caddisguy
06-21-2015, 12:18 PM
I've been wanting to post the story for a while now. It's been over a month, but I finally got around to editing the video of the final moments of our spring bear hunt.
We started the trip by hiking a ways up the mountain in to one of our deer-cam spots to hang another camera where we had lost one--likely to a bear--a few weeks prior. We searched around for the camera for a little while with no success, so we hung the other camera. Rather than take our normal route, we decided to walk the ridges looking for bears or signs of the camera and perhaps see if we could find an alternate route back down. No bears or camera, but we did find another way back down and some great area with a lot of game trails that we will come back to in the future.
After keying in on two different grassy areas and one spot in the timber in between with a lot of sign--old, new and very new--we started making our rounds back and forth between the two spots, stopping for the occasional sit-down to cool off, brush off ticks and wait for a bear to come to us. We would sit for 20 minutes or so here and there. It seemed like we were always just missing a bear, with new sign appearing in these spots. We were having trouble sitting for too long and we were both tired from being up early after a short sleep and hiking around all day. The swarms of mosquitoes were getting to us as well. We threw in the towel pretty early and we were sleeping before dark.
Had a nice long sleep and we were ready to get back at it. Same strategy as the day prior. Hiking back and forth between the two grassy spots and the spot in the timber in between. Fresh sign, but we weren't seeing anything or hearing too much. It was late afternoon, nearing evening time and we knew calling it quits early the night prior was a mistake. Though it was still hot, we geared up in our thick hunting jackets/pants, mosquito nets. We decided to try hiking into another place near by where we thought the terrain would be favorable, but no dice. While walking through the brush, we accidentally jumped a bear that had been hiding close by. It sounded like it booked it and climbed a tree a ways away, but we couldn't see it. Incredibly hot and sweaty, it was now evening and we knew where we wanted to be. We went back to the spot where we had seen the most fresh sign and had the best view (the other grassy spot was a strange narrow strip surrounded by timber but had too much potential for a bear to come out of timber and be way too close, especially if it was a sow) ... we sat on a log and waited, but this time for hours rather than minutes which I think was key. Shortly after the sun tucked behind the mountain, approximately 7:30PM, we heard a bear coming. As the bear came into view, I flicked on the head cam and tried to position myself on the log (which was on a slant) for a stable shot. By this time, the bear was at 20 yards and broadside. It ended up being a head shot. No wasted meat, just bang-flop and not even a twitch.
Then the work began. Being our first bear, we had an idea what we were getting ourselves into, but it still turned into quite an ordeal. It became apparent that even with two of us, there wasn't any hope of lifting or dragging it, so the plan was to field dress it and quarter it. That plan was going along just fine... we had the bear opened up and everything out, except one problem... we could not get through the pelvic bone. We tried our collapsible bow saw with narrow sharp teeth, a folding saw, and a leatherman multi-tool saw. It wasn't happening. Either we need a real bone saw or we were doing it all wrong. So now it's dark, we're working under flashlights and headlamps and there is at least one other bear--and likely other critters--stomping around in the brush. The air horn worked the first time, a little bit the second time but had no effect after that. At this point, I'm skinning and removing meat as quickly as possible while caddisgirl stands guard. I'm was able to keep some fur attached to meat from each "quarter", but let tell ya... this meat didn't come out in quarters but rather hack-and-slash slabs. I've watched dozens of gutless/boneless method videos on youtube, but my working conditions certainly weren't allowing me to replicate very well by any means. A few trips back and forth to the jeep, we had all the meat in game cloth, in a 70L rough-neck rubbermaid with some ice left over from the cooler, chilling in the creek with water running down from the snowpack. It was 12:30AM and time for some sleep, but I would wake up every hour or two to vent the rubbermaid and drain the blood out.
We headed out early, and spent the next day cutting, picking out hairs and vacuum packing. The meat turned out great, despite being a midnight hack-and-slash job and not really "hanging". We've eaten it half a dozen times and haven't really put a dent in it. Tastes great (could have fooled me and told me it was beef) ... the only catch us consistency, as I'm not always quite sure what part I'm eating!!
