Bear season, my favorite time of year for many reasons. I love the spring smells, beautiful wildflowers and new babies running around the bush. And of course, you see so many bears! More than any other time of year. This year was slightly unusual as well in the fact that we have seen quite a few mountain goats while hunting for bear, and not in places you expect. Two were right on the bush road.
The season certainly wasn't a slow one for sightings. I was out a lot and only had one day where I didn't see a bear. The best day was 5 bears. The nice part was they weren't just all little guys either, I seen some really nice bears. This year I was a little more picky on what bear I wanted. I ended up hunting mainly with my rifle because it's easier when the kids are with you. We seen a couple monster bears this year, one was when I took a friend out on her first bear hunt. Unfortunately she missed him but he would have been an unreal first bear. We caught him sleeping in the middle of a cut block. The other one was a great big cinnamon bear. Really pretty bear.
We were exploring a new area we hadn't been in before. It looked promising and we did see bears but nothing that was really what I wanted. They were all little 4 foot guys except one, he was the biggest we had seen, not a big body on him but he certainly had a melon. It was deceiving. After I let him walk I started to second guess my decision. But it would turn out to be short lived.
After we seen this guy it was basically the end of the road so we thought we would turn around and go back to our trusty spot before it got dark. As we were heading out I was paying attention out my window trying to catch a glimpse of any possible bears when Kyle goes, "Oh there's another one! He looks like a decent bear." So we drove past quite a ways and parked. We jumped out with the guns and hiked back up the road to where he had seen him. I guess the bear had been just about to disappear over the ridge when he had seen him. So we hiked up, hoping we could catch up to him. The ridge he was on opened up to a clear cut and he was already across it by the time we seen him (about 500 yards away from the ridge). He was hanging out near the treeline with a little sow (pic above of sow). They were playing and wrestling around which gave me the opportunity to sneak in closer and get a good rest on a broken tree. By the time I had crawled on my hands and knees and got set, they were only 200 yards away and they had finished their play time and were eating. I made sure Kyle was ready with the camera and settled in to my gun. I touched off the trigger and it was a perfect shot, he jumped then started to run a little to the left and down the hill towards us a bit before he went down. I would say he went no farther then 20yards from where I shot him. The little sow jumped and headed for the treeline but just stayed there. She started feeding again and then noticed we were there, so just stayed put and watched us. I didn't realize until I stood up that I was laying at the edge of a deactivated road and the landing was just to my right.We didn't know where the road came off from the main road. So Kyle said he would go back to the truck and see if he could find it. I stayed and filmed the little sow and waited. It wasn't 10 minutes after Kyle left me that the yelling started. I shut off the camera and got my rifle loaded and ready. The commotion caught the sows attention too and she wasn't sticking around. Then came the rifle shot and more yelling. I knew what it was but I couldn't see very far down to where the road was and where Kyle had gone. After the ridge it drops steep back down to the road so I couldn't see anything. I didnt know where the Grizzly would have gone or where it had come from- I was blind. So I stood my ground with my rifle ready. Kyle then yelled up to me from the ridge that a grizzly had come running in to my gun shot. Kyle had gotten to the ridge and looked down towards the road when he seen it come running out of the bush and on to the road towards us. He had yelled at it and made it stop on the road, but it wasn't willing to leave so he put a shot into the road just in front of the bear which made it turn and leave. But I needed to be on full guard just encase he decided to circle around and try again while Kyle ran up the road to get the truck. I was starting to get anxious when I watched the truck leave one way then come back and go the other way. He was having troubles finding the road up to me, being deactivated with some pretty deep water bars the road hadn't been used so it was grown in and hard to find. He eventually found it and made it up to me, we dragged my bear down to the road because we felt safer skinning it and quartering it up beside the truck. The whole time we were on full alert until we were safely driving away.
I have heard of grizzlies coming into rifle shots during elk season, but I have never heard of one coming in during the spring. We have had many run ins with them while goat hunting as well, so far we have gotten lucky with no one injured and no injured bears. Here are some more photos of bears we seen during the Spring:
The very first bear we seen on the first day
This one was a lot more jumpy
Nikita
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