Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors 2021-2022 Savage kill page

Didn't know whether to add this to the 2020-2021 thread or start new. ?? Anyway, I started new.

Lots of bears and some really great hunts this year chasing a pig of a bear. Lost track of how many I counted but had a good year. Missed getting the butterball I had chased around earlier but I'm super happy to fill my tag. Next weekend is opening wknd of deer rifle so it was time to get it done. Was in a hurry to get off the mountain so this is all I got for photos. Took a few days to outsmart him. He had my number the first three times, busting me when the wind swirled. He changed his patterns due to my being all over him but I was able to sort it out and set up for a 25 yard encounter. Today I got some elevation where the wind was more steady and he walked right into me. Little 358 got scoped with some good glass and got it done. Two Barnes to the boiler room 2" apart, both went all the way through. He had a broken tooth that abscessed this summer and he should have been 100 pounds heavier for his frame. It was healed up pretty well but he had been suffering by the looks of it. And yet, they just keep going. Tough suckers.

Lot of blood sweat and blisters to a bear in this country.

The 358 was just too short for my eyes to use iron sights with so I bought a Weaver 1.5-4.5 with a 30mm tube, duplex with a red dot center here in the classifieds and that made a real screamer out of the carbine. Here it is ready to roll.






Here's the bear that didn't get away.




2021 is off to a good start. Blacktail deer are up next. Good luck to all this fall!

Nice! Looking forward to reading about your black tail exploits this year too.

Lee

Well played, you.

Way to go!!!

Blacktail lives matter.

Way to go, I like a 358 too.

Not around here they don't! LOL

The bear meat here is outstanding due to the amount of seeds and acorns available here I assume. Some areas here are 80% bear food as far as the eye can see. September is magic time for bear hunting in this country. Gets harder after that.

Nice job!

Persistent is a word that comes to mind. Congrats!

Congrats Roy!!

Glad you tagged out!

Way to go!

Someone asked for the story on gunners bowhunting black bear thread, so I typed it up.



The area I hunt has acorns that grow on bushes low to the ground rather than trees and are ripe in September. Each year it's a big deal waiting for those suckers to get ripe, lots of trips up in the mountains just picking berries, watching sign, and waiting for September magic time. The bears do the same, stomping through every week or so as the time approaches, and if you spend enough time scouting you begin to pattern particular bears. All of a sudden it arrives and within two weeks there are tracks everywhere but the bears hide during most of the daylight hours.

It's still hot so hunting near water isn't a bad idea. If they're near water they move from 5pm to 6pm pretty reliably going to water first then off to feed. It gets dark about 7:30 so that gives you some decent time to hunt every evening. Morning hunts is ambush between feeding areas and their beds. First you have to find their beds, trails, water, and feed, and put the pattern all together along with times and wind direction. Alot of things have to line up. I found a really good bear and waited at his bed for him one morning and missed him at 45 yards as he came bombing in behind me. I was watching forward of course. I was completely unnerved by his size and how dominant he came stomping in. He shook me up!

I tried again a week later and took my wife along, waiting at the same bed with no bear that morning. About 11 am we moved upslope and moved over 400 yards. I called using a combination woodpecker and deer fawn bleat. About 5 minutes later I see him sidehilling from the right up to us, right from where we just came from, circling downwind to get our scent. I got two shots at 60 and 80 yards. I did get a little blood this time and after trailing him for a half mile decided he was just clipped high on the back and was going to be just fine. I was really upset with myself for missing this guy two times and drawing blood. I almost punched my tag right there but my wife convinced me we needed the great meat and that bear wasn't fatally hit so keep going. If I had hit it hard I would have tagged and been done but she was right, we do love the meat. I caught the same bear on trail camera a week later so she was right.

I added a scope to my 358 carbine that had been open sighted and sighted it in on the way up the mountain one day. I had the load for it so it only took 6 shots to zero. This was a good combination and it shot hole for hole at 70 yards. I just wasn't able to focus on a 16" barreled carbine with iron sights and my eyes. As much as I wanted to hunt with an open sighted little carbine, I just couldn't shoot well enough.

I decided to leave the big bear alone for another week and hunt a long tall bear we had seen only the back half of. His tracks appeared bigger than all but the big one we had been hunting so we named him #2 and went after him. My neighbor got a bear tag and went with me and we watched a stretch of road on opposing corners where the bear had been crossing. He came up near me but caught my scent. This was the 2nd time he had come up to the edge of the brush along the road and busted me. We saw one bear in front of the truck that night on the way out that ran right up the road in front of the truck. Bill was thrilled, it was the first time he'd ever seen a bear in the wild. He couldn't quit talking about it.

