Had an old friend come up and we cruised down to homer the other day and spent a couple days in kachemak bay chasing black bears again. Weather was fantastic, if not a touch warm.
Took the water taxi across the bay Friday afternoon. Loaded up in Homer and got off the beach somewhere east of there. Timing was a touch off as the tide was an incoming tide (tidal swings in the area can be up to 25-feet), so on the hike in we had to chase a couple tidal creeks upstream a ways to find a shallow spot to cross. Over the years I’ve hunted this spot, we’ve packed in several lock on tree stands. As part of having to go upstream to cross, we had to get close to where we’ve hung a stand, so I decided to walk in and check on the stand and show my friend exactly where it was so he could go back without me. Got to camp and had some time to kill and while we were setting camp a bull moose came out and grazed in front of us for a while. That was unique because there aren’t generally a lot of moose in this area.
I told my buddy that typically we don’t see much for movement until right at dusk, which in June is typically 9-10pm. Well, he was anxious, so he went on over about 7. Suits me just fine, I stayed at camp with the spotter set up and poured a little bourbon and got settled in behind the spotting scope. It stayed dead until 10:35, and then someone flipped a switch.
I had a nice bear come out from camp about 300 yards away at the same time my buddy had several bears come out in front of him. I watched my bear for a while and got settled in to shoot, but I was also going to wait until my buddy had shot first. We were about ½ mile from each other, so I didn’t want to risk screwing him. At first a small bear came out for him. Bears can be super hard to judge if you haven’t seen them in the wild before, but he did good to recognize that bear was small. It helped that a big boar came out minutes after the first bear, and he was able to see a noticeable size difference between the two. The tall grass in the area kept him from being able to get a good shot for a while, but when the bear finally cleared, he shot and connected! By then, my bear had fed out of view. I packed up and headed his way to help retrieve the bear and skin it. I made a quick stop in the draw where my bear was feeding, and couldn’t locate him quickly. I’m sure he was in there, but I wanted to try and get the other bear out of the woods before dark.
I met up with my buddy and we located the blood trail where the bear entered the woods. Something about this spot is that we’re hunting the edge of some dark timber. The bears come out of the dark timber and feed on dandelions and grass, and then ease back into the thick stuff. Once we found where he entered the dark timber, the tracking got sporty…down on our hands and knees and crap like that. We found chunks of meat and fat and lots of blood, and my buddy felt good about the shot, so I was comfortable pushing it a little, as it was getting dark (especially in the timber). At one point, I’ve got my buddy posted up to the side of me with a round in the chamber while I’m crawling on hands and knees looking for blood under some nasty alders and thick spruce branches. We leap frogged like that a little until it got even thicker and darker. I kinda went back and forth because this area has a TON of bears, and coyotes, and I didn’t want to leave a dead bear over night and have it get torn up by scavengers. We got about 50 yards in the timber and I heard the unmistakable sound of a stick breaking in front of me a very short distance away. Nope. We are done for the night. I was pretty frustrated because we had jumped bumped the bear, but luckily we bumped him and he went away from us instead of towards us…
We head back to camp and both of us had a restless nights sleep. Get up the next morning, have a cup of coffee and something to eat and get back to the blood trail. We marked the last spot we got to from the previous night and started tracking again. Having real daylight helped make progress quickly, and within a minute we found the bed where we bumped him the last night, and it looked like he lost a ton of blood there, and then we found another bed with even more blood. At this point we know he’s got to be close, there is just no way an animal can loose that much blood and still be upright. The woods are so thick here that I had to take my pack off to crawl around/through some alders. It’s literally like a 3-D maze in these alders. Got through the alder patch, and finally found the bear stone dead. We’re less than 20 yards from where we stopped last night, and the bear is stiff as a board. He had been dead all night. He must have been about dead when we had bumped him, only thing that makes sense why he didn’t come at us.
Skinning job was one of the more suckier ones in recent memory. The bugs were soooo bad. Mosquitoes and black flies. You had to wear a head net or you’d get annihilated, but the sun would reflect off the netting and then you couldn’t see your knife blade. Got the skin off and packed out. My buddy hauled it back to the beach where we had a cooler with ice stashed.
Hunted the same way the next night and didn’t see a thing, which is very unusual in this spot. It’s been a hell of a hot spring for us so far, so I think the bears are only coming out for a short time during the brief darkness that we’re getting now. Solstice this weekend gives us 19 hours of daylight.
I didn’t get a bear, but the weekend was still a major success. My friend’s bear was the biggest we’ve ever seen, much less shot, from this spot. Skull was 19-3/16”, which is just shy of B&C, and the hide was 6’6”. All in all, a great weekend.
