Like I said earlier, we hunted some mighty pretty country. The 1st morning we hunted till 9:30 and came out for a real breakfast so we could get back in at noon and hunt the mid day moon phase and the rest of the day. During that morning I went on a little walk finding some more sign that looked promising for the afternoon.
That afternoon Doug, Barry and I all went looking at my 'new sign'....and we set Barry up on a trail that was heavily used as Doug and I went higher scouting again to try and fine tune the area and fine brand new sign.
What we found puzzled us, but it finally dawned on us that the white oaks we done on the ground, and nothing but hulls were left. No bear scat and we determined the missing acorns were done mostly by hogs due to the sign we found......
![](https://www.tradgang.com/upload/terry/stjcohutta2010tuskgouge.jpg)
So, we went back and got Barry and started descending finding more sign lower down the mountain and came to what we call 'spring one' and it was hot with hog sign and a bear track. Barry was set up on this immediately as Doug decided to hunt below spaghetti junction, and I proceeded to 'spring two'.
I was tickled when I got to spring two at the sign there as well, but after a few minutes of monitoring the wind, I bailed out as I felt like I was cutting Barry off. So, I went back and told Doug I was going off the back side of the lead he was on.
I knew of this area where two trails came together and a little outcropping of rocks that I could hunker back into. I got all set up and cooled off and I got board. I took this interesting pic of a trees 'root-rock basket'.....
I just didn't have a lot of confidence and felt like I was just 'killing time'
so I headed north paralleling the lead. I got about 80 yards away and I saw a mini bluff and nocked at arrow because I could see a white pine was growing up from the base of the bluff. As I snuck and looked over the edge, sure enough, there was a bear bed under that white pine, but no bear was present. I leaned up against a tree for a few minutes and started to climb up the lead a bit when I finally found fresh sign....bear scat with gnats and a beetle on it.
![](https://www.tradgang.com/upload/terry/stjcohutta2010scat.jpg)
Needless to say....I went right back to my rock outcropping and hunkered back in.
![readit :readit:](https://www.tradgang.com/tgsmf/Smileys/tg/readit.gif)