BH for Bears....

[Beendare]

Heres a little slant on RJ's "What If" scenarios.....as this really happened. It is somewhat equipment related [kind of- grin] but olympus's thread made me think of this. [if you have seen my telling of this leave it for the guys who haven't seen it.]



So here is the scenario; Spring Spot and Stalk bear hunt in British Columbia. You are driving a lot glassing clear cuts for green grass patches and you spot a bear from the truck. As you are sneaking in on the bear....a nice 6 footer....your guide yells something to you and spooks the bear into a small patch of dark timber. Its late afternoon....2 hours to dark. There is always rain in the forecast [its spring in BC- grin] but its not raining now.

You and your buddy drop off about 200yds apart downwind of the timber patch...hoping the bear pops out and continues in the direction he was headed. It was a good strategy as your buddy spots the bear about 100yds off continuing where he was headed in the first place. He makes a run down the road and takes a shot at the bear that now swaps ends and trots back into the timber. Right before he makes it into the timber he pauses and your buddy unleashes another arrow. The bear dives into the thick timber patch.

This is the angle he described for his second shot....he thinks he missed the first shot.

blackie presenting a shot

Black-bear800pix.jpg (385.44 KiB) Viewed 6054 times

You decide to walk a section of the road towards your buddy as you can't see his position....and you spot him walking the edge of the road....looking for something- his arrow of course. You dash over and he is a little flustered and says he "thinks" he shot one.

What do you do? decide before you read further.....

[Beendare]

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[Beendare]

lots of right answers to the question above.....I ask my buddy, "What happened?"

He is very oblique with his answers. So i walk him slowly through both shots...did you see or hear the arrow hit? What was the bears reaction? in other words, What exactly happened. His poor recollection of the shots was hindering our plan of recovery...it was like he blanked out.

The bear spooked back towards my buddy on the first shot...and he thought he saw it skip down the road. The first shot was probably a miss....the bear went 50 yds with no sign of being hit....but we spent 1/2 hour looking for the arrow and never found it. It skipped into some thick low scrub or very soft mud.

So no clue there.

He was "pretty sure" he hit him on the second shot as he heard a thwack sound. Well there were trees right behind the bear....so that might explain it. I had him stand where he thought he shot from [but didn't mark!] and I had him place me where the bear was when he shot. No sign there...and no arrow. The timber patch is dogpatch thick...and its about 1 1/2-2 hours before dark.

Wounded bear, dead bear...or maybe a miss? Now what do you do? BTW, you have bows...and the guide has a lever action rifle that he last shot in the 70's [grin, nice guy though]
[i will give it a day or so to give guys enough time to see this before I continue....]

[Beendare]

Oh, BTW....your buddy is a decent shot....not great....avg maybe 8 per target on a difficult 3D course....hasn't killed a lot of animals with his bow...lets say under 10.

Shooting a 65# compound, appx 420gr arrows and ST bh's.

[Roosiebull]

I don't know the scenario travel wise, or Temps.. but assuming you had open access (not a long boat ride) I would probably go grab some food, give it 6hrs and start tracking...then the first 50 yds would tell me if I wanted to sleep on it or continue....with pending rain in the spring in that country, I would rather not sleep on it...but no blood in 50 yds, I would back out...no sense in making false trails in the dark.


Beautiful aussie in your avatar pic! I have 2 myself...my second favorite dog breed...only second to schipperke

[Swede]

"Hey Jack you and the guid3e go after YOUR bear. I will go back to camp and start dinner. Let me know if you find him. Good Luck."

No, really I would probably follow where the guide thought best. He knows bears better than I do, but I would not feel comfortable going into thick brush looking for a wounded bear with no gun. I would say so. I would follow him in if he is on a blood trail, but I am not leading or wandering around. The next day when it was light, I would feel more comfortable looking for the missing bear, but would not be at complete ease.

[olympushunt]

I would move heaven and earth to find those dang arrows. That is STRONG evidence. Might be better than A) Wasting valuable time looking for animal that isn't even hit or worse yet B) going after a ticked off wounded bear.
I have had buddies SWEAR they dead centered a bull (whooping and hollering, high fives and the whole 9 yards) only to find the arrow firmly planted in a tree with NO blood. It is always odd to me how little people remember. Adrenaline I guess.

[Brendan]

Never hunted bear before - but I am grid searching the area around the shot looking for tracks, blood, sign, arrow to get an indication of how bad, or if the bear was hit. Moving slowly and meticulously to get an indication of what I'm dealing with before heading into thicker stuff looking.

Now, I'm going on what I've heard from others - but I've also heard that a bear can be hit hard, and have the hide, hair and fat prevent a lot of blood loss, even in a mortal hit. Any comments on that one from people with more experience?

By the way - liking this thread. Looking more and more likely I get my first ever bear hunt in this May... All depends on work and other projects, but fingers crossed.

[olympushunt]

I'd like to edit my post with the caveat that since Beendare posted about the bow poundage and arrow weight this must be a hit bear. No point in posting that info if it wasn't. Like I said before finding the arrows is huge but griding out like Brendan says has to be next.

[Beendare]

I would move heaven and earth to find those dang arrows. That is STRONG evidence. Might be better than A) Wasting valuable time looking for animal that isn't even hit or worse yet B) going after a ticked off wounded bear.
I have had buddies SWEAR they dead centered a bull (whooping and hollering, high fives and the whole 9 yards) only to find the arrow firmly planted in a tree with NO blood. It is always odd to me how little people remember. Adrenaline I guess.

