Gun shots sound the dinner bell

[ryanb]

Well I decided on a whim yesterday afternoon to go for a drive up to squamish to do some bear hunting. Spotted a medium sized bear a couple hundred yards up the road, and after some interesting events and a few shots he was dead on the ground.

I had dragged him the 80 yards or so back to the road and had begun gutting him out when out of the corner of my eye I see something barreling up the road in my dirrection. Sure enough, it's a very good sized black bear, ready to steal MY kill. I yelled at him, but this didn't deter him. Finally, I fired a shot over his head and that managed to stop him for a bit, while I took some video. Of course I didn't have a second bear tag (for this exact reason, two bears is just too much meat). Soon enough he was coming back up the road and I had to jump in my truck and drive right at him to try and get him to leave me along long enough to load the dead bear.

The truck managed to get him to leave me alone long enough to get the half gutted bear in my truck (with considerable difficulty, making a bloody mess of myself and my clothes in the process). Meanwhile he was just sitting in the bushes huffing and puffing and so I drove down the road a few clicks to finnish gutting my bear.

I've heard of this behaviour from grizzly bears, but never black bears. Just a word of warning to be careful and watch your backs when you're gutting out an animal, even when you're not in Grizzly country.

[lip_ripper00]

good job getting your bear. I have had bears run down the road towards me after dropping a bull. You what they say, gun shots it's like ringing a dinner bell for a bear :wink:

[BCLongshot]

Good story.

I've said this to other people and most don't beleive me.

[ruger#1]

weve had them come into camp in Fort Nelson . if you shoot an animal up there you do it in one shot, they home in on the second shot, and then your dinner.

[Tarp Man]

My buddy and I were moose hunting in Fort St. John area last fall and had two bears run in on our moose kills, with the kills three days apart and a major highway intersecting the two sites. The first was 30 mins before dark and was likely a grizzly due to the partially buried moose we returned to. The only notice we received was a couple crashes in the bush and the huffing and chomping of jaws. The second was a black bear and this was first thing in the morning. The moose was shot in a cut block, we gutted it about 100m from the tree line where it was shot and were pulling it up onto the truck deck when the bear RAN out from the bush. He stood up and gave us the once over then RAN out to the gut pile. Good thing we were about another 200m from the gut pile. This stopped the bear, who promptly sat down to breakfast. Anyways, having one guy looking and listening with one guy gutting maybe saved our bacon from getting the same treatment the moose guts got from the bear. ALWAYS keep a rifle at the ready, within arms-length when gutting is what I was told. After last year and two bears, you better believe it.
-Tarp Man

[Steeleco]

When your first animal is a Moose at dusk and the old guy that's showing you the ropes says " I've no time to teach you now, if you see anything move in those trees SHOOT IT" it makes the hair on your neck stand up, It wasn't till morning that he told me what he meant!!! I'm a believer, no doubt.

[Leaseman]

Reading this thread sure gets the blood pumping....my Dad started taking me moose hunting in 1970 in the area which is now 7-11...moose hunting was great and we use to see lots of game including black bear and the rare grizzly...we continued (and still do) hunting this area with increased sightings of grizzlies over the next 20 years to the point of shooting your rifle litterally meant a visit from a bear!!! ...one year in particular we had shot a huge cow and had her hanging (in quaters) beside camp....woke up in the middle of the night to my dog barking and the old man yelling at the top of his lungs...a grizzly was trying to take off with one of the quarters!!!...we let off a shot and off she goes...just a huge animal!!!.... at this point what I forgot to mention is we had left a radio playing by the quarters AND a coleman lantern burning!!!...next morning we took a look around camp to see where she came from and headed off to and ended up finding 3 sets of tracks!!!...we were planning to start headinf home the following day so we hung around camp, loaded up the camper and basically got everything ready to go....towards dark we got a big fire going to hopefully keep any critters away!!!...after a couple of "pops" we descided it was time to turn in when we heard some branches breaking behind camp...it was a beautiful night with a very full moon...threw more wood on the fire and grabbed two powerful flashlights....the next half hour was the most I have ever been scared in the bush...the sow and her 2 cubs which had to be close to 2 years old were spread out and circling the camp!!!..they were making a soft "woof" sound...we fired off a couple of shots in frint of them but this didn't bother them at all!!!...it finally got to the point that my Dad held both our rifles at the ready and I heaved the moose quarters on my shoulder and threw them in the camper!!!...when this was done (and it only took about 2 1/2 seconds!!) we fired up the truck and drove 10 miles down the road then climbed in the back and slept for a few hours...

Over the next few years we saw grizzlies but lately I haven't seen one for the last few years...other hunters we know in the area have run into the same problem we have....it sure gets the juices flowing when something like this happens...and you notice it always happens a night????

Mike

[ryanb]

Someone asked for the story of the bear I shot so here is an abreviated version:

I spotted the bear about 200 yards up the road. Knew immediately that it wasn't huge, but I wasn't out for a big bear anyways, just a nice little sausage bear. Grabbed the rifle and got out. The bear sort of ambled off the road uphill. Parelleling the road was a 30' cliffy ridge, on the otherside of which was a swampy alder choked flat spot, followed by a rock slide.

The wind wasnt in my favor so I walked up the road past where he went up the small ridge and climbed up 100' further on, upon reaching the top and looking down in the swampy area I could hear him crashing around in the alders. Waited a while and eventually he appeared on a large stump not 15 yards away, completely unaware of my presence. A good quartering towards shot was almost immediately presented and I took it. He jumped off the stump into the alders landing squarely right on his face. I knew he was hit hard but couldnt see him. The alders thrashed around for a few seconds then all was still. I waited 20 minutes then went in...

I had a sinking feeling when he wasn't where I thought he'd be in the alders, but there was a massive blood trail filled with pink lung blood leading back up the rocky ridge. I followed to the top of the ridge and was looking around for the next puddle of blood when the bushes to my right exploded and the bear was coming right at me, but on 2 functioning legs thankfully not terribly fast. Put one right under his chin and that put him down, and then 2 more into his neck before he decided to die.

He measured 5'7" nose to tail. While healthy, he was certainly on the thin side.
looks skinny because this is post-field dressing:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/rbumali/bear1.jpg
and a photo of the ******* that showed up while I was gutting:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/rbumali/bear2.jpg

[Gateholio]

Sounds like quite the adventure!!

Hope your first time by yourself skinning and quartering went well, iIwill never forget the first time I skinned a bear- 2 hours int he pissing rain with a flashlight.:roll: :-D

[.270boy]

wow thats quite the experience, ive never heard of blackbears doing that.

[todbartell]

nice bear :-D

[ryanb]

Sounds like quite the adventure!!

Hope your first time by yourself skinning and quartering went well, iIwill never forget the first time I skinned a bear- 2 hours int he pissing rain with a flashlight.:roll: :-D

Yeah, not too bad all in all. Shot him around 7:00pm so I had quite a bit of daylight left. Of course skinning and gutting was made vastly easier by the fact he only weighed 200-250 lbs. I carry pulley's and rope just in case, but wouldn't have liked to try and get my bear from last year in the truck by myself.

I think I did a pretty good job skinning (it's in one piece anyways ;)), should make a nice little throw rug. He certainly had VERY nice thick fur still, probably because he was relatively high up and not too much fat on him.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/rbumali/bear3.jpg

[Elkhound]

Congrats on the meat bear Ryan. I think all bears can be unpredictable. Kind of what makes them fun to hunt as well.