Well, we finally made it home, empty coolers and all. Didn't see any bears until our last night to hunt. We glassed up a HUGE jet black boar at about a mile with slightly less than an hour of shooting light left he was out for maybe 90 seconds and disappeared back into the treeline. Stuck around the next morning and caught him in the same meadow, but he was cruising and and only caught him for about 15 seconds. Instead of going to the upper meadow the night before, we stuck to our glassing spot as an elk hunter we had just talked to had mentioned a big cinnamon bear in the lower meadows the previous two nights. These were only around 600 yards, so we made the decision to stick it out where we could actually get a shot and see significantly more country, vs limiting ourselves to just the one upper meadow.
About 20 minutes after big boy disappeared sunday morning, a little black bear started hauling straight down through the lower meadow to the creek. I scrambled down to close ~300 yards in hopes that he was running from the big cinnamon, but neither bear ended up showing himself. Atleast I got to make a move, and seeing multiple bears in such a short time span was awesome.
Although the hunting didn't turn out like we had hoped, it was an awesome trip. I want to give a huge thanks to all of those who reached out with advice and hospitality, it really was the highlight of our two weeks. The willingness of everyone to help out and share their hard earned knowledge really made up for the lack of bears. We can't say we didn't give it our all, 10 days of hunting, dozens of miles hiked with thousands of feet in vertical elevation, and an insane number of miles on the truck, we left with only pictures and memories, and a burning desire for redemption in 2026.