I should have posted some pics of the country- my bad.
Typical clearcut like the one he shot the bear...

wolf running800pix.jpg (214.31 KiB) Viewed 6016 times

There is a dk brown wolf in that pic- center, you can just see his ears...but a ways off.

another cut...all were in various degrees of growing back

dave stalking a road

stalk roads800pix.jpg (210.21 KiB) Viewed 6016 times

{I'm doing shorter posts....i'm losing them with the site cutting out on me...PITA]

[Beendare]

So yeah, I agree with Olympus...find that arrow!

It wasn't to be with my buddy running the road ...shooting...then moving again...shooting....then walking up and down a few times without marking the spot. [a lesson!]

The guide wanted to leave and come back with his 'Blood trailing dog'....which seemed like a good suggestion until we found out later it was his worthless Choc lab camp dog.

I pushed the guide to stick around long enough for us to finally find where the bear dived into the thicket. I found a little blood on a log....about 6' from where the bear must have been standing...not much, drips not sprayed lung blood or anything to indicate a lung/heart shot. The thicket was THICK! You couldn't just walk in....you had to paw through the sapplings and brush.

So we marked that spot with flagging and left. We came back the next day with 2 canadian guys that wanted to tag along [one with a rifle]. I only went 30 yds in and found this where it opened up a little;

wounded wide800pix.jpg (188.03 KiB) Viewed 6015 times

[Beendare]

And this...

wounded bear2 800pix.jpg (220.32 KiB) Viewed 6015 times

Another...

wounded bear track 800pix.jpg (88.65 KiB) Viewed 6015 times

All of these bloody spots are in about a 20' dia circle.

It became obvious what happened...and where he hit the bear. BTW, no bear...and no trail going away from there....[of course the lab was worthless]
NOTE; this is probably not going to be as easy as I thought for you to determine from these pics....awe, give it a WAG anyway- grin

What do you think?

[olympushunt]

Well...I am NO bear expert. Never shot at one. I often have a tag that comes with the "Sports Pack" in Oregon. I've have a few bears at 15 yards but have always elected to give them a pass so I don't have to take time away from my elk hunt. Since nobody is guessing I will give you the "WAG". I think the bear was butt shot and is trying to pass the arrow. LOL Like a dog trying to pass a peach pit he was spinning around pooping and bleeding. Good visual....hahahaha.
I have no clue Beendare. I would be excited seeing that much blood but again....I am no bear expert!

[Beendare]

Well this is either the most boring story ever and nobody wants to play[could be the guy telling it as it was pretty exciting]..or there isn't much traffic here...but Congrats Olympus...you pretty much nailed it.

If you study the pics, the bear spent the night there in a 20' circle walking around pooping his guys out. Once we sorted it out, there was big bloody rear paw print on both sides of each poop pile so blood coming out both sides of the back hams...where it appears he spent some time squatting as if he ate some bad Thai food straining to get it all out. I felt bad for the bear...as i've had a few of those kinds of meals myself.

The arrow hit arteries for sure as there was a lot of blood all seeped down into that thick moss like a sponge. I think if my buddy hit the femoral...we would have found the bear right there...must not have as the bear walked off. We cast out in expanding circles...and still no trail...so the wounds must have sealed up. Our guide was walking his lab on a leash going all over in there- nothing.

FFWD a little over an hour later and the guide was done....exhausted, "Forget it he said...time to go". Well I knew that bear couldn't have gone far so I told him we weren't leaving. He made a couple comments and bears are like varmints up there so I got his point but I just hated giving up. I searched for another 20 minuts while the boys were back at the beds when just as I could faintly hear them yelling for me to come, I found it.... blood drops that formed almost a perfect straight line. I figured the bear would be wanting to go to water...and sure enough once I followed a low cut...there was the sign. The blood was thick and maybe 20 min fresh...and a straight line so the bear was going slow....a good sign.

I dashed back and got the guys and we slowly follwed the track with my buddy taking one of the Canadians bolt action rifle. I had told the guys to be super quiet when we got back over there...

We came to within 10' of a big log [like this one] and I got up on another log to look over it...just as our guide with his dog came up along side of us on our right....

big tree 800pix.jpg (112.66 KiB) Viewed 5984 times

[Beendare]

I've seen some amazing things on these hunts....and this was pretty cool. Right about the time I spotted the bear on the other side of the log....the lab started under it. I couldn't even get the word, "Bear " out of my mouth and the bear growled [loud!] and charged....the dog! It was a false charge but the dog scrambled, the guide got so flustered he tripped and fell [300# guy] rolling around wrapped in the leash of a lab that wanted to be anywhere but here....appx 10' from that bear. My buddy had the rifle up and we were inching closer trying to get a shot over the log when the bear did an incredible superman leap over the log at us.

My buddy is one heck of a duck hunter....and it sure saved our bacon on that day. He shot that bear in mid air now about 7-8' from us...bolted the gun and caught the bear agian as he was slumping back over the log....dang that was close. He dropped that bear like a sack of potatoes.
I think this pic is Dave after the shot,still a little shakey.... our guide with the sunglasses...and the canadian trooper with his rifle Dave borrowed

dave after shot800.jpg (87.35 KiB) Viewed 5982 times

As you can see the guide wasn't too happy....I'm just glad he didn't have a heart attack right there as we would have had a heck of a time dragging his bulk out of there.

Anyway.....Do you think Dave gets tired of me asking him, "Seen any flying bears lately?" [no, I don't think so either!]....but it sure was funny when I think back on it.

dave after shot800.jpg (87.35 KiB) Viewed 5982 times

[WapitiTalk1]

I've seen/read this epic bear hunt story so I haven't chimed in. "As if he ate some bad Thai food straining to get it all out. I felt bad for the bear...as I've had a few of those kinds of meals myself."... no trout about that, I have the T shirt

Edit: I was typing this when you were posting the finish to the hunt. I almost forgot about the "flying bear", HOLY HELL!