Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Black Bear, Who's In?

tipmover, I'm no expert but have called quite a few black bears. A guy from Montana, Dober I think is his handle, has called a lot of them. Best of luck if you go for it!

My most used call is jack rabbit distress. Virtually the same sound is marketed as fawn distress and bear cub distress, so close to the same that I can't tell the difference and I don't think predators do either. They just know it sounds edible and in trouble, and if they are not sure they come out of curiosity. I vary the cadence, tune etc. with hand calls to imitate fawn vs rabbit, etc. I have used recorded fawn distress, recorded black bear cub distress, and the closest I've called a black bear was with lip squeaks.

The called bear in the previous post came to a Rainshdow custom closed reed call that sounds jack rabbitish, and I was whimpering on it. The bear was within 100 yards when I started calling so I called softly and watched it come in to 25 yards. We had decided not to shoot it so experimented with calling.

We have lots of lions as well. I set up differently when calling cats, and rarely get a non-targeted animal coming to my call, other than the usual crows, magpies, doe deer. A big exception was in northern BC where my biggest problem when trying to call a moose or wolf during early Fall was grizzlies coming to the call. I quit calling. Adding Rainshadow cougar vocals will up the odds of calling in a lion, may decrease odds of a bear coming in, not sure.

For lions and bears when calling alone, I set up so that nothing can get to my back, even if it degrades the ambush a bit. One time at an ideal spot I took a few minutes to build a lean to of poles behind me so no lion could get to my back.

Bears have a reputation for responding to calls inconsistently. IMO that means we haven’t figured them out as well as we have coyotes. Some run in, some sneak in, most move downwind of the call sound as they get close, some pretend to ignore while moseying closer, some look longingly and don’t come any closer, and I had one run away as soon as I blew the call. The young bear below was leaving so I called with a jackrabbit hand call to get him to hang around and let us look him over.



The one below, in rain, was close enough to have the auto flash reflect in his eyes.