To begin it has taken me way too long to write this post hunt write up. I should have done this like six to eight months ago, but life gets in the way, and I have time now so here it goes. Two- and one-half years ago, while at the SCI Nashville convention I was walking by a booth and a very nice young man in his twenties asked me if I was interested in hunting mountain lions. I stopped and talked with him " Cole Banner " for quite some time and by the time we finished speaking I was convinced that I would hunt with him. He, his brother and friend own B&B Ranch Hounds and are based in west Texas and do dry ground hound hunts for Mountain Lion and Bear in Texas, AZ and NM. I wound up hunting with his brother Wyatt about a year later and got a 168lb cat, developed a great respect for their abilities and started to create a friendship with these guys. A few months after my cat hunt, I saw online that they had donated a bear hunt with their hounds in the Gila National Forest, NM to benefit one of the SCI chapters. I have already harvested both brown and black bear, but my 10-year-old son is a very passionate hunter and very competent for his age. I immediately decided to purchase this hunt for him. I bid on and won this auction and got this hunt package for a very reasonable $4500.00. So last October my son and I flew to El Paso, TX and then drove to Mimbres, NM and met the B&B Ranch Hound group at their camp in the Gila National Forest. Wyatt was again our guide. We had a hearty camp dinner and a good night sleep and then started off right at sunrise the next morning. We started out driving in Wyatt's side by side with the dogs in their box in the back. After driving about two miles and maybe 45 minutes we wound up at a water hole where Wyatt had been seeing lots of tracks the last several days. After finding fresh tracks that were clearly made within the last few hours and determining that at least one was from a large boar, he let three of the dogs loose on the tracks. Two of the dogs immediately hit on a set of tracks hard and were hot on the trail, running and barking. The third dog ran off in the opposite direction. We stayed put for a while and let the dogs do their thing. The pair of dogs barking was getting louder and more furious, which is obviously a very good sign. After about twenty minutes Wyatt told us "Let's Go". I grabbed my Tikka T3 30.06 and my pack and we headed off down a VERY STEEP mountain with VERY DENSE brush. It was tough for Wyatt and I to get through but my son being 10 years old and weighing about 70lbs at the time had one heck of a time navigating that terrain. We hiked through that stuff for about 40 minutes or so and then caught up with the dogs who had a bear treed. All three of us settled down about 60-70 yards away to catch our breath and evaluate the bear and see what we had treed. After a few minutes of Wyatt and I both glassing this bear, we decided that it was in fact a very nice boar weighing approximately 350-375 pounds and was exactly what we were hunting for. The bear was probably 50 foot up in the tree with the two dogs making quite a commotion down below. We moved closer to about 35 yards. I handed the suppressed rifle to my son and set up my 4 Stable shooting sticks for him. My son rested the rifle on the sticks, chambered a round, aimed carefully and fired. It was a Perfect shot with the tell-tale "WHOP" of the impact right behind the shoulder. He reloaded. The bear held on for a couple seconds then fell out of the tree and landed at the base with the dogs going crazy. My son remained on the sticks with his safety on and his crosshairs on the bear ready to fire. After about ten seconds the bear was still moving and struggling to get up. With the dogs clear, I told my son to aim and fire again. He put a second perfectly placed shot into the bear and that finished him. He then made the gun safe, and we all moved up to inspect my son's first ever bear.
Not bad for a ten-year-old. I cannot say enough good things about B&B Ranch Hounds. Wyatt had my son a very nice trophy bear in less than four hours on his very first day. I have hunted with these guys three times now. The bear hunt went pretty easily but all three were successful and all three were superb. The service, the professionalism, the companionship are all excellent. The hunts are rustic, but they are great hunts. Very memorable and rewarding. I will be doing a West Texas Audad hunt with these guys in another year or two.
Not bad for a ten-year-old. I cannot say enough good things about B&B Ranch Hounds. Wyatt had my son a very nice trophy bear in less than four hours on his very first day. I have hunted with these guys three times now. The bear hunt went pretty easily but all three were successful and all three were superb. The service, the professionalism, the companionship are all excellent. The hunts are rustic, but they are great hunts. Very memorable and rewarding. I will be doing a West Texas Audad hunt with these guys in another year or two.