It was tough, but we learned a whole lot from the experience. Next year will be a walk in the park. I was lucky to have someone with me. If I was alone, I would have been out there until sunrise and possibly eaten!! My fiancee is a trooper. Putting a ring on her was the right thing to do!! Here's the video... it's edited it down from 3 minutes as my head was moving all over the place while trying to reposition myself on the log and get a stable shot. The wide-screen fish-eye video is hard to work with, but I managed to get a decent/stable view of the bear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_rimavcG8g
We started the trip by hiking a ways up the mountain in to one of our deer-cam spots to hang another camera where we had lost one--likely to a bear--a few weeks prior. We searched around for the camera for a little while with no success, so we hung the other camera. Rather than take our normal route, we decided to walk the ridges looking for bears or signs of the camera and perhaps see if we could find an alternate route back down. No bears or camera, but we did find another way back down and some great area with a lot of game trails that we will come back to in the future.
After keying in on two different grassy areas and one spot in the timber in between with a lot of sign--old, new and very new--we started making our rounds back and forth between the two spots, stopping for the occasional sit-down to cool off, brush off ticks and wait for a bear to come to us. We would sit for 20 minutes or so here and there. It seemed like we were always just missing a bear, with new sign appearing in these spots. We were having trouble sitting for too long and we were both tired from being up early after a short sleep and hiking around all day. The swarms of mosquitoes were getting to us as well. We threw in the towel pretty early and we were sleeping before dark.
Had a nice long sleep and we were ready to get back at it. Same strategy as the day prior. Hiking back and forth between the two grassy spots and the spot in the timber in between. Fresh sign, but we weren't seeing anything or hearing too much. It was late afternoon, nearing evening time and we knew calling it quits early the night prior was a mistake. Though it was still hot, we geared up in our thick hunting jackets/pants, mosquito nets. We decided to try hiking into another place near by where we thought the terrain would be favorable, but no dice. While walking through the brush, we accidentally jumped a bear that had been hiding close by. It sounded like it booked it and climbed a tree a ways away, but we couldn't see it. Incredibly hot and sweaty, it was now evening and we knew where we wanted to be. We went back to the spot where we had seen the most fresh sign and had the best view (the other grassy spot was a strange narrow strip surrounded by timber but had too much potential for a bear to come out of timber and be way too close, especially if it was a sow) ... we sat on a log and waited, but this time for hours rather than minutes which I think was key. Shortly after the sun tucked behind the mountain, approximately 7:30PM, we heard a bear coming. As the bear came into view, I flicked on the head cam and tried to position myself on the log (which was on a slant) for a stable shot. By this time, the bear was at 20 yards and broadside. It ended up being a head shot. No wasted meat, just bang-flop and not even a twitch.
Then the work began. Being our first bear, we had an idea what we were getting ourselves into, but it still turned into quite an ordeal. It became apparent that even with two of us, there wasn't any hope of lifting or dragging it, so the plan was to field dress it and quarter it. That plan was going along just fine... we had the bear opened up and everything out, except one problem... we could not get through the pelvic bone. We tried our collapsible bow saw with narrow sharp teeth, a folding saw, and a leatherman multi-tool saw. It wasn't happening. Either we need a real bone saw or we were doing it all wrong. So now it's dark, we're working under flashlights and headlamps and there is at least one other bear--and likely other critters--stomping around in the brush. The air horn worked the first time, a little bit the second time but had no effect after that. At this point, I'm skinning and removing meat as quickly as possible while caddisgirl stands guard. I'm was able to keep some fur attached to meat from each "quarter", but let tell ya... this meat didn't come out in quarters but rather hack-and-slash slabs. I've watched dozens of gutless/boneless method videos on youtube, but my working conditions certainly weren't allowing me to replicate very well by any means. A few trips back and forth to the jeep, we had all the meat in game cloth, in a 70L rough-neck rubbermaid with some ice left over from the cooler, chilling in the creek with water running down from the snowpack. It was 12:30AM and time for some sleep, but I would wake up every hour or two to vent the rubbermaid and drain the blood out.
We headed out early, and spent the next day cutting, picking out hairs and vacuum packing. The meat turned out great, despite being a midnight hack-and-slash job and not really "hanging". We've eaten it half a dozen times and haven't really put a dent in it. Tastes great (could have fooled me and told me it was beef) ... the only catch us consistency, as I'm not always quite sure what part I'm eating!!
It was tough, but we learned a whole lot from the experience. Next year will be a walk in the park. I was lucky to have someone with me. If I was alone, I would have been out there until sunrise and possibly eaten!! My fiancee is a trooper. Putting a ring on her was the right thing to do!! Here's the video... it's edited it down from 3 minutes as my head was moving all over the place while trying to reposition myself on the log and get a stable shot. The wide-screen fish-eye video is hard to work with, but I managed to get a decent/stable view of the bear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_rimavcG8g