Opening day treated me well. I’d had two bait stations getting consistantly hit, but one of them went cold two days before opener. My partner made it up from Lesser Minnesota on Tuesday morning and we decided to hang a second stand overlooking the bait site that was still hot. As I have been the one doing all of the baiting, he was kind enough to offer for me to be the one shooting if/when a bear came in that night. He was on camcorder duty.
We hit the stands about 2:30PM – the trail timer indicated that the bait had been hit the night before at 5:30PM. We’re still fairly old-school (no trail cameras).
We settled in, expecting a solid couple of hours to wait for any action…wrong. About 45 minutes later I caught movement in the brush. Black movement. Slowly, reluctanty, the bear approached the crib.
I’ve hunted bears on and off for about 8 years – not had a ton of success, but taken a bear with a rifle (an old Remington 35 that my late grandfather had shot a huge chocolate color phase bear in 1955 with – I have the rug hanging in my “tuff guy room” in the basement) and seen a few other bears harvested before. I’m aware of the fact that they’re hard to judge. At first glance, I was convinced that this was a big bear. Not a monster, but a better-than-the-average-bear.
“I’m shooting”, I whispered to my buddy as the bear closed the distance. The crib is 14 yards from our stands. I see my buddy out of the corner of my eye fumbling with the camcorder. He can’t get it to turn on. The bear is broadside, 13 yards away, and looking the other way. The wind has been swirling ever since we took the stand. I’m shook.
He fumbles and fumbles – and finally gets the thing turned on. We wait for the bear to look away (as it has now started staring at our masses in the tree), and it finally turns to the bait. I draw, pick a spot and release as it quarters away.
Though the angle was good and the arrow penetrated all the way to the fletching, I was concerned that my shot placement was a little far back. We waited about an hour and picked up the trail. It bled out very well – I’m sold on the Rage 3-blades – and we found it easily less than a 100 yards away. The arrow passed through the liver and one lung – it remained in the bear with the broadhead just poking out the opposite shoulder.
The bear managed to lose about a hundred pounds when it hit the ground however. It went about 175 – don’t get me wrong, I still would have dropped the string on it – I was just that far off in my guestimation on it’s size. Both my buddy and I would have put it between 250 and 300 when it came into the bait.
While it would be nice to become more seasoned in field judging the size of these critters, I pray that I never lose the overwhelming adrenalin rush that tends to skew my ability to make such judgements.
FYI – this is the best tasting bear I’ve ever eaten. We had a roast last night and my kids had seconds and thirds.
Great story and a great bear too! Any bear (regardless of size) killed with a bow is something to be proud of! 