I'd been having a lot of leg and foot pain from a pinched nerve in my back that put me down for a couple hours a day. That and bone on bone on my left knee and I was limited to about two miles a day walking in the mountains. I decided to quit acting like I was still 20 and outsmart this bear as close to where he crossed the two track road as possible to ensure I could get him out of the steep canyon country.

I would make a big aggressive hunt in the morning hiking, glassing, and calling and by mid day the left knee was really angry so I'd go for a ride on the quad for a couple hours to check sign and scout deer sign for this weekends blacktail opener. Always looking at bear slides and road crossings for timing and size of bears. About 4 pm I'd head back for the evening hunt. The road had enough slope I could shut off the machine and coast it in pretty quietly close to where I wanted to set up. That saved wear and tear on the sore knee. I had to be very quiet because this bear was bedding just a 100 yards or less below the road in a nasty salal thicket.

I didn't want to go down in there because the wind swirled and visibility was low. I am confident he would have come to a call but hunting alone I prefer not to get a bear in my lap without backup. If visibility had been 30 yards I would have tried it, but this bear needed to be left alone in his thicket and caught when he went out for the evening. I wasn't 100% sure he had water down there but I suspected he did and that would mean he'd cross the two track road about 6 oclock, after going to water and stretching, waking up from his nap.

He busted me one more time with the damned swirling wind. The next time I went up to hunt him he had started crossing at a real brushy piece of road 40 or 50 yards around the corner from where he had been crossing earlier. This told me that even though he knew I was hunting him, he didn't want to leave the area, and he still needed to cross that road to go to food. So I rode the quad about 3 miles around a ridge and found his track down in the bottom of the next canyon over. I glassed around and found some good acorn bushes on the opposing slope, which was about a mile from where he was bedding. Knowing they like to be in the food by 7pm at the latest, I figured I could catch this guy on top of the ridge, above the road I had been sitting, before he dove into the canyon where he was feeding, hopefully in good daylight with enough time left to process him before dark.

I headed back to his bedding area and coasted the quad down the mountain, stopping shorter this time to save on the noise. Loading up the pack and making sure I had a good flashlight, I hiked uphill to the ridgeline then south until I found his trail coming up from below. I was about 150 yards above the road where he had busted me three times in a row. Since he had moved over to the brushy ravine to cross the road, I left his trail and moved over about 40 yards so I could see the ravine real well. It was 4:30 pm.

My mind was alert and I was 80% hopeful I could catch him, but you always have doubts, that's why they call it hunting and not killing. Missing that big dude twice was heavy on my mind, working on my confidence as I sat there and waited. Would I miss again with the new scope setup? It was a tack driver with a scope on it, but you always wonder.

Right at 6pm with no warning, no bluejays squawking, no squirrels scolding, no twigs snapping, I see him coming up the hill on my left, right up the ravine. He had done exactly what I'd hoped and crossed at the brushy spot again and come straight up the hill about 60 yards over from his regular trail. I guess he hadn't heard me coast down in on him and he thought he was all alone. He was just off to my left about 25 yards broadside and moving along sniffing the ground and acting like his food was running away and he was going after it.

This was the first full look I'd had at him. He was a long legged bear and a long bear, but not heavy for his size, if that makes sense. I hesitated and was trying to decide whether to shoot or let this one go when all the work and effort of figuring him out came flooding back in. Deer season opened up next weekend so then my attention would be divided, making it harder to dedicate the time to figure out a bear. Also, I have friends, usually new hunters or people with alot less experience, that I like to help with their tags and having a deer and bear tag unfilled would take away from that, which is one of my big joys each fall. I didn't have a lot of time to ponder the meaning of life, so my instincts just kind of took over and I fired once at his chest. He jumped forward and began to run but by then I had racked the lever and shot again. He made it about 5 yards in all and went down. He let out that gawd awful death moan, twice no less, and laid still.

I sat there trying to get that sound out of my head and making sure he was really done. It really bothers me when they wail like that. They have such a tremendous will to live and are so strong they die hard. Like I said before, if I didn't love bear meat I'd photograph them instead.

When I cleaned him I discovered he had a broken canine tooth that was dark gray, and a healing abscess that broke through the skin on his lower jaw. He was nearly healed but had been suffering for most of the summer and I believe had not been able to put on the weight he should have. If he had not been handicapped by the injury I think he would have been 75 or 100 pounds heavier for his size. His meat was perfect and no odor or sign of anything off other than the scab on his jaw. I finished cutting him up today and it was some of the most beautiful dark red meat I've ever processed. It should be wonderful eating.

Since I was in a hurry to get done before dark and get him off the ridge I only took one photo in the waning light. Here's the little 358 carbine I hunted with irons until it got new glass I picked up here in the classifieds. I load it with 180 grain Barnes ttsx and TAC powder. A real shooter and it shoots flames and bullets! LOL

*same two photos as above deleted

Now I'm craving bear brats.

