Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Bear Stories?

I have none of my own, I've heard some.

Have any tales of the bears?

00 Buck at close range in the dark. Slugs at longer ranges hopefully in daylight hours or with the aid of a good flashlight. Nuisance bears is all I ever shot. My backup was a 40 S&W with 180 grain HP. Right between the eyes for proper effect.

How stupid are you, bear charging at close range with a shot between the eyes???

had a disagreement with a blackie over a dead steer years ago. tripped over a log back peddling and broke my left leg. canceled my dance card with the blackie with my 41 mag as he was sticking his head over the log.
was up at my shed the other day and saw a snowshoe hare sitting by the porch munching on something. went over to look and it was that bear skull. wind blew it down and shattered it. Rabbit was munching on splinters.
had 3 griz in the yard for about 5 hours one day. they definitely owned the yard. head is on a swivel now when we go out in the yard.

A good friend of mine has probably shot more bears than most of us will see. I remember one summer when he shot 67 or 68 bears. He was the government predator hunter in that area for many years. Most were shot with a 270 Winchester using 130 Silvertip factory loads. He had a few interesting experiences. One of the more amusing was a bear he had trapped and shot with a .22. He put the bear in the back of the truck to haul it to the disposal site and was driving on the highway. He glanced into his driver's side mirror and the bear was sitting up, head out in the wind, with his lips flapping. He looked just like a black lab out for a ride. When they arrived at the disposal site, my friend had to climb out on the passenger side and finish the bear with his 357 which settled it down well.
I worked for a time maintaining Forest Service campgrounds and would occasionally have to deal with bears. One of the best reactions I got out of a bear was when I saw one (a small bear) which had tipped over a garbage can and was in the barrel with only his rump exposed. I shot him in the butt with a Wrist Rocket slingshot and a 45 caliber lead ball. When the ball hit, he drove into the bottom of the can hard enough to slide it along the ground. When he got turned around he shot out of there like a rocket. GD

I’ve hunted deer and moose up north a lot of years but have only caught a couple of glimpses of bears in 35+ years. There and gone, before even getting the gun up. Areas I’ve hunted weren’t heavy with bear either.

Did a dedicated bear hunt over bait in 2015. Got a 200 lb female (fall hunt) with 30/06. Rug is in my game room.

I do love bear meat. Was kinda hoping to book another hunt this fall when I’m up north for work but the Covid has put the kibosh on that for this year. Northern trip postponed until spring at the earliest.

One you need to visualize -- flew into a fishing lodge, landed and headed up to the cook shack for a coffee. Inside the cook shack was a shambles and the cook was putting stuff back in place. The door on the opposite side had a outside round circle of bird shot. The center of the patter was missing as the cook shot at the bear on its way out.

Caribou hunting -- camp had an electric bear fence. One night a barren ground grizzly tried the fence. There was a fair amount of noise and getting back to sleep was not easy.

Hunting a big clear cut with dead scraps of trees and piles of brush that you could not see over. My partner was off a ways to my left and we heard something ahead of us but could not see anything. Moving forward quietly I was going around a brush pile and heard a noise immediately behind my left side. I turned and a black bear had den site in a brush pile and its head was sticking out looking at me from about 4 ft. After the shot it took me a while to stop shaking.

A family friend had a bear in her cellar one morning. They waited until the bear quit making noise, then her husband tracked it in the wet grass and shot it.

Had an encounter many years ago with a grizzly just West of Calgary. Was fishing a stocked pond in a picnic area just off the highway that was normally busy with families.
Sun was going down, had my limit so I told my partner I was heading to truck, would put on a pot of coffee while he finished his limit out.
Was headed across the parking lot when the bear wandered out of the brush between me and the truck. He caught wind of me and stopped and looked right at me from probably 35 feet. danger close anyway. All I had was my fly rod and a cotton sack of fish. No firearm, hadn't carried bear spray that evening.........bear ended up with my catch as I tossed it to him, he took of with the fish and I wandered back to the lake to intercept my buddy. He thought I was bringing him a cup of coffee LOL. I heard later that the bear was a known PIA due to "begging" grub from folks that was trapped and relocated.
I never go anywhere without a minimum of bear spray nowadays. Prefer to have both spray and a firearm but can't always carry both here.
Have had other run ins over the years where I had to use spray but that one sticks out. Haven't had to shoot in self-defense, yet. Life is an adventure!

wabigoon;
Good evening to you sir, I hope the second weekend in July finds you and your fine family well and more or less bear free!

