Grumpa Joe
05-05-2009, 10:37 PM
Well I finally got myself a bear. After trying for the past two hunting seasons I got lucky this past Monday. My partner and I left on Sunday for a trip up the Fraser Canyon. We scouted a couple of roads in the Boston Bar area hoping to find some sign that the critters are out. We saw over a dozen grouse and heard many more drumming in the trees as well as 18 deer. However, there was only one pile of bear scat to be found and no sign of any movement. We did find that East Anderson Creek has had some major rock slides up around the 18K mark. It was a fantastic day weather wise so we didn't mind not seeing any blackies as we worked our way up toward Spence's Bridge. We decided to cut across towards Merritt and took the Pemainus FSR to take in some more scenery. Still lots of deer below 3,000 feet but no bears. Eventually made our way into Merritt and stayed there overnight. In the morning went North to check on some lakes for ice-off and decided to head down the Coquihalla to see what the roads looked like down there. Tulameen/Lawless is still covered in quite a bit of snowso we continued on. as we were running out of time we picked one of the FSRs at the bottom of the snowshed and went for our exploration. Just a few Ks off Hwy 5 we started to see a lot of bear sign. we proceeded on scanning as we went and there down a small skidder trail in a clearing we see a bear grazing. Stop the Jeep and out I get to have a closer look. My friend gets out his side and as I get the binos his door makes a loud thud and the bear bails over the edge into a thicket. At this point we decide to park the vehicle and go for a walk up the road hoping that if we don't push it that the bear will come back out. Walked for about 40 minutes up and back and sure enough there it is. The wind had been in our favour coming back down until we rounded the last corner when it switched on us. We snuck into position using what cover we had and set up. As I was bracing up for the shot the bear starts sniffing the air and looking around. Too late. the Federal 180gr MRX hit just behind the right front shoulder and as I found out later exited the same place on the other side. This round is really amazing. On the 2 animals I have shot with it at 150 and 100 yards I have had clean pass through bang flops with very little fur damage. It dropped immediately rolling down a small hill, twitched a bit and lay still. After about 20 minutes we made our way down to my prize , lugged it up the hill, gutted it and made our way back home. During the gutting my friend decided to test his Gerber on his own finger and ended up with a pretty serious gash. With all the excitement I didn't have a chance to snap any pictures so I'll post a few photos of the cape in the next day or so. Truly a great couple of days with my buddy, some great weather and a trophy to boot.
Thanks for reading.
Frontier
Thanks for reading.
Frontier