Seen a Bear Today

[musketman]

I seen my first "wild" bear today, I was on my way to Meadeville, PENN and I looked into an open field and sure enough, there it was, shagging butt across the open landscape...

I was amazed how fast they can run for their size, it was something to see, pitch black color against the autumn surroundings...

 

[Dave Poss]

Good for you! As much time as I have spent in the woods, I've never seen a bear. I've found tracks and knew I was in bear country, but the critters never show themselves. Guess word spread through the animal kingdom about what a crack shot I am...... :shake: I did see a black panther (the cat) once. They were all supposeably wiped out in the early 1900's here but some have started moving back in from Fla. I went to high school in Panthersville and of course our mascot was a black panther. Your story was about a black bear...mine about a black panther; so, I guess it's still sorta, kinda the same subject!!! :huh:

 

[roundball]

There's an experience I've never had...I've watched nature specials with incredible photography, I've seen them in zoos, I've been close enough to have seen fresh bear tracks in fresh snow, and have seen them as roadkills, but never have I seen one live and in person out in the wild...bet you'll carry that memory for a long time

 

[Rebel]

Only live bears i have seen in the wild were when we visited Yellowstone Park when i was a kid, before they moved all the bears out of the park. All the time i have spent in the woods hunting and trapping, and i have never seen one in the woods.

 

[Zonie]

I seen my first "wild" bear today...

It's neat to see wildlife like that. Yup, bears can move very fast when they want too.
Short story:

Years ago I took my (then) 10 year old son Turkey hunting up north of Payson Arizona.
I was armed with my Savage Over/Under (.22 Mag top/20 guage Mag.bottom).

Early in the morning we worked down a 45 degree hillside thru heavy pine and came to a grassy meadow with a small creek running thru it. This was about 60 yards below the point where the hillside started.

We hunkered down at the edge of the pines, sitting along side of a game trail and waited.

After about 20 minutes, my son whispers "Dad, there's a bear."
I whisper back "Where?" "Behind us".

I turn around and look up the hill and sure enough, here comes a honey-brown colored black bear down the game trail.
Well, I says to myself, with this gun, the best I can do is to Pi$$ him off, so I better let him know we're here before he reaches us.

I stand up facing up-hill, the bear stops, takes a 1 second look at me, turns uphill and in less time than it takes to tell this he reached the top (about 35 yards) and was Gone!
The only sound was a brief russle of leaves as he turned and a HUFF, HUFF, HUFF and he vanished!!

No, we didn't see a Turkey. Just droppings and tracks but it was fun anyway.

 

[Rebel]

Were the droppings and tracks from turkeys, or from you after the close bear encounter? :crackup: :crackup:

 

[olgriz]

Here is a picture of a bear I seen once. This was long enough ago that I didn't have a face full of grey fuzz. This bear wouldn't tree, and he had run the dogs so far that they had quit baying and were just walking along with it. We were heading down the hill to cut them off where we thought they would be, and here comes mister bear walking out of the re-prod -- most of you guys would call them Christmas trees -- on the skid road that we were on. He was about 35 yards in front of me with a dog on each side. As far as a target, a bear in that light looks a lot like a mine tunnel, not any real defination if'n ya know what I mean. Anyhow, the .62 caliber ball entered about the ball socket of his right shoulder, busting that bone and passed clear through his length coming out the left rear leg. Of course then he swapped ends and there was nothing but a balled up mess of black bear and five or six dogs. This is the only one I ever killed. I didn't care for the meat, so I never got excited about doing it again.

 

[Keith]

I have seen black bear in the wild four times. I was lucky to see each one of them. I was really disappointed not to see a griz' in Yellowstone.

I think I really saw two different bears twice each. Unfortunately, for the bears, the both died after the second siting. The first was hit a car later that night. The second I shot.

As far as the meat goes it probably makes a great deal of difference what the bear was fedding on, but I thought it was excellent. :results:

 

[Liver eatin’ Johnson]

Other than several Yellowstone bears, I encountered one when I was 12 years old in what is now a very populated NW community called Southworth WA while walking the logging roads. I also watched one from 200 yards away cross a field 10 years ago while visiting my brother in Montana.

