Nice pics Bill. Spent the last two days wandering around the Waldo Lake Wilderness. About 13 miles a day up and down and no shots fired. Saw one nice bull though and there's always next weekend.
As for the bear. I shot him out of a treestand. I'd had a trail camera up in the woods since the middle of July to see what kind of bucks were in the area that I have permission to hunt on. Last week of July I go to check on the camera and it's been torn off of the tree and bitten. Luckily the lens and the flash were intact, but the LED screen was toast. I decided I'd kill the bear if I could.
As some of you may know, Oregon has a no bait, no dogs law. My understanding though is that you can use scent to bring bears in, as long as it is on you. So...I bought this stuff called 12 Miles of Dead Fish, which is basically a scent stick that you burn. And it does reek. I climbed up a tree in my climber stand and lit one of those babies up and hunted till dark with the stupid thing stuck in the laces of my boot. Nothing. Talk about feeling like a dork!
Anyway, I still had some sticks left and figured you can't rule anything out until you've tried it more than once, so a couple of nights later I was up the tree again with a stink stick in my boot. Just as it was getting dark and I was thinking these things were made to sell to idiots, I hear some huffin'. Sure enough here comes Yogi, real skittish. He walks in on me quartering to and I don't have much of a shot so I waited and he boogered up and ran off about 50 yards and started sniffing some more. I thought I'd blown it. After about 15 seconds though he came circling in again. He passed behind some bushes and when he came out he turned broadside in front of a tree and I hammered him. He ran off about 40-45 yards into brush and I heard him moan his last. I'd say less than 8 seconds from impact to death.
So that's the story. Don't think I'd do it again. Feels hippy weird hunting with incense in your boot, but considering the camera, we had a score to settle.
Stan
Topic: ***Daily Hunt Pics and Stories 2005*** (Read 29866 times)
