KK.........well from this past season here is one from where you are going to hunt. Duncan and I had baited a new bait site and had some action on it, so we went back in and built a ground blind on a hill above the bait and about 35 yards from it, down wind and where the hunters back would be to the setting sun.
Needless to say after building the blind we left it alone for a day or two and then took the hunter in. A bear had chewed up the chair we had put in the ground blind which seemed to make him nervous.
He was shooting a .30-06 with 165 grain bullets. TBBC's as I recall. We dropped him off at the bait, which was up the river about 3 miles from camp, at 4 in the afternoon. Duncan went back to pick him up at dark and found out he had shot at a bear. They looked around quickly and could not see a bear or any blood and so left and came back to camp.
As usually happens in that sort of a situation there was a lot of discussion about whether he hit the bear or missed and for the hunter what is pretty much guaranteed to be a rather sleepless night. To make matters worse it had been the last night of the hunt and the float plane would be in to pick them up at about 8am. We decided to get up at 4am and go up to the bait and look for the bear. The other two hunters in the group were sure that he had missed.
We got up at 4am and swilled some coffee and headed up the river before sunrise, arriving at the bait site just at dawn. There was no blood whatsoever, but we did find where the bullet had gone into the base of the tree at the bait. No hair, no blood, no bear................everyone was convinced it was a miss as the bullet hole was so low in the tree. But.........I noticed the bullet hole in the tree looked a bit on the large size and I wondered quietly to myself if it was a pass through on a broadside lungshot.......the ground blind was above the bait and it was a fairly steep downhill shot, so on a pass through it would hit low.
While they milled around bemoaning the miss I looked for some tracks and found a couple in the direction the bear had departed and then struck off into the tall swamp grass and willows. Seventy-five yards later I found the bear piled up where he had dropped on the run. I called back to the guys and told the hunter to come and look at his bear. He said, "Ya right." assuming I was pulling his leg and I had to say to the guys "No I am not kidding, come and look at your bear."
He was one happy hunter because............this would be his one and only bear hunt. He has terminal cancer and does not think he will see the 2009 hunting season. I was VERY happy that I found his bear for obvious reasons. He was a heck of a nice guy and very much deserved that bear.
We packed it out to the boat on a tarp and blasted back to the camp where I skinned it out for a life size mount and we got it all done in time for the 8am flight.
Two things here on this bear kill that stand out and every bear hunter should pay attention to this. The shot taken was a double lung broadside shot.......bears can and often do run a long ways with this shot placement and in really thick bush with little or no blood to follow, they can be exceedingly hard to find. That is why I really like to see at least one if not both shoulders taken out by a big heavy bullet.
If I had not been there the group would have packed up and gone back to the boats and headed back to camp. The bear was lying dead 75 yards away in thick bush and tall swamp grass, but with no tracks to speak of, no blood whatsoever or any real sign of a hit..........the assumption was that the hunter had missed. Many game animals are lost every year due to hunters not following up on big game animals when there is no obvious signs of a hit and this is often compounded by a lack of experience. Little or no blood trail is fairly common with bears, but does not necessarily mean a miss or a poor/non-fatal hit.
The Great Outdoors: Hunting