Just got in from opening weekend of blacktail deer hunting. I took the neighbor kid along who had a bear tag, and I had a deer tag. Can you predict who saw what? LOL He was using a certain powder coated 99 in 358. He enjoys hunting with a Savage lever gun.

Opening weekend I was in the same canyon that I saw the good 4x4 and smaller buck in a couple weeks ago. Camped at the closest spot I could find, rode two miles in on the mountain bike in the dark got there at daylight. Glassed for an hour or so, wind coming downhill when all of a sudden I smell bear! I turned around looked uphill half expecting him to be coming down the bank on top of me! Nothing close but after a few minutes I spot a big black bear at about 125 yards. I
'm not bear hunting but Robert is. Of course he's not with me. So it goes.

I watched the bear off and on for an hour or so and he was moving real slow going around hoovering up all the acorns that had fallen off the bushes onto the ground. He was a great bear, I estimated him at between 350-400 pounds. Around here that's a good one. No deer to be found so I decided I'd sidehill over to the next ridge and look into the next canyon from some rockpiles I could see from where I was. The wind was blowing downhill so I just boogied across the mountain under the bear keeping an eye on him so he didn't bust me. With any luck I'd be able to bring Robert back Saturday evening and have a shot at that bear. As I sidehilled over to the next ridge I kept glancing back at the bear. When I was partway across I looked back and had a good view of the hillside that had been above me. I was surprised there were actually two bears moving along parallel to each other about 25 yards apart. The range was less than 300 yards. I recognized one as the black one but when I looked at the other something was different about it. I set the rifle against a tree and took out my binoculars. By now I was in the morning sun as it crept onto the hillside so I moved really slow.

When I saw the second bear my jaw literally dropped. It looked brownish red with a lighter red blanket over it's shoulders, and it was much larger than the black one! I thought the black one was good, but this bear looked like a grizzly next to him! What a magnificent bear. And here I sat with a rifle and no tag. I watched them both feed along together for another half hour or so until the red one disappeared onto a bench on the relatively open hillside. I figured he would bed there for the day, or that was my guess. The black one kept feeding but I really needed to get on with my deer hunt so I left them and finished scrambling over to the next ridge. This canyon was more rugged with rock slides and outcroppings interspersed with various sized trees and some cover. I glassed this one intently looking for the 4x4 I knew lived here somewhere. No luck.

After another hour or so I had circled down the canyon and back up to the tangled two track road without event. When I returned to camp Robert followed a few minutes later. A plan was hatched for the evening hunt for those two behemeths. Hopes were high as neither bear seemed interested in leaving their enclave. The day passed very slowly and the sun seemed to hang in the sky F O R E V E R. Finally after several hours of going over gear, washing up. napping, and eating all the snacks we could find we headed out about 5pm. We were in place at 6 and I spotted a doe pretty quickly at 400 yards. While I was looking for anyone else that might be with her the big black bear appeared about 50 yards behind her. Her attention was split between us and the bear. The bear was angling slightly uphill and was on a track to pass just a few yards above her and towards us. As we watched and wondered what drama was about to unfold we noticed a second deer, a good buck, standing where she had been. She had moved over and a really nice 4x4, probably THE 4x4 I was after, was standing there, watching that bear approach them. The bear had no clue the deer were there since the wind was blowing downhill and he was above them.

I had promised myself I would pass on a deer if it meant a better chance for Robert to fill his bear tag, and DAMMIT TO HELL, that promise came back to haunt me almost before the ink dried on it. Here was a great blacktail at 400 yards broadside, the one I came for, and a bear about 15 yards above him. If we'd have had two long range rifles it would have been a countdown 1,2,3,boom/boom! Roberts bear and my deer all at once, but alas, we had one long range rifle and one short range 358, plus an inexperienced shooter. The thought had occurred to me to let Robert shoot the bear first then while the deer was trying to figure out what was going on, shoot him second with the same rifle, other shooter of course. It was just too much for Robert to process as it turns out. We watched the bear slowly feed his way towards us for a half hour or more but it was pushing late evening. I wasn't comfortable with Robert shooting the bear at 300 plus yards so we just watched.

In the meantime, I kept going back to the deer that was still there at 400 yards, standing broadside in the open, watching the bear. I could not have asked for a better shot.

The bear closed to inside 250 yards and it was beginning to get dark. When he hit 200 yards Robert made the decision to shoot. By the time he got ready we couldn't find the bear. It had slipped into a crack in the hillside above us where it all began Saturday morning. As darkness closed we decided to sneak out and come back in the morning. I could still see the deer in the scope just fine but there was that pesky promise, so it was not to be.

