RE: My First bear on Tues. Holy Smokes!!!
Heck I will tell the whole story. My buddy and I had gotten up at 4am. on Tuesday the 20th. We left from my house and drove to some good looking units. We glassed for most of the day and saw one young cinnamon bear. We also jumped a bear out of a thinned area of reprod. My freind went down to try and push him back up into a little more open area, but he slipped out the back way. after hunting for 14 hours we were making our way back home. We were going down an old logging road when my buddy saw a bear standing down below us about 250yds away. We went and parked the truck and walked back up the road. The bear was gone. My buddy told me the bear would probably come out in a meadow located about 100yds. from where he had slipped into some timber. There was still snow drifts around, and I think the bear was taking advantage of the green grass that was sprouting up in the meadow. We slipped down some scree as quietly as we could and sat down very quitely and waited. It was about 7:40pm. I started to get impatient and wanted to call it quits. My buddy made the motion to stay put and wait him out. I was about to argue with him, and then I thought he and his dad are 2 of the best hunters I know. They kill some monster bucks, nice bulls, and have a sixth sense about there games behaivour. I decided to sit still and wait till shooting light was over. Five minutes later the bear came out into the meadow just where my buddy said it would. I settled the cross hairs of my old 30-06 right behind his shoulder. The 165 Remington Corelokt struck him hard and he ran sideways for about 20 ft. He then got all fours under him and vanished into the timber so fast I could not get another shot. The buddy of mine said he watched him through his optics and said I had a good hit on him. I was shooting at about a 45 degree angle at 275yds. We went back to the truck and grabbed flashlights, rope, extra knives, and water. About that time a freind of my freinds came up the road on a joy ride. We had not saw another hunter all day long, and this guy shows up. We asked him to wait until we confirmed the bear was down, and then go for some help. We scrambled down the scree and It took about 40 minutes to get to where he was standing. By that time it was close to 9. We started to look for blood or hair and could not come up with any. We were able to find his tracks in the moist meadow grass and started following them. I tell you what I was pretty nervous going into that timber with it being dark in there. I followed the tracks and found him about 40yds. down the hill from where I had hit him. He was piled up. We hollared for the fellow to bring some help back along with lots of rope. We wanted to get him out whole if we could. We dressed him out and waited for the fellow to come back. We hiked back out to meet him and he arrived about 10:30pm with rope and another buddy. We had to drag him the first 150yds. up the hill to reach the rope. That tooks as nearly 2 hours. After we got the rope on him, it took a another hour to tow him up. We had to steer him through an old growth willow patch that you had to crawl through on your hands and knees. I filled up his body cavity with snow, and delivered him to the meet proccessor the next morning. He was 7' 2 tall, and field dressed at just over 300lbs. The game proccesor said he had almost no fat on him. They also said that he was close to 400 live weight at there estimation. I took the skin and skull to the taxidermist. They said it was the biggest skull and paws they had seen in 3 years. His teeth were worn down to the gums and his canines were rounded off