Firedancer
New member
Congrats on the bear, looking forward to reading the rest of the story!!
2014 Spring Montana Bear Hunt - Report
- Thread starter dihardhunter
- Start date
Yotkilr
Member
Great looking bear. Congrats
dihardhunter
Active member
Alright, back from the weekend...let's see if I can negatively both mine and your workweek productivity some more...
After looping through Libby to deposit the bear meat at a local taxidermy shop and refuel the truck, we headed north towards the Yaak. I had a particular area that had caught my eye for some time now. An absolutely huge basin that had burned 10-12 years ago. Totally remote from the standpoint of active roads, but easily accessible because you can simply walk 0.75 miles with about a 400' elevation gain to the best glassing seat in the house.
Uh, if you can follow topographical directions that is. Only time we got turned around all trip and it sucked. What should have been a 30-minute hike turned into 2 hour winding walk. On the bright side, we did luck into a waterhole which turned out to be a good thing as we had no water around our camp/glassing site.
After we pitched camp, we settled in for a 4-5 hour glassing session.
We hoped any bears sighted would show themselves in one of 2 spots. A cluster of grassy cliffs about 1 mile distant, but a fairly easy traverse...
...or anywhere along the creek bottom that bisected the basin and within reasonable striking distance.
Well, the good news was that we did see a BIG black bear that night as he meandered through this green meadow hanging on the horizon.
The bad news was that this is what the best route of approach looked like.
With just under 2 hours left of daylight and with the bear not throwing out the anchor on the green grass in sight, we decided the prudent thing to do would be to continue glassing and hope for a closer target. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. In fact, the lone boar was the only animal we saw all night.
The next morning, we were able to keep a straight bead on the truck and were out by mid morning. With a lunch invite from Gerald M. and plans to hunt with Travis (theat) that evening, we turned the truck south and headed for what would be a most delicious roasted chicken and vegetable dinner complete with all the fixin's! Pumpkin pie and ice cream capped off what would be remembered fondly as the best meal I've ever eaten in Montana. Granted a pretty small sample size, but I'm thinking that feast will hold up for a while!
After looping through Libby to deposit the bear meat at a local taxidermy shop and refuel the truck, we headed north towards the Yaak. I had a particular area that had caught my eye for some time now. An absolutely huge basin that had burned 10-12 years ago. Totally remote from the standpoint of active roads, but easily accessible because you can simply walk 0.75 miles with about a 400' elevation gain to the best glassing seat in the house.
Uh, if you can follow topographical directions that is. Only time we got turned around all trip and it sucked. What should have been a 30-minute hike turned into 2 hour winding walk. On the bright side, we did luck into a waterhole which turned out to be a good thing as we had no water around our camp/glassing site.
After we pitched camp, we settled in for a 4-5 hour glassing session.
We hoped any bears sighted would show themselves in one of 2 spots. A cluster of grassy cliffs about 1 mile distant, but a fairly easy traverse...
...or anywhere along the creek bottom that bisected the basin and within reasonable striking distance.
Well, the good news was that we did see a BIG black bear that night as he meandered through this green meadow hanging on the horizon.
The bad news was that this is what the best route of approach looked like.
With just under 2 hours left of daylight and with the bear not throwing out the anchor on the green grass in sight, we decided the prudent thing to do would be to continue glassing and hope for a closer target. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. In fact, the lone boar was the only animal we saw all night.
The next morning, we were able to keep a straight bead on the truck and were out by mid morning. With a lunch invite from Gerald M. and plans to hunt with Travis (theat) that evening, we turned the truck south and headed for what would be a most delicious roasted chicken and vegetable dinner complete with all the fixin's! Pumpkin pie and ice cream capped off what would be remembered fondly as the best meal I've ever eaten in Montana. Granted a pretty small sample size, but I'm thinking that feast will hold up for a while!
dihardhunter
Active member
Day 7 - The dinner from Gerald's house blessed us with several extra pounds to carry into the backcountry and we were feeling a bit sluggish. Thankfully, we were hunting with lazy man Travis that evening (those of you who have hunted with Travis know that this is stated with tongue planted firmly in cheek).
To be honest though, we did have a perceptibly easier hunt that evening - hiking in a little under a mile to glass a large south-facing slope in the local wilderness area. With guide Travis at the helm, we pushed up the drainage towards a large boulder slide that would be our glassing spot.
