There were 4 people in my group at camp, all trad archers. Mike Dutdut, myself, and the father and son duo of Doug and Dave Hill. The Hills had flown into Montreal from Texas and rented a vehicle and Mike had driven from Illinois. I communicated with Mike during the trip, and we both ended up spending the night before the hunt at the reasonably priced Hotel Normandie in Louisville, which is around an hour from camp.
We met up with Jerry, his son Luke, and the Hills on Tuesday morning, got our licenses and orientation, and anxiously awaited getting out to the baits for the evening hunt. If you have checked out any of Jerry's youtube videos, you will be a little familiar with Luke. He is 17 years old, and a very nice and hardworking young man. Jerry is doing a great job of showing him the ropes of being a guide, and Luke has experience that is beyond his years.
I told Jerry during the orientation that my biggest concern was shooting a small bear accidentally, and the group went over some of the ways to judge a bears size, the most obvious one being comparison to the bait barrels, with a discussion of the number of hunters that overestimate the size of the bear due to excitement. I think we all were a little excited from the start, but not beyond what is reasonable.
We headed out to our spots, and were told not to leave our stand for any reason until Jerry returned to pick us up, so as not to chase bears away from the spot(as they were likely close) and ruin the spot for ourselves or future hunters.
We were told how sneaky the bears can be, and each hunter can now confirm that to be the truth. Much like a mature boar hog, they can approach a bait silently, often stepping in the exact footprint from previous trips to the bait. We were told to be ready to shoot immediately after being dropped off, as the bears can be very close and come into the bait right after the truck pulls away, and that the bear will smell you, but if you are motionless and silent they will still come in. Their hearing is very good, and while their eyesight isn't the best, they see motion well.
The stands that we were in ranged from ground blinds to treestands, that were typically around 7-8 feet off of the ground to the platform, to groundblinds. The bait were set up for shots less than 12 yards, although there are other spots that are longer and more setup for compound shooters when they are in camp. The baits frequently have creative names from prior hunts. I wonder if mine will get one after this hunt.
When we arrived at my bait, I got up in my stand and quickly got ready. I could see that stand from the road, and was told that at this spot, bear were notorious for walking down the road and eyeballing the stand to see if a hunter was in it. The blackflies, which are notoriously bad at times, were not bad at all, and the mosquitos that were pretty bad were being held at bay from a steady wind. I didn't need more than my thermocell and the small amount of DEET that I had applied.
The wind made it difficult to hear, and between that and the cooler weather, the bear weren't quite as active as they otherwise would have been, but I was still pretty confident of seeing bear. A couple hours into the sit, and rain squall came in, and the wind blew my tree pretty good, but I was able to put my rain gear on and stayed dry, although a couple of the guys forgot raingear and got pretty drenched that night. Putting on the raingear was probably the only real motion that I made that could have messed things up, but I looked around pretty good before starting and it was a heavy enough rain to dampen any noise that I would have made.
I didn't hear or see anything until 8pm, when I heard a branch snap. I was later told that a bear will sometimes do this on purpose to announce their arrival at a bait to other bears, and I really believe this is what happened. I looked to my right, and 25 yards in the dark brush, there was a bear looking around, then it started to circle counterclockwise to the bait. In just a few seconds I heard a boar glonking(?not sure of spelling) as it approached the bait, and the sow that was circling to my bait pitched a fit, screaming and smashing the nearby brush. The boar continued to approach, and the sow threw another fit. That was enough to tell this boar that the sow was not ready to be bred. I caught sight of the boar, a large one that was over twice the size of this sow, maybe 80 yards away to my right, between me and a small lake. It just ambled to the north, parallel to the edge of the lake, and out of my life.
The sow silently circled around the bait, and I lost sight of her until she emerged on the road ahead of me, circled slightly into the brush on the other side of the road, crossed over the road again behind me, then to my right, and again in front of my to the bait, which consisted of some grain piles, grain in the upright 55 gallon drum, and some grease poured on the ground. When she reached the bait, she immediately plopped on the ground nearly facing me and began eating grain piles like lazy dog would do. Every once in a while she would stand, and move quickly into the brush 5-10 yards away, then slowly return to the bait. She didn't look spooked at all. I guess this is just what they do sometimes.
