|
|
|
|
You've heard the saying, "third time is a
charm," well, this was my third attempt at a spring black bear hunt
for 2005. I got the time off work at the last minute. My wife
and hunting partner, Shanna, had work obligations; this was the first time
ever she had to miss a trip on the boat. About 5 days prior to
departure, I called my
friend Greg, described the hunt and asked him if he
was interested. He said, "I'm IN!" He flew up from
Texas and the hunt began. We set up camp at an abandoned cache of shrimp pots situated with a small cove on one side and open water on the other. When the wind came up, we could park the boat on the cove side. We adopted the bears' schedule and woke up just prior to first light. We cruised the shorelines until noon, then returned to camp to sleep and eat a meal until it was time to start cruising the shorelines again around 5:30 PM. By 11:00 we were back in camp for the night. This schedule proved to be very productive.
|
|
|
Success came on the third day. We had just finished stretching our legs by hiking up a hill on the lookout for bears and had returned to the boat. It was several hours into the evening hunt, right at 7:00 PM. We were cruising away from the beach when I looked back toward the shore line we had just left. That's when I saw him, a beautiful, jet black, hefty looking bear walking along a brush line. I immediately turned the boat around and headed back toward the shore. I pulled the boat behind the same hill we had just climbed, for cover. Quietly, I stalked my way up toward the top of the gravel slope as a light mist was falling. There he was.... grazing on grass in the middle of a large field, in the open! He had no close cover. I laid down at the top of the gravel slope with my rifle barrel sticking thru the grass line. I carefully extended my bipod legs and looked thru my scope. The crosshairs were rock steady on the bear's chest. I clicked the safety off and as I did the bear immediately looked up and toward me. He then went back to grazing. I carefully squeezed the trigger and never even noticed the blast of my Ruger M77 30-06 firing the 180 gr. nosler bullet. The bear was immediately on his back with his paws in the air. I gave him one more shot and he never moved again. I was PUMPED! This was my first successful hunt ever! For anything! We hiked the 140 yards to my bear and determined he had expired. Neither one of us had ever skinned a bear before, BUT.... we had watched the video over and over, so I went to work. In the process, I poked my little finger with my knife and just barely cut the skin on my index finger, so shallow it didn't hardly bleed. These cuts would come back to haunt me. My bear was a beautiful, unrubbed boar that measured at just over 6 feet.
|
|
