One of my grandsons got a bear opening day, August 1, and it was such a low profile event I didn't even know about it till a couple of days later. Zay thought that I knew he'd gotten a bear. I don't have any pics and I heard his story while he was prepping the skull.
This is the third year (in a row I think) that he has either killed a bear opening day of bear season in WA, or passed a good sized one.
In late afternoon he hunted a thick brushy hillside where bears like several kinds of berries, but so thick that it is hard to see a bear. He could hear a bear foraging in the brush on the hillside across a small canyon from him, and spent over an hour trying to get a look at it. He crossed to the bear's side of the valley, climbed up above the bear, tried different angles from the opposite hillside across from the bear, etc. He has called and killed bears that way but I don't know if he called to this bear or not.
The bear finally showed itself at sundown through a hole in brush at 240 yards and he shot it with his semi-auto chambered in 6mm ARC. First shot through lungs, the bear dropped, then got up again and he shot at it twice more within 2 or 3 seconds, hitting it once more. Using tipped Barnes, not sure of weight but think they were 90 grain bullets.
He phoned his brother, Code, who lives nearby, to help him track. Code drove up the logging road and hustled and got to where Zay shot from in 16 minutes. It is so thick with berry bushes laced with head high stinging nettles that the arms and any exposed skin on those two young men are a solid mass of scratches.
It got dark enough to need flashlights and Zay stumbled on the bear by chance while looking for blood, 20 or 30 yards from where it was hit. Average sow, about 200 lbs. or a tad more live weight, very fat, stomach full of berries. Three hundred yard pack out on fairly easy slope, that Code said was their worst pack out ever due to thorns and stinging nettles!
Congratulations on the bear and sorry about the conditions.
That woulda been fun 40 year ago.
Congrats on finding it.
Yah, I'm exhausted just from reading it. :laf: