MERIDIAN, Idaho - As you well know, I love spring bear hunting. My bear spot finally thawed out so I thought that I'd go throw out my bait and then turkey hunt for a couple of days. I got up there Monday a little after lunch and threw out my bait right fast. Then I met up with my buddy Roger Ross and off we went. We hit quite a few spots but only saw one bird.
That night his wife told us she'd have us dinner so after the afternoon hunt we ran by his house and ate. After we finished there was still a few minutes of daylight so I ran back to camp and thought I'd run check my bait.
I'd set up a good bait station but still, I knew nothing would be there in just a few hours. I'd hung some scent bags, put out a few trails and had some good bait. I've been baiting there for 10 years. Year after year local bears can get used to your bait and return, almost like bears feeding on salmon every year I think. But still, it'd only been out a few hours.
I took out from camp and hadn't gotten half way to my bait when I saw two bears not 40 yards away grazing on the hillside off to my right. I nocked an arrow and took two steps. Suddenly to my right a bear jumped up a tree. It always amazes me how fast that they can shoot up a tree. In the blink of an eye they can be 10 feet up. It's funny how they seesaw up grabbing with their front paws and pulling themselves up and then pushing up with their hind feet.
It was a 1 ½-year-old cub. Oops, one of the others must be a sow. Nope, that would be the sow off to the right and in back of the other two with her head up coming at me to see what spooked Jr. up the tree.
Time to put away the bow and pull out the .44 mag. and start backing up. Not usually a good deal stepping between a sow and her three cubs. I started backing away right fast. Jr. came shinnying down the tree. I got around the corner before the sow got over to me and I backed on down the trail.
She didn't come around the corner so I guess she scooped up her cubs and went the other way. By now it was nearly dark and I didn't want to take a chance of having to shoot the sow so I went back to camp and hit the sack.
It was a nice night, not exceptionally cold and I slept like a log. Roger pulled in before daylight as I was finishing my morning reading and I built a fire and whipped out a pot of coffee. We ate and took out turkey hunting. But first, we had to check the bait. It'd been hit and we jumped a gobbler on the way down.
We turkey hunted all day and covered a lot of ground but no birds in the bag. Later that afternoon I headed back to my bait. Something had come in after we'd checked it that morning.
At 7:15 a young cinnamon bear came in. He was 55 yards out. I haven't been practicing enough so I didn't want to take that long of a shot. I got to 40 yards and he spooked. Oh well, I didn't particularly want to shoot one the first night anyway.
I headed home that night and then Thursday Don Gerber and I headed up. I'd found a dead cub Tuesday and wanted to go check it out. I'd stepped over a log and as I was doing so I noticed that I was about to step on a bear. It looked like he was asleep. I poked him with an arrow and he didn't move so I rolled him over. It was a 40-60 pound cub.
I couldn't see any wounds but was bleeding out of her nose. Talking to F&G they figured that a boar had slapped it and it had some internal injuries, or maybe it fell out of a tree. Anyway, Don and I went to check on it. Whoa! It was gone. We looked all over and could not find it anywhere. I guess a boar had drug it off and ate it.
Downhill we'd found a really big bear track. The front paw track was right at 6-inches wide. That's a big bear. We hiked around in the middle of the day mushroom and bear hunting. Well, we hunted a couple of days and didn't get one. Dang, I'd jumped the gun. I know it doesn't make sense to set on a bait until it's been out for a couple of weeks but I'd seen five bears the first two days so I'd told Don to buy a bear tag and come up with me.
Well, for four days of the first week of baiting it'd been exciting and a lot of action. Now to set back and give them a couple of weeks to start coming in.
For more on bear hunting you can check out these links:
http://blog.havalon.com/8-bear-hunting-tips-fall/
outdoorsite.com and select me as the author
Tom Claycomb writes a monthly outdoors column for the Humboldt Sun.
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