BEAR!!!
GRIZZLY!!!
We sat back to watch this big boar put on a show for about 10 minutes before moving on.
Arriving at the boulder field, we all selected comfortable spots and stared holes into the opposing hillside for the entirety of the evening.
There were glacier lily patches everywhere with green grass filling in the areas between the rocks, cliffs, and patchy snow drifts. But there was also a grizzly in the drainage. No clue if other animals had vacated the immediate area due to his presence, but it sure seemed like that to us. No other animals were spotted that evening.
Seeing that grizzly was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, and so was the prospect of sleeping under a roof and getting a hot shower that night. It had been over a week since either of us had seen a bar of soap, and the allure of modern conveniences had us pushing back towards the trailhead with renewed energy in the dark.
I said it at the start, but Travis and Gerald are two of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. Tremendously enjoyed hunting with Travis, and the Martin family's hospitality was very gracious (Travis' family's too for that matter).
“Wild country offered the necessary freedom and solitude. Moreover, it offered life stripped down to essentials. Because of this rawness, wilderness was the best environment in which to ‘settle ourselves, and work, and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of our opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion.’…till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we call reality.” – Henry David Thoreau
To be honest though, we did have a perceptibly easier hunt that evening - hiking in a little under a mile to glass a large south-facing slope in the local wilderness area. With guide Travis at the helm, we pushed up the drainage towards a large boulder slide that would be our glassing spot.
BEAR!!!
GRIZZLY!!!
We sat back to watch this big boar put on a show for about 10 minutes before moving on.
Arriving at the boulder field, we all selected comfortable spots and stared holes into the opposing hillside for the entirety of the evening.
There were glacier lily patches everywhere with green grass filling in the areas between the rocks, cliffs, and patchy snow drifts. But there was also a grizzly in the drainage. No clue if other animals had vacated the immediate area due to his presence, but it sure seemed like that to us. No other animals were spotted that evening.
Seeing that grizzly was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, and so was the prospect of sleeping under a roof and getting a hot shower that night. It had been over a week since either of us had seen a bar of soap, and the allure of modern conveniences had us pushing back towards the trailhead with renewed energy in the dark.
I said it at the start, but Travis and Gerald are two of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. Tremendously enjoyed hunting with Travis, and the Martin family's hospitality was very gracious (Travis' family's too for that matter).
“Wild country offered the necessary freedom and solitude. Moreover, it offered life stripped down to essentials. Because of this rawness, wilderness was the best environment in which to ‘settle ourselves, and work, and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of our opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion.’…till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we call reality.” – Henry David Thoreau
CabinFever
Member
Great pictures and storytelling, can't wait for more.
dihardhunter
Active member
Day 8 was a slog. I'll be short on words with this one, because that pretty much summed up the day's hunt. Keep your head down, mouth shut, keep trudging, and don't bust your butt slipping on some rain-soaked rock or log.
Raw power on full display. Wow.
One of the few moments we weren't getting pelted with raindrops. Big trees in the wilderness.
More power on display. The amount of snowmelt coming out of this drainage was insane. Plenty of dicey crossings, but nothing too freaky.
The basic plan of the hunt was to cover 3-4 miles of pack trail miles before diving off into a side drainage that housed a perfect rockslide where 5 full avalanche chutes would be on display.
Bushwhacking was a nightmare with 10 logs per 10 feet and 1300-1400' of elevation was a daunting task to reach the glassing location. Even though we had covered 90% of the overall trek, I knew we were in trouble when 20 minutes had elapsed between checking the GPS' distance to destination and we had only chipped off 0.03 miles. Only 0.14 miles separated us from the spot, but with toes, knees, hips, hands, elbows, and nearly nose touching the ground simultaneously and things getting slicker by the minute, it was looking like the mountain kicked our butts that evening. With patches of open canopy, we were able to do some glassing but our view was very restricted. Even so, we were able to pick up a couple cow elk feeding in and out of the lush green grass growing in one of the middle chutes.
After a lengthy debate on safety, reiterating how badly we didn't want to spend the night sleeping standing up, and the improbability that we'd even have enough time to reach a bear spotted before dark, we tipped our hats to the mountain and began the long trudge back to the truck. Somehow or other, there was a way to get to that boulder field, but our exact approach was NOT the way to accomplish the task.
