Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting New guy story about a big bear

Hi, my name is Will. I'm a simple blue collar guy and family man from NW Oregon. Outside of my family the outdoors is my #1 passion more specifically big game hunting (bow and rifle) and salt water fishing. Recently I've gotten into hand loading and want to give long range shooting a go. I've been on ifish dot net for a number of years and am looking to branch out. I mostly like looking at pictures and reading success stories from people's hunts. This seems like a good place to do so! If you're a member there too drop me a line so I can put the pieces together I'll add some more stories as time permits to the appropriate board. Here's one of mine you might enjoy...

May 23, 2011

I'll never forget this day.

This story actually begins the year prior when I blew my knee out. It ended up requiring surgery which cost me most of my deer and elk season. Looking for any excuse to get out of the house I put in for my first spring bear tag with virtually no expectations of success. My extent of bear hunting exposure was as a kid I helped wrangle and chase a pack of walkers from time to time that belonged to a family friend but I hadn't had anything to do with bears since the atrocity known as ballot measure 18.

As the opener approached I was eager to get out. My plan was to tote my rifle, hike logging roads and grown over skid roads and hope to find them feeing on the fresh shoots of grass in the ditch. After all; that's how Jim Shockey does it. Should be easy, right?

Well I got plenty of exercise that April and first two weeks of May, but had nothing much to show for it. Nevertheless I kept at it and was having a great time in the woods watching grouse drum away and bulls and bucks sprout new antlers. By the end of May I was glassing cuts more and was toying with predator calls. I had bought a new dozen arrows and they were shooting well so for no other reason than that I grabbed my bow on the morning of May 23. I hiked and glasses all morning. That afternoon, like all the dreams I had been envisioning all season a bear appeared in a cut. Unlike my dream he was barely bigger than my dog, 2-3 canyons away and rubbed naked from the front shoulders back. I decided he wasn't worth my time and wrote the season off as a success by finding a bear and was feeling pretty good about myself. I packed up and hiked to the edge of a swamp where I had seen some pretty impressive sign the week before to play a tune on my fawn distress call before it got dark just for giggles.

Mosquitos were sucking the life out of me as I hyperventilated myself wailing on the call. I was about to pack it up for the day when I caught movement on the other side of the swamp-it was black! I knocked an arrow and readied myself just to see the shape sink into the brush. I quickly picked up my call and resumed my sequence hoping to entice the animal back into sight-holy crap! It worked! I started to draw back and again the bear vaporized out of sight again. This went on for almost a half an hour and the sun was starting to set. I tried to sound a pitiful as I could on the distress call. Like magic I saw a shadow move through the brush and materialize itself as a bear on an elk trail 20 yards away. I dropped the call, drew back and anchored in one swift movement. The bear was about to step off the trail and out of my sight once again so I whistled to stop him and timed my shot accordingly. The bear never stopped when I shot. I watched my arrow disappear into his midsection and him bolt into the brush. I listened to him crash through the brush and prayed for a death moan I've heard about but my prayer wasn't answered. I've never come so close to throwing up over a shot as that. I found my arrow but strangely it had good blood on it. I began to look for more sign but couldn't find much and it was getting close to dusk by now. I hiked back out to where I had service and made a few calls.

After an hour or so, with the help of a friend, who had rounded up a couple of his friends, and my dad we started pushing brush with pistols at the low ready looking for this bear. Nobody could find anymore blood. Inch by inch we pushed a long. We had made it 100yds off the trail from where I had shot from when I heard, "I found it!" Come through the trees. "Blood or the bear?" I hollered back. "The bear!" came landed on my ears. I holstered and took off towards the voice at a dead sprint.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I walked up on my bear. He was bigger than big. I didn't know bears but I knew enough to know he was a giant.

Turns out there had been a miraculous act of Devine Intervention. My shot that I thought was horrible turned out to be great. The arrow had deflected off one of the furthest back ribs and taken a hard angle towards the vitals, getting both lungs and came out just behind the far shoulder.

We were able to get the quad on a skid road a few hundred yards down the canyon from where he died and the 5 of us were able to drag him out (down hill luckily) whole and on to the quad. We took him to our family friend, the same one that used to let me ride on top of the dog box with the pack as a kid, who owned a small meat cutting shop now. He was outside waiting for us when we pulled up. He let out a long whistle and said, "I've killed more bears than I can count and don't give a damn if I ever see another one, but I'd kill that sombitch in a second!"

We put him on our friend's certified scale. As the counter weights were added and the arms leveled I heard someone call out, "375!" Another, "390!" Then an unsure, "400!?!?" As sure as I'm writing this the arms leveled at 405lbs.

60 days later my bear was scored and then accepted by the Pope and Young club with the official score of 20 4/16"

Thanks for reading

you might have seen this pic in the back of an issue of Eastman's a few years ago



I'm 6'2" and 260lbs BTW

Welcome to the 'fire

Heck of a bear. Good job.

And a great one to learn on. Never take a bad shot. You got lucky there it seems.

I've passed on so many, but thats because I made a mistake once and took a shot.... that I should not have and it took a LONG time to get over that..

That one will look great in the house!

Jeff

Nice bear. I really feel for you for all your patience and suffering to get your black.
Makes me feel real fortunate that I've had really good luck shooting 6 in the last 10 years 5-10 yds from my pickup along the highway in Alberta. Different hunting techniques in various countries I guess.

Great bear, Congratulations!

When baiting was still legal in Oregon, back in the early 80s, I arrowed two of them up on the slopes of Mt Hood. They in total were not as big as yours.

Great story and pics and bear.