1st Spring Bear Hunt

[chrislibby88]

Dude, sweet hunt.

 

[bfriendly]

What a great trip! Thanks for taking us with you! Did y’all eat any fish? Seems like it’d be a treat from bagged stroganoff……love to see pics of that!

 

[Whit90]

@splatek what pack are you using now?

 

[splatek]

@splatek what pack are you using now?

SPIKA from Australia.
It has hauled out a bunch of things for me and wasn’t terrible. It weighs about as much as the higher end packs.
I’ve hauled two whole deer, different times, on the meat shelf with a full pack of snacks and clothing. The game check techs at Chestatee were like “how’d that work out for ya?” But I had to bring him home to show my little man. He likes to “help” process animals with me.

 

[HunterJoe24]

Sounds like you guys had some fun! Hopefully you guys get something next time. Piece of advice, I’m a guide and have been on 7 successful bear hunts in the last year alone. Walking lots of miles usually does not equate to success bear hunting. The times it does is luck more than anything. The most successful bear hunters just sit on a knob and look at the same country for days on end. Bears are wayyyy shorter than you would expect and can be very tough to find. Also, walking spreads your scent around a lot and that is the quickest way to run every bear out of the country.

 

[KentuckyHeadhunter]

Sounds like you guys had some fun! Hopefully you guys get something next time. Piece of advice, I’m a guide and have been on 7 successful bear hunts in the last year alone. Walking lots of miles usually does not equate to success bear hunting. The times it does is luck more than anything. The most successful bear hunters just sit on a knob and look at the same country for days on end. Bears are wayyyy shorter than you would expect and can be very tough to find. Also, walking spreads your scent around a lot and that is the quickest way to run every bear out of the country.

Very interesting insight.

 

[splatek]

Sounds like you guys had some fun! Hopefully you guys get something next time. Piece of advice, I’m a guide and have been on 7 successful bear hunts in the last year alone. Walking lots of miles usually does not equate to success bear hunting. The times it does is luck more than anything. The most successful bear hunters just sit on a knob and look at the same country for days on end. Bears are wayyyy shorter than you would expect and can be very tough to find. Also, walking spreads your scent around a lot and that is the quickest way to run every bear out of the country.

Our experience, IMHO, was we had to hunt the bears down. There were quite a few folks out hunting so we weren’t the only ones laying down scent. When we got away from the people we found bears. Almost got on one by hunting where the bears were.

I appreciate that insight though. I think in some parts we hunted, I can think of one high elevation snow capped peak area, the strategy you outline would’ve worked perfect. It was he country to us and we wanted to see some ground bc and get a feel for what and how things laid out compared to our e scouting and local Intel.

 

[twincedargap]

Sounds like you guys had some fun! Hopefully you guys get something next time. Piece of advice, I’m a guide and have been on 7 successful bear hunts in the last year alone. Walking lots of miles usually does not equate to success bear hunting. The times it does is luck more than anything. The most successful bear hunters just sit on a knob and look at the same country for days on end. Bears are wayyyy shorter than you would expect and can be very tough to find. Also, walking spreads your scent around a lot and that is the quickest way to run every bear out of the country.

thanks for the unsolicited advice. not our first bear hunt. we were covering ground via logging roads to find grass w/in areas reachable by glass.

 

[trad bow]

Thank you Steve and @twincedargap. Great write up on yawl’s trip. Can’t wait to be able just to get back to hunting the Georgia mountains again. Maybe next year. Hopefully anyway.

 

[Roebuck]

I’m not much of a turkey hunter, which usually leaves my spring for trout fishing and/or scouting. This year things started to change about two to three months ago when @twincedargap started talking about a western spring bear hunt. I had a very short window of time when I could make it happen, but it worked out.

We hunted two different ranges. Over 70 miles hiking, most at elevations at or above Georgia’s highest peak. Many, many more miles in the Jeep looking for the bears. Hard to put into words what the experience was like, but I learned a lot. We saw turkeys, elk, mule deer, whitetail (so many whitetail), moose, grouse, huge rabbits, trout, trash fish (I mean white fish), black bears and grizzly. I think pictures do it more Justice.

Camp
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Glassing, ridges, etc.
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Forgot my spoon so had to get creative

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These stumps can really stump a new hunter. Can’t count how many times we glassed up a burnt stump thinking it was a feeding or bedded bear.

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About three days before our hunt was over we bumped two bears less than a mile apart in the Jeep. Also saw a griz that day. On the last half of the last day we decided to get back to that road and creep along on foot. Started at 4100 feet climbing over a 1000 feet, slipping along at a snails pace. And almost exactly where we bumped a bear just two days previously we turned a corner and there was a large, gorgeous chocolate black bear. I was not prepared for this. I was prepared for a 300 yard bipod shot. I fumbled, took too long and by the time I got the crosshairs settled all I had was a Texas heart shot for about a second and then he was gone. I was gutted. We walked until dark bumping another bear even closer to where we had bumped the second bear in the truck. We both said “hunt where the bears are, not where you want them to be.” They weren’t on the big hillsides to be glassed as we watched in every YouTube video available. They were in a thick cover terrain feature with vibrant green grass in patches of clover.

I could chalk this non harvest as a loss, but I learned so much. Experienced big country. Took in the sights. Saw a ton of game; shoot we got so close to a mule deer we joked that I should throw a rock at it (I didn’t). I learned about gear choices. Built camaraderie. We joked on the way to the airport that for all the videos and research we did about western spring bear hunting, we ended up getting on bears and hunting then the same way we hunt them back here on CNF.

This trip made me a better hunter. Period.

What a great experience and thanks for sharing. Never mind not shooting a bear as I always say no time spent in the woods or on the hills is ever wasted, always something to learn and the experiences last a life time.