As you may have been reading I drew a grizzly bear tag for the Horsefly area this spring (2009). I spent a lot of time planning, talking to hunters, going over maps, and google earth before going on this trip. I had a few people bail but a new friend (Nick) was gracious enough to offer his truck and quad to join me in the trip.
When we arrived in the area we were planning on hunting I was soon dissapointed as snow was covering all the areas I had planned to spot for grizzly. Above is a picture of the only grizzly tracks we saw. We staked this area out a few times for hours but there was no new sign or sightings of North Americas top predator.
This scat was found close to the tracks, I can only assume it is grizzly bear scat.
We spent a fair amount of time spotting for grizzly bear but again we were not able to even look in the areas I pre planned from google earth. We could not access the slides but still glassed what we could to no avail.
In total we saw 3 moose, 3 grouse, a porcupine, and 5 black bears. but I connected on this boar on the left. He was not huge but I decided to take a meat bear on the first day of the hunt and invest the rest of the trip searching for the elusive grizzly that never presented itself.
The story was: We were quading down this main forest service road and the bear was 200 yards away on the road. Nick initially wanted a crack at it but it scurried up the hill into the woods. We tried to circle around the area it was travelling and I spotted the bear below me. The bear was walking out to the open so I loaded a shell and anticipated where the bear was going to walk. The bear had other plans and decided to go down accross the road and towards the river. As it was walking through the bush on the other side of the road, I came accross the road and saw the black bear walking through the trees. He stopped and looked towards my direction and his hesitation was his demise. I took a freehand shot and connnected right behind the shoulder.
The bullets I had been using were Barnes TTSX 168grain out of my .300 Winchester Magnum. I hand loaded and tested them at the range as you might have seen on previous posts. The shot was from 60 yards (approximately) and was a one shot kill, the bear did not travel far before piling up on a tree. The boar was 5’4" from nose to tail. I am getting jerky made out of the hind legs, garlic sausage, and chorizo sausage out of the rest.
Below is a picture of the exit wound of the Barnes 168grain TTSX bullet on the aforementioned black bear:
