Not as “Traditional” as it might have been, but here goes:
A friend and I were out looking over some muley and elk country that was new to me, but well known to my buddy. I took along my bow just in case we saw, and had an opportunity, at a shootable black bear. All we saw all afternoon and early evening, however, was one bull and a muley doe.
We were on our way out in the truck, but still some 35 km from the asphalt, when we rounded a bend in the logging road and saw large, dark coloured rear end sauntering down the road ahead of us. We parked up and went on the chase. He was moving along pretty well and it took us about kilometer to get within shooting range. The wind wasn’t too kind and he spooked and disappeared down the bank before I had an opportunity. We hiked back up to the truck, stowed our gear and carried on making our way out. We hadn’t gone 2 km when there he was again. We decided to carry on past without pausing and to set up further down, this guy definitely appeared to have a destination in mind. As we got close he ran up the bank and watched us pass. This guy was behaving like he was king of the hill, and not easily put off; something that I was counting on.
We went another 1 1/2km and then walked back to what looked like a good ambush spot. I cleared some brush, prepared the ground around me (If I was to get a shot I knew it would be a close one) and sat down to wait.
25 minutes later there he was, 100 yards away and ambling down towards us looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. At first glance I wondered if it was the same bear as the colouring looked quite different from this angle, but his attitude soon confirmed that it was. I stood up and tried to stay calm. Thankfully he took a while to get to me and I had time to get myself under control. I kept telling myself to come to full draw and pick a spot, really needing a good shot as I was certainly going to be in his “personal space” at the moment of truth.
I came to full draw as he passed behind some thin brush, let him go by to just past broadside, waited for his nearside front leg to move forward and released. He immediately spun to try to bite what had stung him and, thankfully, decided to run up the far bank. he went a total of 15 yds before collapsing. I picked up my arrow, confirming that I had got a complete pass through, with good blood for the whole length.
I had caught the top of the heart and both lungs, phew!
He was approximately 6 ft. nose to tail and my buddy, who has much more experience than I, estimated his weight at around 300lb. I very decent early season bear for these parts.
On the 30+km drive out we saw another nice boar with a sow and a beautiful bull in velvet at about 30 yds.
To crown the day, it was my buddy’s birthday!
I used a 44# at my 26.5″ draw Caribow Wolverine R/D longbow, with EFOC 650gn carbon arrow with a modified Grizzly El Grande single bevel broadhead.
Red Dwarf