“I have generally gone into the woods weakened in body and depressed in mind. I have always come out of them with renewed health and strength, a perfect digestion, and a buoyant and cheerful spirit.” – Samuel Hammond
Raw power on full display. Wow.
One of the few moments we weren't getting pelted with raindrops. Big trees in the wilderness.
More power on display. The amount of snowmelt coming out of this drainage was insane. Plenty of dicey crossings, but nothing too freaky.
The basic plan of the hunt was to cover 3-4 miles of pack trail miles before diving off into a side drainage that housed a perfect rockslide where 5 full avalanche chutes would be on display.
Bushwhacking was a nightmare with 10 logs per 10 feet and 1300-1400' of elevation was a daunting task to reach the glassing location. Even though we had covered 90% of the overall trek, I knew we were in trouble when 20 minutes had elapsed between checking the GPS' distance to destination and we had only chipped off 0.03 miles. Only 0.14 miles separated us from the spot, but with toes, knees, hips, hands, elbows, and nearly nose touching the ground simultaneously and things getting slicker by the minute, it was looking like the mountain kicked our butts that evening. With patches of open canopy, we were able to do some glassing but our view was very restricted. Even so, we were able to pick up a couple cow elk feeding in and out of the lush green grass growing in one of the middle chutes.
After a lengthy debate on safety, reiterating how badly we didn't want to spend the night sleeping standing up, and the improbability that we'd even have enough time to reach a bear spotted before dark, we tipped our hats to the mountain and began the long trudge back to the truck. Somehow or other, there was a way to get to that boulder field, but our exact approach was NOT the way to accomplish the task.
“I have generally gone into the woods weakened in body and depressed in mind. I have always come out of them with renewed health and strength, a perfect digestion, and a buoyant and cheerful spirit.” – Samuel Hammond
dihardhunter
Active member
The conclusion of our hunt - Day 9.
Not really sure what's going on with my Photobucket account right now, but I didn't take any original photos on this day anyways - sour weather and digital cameras don't mix well.
At this point in the hunt, Andrew was calling the shots on where and how to hunt. With rain in the forecast and some in-town intel on a hotspot of bear activity, we decided to use the truck for the bulk of our activities on the last day of hunting. Driving up to different overlooks and road closures, we planned to cover a lot of ground quickly in an effort to locate a last-day bear.
We spent several hours through off-and-on rain showers glassing some great country. We saw some deer, saw some elk, even drove over and around several piles of bear poop, but no bears to be spotted.
Time was ticking on the hunt, but we had several conversations acknowledging how awesome it had been regardless of whether or not we could fill our second bear tag. The country we’d seen, the critters we’d watched, the bear we’d killed, the people we’d met – it had all been phenomenal.
With less than an hour left, we switch-backed up approximately 4 miles of narrow logging roads and parked at the closure gate which led to the backside of the mountain and an expansive drainage that had been logged heavily in the past 5-10 years.
Only 10 minutes into our last hike of the hunt, it was becoming speedily apparent that we had stumbled onto quite the game-rich mountain for a finale. Deer, elk, and moose were all encountered in the dwindling daylight.
Still walking on closed roads, we reached a final glassing spot where our binoculars swept the surrounding countryside a final time. But it just wasn’t meant to be – it was time to hike back to the truck.
…
…
BEAR!
I could not make this up if I tried. Literally as we were turning to leave, I swung my optics onto the largest black bear of the trip. He was waddling down a clover-covered logging road about 500 yards away and with only 10 minutes or so left of legal shooting light. His gait, pot belly, enormous shoulders, and “lack” of ears indicated he was a no-doubter for even the most accomplished of bear hunters.
Scramble mode would be an under-statement. It was more like “try not to die by falling down the mountain or by impaling yourself on one of the infinite blowdowns” mode.
The bear’s position was in our favor, but the timing most certainly was not. In order to reach the bear, we had to sidehill as fast as possible back into the heart of the mountain in order to come out on the next point which MIGHT put us in range of the bear.
We might very well have been in range at that point, but the heavy timber precluded us from getting a line of sight on the logging road he had been standing on, let alone the bear himself. Seconds mattered at this point and we had no choice but to try to come in hard, fast, and above the bear. Hard and fast meant noise and commotion. Above meant sinking thermals.
