vichris
Active Member
- Messages
- 234
I was fortunate enough to take my first bear with a bow this year. The area I like to hunt holds a fair amount of bears and this year was no exception. I had bought a bear tag so that if I ran across a bear again while elk hunting I could take one. We had seen a lot of bear sign while scouting and during the first several days of elk season. On the morning of 9/6/08 I was slowing working my way to one of my elk honey holes. As I slowly worked my way to my spot I heard some noise and came around some trees to find a good sized black bear foraging for berries. I drop my pack and got my range finder out and slowly moved up on the bear. I ranged it @ 60 yds. If I could get up to 40 yds I knew I could make a good shot it so I range a few trees in front and found one to be 20 yds away. I slowly maneuvered behind the tree and worked my way to the tree. When I got to the tree I ranged again and was right at 40 yds. As I knocked the arrow the bear looked up at the sound of my string but went back to eating berries. I drew and put my 40 yd pin on the bear but I couldn't really pinpoint a spot to aim for. The bear looked like a big black blob. I decided to let down and the bear again looked up at me but quickly went back to digging around for more berries. Finally the bear slowly moved to a more broadside position and I quickly drew and released the arrow. At the shot the bear spun around and ran. I went back and retrieved my pack and moved up to where the bear was standing and quickly found my arrow. The arrow was covered in blood. I took me a fair amount of time to find the exact path the bear traveled but I finally did find it. The pine needles, leaves, and claw marks left a definite direction of travel. I soon found blood too. At first it was small drops which developed in large drops and into large splashes. Soon I was finding pools of blood and logs painted with blood where the bear had crawled over them. I also noticed that if I looked up ahead I could find blood just by looking for meat bees. The blood trail lead to a step canyon and that's when I decided I needed to go back and see if I could find some help. By the time I got back to camp and the rest of my hunting party got back from their days hunt it was to late to attempt to find the bear before sunset. Early the next morning my hunting buddy Steve and I took off to see if we could find the bear. I was very familiar with the canyon it headed into so we decided to see if we could locate the spot the bear dropped into canyon from the bottom via my GPS readings from the previous day. The only problem was that I could not pick up consistent satellite signals from deep inside the canyon. So I climbed up the canyon walls back to the spot where the bear had dropped down into the canyon. After tracking through some very thick brush, down a miserably steep trail, under logs, over logs, and even over a chasm that had a log across it (I about wet my pants when I saw those blood drops on that log) the trail finally dropped down into the bottom of the canyon. I knew the bear was really laboring as it crossed one particular log that was painted entirely over the top with blood. I was head down scanning the canyon floor for blood when I looked up to see the bear 5 ft in front of me....dead. I radioed Steve who had stayed in the canyon and he made his way over to see the bruin. When I had initially seen the bear the 1st thing that came to mind was that was a big boar. We were both surprised when we discovered that the "boar" had teats. It was a sow.
Here are a few pics of my NM bear.
Here are a few pics of my NM bear.
