So I had a bear in the freezer and the pressure was off. Actually one of the things that makes bear hunting so fun is that there really isn't any pressure. Most every day you'll see bears, and most every bear you see will be in range. But for me the third day was even less pressure. I wasn't going to stick a bear unless I was convinced it would go 18 inches, and I probably wouldn't even shoot it then. I had 4 more days to hunt and I wanted to enjoy them.
Before setting up on day 2 we'd checked several baits, all of which had been hit, and 2 of which had bears at them when we approached. One had a large pile of bear, uh, poop. That's where I was headed for Day 3.
Much like the first 2 days, bears started showing up before I even got settled. Also like the first two days, the first bear to show up was a respectable boar. Not big, not small. I was content to watch him. Then another similar sized bear shows up a couple of minutes later (turn your volume up):
These two carried on for maybe an hour when suddenly their heads both shot up and looked down the path they had come in. Seconds later they were fleeing the scene in a big hurry. I figured it had to be a dominate boar so I got the video setup and got ready:
But, as I always seem to do with bears, I couldn't decide if he was a shooter or not. He was clearly a dominate boar. He also had a nice white blaze on his chest (visible on the video above), but was he 18"? Unfortunately he didn't hang around for me to debate... He caught of whiff of me, came over and postured under my stand for a few minutes and left. Unlike most bears, he wasn't comfortable with me being there. I figured my shot at him was over. Absence made my heart grow fonder, or something like that.
The two other black bears wandered back after a few minutes, joined by a smaller black sow. Then a few minutes later the big bear was back! He came in cautiously, paused briefly by the bait, and then came over to my stand. You could tell he still didn't like something and it looked like he was going to take the path leaving the site to my right again, but he paused at 7 yards:
You can hear the death bellow if you turn the volume up.
He went less than 30 yards, although it was so thick I couldn't see him go down. To give you some idea of how dense it was, I only lost sight of him for maybe 10 yards, and I could hear him die. Still it took two of us maybe 15 minutes to find him. You had to nearly step on them in some of that country.
Green scored 18 3/8ths!