We've just rolled back in from a few days up the mountain tenting and this time didn't see a black bear - though we did see some reasonably fresh bear scat so were watchful for them as usual.

Black bears and I go back a long, long ways and sometimes we've been pretty close to each other.....

The first time I was tenting with my oldest sister in northern Saskatchewan, I want to say we were less than 100 miles from the North West Territories, near the Dene community of Black Lake.

The campsite we were using was shared by some archaeological folks doing a dig and they'd been having issues with a pesky bear. The first or second morning I woke up to a noise outside the tent, looked out the screen and saw the bear's nose about as far away from the outside of the tent as my nose was on the inside!

I saw that one again when I was washing up one morning at the lake - and he was too I suppose - again we regarded each other with more curiosity than anything else and left on our own separate ways.

When I'd moved to BC for the first time in '81, a buddy and I were chasing whitetails up on the mountain range east of us. We'd split up an hour or so earlier and as I was sitting on a stump looking over a cut block for movement, a young black bear mother came feeding up the mountain directly towards me, her single small cub behind her. For reasons that make no sense whatsoever to me now, I decided to sit still and see how close she'd get to me before noticing me.....

Now you have to understand wabigoon that I was young and dumb in many, many ways then and had no concept of how fast a black bear can actually move.

Anyways, she's feeding directly towards me, junior about 10' behind her and as she does, I'm becoming less and less comfortable with my decision. As she puts her head down to feed I'm now tracking her with the muzzle of my '06, but she's a mom and I don't really want to shoot either of them.

When she's maybe.... maybe 25' away from me, I get up off the stump, wave my ever present cowboy hat in the air and yell as loud as possible - which I've been told is pretty loud considering my lack of stature....

So mom bear about doubles in size as she puffs up, spins left and tears down the mountain away from me and runs right over junior!

Junior begins the most heart wrenching and pitiful squalling one can imagine! Quite loud for a little guy as well, but then by this time mom bear is running back and forth at about 50yds bawling and clacking her teeth.

I can still actually hear the teeth clacking now as I type this all these decades later wabigoon. That was something, you know?

Junior was clearly lost at this juncture and began to wander up towards me and I found a few more notches on the dial for volume explaining to him he needed to not advance towards the little guy in the hat.

Finally, though it was likely quite quick in real time - junior headed down the mountain to mom, she gave me a few more vulgar expletives and left with the little fellow in the direction they'd come from.

About that time my hunting partner shouts out to me asking why the shouting and I yell back "There's a mad mother bear over here man!"

That's one bear story wabigoon, the closest I've let one come on purpose I believe, but certainly not the last.

Thanks for letting me recall that hunt from the sunny slopes of yesterday sir and thanks for coming along with me on it.

All the best to you folks this summer.

Dwayne

In Baniff National Park they have a she bear stuffed in the tourist center. It had been relocated three times, each time farther away and came back . OK you can stay. She's still there.

Urban legend has someone in North Vancouver catching a couple of bears mating in his hot tub. Bears in hot tubs is not uncommon, my cousin had to replace his cover a couple of times.

The only bear I ever shot was back in the 60's. A friend and I were moose hunting in the back of beyond and one afternoon we saw a small bear trying to get in to a cabin being used by mining prospectors. It took off and we watched it go. The next afternoon at exactly the same time it showed up again and headed for the prospectors cabin. When we had warned them the day before they asked us to kill it since they expected it to return. My friend shot and wounded it (his brothers gun which had never been properly sighted in). It started to run and I killed it when it jumped over a cut bank.

The prospectors were so happy they asked us if we wanted to join them in the cabin. Unfortunately it smelled like a garbage dump so we declined. We mentioned about having a camp set up down the lake as our reason for not joining them.

Jim

Our good family friend Joe, was famous for telling, "You keep the bear up the tree, I'll get the gun". His wife Helen said, I could get the gun".

Joe, and Helen were late one evening in Wabigoon getting to our place, that is when the bear was loitering in their back yard.
I should still have some bear claws from that one. I'm impressed, a bear could easily
take the face off a man with one swipe.

I'll be quite happy to keep, "social distance" from any bears, say six hundred feet.

Put your glasses on and read my post again. I said nothing about the bears charging. Most of them had their heads down eating garbage home owners would not clean up.

over a few years i shot a few bears over my legal bear baits with a bow,but i kinda quit baiting bears got to easy for me to kill a bear with my bow over a bait. finally figured out how to keep bears from my bird feeder on a wood post, i used plenty wire on porcelain insulators with a electric fencer close by that`s on 24 hrs a day 7 days a week, otherwise i am fixin or replacing wrecked bird feeders,coons and squirrels are stay`n away too now. had to do the same thing in my garden too and the turkeys stay out now too. i know city people think bears are so neat but in my world bears are a nuisance and can be dangerous too .

Was caribou hunting north of Tok in the late 80's and since we hadn't seen any caribou I started hunting spruce hens with a .22 revolver. I had wandered several hundred yards from my 3 wheeler and rifle when I topped a small ridge and saw a huge scrapped up pile of brush and dirt about 20 yards away. It took a moment to sink into my dense skull that the caribou leg sticking up meant a grizzly kill site. I immediately backed away at flank speed while covering my retreat with the 22, although I doubt it would have helped if the bear had been in residence. Needless to say I didn't leave my rifle behind again while pursuing spruce hens.
Another time while fishing for reds on the Russian at around midnight I looked up stream and there was a brown bear doing the same around 30 yards away. I suddenly remembered that I had a urgent need to return to camp...

Lot of close encounters with bears over the years. Many at a few feet.

One evening on a bow elk hunt I happened across a black bear in a huckleberry patch and took a shot with my bow at 45 yards. I hit just above it's back and stuck in a tree, the arrow close enough to pull hair off it's back. It took off like a shot. Since we'd called in three bulls in a couple hours of hunting I decided to go back the next night and hunt for a few days. I was setting up my tent about 100 yards from where I'd taken that shot at the bear the evening before, and had left my bow leaning against a tree 15 yards away. I looked up and there was that same bear, sitting on his haunches 15 yards away, watching me set up my tent. He was just sitting there, as if to say, "Whatcha doin'?"

I couldn't reach my bow so I just kept doing what I was doing, one eye on that bear the whole time. He finally tired of watching and wandered off. I spent a long night imagining him coming back for revenge and shredding me into strips.

My grandfather has a print of fishermen returning to camp, to find bears sacking the campsite. I wish I had that.

in about 1960 we were on a junior camp hike in Yosemite . strict rule was to have all food stuff hung in a tree away from camp. my Nephew couldn't resist a bunch of snickers, butterfingers etc in the bottom of his sleeping bag. about 1 am we were all awakened by his caterwauling like a stuck hog. nice 200lb ish black bear was dragging him into the river about 50 yards out of camp. we counselors all grabbed pots and pans and rescued him. whole bottom of his bag was covered with bear slobber and the inside of the bag with 9 year old's piss! we let him keep the candy
might have been a mistake rescuing him. he was a drug addict for the next 50 years and in and out of prison. PTSD? not!

We are in a high density Grizzly area here, seldom seeing a black bear. Grizzlies prey on them.
They often get into our hen houses, and are sighted frequently . Elk calve in and around our places and these bears kill many calves.
We are off to see Sawbones for a few days and hope none discover our meat birds( chickens) they will rip and tear their way in. Generally leaving the cattle and horse alone, but just love chicken....and easy pickings.
The neighbors are on alert and will check in.
It was a mistake cancelling the season on these Great bears ....but I really love having them around. I won't live anywhere Grizzlies and Bighorns don't reside.
Most of the locals have first hand experience with Grizzlies, some have been ripped up a bit. Not if , but when a hunter will have an encounter....especially if he cow calls elk, they can zero in on this.