This morning the alarm went off at 5am. We lit a fire, had a quick bite, triple checked our gear and headed out, this time on the atv's. We were able to ride the uphill section of the approach w/o danger of being seen or heard then we parked the machines and walked the remainder. Not enough people pay attention to the noise and even the headlights as they approach an area to hunt. Slamming car doors or lights flashing are no bueno with me. Total darkness and silence are essential. I've been watching bears that hear a car on a gravel road from 2 miles away and they run for the timber as soon as they hear it. If you want to hunt undisturbed animals you just can't let them know there's a human within 100 miles. That's why we camp there even though we're only 20 miles from home. No truck coming up the mountain at 5 am to scare everything off.

When we arrived before daylight again, we got settled in, with Robert taking up a spot about 20' behind me. We started glassing and it wasn't long before we spotted our first bear. Unfortunately, he had busted "us" and was making his way sidehill at 250 yards for the next canyon over. Robert couldn't decide what to do so he did nothing. A few minutes later another bear follows the same pattern, running like he got a whiff of a big bear he wanted to nothing to do with. The wind seemed right for us blowing straight downhill but they had sniffed something. He was bigger than the first and definitely a shooter bear but smaller than the big black from the day before. Same range, same conversation, Robert couldn't commit, and the bear walked. Two bears in 10 minutes at 250 yards, no shots fired.

We glassed some more but apparently there was no other bear. We tried calling to be sure, and to flush any deer that might be hiding in the canyon with no luck. The rest of the morning hunt we sidehilled our way back towards camp 1 1/2 miles away trying to flush a buck or bear. Only three does and sore feet for our effort. There were bear tracks here and there, all fresh. We arrived back at camp, loaded up and came home. I dropped an SD card from the trail camera so I'm headed back up there to get it. We have a bear on it coming out of the creek bottom once a week. Now if we could figure out where he is the other 6 days at a time we'd be set. LOL

Just got back from retrieving the SD I had dropped. Hiked back out to the canyon and made it just in time to see the big black bear approaching a small ravine where all the action seems centered in this canyon. I haven't been in there but I'd bet $1000 there's a bathtub sized pool those bears lay in and drink from. After he emerged from the ravine he headed uphill to the small bench on the hillside where the red bear had disappeared the day before. Robert and I had sat on that very bench for an hour this morning waiting for one of the big bears to come in, to no avail, and now there he is, 6:15 pm, full daylight, and no one is there to welcome him. *sigh*

No buck tonight anywhere in the canyon. I will return for him. Wish I still had a bear tag.

It wouldn't be called hunting if it wasn't like your experiences.

Saw three great bears and a few does today. Completely circled a mountain, got rained on and sat in the fog for hours. No buck.

There were three bucks in the yard when I got home including a big 4x4 with eye guards.

doe antelope, zip, switch barrel 99G with the 250-3000 barrel, one. Ruined my one shot kill string. It took two shots.
Unfortunately I took photos with my stupid piece of junk cell phone and I can't get it to transfer the pics. Took a pic of the piece of junk cell phone with the 35 MM. I'll take the 35 mm with me next time.
Dave Harper, my cousin in law, got a buck Monday with his Model 77, 243. Can't post a pic since he didn't use a Savage.


I tried to rotate the pic twice but it didn't take apparently.

The neighbor and I went back to the spot I've seen bears at 6 times in a row now. We spent the night, had a big ol campfire, drank a little whiskey, and fell asleep about 10:30. Woke up late so we hustled to make it 2 miles out the canyon by daylight. Immediately spot this bear in the pre-dawn light, straining to make him out at 550 yards. As it got light he was headed for the next canyon over, hoovering acorns off the ground as he ambled along real slow.

Robert made an amazing 45 minute, 500 yard stalk up the mountain to cut him off. I was able to watch through the binoculars as they were on a collision course. Finally Robert spots the bear at 55 yards, feeding completely unaware. One well placed shot with the 284 and it was over. Robert let out a burst of pent up anxiety and whooped real loud. I chuckled to myself as he celebrated up there on the hillside. As all that's going on I spot movement on the hillside between us. Damn if the big red bear I spotted a week or so ago isn't walking across the hillside broadside at 200 yards. He stopped and looked down the hill towards my position several times. And there I sat w/o a bear tag. Again. LOL

It took us 6 hours to get that bear back to camp and in the creek to cool. Robert is so tickled he's been beside himself talking about it all day. That makes me happy. I love hunting timber pigs and sharing it with such an enthusiastic person. The .284 was flawless as always. The packs were about 90 pounds each. I kept getting stuck like a turtle on his back when I sat down to rest. Damn I'm not 25 anymore. I didn't feel too bad, Robert did a lot of grunting back there too. LOL