2nd Day of Hunting
Breakfast is at 8am. Bear hunting is civilized.
One of my age finds himself humming the “Look for the bear necessities of life” while choosing between omelets, eggs benedict, ham, bacon, and French toast. Why Miss Kathy put that little container of granola cereal over in the corner I will never know.
After noticing the stare
coming from PB I backed away from the table and went and got our backpacks and her rifle. PB had originally planned to use her 7mm 08 on this trip. However, after discussing rifle choses with Mike she opted to use the 375 H&H. Our first morning she fired this rifle at a target for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time since we owned it. All three shots fit inside of a 4inch plate and the last two were overlapping. All three shots were taken off of sticks. After checking the target, PB broke into a large smile and told me that she liked shooting this gun. That was not her response after the first time she shot the gun at home. If PB played football for me, she would start. However, I would never watch her at practice. Her technique would be awful. In a game, though, she would make plays all over the field. She is a player not a practicer. (new word) Please note she did not like carrying the rifle in her words, “It is too heavvvvvy.”
We started the day back in the truck driving the logging roads. There will be signs on the sides of the road stating when a certain part of the forest had been replanted. This morning we were going through a forest that had been planted in 1958. These were big trees but even then when compared to the some of the stumps I had seen they were not anywhere near the size of the old growth trees.
On this road we were following very fresh tracks and scat. We came to the point in the road where it had been washed out by floods. We dismounted, scrambled across the washout and started following the bear down the road. The forest is so thick even the bears choose to travel the roads. We walked for half a mile till we came to another washout. This was a much steeper climb so Mike asked us to wait as he reconnoitered the road on the other side. Mike crossed the stream and started walking down the road and soon disappeared around a curve. PB and I spent the time marveling at this temperate rainforest we found ourselves in. On the right side of the road the ground sloped sharply upwards and this area had been logged in the past decade. The left side of the road dropped quickly into a creek bottom. The trees along the creek had not been cut and so this created an edge of clearing of 20 yards between the road and trees. There was a large log laying on the ground at this edge. The sun was just climbing over the mountain to our right and had spotlighted the log. I looked down the road and saw Mike returning. I looked left and that log had changed. It had a bear on it. The bear had seen Mike and needed a better view so it climbed up on the log. He sat there on his haunches watching Mike walk by with benign curiosity. Once he was satisfied the bear casually ambled down the log and dropped off into the bush below. By this time in the hunt PB and I knew that this bear was the same size as the ones we had seen yesterday. We could not tell you whether it was a boar or sow, though. Mike never saw the bear until he got back to us and then only briefly before it disappeared. A great start to the day.
Vancouver Island is a temperate rainforest. The sunshine that had spot lighted that bear was the last sunshine we saw that day. It started to rain. Now for us Texans rain is not a big deal after the last 16 months. Texas itself maybe turning into a rainforest. We spent the rest of the morning driving to overlooks. We would glass. We would clean rainwater from our optics. We would glass. We would clean rainwater from our optics. Note, bring many dry rags to clean your optics.
Lunch was taken on top of a mountain overlooking roads that traveled through several cut areas. The idea was to spot the bears across the valley and then drive to the base of the hill and walk up the road to the bear. This could get interesting when some of the roads looked like this.
After lunch Mike took us to his next overlook position. Mike has been hunting this area for many years. Mike is 31 years old. He looks 16 but he knows his hunting area and he knows where big bears are located. The question is will they be visible. We came to the next overlook. Mike jumped out of the truck climbed a brush pile and started glassing. By the time I could get out he was already heading back to the truck for the spotting scope. “We are in luck the big bear is out!!!” he said. I climbed up the brush pile and immediately my glasses and binoculars became rain soaked. Mike was looking through the spotting scope and said, “Yep, that’s the big bear we have been looking for the past two years.” By this time PB was up with her glasses but all she could see was raindrops. I looked in the spotting scope and amongst the raindrops I finally saw a large black blob. Even to this amateur it was obvious that we needed to go after this bear.
We piled back into the truck and Mike began to race down the mountain. Ok, the Dodge truck we were in could corner really well. It was better than a roller coaster. As we moved down the hill Mike began to tell us the history of this bear. For the last two years they had seen the sign of a very large bear in this drainage. This sign was such that every time Jim Shockey had come to hunt this area he would spend several hours glassing from where we had seen the bear. This was the first time anyone had seen the bear. Mike was excited!
We got to the bottom of the hill and then drove across the drainage to the road that went up the hill that the bear was on. Mike had also told us that he had briefly seen a sow with the boar. The rut was on! When the road started going up hill we stopped, got our gear ready and started walking. We immediately starting walking through an alder grown road where visibility was zero. We were deep into this cover when it dawned on me that there was a bear in here and possible two. Pulse rate went up. Adrenaline started pumping. All of a sudden I could hear the bees buzzing in the flowers near me. I could smell the wet alders we were walking through. None of these sensations I had noticed in the last two days but now I could. Again I was third in line and carrying PB’s rifle. I could tell the road curved to our right. Mike was ahead of me enough to see around the curve but I could not. He came to an immediate halt and turned to us. Just his eyes told me to push the rifle to PB. As she grabbed it I was able to take a cloth and wipe the lenses of the scope. Mike had the sticks set up. PB had the rifle up on the sticks and I was able to step up closer to see down the road just in time to see a very large bear 30 yards from us turn broadside. The bear was standing just at the point where the alders cleared. So we could see it but it could not see us. I had the sense that the sow had just stepped off the road to our right and was heading up hill.
Mike whispered, “Shoot.”
BOOM! was the response.
The bear hunched and jumped straight up. He wheeled and headed left and down into the gully. Mike raced forward to where the bear left the road. The cover is so tight on these roads that a follow up shot on the road is not possible. Mike had told us that he would do this and not to reload until he had called us up. Mike waved us forward. PB reloaded and I grabbed the sticks. We came around a brush pile and looked down into the gulley and could see the bear starting to work up the other side. Mike set the sticks and PB gave two follow up shots. Mike then added his rifle and the bear was down on the opposite slope of the gulley. PB’s shots had been solid and Mike’s shots had brought a quick end to a very strong bear. It was proper team work between hunter and guide.
I fumbled the camera on the first shot but I got these on the follow up shots.
Princess Bride and her Hairy Bear.
These bears are amazing animals
