Opening Day Bear

[Deerslayer]

Shot my first bear yesterday after waiting eight years to draw a tag. He was shot in Price Co. WI. His estmated live weight was 300 lbs. He weighed in at 260 lbs at the check-in station after being dressed.

http://www.trophyphotos.com/photos/full/18744.jpg

[Altjaeger]

Congratulations on a very fine bear.

[postoak]

Really! Did you shoot it over bait?

[Deerslayer]

In WI they switch off every year as far as who gets first crack at the bears between bait sitters and dog runners. This year the dogs got first crack. He was treed by three well trained bluetick hounds.

http://www.trophyphotos.com/photos/full/18745.jpg

[Greywolf]

Congatulations Deerslayer.
Nice bear.

[postoak]

Do you attempt to keep up with the dogs or just wait for them to tree? Is a lot of walking involved?

[DaveHawk]

Awesome Chris ! Congratulations. Now will you be making stew.

[Greywolf]

Do you attempt to keep up with the dogs or just wait for them to tree? Is a lot of walking involved?

Keeping up with dogs involves radios and a high speed truck in this area.
It's not too un-common to have a bear tree twenty miles from where the dog struck out on him.

[postoak]

So how does that work? Is this on public land?

[Deerslayer]

Do you attempt to keep up with the dogs or just wait for them to tree? Is a lot of walking involved?


This one treed about a mile off the road. After we knew he was treed, we walked into him, but went back to get the ATV to get him out after I shot him. The dogs have a radio collar that makes a certain noise when the bear is treed, that is how we knew that it was time to walk in to where they were. That required a bit of bushwacking through some thick stuff. This weekend this guy will be running his dogs for an older man who has a bear tag. They will probably need to use an atv to get this guy as close to the bear as they can. Sometimes the bears don't tree at all and choose to duke it out with the dogs on the ground or just keep walking until the dogs can corner them. If the brush is real thick it can get kind of hairy or at least I'm told. My bear chose to go up a tree thankfully. We had run one earlier in the morning that we never did catch up to. This bear started out on private land that we had permission to be on but ended up treeing on county land. He only went maybe a mile and a quarter before treeing. The one earlier in the morning we caught the dogs after they had went maybe four miles and were heading toward some private land that we did not have permission to be on. Up until that point they had been on public land.

[Bushman]

What did you use to gun him with? I guess near anything would work, but for the places that a guy needs to go where a bear goes something light and easy to run through the brush with is probably preferable. That iron sighted M94 .30-30 seems like the quintessential bear hunting rifle when you are using dogs. I can't imagine dragging a bear out of the woods without an ATV. The ones that we got were like trying to pull a full water bed mattress. They just spread out all over the ground and they don't have those nice handles on their heads like a deer does. We always had a crew of guys for the support team, but the star of the show was always my Rokon. Fold the thing over the back rack and drive out of the woods with him.

[Deerslayer]

That is pretty close to what I used but in my case it was an iron sighted Marlin 336 R.C. lever action in .35 Rem. shooting 200 gr. core lokts. It was the prefect gun for all of the reasons you noted. A lever action works great because you just load up the magazine as your heading in, no round in the chamber so it is extra safe as your tripping over logs and downfalls walking in. When you get there and determine that the bear is a shooter you just cycle the lever and your ready for bear. I inherited this gun from my Grandfather and had yet to kill anything with it, until now.

[greenjeans]

that bear just dont look like a 300 pounder to me. Price county Where abouts?

[Wismon]

Very nice! Congrats!