Unfortunately, not the way I hoped. I shot a good bear, thoughtI made a great hit, but did not recover it.
Got up thereThursday afternoon to hot temperatures. Our stands were 7 miles up the lake sowe went out Friday late morning to put up the stands. Plenty of sign, but thebaits hadn’t been hit. We spent the rest of the day learning the lake andcaught plenty of fish. First day to hunt was to be Saturday, but that afternoonthere was a tornado warning and several severe thunderstorm warnings so wecalled it off. It was about 90 degrees and the wind was wrong so didn’t botherme. The front that was coming had the right winds with it. We did go up and putsome more bait out though and found it had been hit Friday night. Sunday I gotinto the stand around 5, bait had been hit again Saturday night. About quarterto seven a pretty good bear was coming in. I had seen it early enough to be atthe right position and got a good enough look to see it was one I wanted. I wassurprised how good it looked. Really wasn’t sure how the hair would be inmid-august. Beautiful black with a beautiful chocolate on its muzzle. It camein north of the bait, stopped behind a mid-size evergreen checking shit out. Hetook two steps forward that put him at about 30 yards perfectly broadside.Couldn’t have asked for a better shot. I drilled him with my .375 win. With whatlooked like the perfect shot behind the shoulder. It knocked him flat off hisfeet, he was on the ground kicking all four feet, spinning around. Couldn’tbelieve it when he got up and ran into the woods again.
Here’s where I kick myself in the nuts inhindsight. He got into a spot north ofme where I could see him through a spot in the trees. I could only see black,but in my mind thought that another bullet into him would help, not knowing forsure what part of his body I was seeing. I drilled him again and all hell brokeloose. Roaring, growling, crashing, about a 3 inch diameter tree he knockedover crashed down. Pissed him off big time and apparently gave it one hell ofan adrenalin rush. In hindsight I believe he would have laid down soon andprobably bled out. When we started looking we had great blood………right up untilI shot again.
Monday spent 7hours, Tuesday 3.5 hours, Wed. and Thurs. went back basically hoping birds oranything could help us. No luck.
All in all, beautifulcountry, good fishing, just wish it had a better ending.
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I typed that in outlook and copy/pasted it. Not sure why it eliminated many spaces between words, but it won't let me edit it. Also when I logged into NDA this morning the first thing I see is that article about tracking wounded deer with a dog. I can't say how many times that crossed my mind those few days.