!....job well done!..congrats!!

[jedimaster]

What a beast! Congrats and great write up.

[charlie_horse]

Well done!

[M.Dean]

Great looking bear, way to go guys! So-- so is winter time over if were reading about great bears like this one going down??? It must be spring time, Yeee Hawwww!!! My buddy say's he knows that exact spot, he's gas'in up the bus as we speak, so me and the "Team" should be there by morn'in! Congrats again on a dam nice bear, and lett'in us all know where the big ones hang out! Anyone else want a seat on the olde bus, shoot me a PM!!!