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Monday A.M.
Yesterday we hunted down in the Fraser River valley. This morning we decided to take the quads up the mountain a ways into some higher country above the valley. We rode about 8 miles on old logging roads, steadily climbing in elevation, even going through a few snow patches. The weather wasn't the greatest this morning, as it was raining at a pretty good clip. We looked at some great clearcuts with green grass everywhere, but didn't see any bears or much sign. When we came back down and were within about a mile from camp, we saw a good sized bear on the road when we came around the corner, but our wind was blowing right to him and he bailed off the road back into the woods.  On our way into the high country   Glassing for bears Monday P.M.  This afternoon we decided to do some still hunting on the railroad since we've been seeing so many bears along there. When we had walked about a mile, we spotted two bears eating out on the railroad about half a mile away. They weren't together, but they weren't far from each other. The wind was blowing in our face and there was some good cover between us and them, so it was a good stalk situation. One of the other hunters was to make the first stalk of the afternoon, so he got in gear and got started. We followed him at a distance. He was closing the distance when we heard the train coming in the distance. After the train passed, we didn't see that bear again, but the bear that was on the other side of the tracks came back out just a few minutes after the train had passed. It was my turn now. I was about 300 yards away from him, and he was a very nice size boar. The idea was to follow the ditch beside the railroad bed on this side of the tracks, and then to come up over the tracks and take the shot. I marked the power pole he was standing closest to and started my stalk. As I got closer, the ditch got more shallow. I started out crouching, then crawling, then slithering on my stomach as I got closer. Every so often I would peak over the tracks to make sure he was still there. He was, so I continued. My plan was to basically get directly across the tracks from him, then rise up and shoot at about 25 yards. I crouched down for the last time, to get an arrow nocked. As I was nocking my arrow, I heard a noise and all of a sudden I see the bear coming over the tracks at an angle, kind of parallel to me. My immediate thought was that the bear was considerably smaller than the one I had started out stalking, but I pushed that thought aside in the heat of the moment and whistled at the bear, trying to stop him. Finally he did stop, almost broadside, and I drew my bow. Unfortunately, that is when things started to go horribly wrong. I made a quick snap judgement that the bear was 30 yards away and held on his lungs with my 30 yards pin. Apparently, I grossly underestimated the yardage, because my arrow hit the ground several feet this side of the bear - then it skipped into him and got what appeared to be at least 6-8 inches of penetration, near his ham. I was horrified, and so was the bear. He growled, ran about 10 or 15 yards, and stopped. By this time he was a good deal further than I like to shoot, but since I had an arrow in him already - a bad hit at that - I was definitely going to try and get a killing shot in him. I nocked another arrow and held for the range I thought he was, but again I underestimated, and again I shot low of where I was aiming, believing that I missed him completely. At that shot he took off like a scalded cat into the woods. I was feeling pretty low at this point, pretty sick to my stomach. This was not going down well. All I could think of was trailing a poorly hit bear into what is basically a jungle. My guide and the other hunter had watched everything from a short distance away, and when they caught up to me we went to the spot where my first arrow hit him. We were surprised to find a pretty good amount of blood there. We also found my 2nd arrow, and it appeared to have passed through the bear, as there was blood from tip to tip and on all 3 vanes. The guide started following the blood trail into the woods, and started finding more and more blood the further he went. Down low on the ground, up high on bushes and generally just all around. At this point I was starting to have a little hope that I might have got lucky and hit an artery.  Blood trailing   Starting to look better.... We went in after the guide and after about 75 yards of trailing, got hit with a pretty pungent smell and within a minute after, the guide saw the bear, laying down about 15 yards ahead, still alive but not by much. He had his gun trained on the bear while I nocked another arrow and tried to find a shooting hole. I found a small spot where I could slip an arrow through and put it into his chest between the shoulder and neck. That's exactly what I did, and this time I hit where I was aiming. He jumped up and started trying to climb a tree beside him, got about 10 feet up, and then fell to the ground, finished. When we came up on, it was clear that my initial thought before I shot - about him being a smaller bear than the one I had been stalking - was absolutely true. This was not the bear I had been stalking. It was at this point that the guide and other hunter told me that while I was stalking and at a point where I couldn't see it, the bear had left the railroad and went into the woods, and came back out several minutes later a little ways down the tracks. The other hunter had videoed most of the stalk, so we watched his video. Sure enough, the bear I had started out stalking was a considerably larger bear than what I shot. The bear I shot was probably 150 lbs. and will probably square 5 1/2 feet. We think what happened is the bigger bear went into the woods and when this bear came out onto the tracks, they just assumed it was the same bear, but it wasn't. Also, they said that the bear was staring real hard down into the woods where the bigger bear had walked into them, right before he bolted across the tracks. I'd bet big money that bigger bear was down in the woods and thinking about coming back out for some more chow.  The end result - my first black bear! Nothing about the kill turned out like expected, but as they say, all's well that ends well. He's my first ever bear, and has a nice, thick coat that will make a great rug. Plus, I've got a 2nd tag and I'll hold out for grandaddy bear with that one. We had about an hour of daylight left, so did some cruising around looking for more bears. In that hour we saw six more bears and the other hunter got in 2 stalks, including one on a very large bear with a white blaze on it's chest. Unfortunately the lighting and distance wasn't the best for good pictures. On both stalks, the wind betrayed him in the end and he didn't get any shot opportunities. It was a good note to end the day on, though. Check back tomorrow for another hunt update!
Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children. |
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