Bears have always intrigued me, especially big bears. With the season winding down, I headed back to the Oregon Coast where I hunted with long-time friend and guide, Jody Smith (www.jodysmithguideservice.com).
There are two schools of thought when spot-and-stalk hunting spring bears: Cover as much ground as you can, spot-checking places for feeding bears, or stake-out a place and wait for bears to feed out. After four days of covering hundreds of miles and not finding a big bear, Jody and I decided to sit on a unit where we’d seen bears working. With the rut approaching, we knew boars would soon be on the move.
The unit was big, 1,200 yards across, 2,000 yards top to bottom, and steep. With three days left in the season, I wasn’t going to be picky. We’d seen a 250 lb. boar in this unit, but he fed his way into a brushy creek bottom before I could get a shot. At daylight the next day we were back in there, hoping any bear would show up.
Not long after hearing some growling, woofing and fighting in the timber, a small bear appeared, followed by a bigger one. It was mid-day, temperatures were warm. The pair fed through the brushy bottom, then moved out of sight for 10 minutes. When they came out of the brush, less than 500 yard away, they were moving our direction.
We weren’t in a hurry to shoot, as the bears got closer with every step. This allowed us to watch the big boar feed, drink from a creek and chase the sow. At one point he even bred the sow, something I’d never seen in all my years of bear hunting.
As the pair continued up the canyon, boar trailing the sow, I readied for the shot. They eventually moved toward the top of a ridge, across the canyon, and I settled in to the custom .338 crafted by Curt Mendenhall. Looking at the boar on high power through my Trijicon 5-20×50 scope, at 200 yards I knew it wasn’t the 250 lb. bear from the night before. This one was bigger.
With the bear standing on a steep, open hillside, facing away, instantly I knew I hit him a bit far back. Before I could get another round in him he was out of sight, over the top of the ridge, headed for thick timber down the backside.
My shot didn’t do the gun, scope or load justice; I just plain made a poor hit. I felt sick to my stomach and disgusted with myself, as this should have been a slam-dunk shot. Swapping out the .338 for a brush gun–a .45-70 topped with Trijicon’s RMR, Jody and I went after the bear. We didn’t want to wait, as the brush was so thick, should the bear expire before we reached him, we’d likely never find him.
Though it was mid-day, the dark shadows in the thick timber and heavy brush made it tough to see. Ferns and brush grew over our heads and we’d hoped that if we bumped into the bear, he’d run the other way.
After more than an hour of intense, nerve-wrenching searching, Jody spotted some vine maple limbs shaking below us. Inching closer, the bear busted out of the brush, headed through the creek bottom and up the opposite hillside. A quick shot hit him, but we couldn’t tell where in the thick brush.
Moving in for a follow-up shot, the bear was huffing, snorting, tearing up logs and thrashing the ground. Through the tall ferns and dense foliage it was near impossible to see him, though he was less than 20 yards away. Moving closer, I finally found a small opening, and when he turned, snarling, I hit him one last time with the .45-70. The distance was eight yards.
Because I’m writing a book on hunting Western black bear, I wanted to get the true weight of this bear, so we yanked him up on a portable scale. He was even bigger than we’d thought. “That thing has the biggest head of any black bear I’ve seen,” Jody noted.
I’ve been fortunate to have taken grizzly, brown and polar bear, and dozens of black bears over the years, but I knew this would be my biggest Oregon bear, ever. His blocky head, thick legs and massive neck left no question he was an old bear,(he’s being aged by ODFW). He weighed 352 pounds, squared more than seven feet and had a skull that green scored just over 21 inches. The average bear taken in Oregon is about 180 lbs. and 4-5 years old. The fact he was a Coast Range bear made him even more impressive.
When skinning the bear we found a .30 caliber bullet encased in a calcified tissue mass, about the size of a golf ball. Who knows how many years that bullet had been in there, but it didn’t even penetrate to the shoulder blade, yet was fully expanded. We also found that the Nosler 300 grain AccuBond from my initial shot with the .338 was lodged in the bear’s sternum, having passed through liver and clipping one lung. The bear traveled about 200 yards from where he was first hit.
Ten days afield this spring season, hundreds of miles traveled, numerous hours spent glassing, and having passed other bears, finally, with only three days left in the season, it all came together.
You’ll get to see it unfold on Trijicon’s The Hunt, on the Sportsman Channel, later this fall.
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