Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Elk Hunting In Grizzly Country

Maybe not - could have been the bear itself after being on a rotting carcass.

I was taking my wife and boys out on a spring walk to one of my moose-hunting areas, with my carry rifle - '94 in .30-30.

50 yards off the road we got the smell, just as Mr. Bear (Brownies in this area, usually) went crashing off through the second growth, while we went back to the truck, post haste. A few days later I poked my nose in there again VERY cautiously! No smell, no carcass, no bear.

Killed a cow caribou up near the top of a ridge, once, after sunset, 2 miles from the truck. Gutted her, spread the rib cage open with granite shards and left. Over the top, and down in a big cirque, I got jumped in the half-dark at maybe 50 feet by a young 2 or 3 year old brownie coming out of a sunken, grass-lined stream bed. Bear was likely thinking I was a meal on the hoof of some sort. I certainly smelled like it after the hasty dressing job. After a brief stare down, a stand-up look at me, and loud - um- "conversation", it realized what I was and left muy pronto - up the way I'd come down.

Next morning I found it on the gut pile, which had rolled 50 yards or so down the steep slope from the cow. More "conversation" followed , only this time I had a fully loaded magazine and chamber in the '98 .280, instead of only 2 rounds in the mag as per the night before, after shooting the cow and not topping out again. Dumb!

The bear left, not without looking back a few times.

The bear had eaten the liver, took a little off the brisket, bitten into the heart, and crapped all over the place.

I kept the rifle within reach as I skinned and parcelled the cow, and had it in my hands before you could say "Oh, chit!" after I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.

I have never before nor since been puckered by a big batch of yellow and blue party balloons come drifting over the ridge line just above me.....

I'm with T Inman - bearanoia is over-rated, but pay attention!

I always freak out when I see party balloons in the wild.... especially if they are attached to a clown....

Funny about the balloons.

When I was a kid, my dad bribed me with bear hunting if I split enough wood throughout the summer. We spent the entire summer near West Yellowstone and bears were a common occurrence almost every day.

I split enough wood to qualify to go bear hunting at the end of the summer and my dad dropped my brother and I off at the highway to sneak into where the bears ate at a campground dump near Beaver Creek.

When we walked up, a black bear crawled out of the dump and my brother shot it. When we got up to it, there was an Eddy’s Bread sack hanging out of the bear’s butt.

Being kids, we weren’t sure how to handle the situation, and pointed it out to our dad.

All he said was “don’t mention any of this to your mother.”

Shrapnel, what do you think that bear weighed?

I would guess around 500#

Almost always the right choice.

Many of my conversations with my sons have began or ended with “Don’t tell Mom”.

ha

That is an exellent point you bring up las, it may have been the bear that stank and maybe there was no buried carcass.