It wasn’t a good set of ingredients and they definitely did not make a good recipe. A long-range gun and sound shooting would most certainly have equaled a dead bear. However, the 10-minute sprint/stalk to get within our comfortable range only gave us one last fleeting glimpse of the escaping bear’s back end. We broke into the open at roughly 175 yards, but the bear was already vacating the premises.
Needless to say, it was a long final trudge back to the waiting vehicle. A flat tire during the descent off the mountain added some salty sweat to the wound, but it was a heck of an exciting way to end our 2014 DIY Montana spring bear hunt. Heck, it just might have planted the seed for a next time!
Thanks a ton everyone for following along. I hope you enjoyed reading it 5% as much as I did experiencing it.
I came up with this saying several years back. I highly doubt it's actually original with me, but here goes..."Take a 'hunt of a lifetime' every year". This hunt most definitely fit the bill!
Not really sure what's going on with my Photobucket account right now, but I didn't take any original photos on this day anyways - sour weather and digital cameras don't mix well.
At this point in the hunt, Andrew was calling the shots on where and how to hunt. With rain in the forecast and some in-town intel on a hotspot of bear activity, we decided to use the truck for the bulk of our activities on the last day of hunting. Driving up to different overlooks and road closures, we planned to cover a lot of ground quickly in an effort to locate a last-day bear.
We spent several hours through off-and-on rain showers glassing some great country. We saw some deer, saw some elk, even drove over and around several piles of bear poop, but no bears to be spotted.
Time was ticking on the hunt, but we had several conversations acknowledging how awesome it had been regardless of whether or not we could fill our second bear tag. The country we’d seen, the critters we’d watched, the bear we’d killed, the people we’d met – it had all been phenomenal.
With less than an hour left, we switch-backed up approximately 4 miles of narrow logging roads and parked at the closure gate which led to the backside of the mountain and an expansive drainage that had been logged heavily in the past 5-10 years.
Only 10 minutes into our last hike of the hunt, it was becoming speedily apparent that we had stumbled onto quite the game-rich mountain for a finale. Deer, elk, and moose were all encountered in the dwindling daylight.
Still walking on closed roads, we reached a final glassing spot where our binoculars swept the surrounding countryside a final time. But it just wasn’t meant to be – it was time to hike back to the truck.
…
…
BEAR!
I could not make this up if I tried. Literally as we were turning to leave, I swung my optics onto the largest black bear of the trip. He was waddling down a clover-covered logging road about 500 yards away and with only 10 minutes or so left of legal shooting light. His gait, pot belly, enormous shoulders, and “lack” of ears indicated he was a no-doubter for even the most accomplished of bear hunters.
Scramble mode would be an under-statement. It was more like “try not to die by falling down the mountain or by impaling yourself on one of the infinite blowdowns” mode.
The bear’s position was in our favor, but the timing most certainly was not. In order to reach the bear, we had to sidehill as fast as possible back into the heart of the mountain in order to come out on the next point which MIGHT put us in range of the bear.
We might very well have been in range at that point, but the heavy timber precluded us from getting a line of sight on the logging road he had been standing on, let alone the bear himself. Seconds mattered at this point and we had no choice but to try to come in hard, fast, and above the bear. Hard and fast meant noise and commotion. Above meant sinking thermals.
It wasn’t a good set of ingredients and they definitely did not make a good recipe. A long-range gun and sound shooting would most certainly have equaled a dead bear. However, the 10-minute sprint/stalk to get within our comfortable range only gave us one last fleeting glimpse of the escaping bear’s back end. We broke into the open at roughly 175 yards, but the bear was already vacating the premises.
Needless to say, it was a long final trudge back to the waiting vehicle. A flat tire during the descent off the mountain added some salty sweat to the wound, but it was a heck of an exciting way to end our 2014 DIY Montana spring bear hunt. Heck, it just might have planted the seed for a next time!
Thanks a ton everyone for following along. I hope you enjoyed reading it 5% as much as I did experiencing it.
I came up with this saying several years back. I highly doubt it's actually original with me, but here goes..."Take a 'hunt of a lifetime' every year". This hunt most definitely fit the bill!
Horn Seeker
New member
Great story... you guys had a great trip! Thanks!
