Mountain grizzly tracks

[Okanagan]

Got out amongst 'em last week a bit, hunting whitetails.  In a skiff of snow one morning came across these tracks.  The clearest track I had to work with only shows a hind pad plus one toe, but the pad is clear.  Not a big bear by coastal or brownie standards but a  good one for southern British Columbia Rockies way in the interior, with no salmon runs.  The ruler in the photo is 4 inches/10cm long.

[FinsnFur]

Bears scare me.
I had to get up and back away from the computer to even read your post here Okanagan.

[vvarmitr]

Man, in your area you gotta walk softly & carry a big stick er gun.

[pitw]

I agree with Jim here.  I'm lucky the grizzlie's haven't followed the elk and moose back out on the prairie's so I only have to turn my neck 3/4 around when I'm sitting.  4 year's ago when my daughter, Dean and I took some guy's from Denmark out hunting,  I would tell Benny [Dane] every time I'd show him where to sit that he should stay awake and pay attention as not to get snuck up on by a bear.  Everytime we pushed through to him he was alway's alert and looking a little worried.  Walking back for the truck's after one such push he turned to Dean and asked "is there many bear's around here". "None" was the reply,  well the hand the size of a football swung around by a powerpole connected with my chest,  I swear I went backward's 20' and the air leaving my now collapsed upper torso was comparable to gas's leaving an F18.  Dean is still picking thorn's out of his hide from rolling in the rosebush's laughing.  Guess he was a mite worried.

[possumal]

With big rascals like that roaming around, I'd be double careful when using mouth calls. Maybe a rear view mirror is in order.

[Okanagan]

Bears scare me.
I had to get up and back away from the computer to even read your post here Okanagan.

FnF, if bears scare you, you are smarter than you look!  They should, within reason anyway.  I fall somewhere between my Aussie friend now in California who will not cross the border into Canada because there are bears, and Timothy Treadwell, who didn't have enough sense to be afraid of them.

vvamitr, the bears influence what rifle a lot of hunters carry.  Many sheep hunters I know take at least a .338 Win mag with a better quality hefty bullet, not that the sheep need it but in case... .  With my modest 06, in serious bear country I'm starting to lean toward keeping it loaded with 180 Swift A-frames, again, not that deer nor caribou need that much killing.

200 yards from where these tracks were, two years ago a grizzly visited me.  I'd killed a whitetail buck and dragged him down near the road.  I decided to bone out the buck to save vehicle space while I hunted for another buck on a multi-day trip home.  So I hid behind a clump of thick trees and brush within 40 feet of the logging road and went to work laying meat on snowy logs to cool, no hurry that day.  Once in awhile I kept hearing something walking in the forest near me, and assumed that it was a curious whitetail.  Twice I wiped my hands and picked up my binoculars, carefully scanning through the trees to see if I could spot this critter that kept hanging around, and by then had circled almost 180 degrees around me. No luck.  I found my bullet (165 Hornady Interbond) and put it on a stump to take with me when done.

I went off and left the bullet on the stump, near the scattered pieces of skeleton, hide, entrails and dehorned head.  Before I left the next morning, I remembered the bullet and drove by to pick it up.  I left the rig running, hopped out with no rifle and walked to the stump behind the clump of brush -- and found all the deer parts raked together and covered with a pile of sticks, grass and duff.  My hair started raising on the back of my neck.  I grabbed the bullet  since I was already there,  and with neck aswivel to see all ways at once, I did the heart thumping quick step back to the rig, trying to listen over the purring of the engine for any sound of a bear moving in the brush.  Baaad.  I could imagine the bear rushing out and me saying, "Hey, Mr. Bear, I don't want even one bite of your cache, honest.  It's all yours Big Fella!  Can't we all just get along?"

The light snow had melted too much to see tracks near the deer, but 100 yards down the road toward where I found these latest ones, fresh grizzly tracks showed in a patch of snow.  I'm sure it had been the bear circling me the day before, attracted either by the shot or by scent.  A game warden told me years ago to get game out of the woods ASAP and not leave it unattended in that area because grizzlies had learned to come to shots to claim at least the entrails and the whole animal sometimes.

Curiously to me, in my quick look at the partially covered pile of deer parts, the bear had eaten only the lungs, nothing else of the innards clump, and did not appear to have eaten any other part.   He probably wanted to age the rest of it.

[Okanagan]

With big rascals like that roaming around, I'd be double careful when using mouth calls. Maybe a rear view mirror is in order.

Guess we're all up and  posting  about the same time.  Possumal, I flat out don't use mouth calls in some areas because of grizzlies.   When I do, say when trying for a wolf, etc.  I set up so that no bear can get close without me detecting it, even if that degrades the stand location a little.  That has paid off for me, when a grizzly came in to a predator hand call intended for wolf. 

[nastygunz]

I was watching a hunting show last weekend....Ruger Dangerous Game perhaps?.....the outdoor writer Chris Dorsey went bear hunting with a guide who calls them in with a rabbit predator mouth call.....holy helll he let out a blast on the mouth call, he crouches tells Dorsey get ready get ready....this friggin MONSTER of a bear comes crashing right at them through heavy brush....Dorsey is using some fancy double magnum gun.....drops the bear at 20 some yards.....probably the most exciting footage ive ever seen on a show....that damn bear looked like a big brown school bus coming through the woods...i also read in Montana/Wyoming that the bears have learned rifle shots mean big elk/deer food opportunities and will come right in after the kill.
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7:00 p.m. ET Federal Premium Dangerous Game- Premiere
Join host Chris Dorsey as he hunts the bear populous island of Kodiak, Alaska using a technique that few hunters have the nerve to employ; using a predator call on these aggressive and hungry bears guarantees some intense action.

[possumal]

Just thinking about this spooks me a lot.  I remember reading a story in Outdoor Life some time back where 4 guys would go deer hunting every year as a get together. They were all college classmates and hunted the same area every year. One of the guys didn't come into camp on time, and it got dark and they couldn't find him.  Next morning they went to where they knew he had been on stand by a big dead stump, and found where a big bear had come in on his blind side, hit him with such force that his Ruger 270 was driven through the stump.  They went and got the local game warden, and after some tracking, they started finding body parts of their friend.  The game warden ended up tracking and killing the bear. This fellow had been using a grunt tube.  Not me, I can tell you that.

[nastygunz]

I had a big bear that I was taking pix of one time who didnt like it and didnt wanna go the other way....started chompin n poppin his jaws and staring right at me....I slid the .357 out and very slowly backed away and got out of there....every other bear ive seen in my entire life....if they spotted you they were gone like a rocket....ya never know and that was a black bear....wouldnt even wanna think about a brown or grizzly bear...I posted some pics of a bear on here who was lookin me over pretty close....and I was lookin him over right back pretty close haha :shck:

[possumal]

That could result in a long, cold wait up in a tree stand.  If you put an arrow through one of those big rascals and get him to squalling, you might get lucky and have the others leave or put their attention to him, even attack him.  Bow hunting on the ground in that area would definitely not be my cup of tea.

[golfertrout]

 :roflmao: :roflmao: