Very very very happy to be posting again here after my spring bear in may. I got this guy at 7 am this morning as he walked through a blackberry patch. I found this spot that’s right off a very well traveled road but you could never see it from the road so it’s perfect. It’s this big cliff with a solid patch of blackberries below it and I knew a bear was in there so I decided to sit on top of the cliff with a good view of the patch. Lo and behold 40 minutes into shooting light he wanders in and I stop him with a grunt and squeeze off a perfect shot. He goes 10 yards and death moans and then the fun really started as I had to get him out of there. I thought it was a color phase bear but it was just very rubbed on the back half. I’m guessing he’s in the 250-300 pound range and a very old boar. Very blessed and looking forward to eating him! Also shot a cow elk last week so it’s been a heck of a 2 weeks! Cool bears posted so far here good luck everyone!
congrats!!
the biggest bodied bear i have killed was a similar scenario.... a big clearcut, at the bottom is a paved road, but you could see more than half of it from that paved road. to walk in there is just shy of 3 miles, and uphill the whole way.... why would anyone walk into a spot like that just to get to a cut that's right along a paved road?
while that spot was in it's good habitat stage, it was a gem of a spot.... nobody hunted it, it was an isolated food source that backed up to NF land, and it held game like crazy. the bottom of that cut was like a ladder of flat benches, there were 3 levels, and that's where everything hung out, and you couldn't see any of that from the road, even though it was really close to the road. one evening i watched 8 bucks in there feeding during spring bear... i found that big bear the year before while deer hunting, but i already had a big bear in the freezer, so i didn't want to kill him that year.... but i certainly planned on killing him, which i did.
that spot is long overgrown now, and probably the last 4-5yrs it was good i let my sis in law hunt it, i stayed out of there unless i was hunting with her. she killed a good bull in there with her bow, and a couple really good bucks..... once i took her to that spot the first time, she kinda claimed it, so i let her have it.... half of the fun is initially finding those places, and i'm not one to put too many of my eggs in one basket, so it wasn't a hard decision to me, and that was a perfect spot for her to beat up for a few years.
well done on the bear, and i bet there is a lot you took away from that scenario..... there will be other spots like that in the future that are too obvious for people to hunt, especially if access is a little difficult.... those spots can be really good