As it happened the bear climbed waaaaaaay up in that lodgepole and sat draped across a limb looking down at me.
I reached in the back of the quiver for my last broadhead arrow. It was a special arrow and I'd planned on testing it on something other than a bear.
One of the guys from the previous weeks hunt had left a prototype broadhead from a company called New Archery Products. I'd never heard of them.The broadhead was called a Razorback 5 because it had 5 blades... and it rotated on it's ferrule.
What it had going for it was the fact that it was mounted straight as a dye, it was razor sharp AND the arrow it was mounted on had feathers on it.
I sidled around a little bit and looked the situation over. It was a fairly long shot and almost straight up. I slid the arrow across the rest, nocked it and made ready to shoot.
The only real angle I had would send the shaft into the bear's exposed belly and angle upward into his heart lung area.
Bending hard at the waist I came to full draw, took an extra half second to settle in and let the feathered messenger go.
The arrow strobed through a couple of light beams slanting down through the pines and buried to the fletch in the exact spot I was concentrating on. The broadhead came to a stop, protruding a few inches from between the bears shoulders. I knew I had him and stood there watching like a dummy.
As the bear started to lose his grip on his perch I realized I was in danger of getting squished by a very dead bear. I back pedaled out of there a few yards.
The bruin slipped from the branch and hit the branch below him and snapped it like a soda straw.
It flew out and away from the tree.
It was about then that I realized that the real danger might not be from the falling bear at all, but the huge limbs that were raining down around me. I gave the tree even more room.
The bear hit the ground with a resounding thud and lay still. It was over.
As I stood there staring at my prize I was feeling a little numb from the experience and the adrenaline let down.
Before long I was aware that Larry was pounding me on the back and babbling incoherently about the whole show. He'd come along behind me on my stalk with 35mm camera recording most of it.
We'd later find that the action shots were too blurry (obvious camera shake) for any kind of veiwing.
I learned a valuable lesson that evening and wasted no time in adjusting my bow for better clearance of the fletch. I shot plastic fletch for quite a few years after that day with very good success and never experienced the same frustration I had that day on the mountain with a bear and a good friend.
Topic: A bear with rubber feathers... a story for Weekend Warrior**pics added page 3&4 (Read 1801 times)
