Here is the story of my 2011 fall bear.
Monday Sept.12th opening day of the Fall Archery Bear season found me on stand at 3p.m..It was a nice day except for high winds.The woods were very quiet with nothing moving until 10 minutes before dark when a large bear stepped out of the thick brush and stopped behind a large maple tree.At this point all I could see was his hind end and about 30 seconds later he swapped ends crashing back through the thick stuff leaving me wondering what spooked him.He did not return and I climbed down and headed for home.
The next two days were uneventful on stand with nothing moving except for the trees due to the high winds.
Thursday afternoon found me on stand at 2p.m. It was still a very windy day with nothing moving until 5:25p.m. when I spotted movement in back of the baitsite.All of a sudden Boo-Boo showed up and proceeded to clean out the baitpails.He looked to be about 125 pounds and entertained me for the next 45 minutes.The rest of the day was uneventful.
Saturday morning found me in my treestand at 6:25a.m. due to the amount of a.m. pics I had of bears in the baitsite.It was still very windy and when daylight arrived I had five pileated woodpeckers knocking the wood chips out of a couple of dead trees 25 yards away.At 10:30a.m. I climbed down and went home.
Monday Sept.19th found me on stand at 2:30p.m. And this time it was a calm day with no wind.Nothing moved until ten minutes before dark when a large bear stepped into the baitsite giving me a broadside shot.I took the shot and the bear tore off to my right and about 20 seconds later instead of death moans I heard death roars that echoed through the woods then all was quiet.I retrieved my blood soaked arrow and left the woods.
Tuesday morning found me back at the site to track the bear.The only blood I could find was where I retrieved my arrow from the pass through.It was a hard tracking job and I lost his direction of travel when I came across four different bear trails.I kept trying to pick up his trail but ended up going back to the baitsite and took a compass bearing from where I was standing in the direction of the roars I heard the night before.Approximately 15 minutes later I had walked directly to my bear and realized he would be hard to get out.My shot had double lunged the bear and I was surprised he had travelled this far.The bear went 45 feet down into a ravine and luckily two trees stopped his descent because it was about another 75 feet to the bottom of the ravine.I went out to the truck and phoned my brother who along with my nephew arrived to help me.It took us 3.5 hours using a block and tackle just to get the bear up to the top of the ravine.Total time to get the bear to the truck was 7 hours and 45 minutes.Once at the truck I got my pics and then built a tripod and hooked the chain hoist to it to load the bear as we could not lift it off the ground to load it.The boar weighed in at 423 pounds.Another successful bear season!!!
4everbowhunts 2011 Fall Black Bear