She wasn't very cooperative in standing still for very good comparison to the barrel, but it looked like her back came up only to the second ring of the barrel, and for me it was a no-brainer. She was not a shooter for the first day of the hunt, and I settled in to enjoy the show. They only thing I wanted to do was get a practice draw in at some point, because the anatomy of a bear is somewhat different from that of a deer or hog. The sow moved behind the barrel and laid there for a long time, licking at the holes on the bottom third of the barrel. She even hooked the barrel with here claws and rotated the barrel rather than getting up.
The bait was in a depression with a thick canopy above it, so it got dark pretty quickly, and I was starting to have a little trouble seeing. The sow tipped the barrel and began feeding, againg facing me, but turned to feed at a pile of grain on the ground that had spilled out of the barrel. First chance for a practice draw in the low light, but I could barely make out the silhouette. I drew back, like I had done so many times before, but before I knew it the arrow was gone and I heard a loud crack, and the sow took off, toward the lake then turned to the south. I caught a glimpse of the limping bear when it was directly between me and the lake, but lost it after that in the low light.
My string tracker line had some how come loose, and I with minimal motion I pulled it back to me, and saw probably 4 feet of bloody line at the end. I didn't understand how this was possible, but I new that I must have got good penetration. Jerry showed up around 15 minutes later to pick me up, and I told him that I had shot one. Based on the fact that I didn't hear a death moan from the sow and the sound of bone impact, we decided to wait until morning to look for the sow.
The other hunters all saw at least 2 bear, and all reported seeing a nice boar, but no shots were taken other than my accidental shot. I assumed that I had hit the sow quartering away, and broken the off side shoulder, since I have done that on numerous game animal, and I figured it would be a short track. Wrong. We got to the bait, and put Jerry's tracking dog, named Bear, to work.
Let me just say that his dog is a beautiful Bavarian Mountain Hound that is very friendly, tightly bonded to his owner, and was quite the celebrity in camp. Bear is also a skilled tracking dog, even at a relatively young age.
Bear went to work and quickly found the trail. There was a massive blood trail, with Jerry up front with his dog on a leash, and me staying to the rear so as not to interfere with the track. My blood soaked arrow was found were I last saw the bear, and you could literally see piles of blood as far as 20 yards ahead in the dark timber with the naked eye. I was using the same Snuffer broadhead on the tip of the arrow that I had killed a 200# boar hog less than a week prior. You would have expected to see a bear piled up 50 yards from the shot with the amount of blood present, but this went on an on for over 250 -300 yards, when the track led to thick grass on the edge of the lake and disappeared. Fortunately the hound indicated that the location of the sow, just a few yards away from Jerry, in a small depression in the grass laying on it's back. I am confident that any area search would have discovered the bear, since it was less than 15 yards into the grass for good blood, but it may have taken enough time for the meat to spoil.
We took a quick video of the spot of recovery began the drag out of there, amazed at how far the sow had gone with the amount of blood. It wasn't until we were nearly back to the road that we noticed and arrow wound on the sow's head, since she had been laying on here back when we found here. We tagged here and loaded here into the truck, got here back to camp, and had a good look at here during the skinning process. It turns out, the arrow had gone in through a portion of the skull , down and out the opposite side of the neck, and through the opposite side armpit. Large amounts of blood were on the armpit, coming out the neck wound, and just coating the chest. The best that I can guess is that in the low light, and with not really intending to shoot, I didn't notice that the bear was turning toward me and taking a step back when the shot went off. I believe that the greatest amount of blood loss was from what was probably the Axillary artery in the armpit, and the combined blood loss from the armpit and neck is what did this sow in.
Topic: Russell Outdoor Guides- Bear Camp Thread (Read 3166 times)
