WV Bear
 

My first bear after hoping for one in over 40 years of bowhunting. It was a very windy evening I really didn't expect to see anything but 2 young deer came in around 5 they fed around for about 20 minutes. I was hoping to see an 8 point that had been coming around, all of a sudden both deer took off like crazy I wondered what had scared them I knew it wasn't me as the wind was in my face and I was 30 ft in a Hugh pine. I looked up the hill and saw the bear coming I had just enough time to pick up my bow and draw when she hit 25 yards I let fly. The bear grunted one time and took off I lowered my bow and went to where she was standing when I shot there was blood there so I went about 30 yards and there she was. I couldn't believe it had only went that far the 100 grain steelhead had done it's job.

Thats a good looking Bear, congrats on the long wait finally coming to an end.

Congrats on a fine bear.

Sweet!

The makings of some fine meals and what looks like a really nice skin for a rug. Make sure you bleach out the skull too. They look really cool on a shelf.

Pretty cool. How's the tags work there? Did you need a bear tag?

I don't know about WV, but in VA when you buy a big game license you get 6 deer tags, 3 turkey tags and a bear tag. Plus you can get a lot of "bonus" deer tags. It is possible to take 20+ deer a year in VA if you want.

I have a Navy buddy whose grandparents own a farm on the Blue Ridge. They get damage tags to protect the corn crop. We've taken up to 15 in a weekend using those permits. All the meat from those tags is donated to the poor so they don't go to waste.

congrats! don't throw away the fat...render it down! its really good!

Makes really good patch, and bullet lube. Taste like crap!

I'm not sure I could enjoy getting so many tags so easily. I like the challenge of getting the tag, but especially trying to get a mature buck on millions of acre's of public land. I get bored easily when something is too easy.

Congrats on a nice bear. Got to love that bear hunting! Did ya get a chance to weigh him?

In wv you buy your liscense, and pay extra for tags, no bear tag needed but you must purchase a bear damage stamp, the funds from bear damage stamps go into a fund to re-imberse farmers for losses of livestick from bear kills. in va west of the blue ridge you get 3 tags with your liscense, a doe, an either sex, and a buck, last year I hunted va you could by additional doe tags but 2 bucks was the limit.
RR

Just the fat by itself tastes like crap but it renders down to some of the best lard you can get anywhere.

"I'm not sure I could enjoy getting so many tags so easily. I like the challenge of getting the tag, but especially trying to get a mature buck on millions of acre's of public land. I get bored easily when something is too easy."

You can make the hunting in VA as easy or as hard as you want. Nothing stops people from hunting public land. There are millions of acres of that too in the Natl Forests etc... But the point of the damage tags isn't sport, it is preventing crop damage. Besides, for the most part the Southern states have a lot more deer than any other area of the country. Winterkill isn't a problem and they grow crops pretty much year round. Things are done differently down here than in my native CO.

By the time a serious deer hunter in the South turns 25 years old he/she will probably have racked up at least 30 or 40 deer. How long would it take the average hunter in CO or WY to get that many? I know I grew up in CO and I didn't fill every deer tag I held during those short seasons. In VA you can hunt deer from late Sept until the end of Feb.

I didn't need to purchase a tag as I am a senior and receive the tag with my free license but you must buy a tag if you have to buy license I bought it for years and got to use it at 65 I got it free and got my bear.

No scale but the taxidermist who also checked it in said around 250

I didn't keep the fat everyone here said cut it off throw it away. My wife put some of the steaks in boiling water to get the blood out and the fried it in butter it was some of the best steaks I have ever eaten.

fat once rendered into grease is also very good to condition leather, my mother has kept all the fat off every bear I have killed (11), she also says the grease makes the best pie crusts.
RR

That's what I meant by being too easy. You know what it's like getting a mature muley buck in the high country here. Especially, if you don't use a scope.

only reason its too easy is because of the population density, if we can ever get the heard back to the carrying capacity of the land you will be lucky to see a buck during season, but when you do he will be worth it. If you choose it can be diffacult to aquire your deer, in 1996, I shot a 4.5 yo 9 point on the va side of great north mountain in shenadoah county, I shot the buck on a day when the weather wasn't fit to let a digging iron set outside, 16 degrees, wind howling 20 mph, snowing. shot the buck at 9:20 AM, state law at the time required the deer to be taken to a game checking station before skinning, I was 1.6 miles from my truck, at 4:30 PM I loaded the deer, and by 5:00 was finaly limbered up eough I could depress the clutch pedal on my truck, never had an easy moment that day. This is rugged NF land with very low deer density, no atv's allowed so if you don't have a packhorse you drag them or carry them, I've done both, when I was younger.
we never had a doe season here for 17 years, when they started them back up in 1974, the landowners at the time (farmers who were up in years) wouldn't shoot them and wouldn't let others either, so we ended up with about 80 per square mile in the early 90's our area has the carrying capacity of 18-21 psm we have them down to around 30 psm in this area, still plenty of deer.
bear populations are up 25X from what they were in 1978 when I started hunting them, they are now starting to increase the limits and seasons to thin them down.
RR

RR.........I'm not downplaying your hunts. They're all good, and difficult in their own way. There is a difference between hunting whitetails and mule deer though. Whitetails love the timber. Muley's love altitude, and the mature ones will be above timberline looking down on you. Very difficult to get close to.

