Decupparo
FNG
After 3 years of applying I finally drew my first bear tag in the area where my buddies and I hold our annual turkey hunting and beer drinking camp.
The original plan was to get to camp Wednesday afternoon, set up the wall tent, and then check my rifle’s zero in the nearby clear-cut. However, when we arrived at camp on Wednesday it was pouring rain and had been for the last 24 hours to the tune of 1.25” of precipitation in the region. While sitting in the hastily erected wall tent and listening to the rain pound the roof, we adjusted our game plan based on the forecast. I would take advantage of a window of clear weather from daylight to 9:00 am the next day to check my rifle; My buddies would go out to see if any turkeys wanted to play ball. It ended up being a bust on both accounts, with my rifle all over the place and them not hearing a single gobble. Luckily for me, my buddy brought his tack-driver of a Remington 700 chambered in .300 Weatherby. After posting a 200 yd group with the borrowed rifle any hunter would be happy with, we headed out to the first glassing knob I had picked out on Google Earth.
The three of us motored our bikes down a closed road to get to the knob, which was surrounded by a large clear-cut and allowed good line of sight to opposing ridges and into the nearby canyons. When we arrived, we were heartened by the amount of bear scat on the road. We gained some elevation and settled in to start glassing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long until a new storm front was moving in from the North, and it looked mean. We fast pitched my Big Agnes Copper Hotel rainfly over its poles and hunkered down to wait out the storm. The storm passed at 2:00 pm, after roughly four hours of napping and holding down the poles so my tent didn’t turn into a kite.
I started to get antsy and we decided to drop down the face about 600 yards to get a better view into the nearby canyon bottoms. We dropped back down to the road we came in on and started down a cat road through the clear-cut to begin our descent. As we round the corner the bulk of the cut comes into view and we all reach for our binos, my college roommate gets his up first and sharply whispers: “BEAR”.
The fire drill begins… I drop to the ground and grab the rifle of the pack and the three of us start creeping back up the cat road to the main road up above the cut. We get perpendicular to the bear and I lay eyes on him for the first time, he has no idea we’re there. My roommate calls out the yardage: “386”. I take a couple deep breaths to calm myself, dial the gun for 390 yards and get tucked into my shooting position just off the road. I get set and find the bear in my scope, the first thing through my head is: “Is there anyway this is a griz?” which is quickly pushed aside by the fact we’re in northeast Oregon. The bear is feeding at a quartering-to angle along a lip in the clear-cut that I was praying he wouldn’t disappear behind until he finally stopped and turned broadside. I felt rock solid in my rest and didn’t waste any time in taking the opportunity. I lost him in the scope as I fired but my roommate had the spotter trained on him and called out: “You thumped him!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, he’s laying right there!”
Once I found him in the scope again and could see his brown fur sticking over the lip motionless, we proceeded to carry on like fools; hooting and hollering celebrating what just occurred. We got him packed out just before dark and were back to camp at right about beer thirty to celebrate our success.
We didn’t have high hopes for this tag and were fully prepared to hunt hard for 5 days and potentially go home empty-handed. None of us thought we would even have an opportunity at a bear on Day 1, especially with our luck. I was in shock for the rest of the trip that I was able to fill my first bear tag on a beautiful animal with just sheer dumb luck.
The original plan was to get to camp Wednesday afternoon, set up the wall tent, and then check my rifle’s zero in the nearby clear-cut. However, when we arrived at camp on Wednesday it was pouring rain and had been for the last 24 hours to the tune of 1.25” of precipitation in the region. While sitting in the hastily erected wall tent and listening to the rain pound the roof, we adjusted our game plan based on the forecast. I would take advantage of a window of clear weather from daylight to 9:00 am the next day to check my rifle; My buddies would go out to see if any turkeys wanted to play ball. It ended up being a bust on both accounts, with my rifle all over the place and them not hearing a single gobble. Luckily for me, my buddy brought his tack-driver of a Remington 700 chambered in .300 Weatherby. After posting a 200 yd group with the borrowed rifle any hunter would be happy with, we headed out to the first glassing knob I had picked out on Google Earth.
The three of us motored our bikes down a closed road to get to the knob, which was surrounded by a large clear-cut and allowed good line of sight to opposing ridges and into the nearby canyons. When we arrived, we were heartened by the amount of bear scat on the road. We gained some elevation and settled in to start glassing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long until a new storm front was moving in from the North, and it looked mean. We fast pitched my Big Agnes Copper Hotel rainfly over its poles and hunkered down to wait out the storm. The storm passed at 2:00 pm, after roughly four hours of napping and holding down the poles so my tent didn’t turn into a kite.
I started to get antsy and we decided to drop down the face about 600 yards to get a better view into the nearby canyon bottoms. We dropped back down to the road we came in on and started down a cat road through the clear-cut to begin our descent. As we round the corner the bulk of the cut comes into view and we all reach for our binos, my college roommate gets his up first and sharply whispers: “BEAR”.
The fire drill begins… I drop to the ground and grab the rifle of the pack and the three of us start creeping back up the cat road to the main road up above the cut. We get perpendicular to the bear and I lay eyes on him for the first time, he has no idea we’re there. My roommate calls out the yardage: “386”. I take a couple deep breaths to calm myself, dial the gun for 390 yards and get tucked into my shooting position just off the road. I get set and find the bear in my scope, the first thing through my head is: “Is there anyway this is a griz?” which is quickly pushed aside by the fact we’re in northeast Oregon. The bear is feeding at a quartering-to angle along a lip in the clear-cut that I was praying he wouldn’t disappear behind until he finally stopped and turned broadside. I felt rock solid in my rest and didn’t waste any time in taking the opportunity. I lost him in the scope as I fired but my roommate had the spotter trained on him and called out: “You thumped him!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, he’s laying right there!”
Once I found him in the scope again and could see his brown fur sticking over the lip motionless, we proceeded to carry on like fools; hooting and hollering celebrating what just occurred. We got him packed out just before dark and were back to camp at right about beer thirty to celebrate our success.
We didn’t have high hopes for this tag and were fully prepared to hunt hard for 5 days and potentially go home empty-handed. None of us thought we would even have an opportunity at a bear on Day 1, especially with our luck. I was in shock for the rest of the trip that I was able to fill my first bear tag on a beautiful animal with just sheer dumb luck.
