Ok fellas. This was my second trip to Stickflingers, but I am still far from an experienced bear hunter. This week helped a lot as I was more patient and got to watch many more bears interact. I didn't get the education David G. and Mike D. got, but mine was much less stressful! My big goal was to take a boar on this trip. Last year I shot a beautiful bear with a 6x8 blaze on it's chest, but it ended up being a sow. A boar was more important than size for me this year.
It was a tough week by big bear standards and I know the Stickflingers staff was stressing over that. They normally have a day or two of east winds in a 6 day hunt. This year the entire first 2 weeks were east. It made many of their best stands unhuntable and made it a challenge to keep 6 hunters in prime locations.
I was placed at the pit stand the first night and I was shown pictures of a 7+ foot black, a 7+ foot chocolate and 6+ foot bears of each color too. Any of them were fine for me. The first bear I saw was a nice chocolate bear that wanted to come sit with me. I shifted and gave it a look and it went down. Much more agreeable than some of my buddies experienced. The chocolate went to the barrel and I could see that it was a couple of inches shorter than the top, probably the 6+ footer. It left without giving me a shot. Later a nice black, slightly bigger came in and I decided to wait since it was the first night and I had seen the chocolate. They both came in later and I was positioned to shoot the chocolate when the black promptly bred her right in front of me. I am glad I didn't shoot her. They ended up repeating the act 3 more times before the night ended. I saw 9 different bears the first night.
The second night I did not see either the chocolate sow or her suitor, but I did see 8 bears with only one repeat from the first night. I had one bear come in that was the color of an Irish Setter dog. By far the prettiest bear I have ever seen and I believe it was a young boar just under 6 feet. He was very aggressive toward the other bears.
Day 3 saw saw heavy rains until 5:30 or so and an abbreviated sit. I was at a new stand called South Bell. A couple of the others had not seen many bears so we switched things up a bit. I had one 5 foot bear spend most of the night with me, but that was it.
Day 4 found me back at the pit with the intentions of taking the red bear if it showed since the bigger bears were being finicky and higher winds were in the forecast for the last 2 days. At 3:15 a brown bear started in and circled to enter from the far side of the barrel. On all fours it stood and drank off the top of the barrel and I realized I may have wrongly assumed it was the chocolate sow. The bear took a couple quick bites and turned to leave. The sow has a scar on her left hip and to my disappointment, there was no scar on the left hip when the bear turned to leave. I knew I had missed an opportunity at a nice bear. I had a couple of smaller bears visit multiple times over the next couple of hours. About 7:30 a small chocolate was circling and went on full alert. I looked to the east and a massive bear was coming in. It had red guard hair and black tips so it looked black until the wind blew and then there was a red tinge. I wanted to kill this bear. It saw the smaller bear and put on a full charge right under my tree. It ran the small bear 200 yards and treed it. Unfortunately he never came back.
At 8 I had a black bear heading in. It got to the back side of the barrel and I saw it was within an inch or so of the top of the barrel. The big chocolate sow came in and he ran her off multiple times. He also ran 2 other bears off and treed them. Each time he would grab saplings in his mouth and snap them off as he growled at the bear up the tree. After another such display I decided it was a boar around 6 feet and I was going to take him if I could. He came back to the barrel and promptly stopped at 9-10 yards broadside. I was using my Roberston Tribalstyk 54@ 28 (drawn to 29 1/2), a tapered Surewood shaft and a 160 VPA Terminator. I hit the bear in the pocket on the right side and it came out in front of the leg on the left. The bear jumped up on the tree and climbed to about 12 feet before sliding/falling to the ground and making a 50 yard semi-circle. All was quiet and I got no death moan. I walked the 1.6 miles back to camp and guide David and Dave Gage came back to retrieve the bear. It was a good trail and soon we found the bear. The first thing I did was check and it was a boar!
As others have said, we had a great bunch of guys in camp. All were ethical, responsible bowhunters and great shots I might add. The Stickflingers staff is very experienced and they truly care about the bears and the quality of your hunt. If the wind switches to the west this week, watch out for the bears that will be taken!
I am still not sure who this gray bearded gent is in the pics. Surely that can't be me! Pictures at 6:30 AM after 2 AM campfires are tough!
Topic: Stickflingers Experience Learning so much..So far from home. Pics added 6-8 (Read 1451 times)
