A day in the life of a stalker

[code]

Day #1
2 bear
3 elk

We made it to our campsite by 3:30pm, set up camp and started hunting by 5:00pm. We drove directly to a spot that was recommended by a very good bear hunter friend. We saw two bulls and one cow that were very playful splashing water 20 feet into the air and swinging their heads around. After watching for a few hours we decided to head back to camp. We were just about to turn into camp when we saw a black spot moving 150yds past our camp. I got out my camera, turned it to video, looked up and it was gone. We drove up to where it was got out and called but the bear had vanished. We decided to drive on a few more km but didn't see anything. On our way back we saw the same bear following a power line 200yds from where  we saw him before. He was a smallish bear and it was getting dark so I decided to pass the stalk let alone the shot.


Day #2 to be continued by Okanagan         

[Okanagan]

Hey, no fair!  You took the easy first evening with only two bear sightings and no stalks.  If I don't get it done tonight, will shoot to post tomorrow night.

Will add that Cody's zoom camera is better than a spotting scope.  I was speculating that two of the elk were bulls based on their lighter color, when Cody causally said that they were bulls.  When asked how he knew, he showed me a zoomed and enlarged photo he'd just taken that clearly showed growing antler stubs in velvet.  We could take our time to look at them, much easier than a spotting scope.

[Okanagan]

Day 2.
Lots of elk
Lots of bears (5?)
Three or four steelhead seen, one landed
Several sea run cutthroats seen

Slept in as we did all but the last day.  We only saw three bears before 5:00 PM the entire five days of hunting.
Saw several elk on the way to check the next valley over from our camp.  Saw several sea run cutthroats and a pair of steelhead from a logging road bridge, so hiked ¼ mile to a hidden pool and Okanagan caught one bright steelhead.  There is an early summer run in that stream.



   In late afternoon we checked a small meadow and saw a bear big enough to know instantly that he was a shooter, 125 yards across a small valley. 



The wind was right and his coat was perfect.  Neither of us considered using the rifle.  I thought that the most direct route was impassable due to some low cliffs (we were sitting on one) so told Cody to stalk around through the timber.  The bear heard or smelled Cody, looked his way, and walked calmly into the timber 90 seconds before Cody got into the strip of meadow.
   Cody walked easily back around the base of the rocks to where I waited on the ledge of the road.  The bear was feeding voraciously, paying attention to nothing, and a creek was making some cover sound.  It would have been an EASY stalk to within 30 yards had Cody stayed on the valley floor and moved only when his head was down, which was almost all the time.
   A little later and a few miles away we glassed what looked like a big bear over half a mile from us across a river, no way to get to him.




We went back past camp to check a road recommended to us by a novice bow hunter which he called the bear slot.  Near camp a medium to smallish bear ran off the road and Cody went after it in timber.  He passed on several broadside shots at it which he will have to describe.  He had the big bear we’d just seen in mind.  Half a mile later another bear ran off the road and he followed it and passed on a shot.  It was smallish and rubbed on its hindquarters.
   On the bear slot road, we came on one medium sized bear in the road that ran off into super thick brush and thick small alders.

Back within half a mile of camp Code saw a bear on a cliff ledge above his side of the road.  We hopped out and instantly saw that this was a much larger bear, not huge but a DANDY bow candidate.  Code asked me to estimate range and I said 45 yards.  His arrow shot a smidge under the bear below his heart.  It moved up a body length, stopped to look at us and moved on before he could shoot again.



Sirloin steak, potatoes baked in the coals and apple pie.


If I've left out bears or anything else, Cody, correct the story.  Seems like there was another bear near camp.

[Dave]

Sirloin steak?  No steelhead?

That's about two weeks worth of hunts (if you're lucky) rolled up into one day.

[Okanagan]

Hey Code, rather than drag this out day by day, how about if I describe two stalks and then you tell about your stalk on that last bear that you shot, including shooting in the strong side wind and how you handled that.  (If you have already written something else, go ahead and post that).

Highlight bow stalk:  At 11:10 AM we spotted a bear across a valley ¾ mile away that looked like a Sumo.  He was in a good place to stalk so we drove around to a logging road above him, thrashed quietly down through a bad clearcut and deadfallsâ€"and discovered we were in the wrong ravine.  Up over a cliffy ridge, me sweating and bruising shins and knees.

The bear was still in sight.  I hung back while Code speeded up, working upwind along the edge of the bear’s meadow.  The shade moved off and apparently to get out of the hot sun, the bear fed into the timber when Code was within 100 yards.  The bear didn’t know he was being stalked.  Three more minutes and Code would have killed that one I think.

Highlight--The Five Bear Bow Stalk.  Code spotted a hog of a lone bear 400 yards from us and we went after it, skirting the edge of a meadow.  150 yards into our approach, another bear came out between us and the first one.  The second bear was rubbed as ugly as any bear I’ve seen.

Circling in the timber to get around a water channel, Code noticed a bear up a tree!  (3rd bear on this stalk).  It huffed, groaned and grunted at us.  We could see fur bits up a tree 30 yards away in the middle of a dense thicket, but couldn’t tell size.  I thought that it was a big cub put up the tree while the rubbed sow fed in the open, so talked Code out of fighting through the noisy thicket to see it better.  We scared off the bears in the open anyway, and in hindsight, I wish we had checked out the bear up the tree. 

In the open again, Code sneaked around a point of brush while I hung back.  As I waited I glassed yet another bear (#4) a quarter mile back beyond our starting point in a pocket meadow across the valley.  We hustled back past our vehicle, but the wind was angling toward the bear.  I thought we might get away with it but when we were within 150 yards the bear started lifting its nose high and feeding less, and finally walked into the trees. 

As we stood there accepting our failed stalk, we spotted another bear (#5) 60 yards farther than the one that had just left.  It was feeding in creek bends and its back moved up into view.  Game on--- again.

Getting around water obstacles turned that stalk into a nightmare route of huge deadfalls in thick, thorny brush.  Dripping with sweat I came to a chest high log and just stopped.  Code said, “Grampa, hand me your daypack and rifle over the log.”  Good kid.  Bad stalk.  A friend of ours came back two days later, killed bear # 4 in the same spot with a 150 yard shot from a .280, and retrieved it across the creek with a canoe.

[Okanagan]

This is one of those times I wish the edit feature lasted longer.  I'd delete the five bear story above.  On the way home I told Cody not to post the story of the five bears on one extended stalk, but then I was posting cut and pastes from the daily journal I'd written and forgot my own advice.

Why not post it?  Because it sounds over the top and is such a piece of luck beyond normal that it is best left untold except around the family campfires.  It feels like rubbing it in on folks who don't live near lots of black bears, and I did not intend that at all.  Please chalk it up to ignorant exuberance but not malice.