Here’s a quick (or not so quick) update on how this season went. First off thanks to everyone who contributed ideas and offered advice. I utilized a lot of it and it ended up paying off well! Disclaimer, I can not fully count this as a traditional archery kill, but I’ll post it anyway. If it needs to be pulled, I understand that.
I began running baits the day after I got up to school, which would have been August 27. I originally had two spots that I was working to keep baited, but one was not getting hit and after a week and a half I stopped baiting it and started at another spot. My first bait site however seemed to be the most active, with a sow and three cubs starting to hit it fairly consistently right away. After a few days a bigger lone bear which I took to be a boar started showing up as well. Another sow with a single cub as well as a smaller lone bear would also show up periodically. Almost all of the activity was during the day which had me excited. It got to be quite a time commitment to bait every day on top of going to class, senior design meetings, and homework, but I did my best to make it work and keep things consistent. Every day after my 11:00 class I would run home, change into my baiting clothes, then drive out and freshen baits. If I hurried I normally would have enough time for lunch before my 2:00 class. All the while bears continued hitting the site consistently during daylight, which gave me high hopes of at least seeing a bear while hunting.
Opening day came and went with a pretty steady parade of bears coming through and hitting the bait site. It was super entertaining watching the sow with cubs as they were feeding and rolling logs out of the way. I also had another smaller lone bear come in a couple of times but it was so small I didn’t even consider shooting it. The second day of season I went out again and had the sow and three cubs come back again. They were there for maybe an hour. Later on the sow came back by herself and stayed until well after dark, causing a bit of excitement when I tried to get out of the tree. She bluff charged once and then followed me out the truck popping her jaws and huffing the whole time. She stayed about 25-30 yards back though and never came any closer. The boar I was after didn’t come in during either of these first two hunts, although he was there midday while I was in class.
I wasn’t able to hunt the third day but the fourth day being Saturday I planned a pretty long day in the tree. After looking at the pictures on my camera the days leading up to season, I noticed that the boar I was after generally came in within an hour or two after I baited. I always made it a point to come in upwind and make a lot of noise when baiting so that the bears would learn that noise usually meant food. I believe that boar got pretty well conditioned to that and would wait until he thought I was gone to come in and feed before the sow and cubs would come clean it up. With that in mind, I decided Saturday I would go bait like I normally do, make a bunch of noise, then drive out and park the truck a ways away and sneak back in. It was in the 70’s, and by the time I got to the stand I was sweating like crazy in my camouflage. With it being so warm and sitting partially in the sun, and combined with staying up late to get some assignments done the night before, I started getting tired. I would nod off and take 2 or 3 minute naps, then scan around real quick and go back to sleep. At 12:30 I was doing one of these scans when I noticed a bear walking in about 30 yards away. It took a second for me to register what I was looking at and then I realized that it was the boar I was after. I slowly stood up and got set to shoot. He looked up at me for a second, then continued on to the bait site. When he got there, he laid down with his back towards me offering no shot. By now I was starting to get the nerves a little bit, and the longer he made me stand there and wait the worse they seemed to get. Finally after about 5 minutes a chipmunk ran through the leaves off to my left and he stood up and turned broadside to look.
Now I’d love to be able to say that all that summer practice paid off and I made a perfect shot on this bear, but the fact is that I didn’t. I drew back, anchored and shot, and I distinctly remember looking at the entire front end of the bear and not one spot. Left to right was perfect, but I was about 8 inches high and ended up hitting him in the spine. He went down with a snarl and started spinning in circles and snapping. I felt sick and quickly got another arrow nocked as he started crawling off through the brush. There was a lot of blood coming from the wound and I thought that I had hit the artery that runs along the spine. I drew back again when he was at 25 but my elbow hit the tree I was in causing me to short-draw. I should have let down but was so focused on trying to get another one in him that I let it go anyways. Again left to right was perfect but I was about 3 inches over his back. I got my third arrow and looked for one more opening in the thick brush he was now in. There was a hole about a foot in diameter at 40 yards that I knew he was going to go through, and as he approached it I forced myself to draw and focus on what I was doing. When he hit the opening I shot and watched the arrow arc in through the gap and hit him, unfortunately just low enough that it missed his vitals.
By now he wasn’t moving very fast at all, and I felt certain that the first arrow was starting to take effect, but I wasn’t sure how long that would take or how far he would go before it killed him. I called my roommate and asked if he would bring my rifle out for me. My sister, who also attends Tech, is always asking if she can be involved with tracking when I shoot something, so I called and asked how adventurous she was feeling. She was excited to come out as well. I didn’t want anymore than 3 people going in after a potentially wounded bear, and made sure that when they both got there that they understood to stay behind me and go slow.
We got on the track and followed it into the thick brush, going very slowly and scanning ahead carefully. It was easy to follow the broken down brush showing where he had gone, but the blood was less than ideal. The trail zig-zagged back and forth with multiple beds within a 15 yard stretch. I was looking at a scuff mark in the leaves when my roommate said “Uh, Trenton”. I looked to my right and the bear was laying tucked under a log on the ground about 15 yards away. At first I thought he was dead, as he didn’t move and we had spent the past 15 minutes within 30 yards of him. However, he then slowly raised his head and looked at us. He was right on the verge of dying, and could barely move his head. I’m confident that another few minutes and he would have been dead. However, I didn’t feel that it was right to let him lay there any longer than he had to just so that I could claim it as a traditional archery harvest, and I gave him a round in the chest with the rifle to finish him.
It wasn’t how I wanted it to end, and it’s unfortunate that that’s how it ended up, but I’m still extremely grateful that we were able to find him and finish him off as quickly as possible. All told he only made it about 60 yards, and actually ended up circling back to only about 40 yards from my stand. The brush was so thick I couldn’t see what he was doing.
He’s not a big bear. When getting him registered I was told between 150 and 160 pounds. However I’m not complaining at all as I never expected to be successful during a first time bear hunt. The freezer is full and I’m looking forward to enjoying bear steaks and roasts throughout the winter.
Again thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread! I read and tried to utilize every little bit of information that was shared on here.
I used my Stillwater Aberdeen recurve, 57@29. GT 500's with a 200 grain 3 blade VPA. Arrow weight was around 525 grains.
Not sure why that picture at the end is upside down...
Photoshoot with the small bear opening day
Topic: Black Bear Tips and Tactics UPDATED 9/13 (Read 5388 times)
