Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 76 dayz till....spring bruins in Big Sky country

Life doesn't get much better than tracking bruins in the snow does it!

I've only have one bruin that was serious about getting a piece of me. Client had hit it, I went into the brush to find it, had sort of an uneasy feeling about it so I took my clients 25/06 in with me (I never carried when I guided). Long and the short the brush was thick and I was on my hands and knees.

I got in short ways by crawling and looked up and there he was about 9' away, and when our eyes met he came at me hard and fast. I shot him under the chin with the 25/06 and it was lights out. Then I cried for a while and asked the client if he had any spare cloths because mine weren't any good any more.. He was plenty close for me...


Dober

That June snow was in 2001. I'd already taken a MT bear and had an Idaho license. I left work early on the last day of the ID season, the 15th (a Friday) and raced toward the border. It was my 3rd ID trip that spring. I pulled into the first USFS access across the border and started up an unfamiliar drainage. There was still a good amount of that snow and after about a mile, I cut two sets of tracks, big and small. Thinking it was a sow and cub, I kept walking and a while later crossed those tracks again, this time taking a better look. The larger track was 5 1/2" across the pad, the smaller right at 4. I followed them into a draw with about 20 minutes of remaining daylight - the wind was perfect, ground was silent, and the tracks were smokin' hot. They led me to an open rockslide where the snow had melted off. On the other side, only one set of tracks continued. I followed the smaller track along the far side of the rocks and down toward the bottom of the drainage. Light was fading. At bottom, finally, I spotted one of the bears.. on a dead run .. kapow, dead tiny sow. It was one of the few times I've taken a bear and been a little bummed out. But after a few minutes, I realized that not everybody acquires such a fancy toilet seat cover for the mere cost of $350 license, $500 in fuel, $100 in food, and modest $15 expense at the tannery.

The local warden waited up till 11PM to check my bear... super nice guy.

Here's about the only photo I got, yes it's a bear, not a laborador..


The weekend prior I was hunting with friends in Idaho and this one was taken. It doesn't look like much, but it was a pretty good one - around 6ft square and had a 19" skull. We ended up skinning it under the overhead lights of a service station in front of the pumps. I think I'd seen this one while glassing on my first trip, but was unable to connect.

And melting............

And melting............

30 days...