The bear turned out to be an OLD bear. We’ll call it the gato bear.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Took the water taxi across the bay Friday afternoon. Loaded up in Homer and got off the beach somewhere east of there. Timing was a touch off as the tide was an incoming tide (tidal swings in the area can be up to 25-feet), so on the hike in we had to chase a couple tidal creeks upstream a ways to find a shallow spot to cross. Over the years I’ve hunted this spot, we’ve packed in several lock on tree stands. As part of having to go upstream to cross, we had to get close to where we’ve hung a stand, so I decided to walk in and check on the stand and show my friend exactly where it was so he could go back without me. Got to camp and had some time to kill and while we were setting camp a bull moose came out and grazed in front of us for a while. That was unique because there aren’t generally a lot of moose in this area.
I told my buddy that typically we don’t see much for movement until right at dusk, which in June is typically 9-10pm. Well, he was anxious, so he went on over about 7. Suits me just fine, I stayed at camp with the spotter set up and poured a little bourbon and got settled in behind the spotting scope. It stayed dead until 10:35, and then someone flipped a switch.
I had a nice bear come out from camp about 300 yards away at the same time my buddy had several bears come out in front of him. I watched my bear for a while and got settled in to shoot, but I was also going to wait until my buddy had shot first. We were about ½ mile from each other, so I didn’t want to risk screwing him. At first a small bear came out for him. Bears can be super hard to judge if you haven’t seen them in the wild before, but he did good to recognize that bear was small. It helped that a big boar came out minutes after the first bear, and he was able to see a noticeable size difference between the two. The tall grass in the area kept him from being able to get a good shot for a while, but when the bear finally cleared, he shot and connected! By then, my bear had fed out of view. I packed up and headed his way to help retrieve the bear and skin it. I made a quick stop in the draw where my bear was feeding, and couldn’t locate him quickly. I’m sure he was in there, but I wanted to try and get the other bear out of the woods before dark.
I met up with my buddy and we located the blood trail where the bear entered the woods. Something about this spot is that we’re hunting the edge of some dark timber. The bears come out of the dark timber and feed on dandelions and grass, and then ease back into the thick stuff. Once we found where he entered the dark timber, the tracking got sporty…down on our hands and knees and crap like that. We found chunks of meat and fat and lots of blood, and my buddy felt good about the shot, so I was comfortable pushing it a little, as it was getting dark (especially in the timber). At one point, I’ve got my buddy posted up to the side of me with a round in the chamber while I’m crawling on hands and knees looking for blood under some nasty alders and thick spruce branches. We leap frogged like that a little until it got even thicker and darker. I kinda went back and forth because this area has a TON of bears, and coyotes, and I didn’t want to leave a dead bear over night and have it get torn up by scavengers. We got about 50 yards in the timber and I heard the unmistakable sound of a stick breaking in front of me a very short distance away. Nope. We are done for the night. I was pretty frustrated because we had jumped bumped the bear, but luckily we bumped him and he went away from us instead of towards us…
We head back to camp and both of us had a restless nights sleep. Get up the next morning, have a cup of coffee and something to eat and get back to the blood trail. We marked the last spot we got to from the previous night and started tracking again. Having real daylight helped make progress quickly, and within a minute we found the bed where we bumped him the last night, and it looked like he lost a ton of blood there, and then we found another bed with even more blood. At this point we know he’s got to be close, there is just no way an animal can loose that much blood and still be upright. The woods are so thick here that I had to take my pack off to crawl around/through some alders. It’s literally like a 3-D maze in these alders. Got through the alder patch, and finally found the bear stone dead. We’re less than 20 yards from where we stopped last night, and the bear is stiff as a board. He had been dead all night. He must have been about dead when we had bumped him, only thing that makes sense why he didn’t come at us.
Skinning job was one of the more suckier ones in recent memory. The bugs were soooo bad. Mosquitoes and black flies. You had to wear a head net or you’d get annihilated, but the sun would reflect off the netting and then you couldn’t see your knife blade. Got the skin off and packed out. My buddy hauled it back to the beach where we had a cooler with ice stashed.
Hunted the same way the next night and didn’t see a thing, which is very unusual in this spot. It’s been a hell of a hot spring for us so far, so I think the bears are only coming out for a short time during the brief darkness that we’re getting now. Solstice this weekend gives us 19 hours of daylight.
I didn’t get a bear, but the weekend was still a major success. My friend’s bear was the biggest we’ve ever seen, much less shot, from this spot. Skull was 19-3/16”, which is just shy of B&C, and the hide was 6’6”. All in all, a great weekend.
The bear turned out to be an OLD bear. We’ll call it the gato bear.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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