Just as a comparison. Virginia's highest mountain is 5700ft. Take a look at where mule deer hang out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_o...ts_of_Colorado

the bear I shot tasted good and the fat tastes excellent! I made homemade tortillas with some of the fat and man they are the best.

I'm curious. Do you like liver?

I grew up hunting hunting mulies, I've hunted whitetails and I've hunted blacktails. Of the 3, a really big blacktail is the hardest of all of them to get. When you talk about whitetails and mulies, I'd like to point out that some really good whitetails come out of some pretty rugged country in Idaho, Montana, Washington etc... and I have personally seen whitetails over by Kremmling. Additionally altitude, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily make a hunt any harder than any other type of topography. Every habitat has its own unique challenges and must be looked at in that context.

When hunting high, you can sit and glass and let your optics save you a lot of walking. In heavy timber, that isn't possible. Of all the deer hunting I've done, hunting whitetails in the river bottoms of the FL panhandle was the hardest type of deer hunting I've found. The cover is horribly thick, you had to watch out for cottonmouths, diamondbacks and alligators. It is hot and humid, bloodsucking bugs are thick, the deer are spread thinly and it is nearly impossible to use a treestand. The only way to hunt them is to get into the brush and root them out. You will be wet, muddy, skeeter bit, scratched, hot, tired and unsuccessful most of the time. When and if you do get a buck it will probably be no bigger than a 3x3 (the soil is mineral poor and big antlers ain't gonna happen), weigh around 120 lbs live weight and you will value him highly.

Besides, a lot of the very biggest mulies coming out of Colorado are not coming from the high country at all. The plains of CO, WY, NE, and KS all have a lot of huge mule deer bucks. I've seen some monsters out in the counties of Yuma, Weld, Logan, Kit Carson, Phillips etc... feeding in corn fields and alfala fields. Matter of fact, it I wanted a real big mule deer I'd be looking in the prairie and not the high country.

Bucks like this are on the prairies waiting for the man who knows how to hunt. By the way, this is a NE buck.

I'm not going to argue with you about it. I've hunted both, and for my style of hunting. Muley's are harder in the country I live in.

Keep in mind I still hunt thick timber. Right where whitetails and blacktails want to be. It's also where mature muley bucks don't want to be.

Big muleys are hard to get in my neighborhood. Average muleys are like fleas on a hound. Big whitetails aren't too tough if you can get access to a good timbered creek bottom.

I love to hunt high but around here there is usually enough early snow to move the muleys down by the time gun season starts. Find a timbered creek bottom right at the base of the mountain where the pines stop and the sage begins and you have solid gold. Whitetails and big muleys in the same general area.

True for rifle seasons here, but not for mid Sept muzzy hunts. They're all high, not near the rut, and smart. Trying to get one without glassing, and a scope is like bow hunting. I give all the credit to bow hunters who can get a trophy buck around here. Although they glass a lot which gives a small edge over me.

I've been at this awhile. I know what's harder and easier for me. It could be completely different for someone else.

This is exactly my point. Seems that when someone mentions hunting elsewhere you're real fast to say it is so much harder the way you do it. Expecting others to simply agree with you is a stretch. The guy that goes west and stumbles into a 30 inch wide 4x4 mulie on the first morning of his first Western hunt probably isn't going to believe you. And the guy that hunted the same whitetail buck over several seasons in a hard hunted area before he tagged him probably won't either.

Based on my pretty extensive experience, I simply haven't found the mulie to be overly difficult in the places I have hunted him and I have hunted mulies with rifle, bow, muzzleloader, handgun and I even shot one with a shotgun. Maybe you have found them difficult, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong. That's why I specifically said that every habitat has its own type of challenges. Rather than dismiss the experience of others, welcome their viewpoints because info shared benefits all of us.

By the way, I'm going to apologize to the originator for hi-jacking his thread. This is about his bear, which is a good bear, and not about the differences in different types of deer hunting.

yes I also apologise for the hijack, royak, congrats on your first bear, you mentioned "she" inyour post was it a sow?
RR

You also misunderstood what I said, but you're right. We hijacked the thread. So, i'm done.

btw..I'll be bow hunting next year, so i'll find out what that's all about. I'm not sure it will be much different from my muzzy hunting since my range is only 40-50yds with a peep sight. However, i'll have a whole month to get it done with a bow. We'll see.

Im not a fan of it...why?

Thanks Ridge Runner yes it was a sow but it sure was a beauty