 

[olgriz]

As far as the meat goes it probably makes a great deal of difference what the bear was fedding on, but I thought it was excellent. :results:

I think you are probably right on that. I've had old timers tell me that a bear eating fish aint fit to eat. In this country spawned out dead salmon used to line the creeks and the bears would feast on them and they said that you didn't want to try and eat one of them bears. In fact they said you couldn't hardly get down wind of a fish eating bear after you killed it.
My son killed a bear a couple of years ago, and they loved the meat. It just might have been a food prejudice on my part also, but my wife didn't like it either and maybe we needed to try and cook it a bit different. I get as big kick out of seeing them out there in the woods as I do shooting one.

 

[the skrat]

i have logged in the u.p. forests for 20 years now and bear sightings are fairly common up here. i average 4 to 5 a year and while cutting or cruising timber have come to close for comfort qite a few times. during the winter when cutting up a blown over tree we sometimes find a bear hibernating under the tree we are cutting on we then flag the erea off and leave it alone. i crawled in a bear den once and seen 3 cubs nursing on their mother they were probibly only 4 inches long . i have hunted for bear twice now with my longrifle 50 caliber rb but have not seen one big enough that i wanted to shoot. i have been with freinds that have shot them and have eaten them quite afew times and do enjoy the meat. in our erea there have been a few bear in the 500 to 600 pound class and have seen a couple that big myself.

curly maple

 

[olgriz]

i have logged in the u.p. forests for 20 years now and bear sightings are fairly common up here.

i have hunted for bear twice now with my longrifle 50 caliber rb but have not seen one big enough that i wanted to shoot.

in our erea there have been a few bear in the 500 to 600 pound class and have seen a couple that big myself.
curly maple

I don't want to sound too dumb, but could you enlighten me a bit and tell me where u.p. is? :hmm:

I hope I don't stir up a hornets nest with the next remarks, but If you should get a chance to hunt bear with a .50 caliber and you are using dogs and have him treed is one thing, but in a face to face confrontation on the ground, well in fact even in a tree, be sure you hit the bear where he lives, with a powerful enough load to reach where he lives. A .50 caliber isn't a lean mean killing machine and you could have your hands full of ticked off bear while you are trying to reload. This comes from experience of me hunting deer with a .50 and is the reason I hunt with a .62 caliber round ball. I'm not saying a .50 won't kill a deer, it will kill it just as dead as any other caliber. I killed a buck with a 50 using 80 grains of FFFg and anchored him on the spot. Busted his neck at about 50 yards. It's just in my experience with many deer that the larger caliber does the job a bit faster and a bit farther away. :imo:
The English figured that out a long time before me, and they hunted with very large caliber round balls. So don't holler at me, hunt with any size rifle that is your favorite, but just be aware of it's limitations. :m2c: Now I'd like to tell you the rest of the story.
I don't want to mention names, but a friend of mine hunts with a .54, and his target load is half his hunting load. The rifle was loaded with a target load and a bear of opportunity suddenly arrived and the dogs treed it right there. My memory aint the best when it comes to numbers, but it seems to me the target load is 75 grains of FFg, keeping in mind I'm the guy that misremembered the invention on the cap primer by about 20 years. Anyhow, he shoots the bear -- range? -- up a tree, so my guess -- 50 or 60 feet or so. The ball might as well have bounced off. It lodged against the spine, so the penetration was maybe three inches, and the bear might have been in some pain, but he wasn't slowed down a bit, and came out of the tree fighting mad and fighting dogs. :results:
Man bear stories keep coming to mind. Here's another. 25 or 30 years ago in Oregon there was no bear season. A couple of guys that I worked with in the mill -- brothers -- were out in the woods driving down one of the many roads in logging country, when they come upon a bear. They're going fishing, but they are armed with a semi auto .22 pistol, and hit the bear the first shot, which ran it up the first tree. They proceeded to empty the pistol rapid fire. The bear fell out of the tree plumb dead. Right? Yeah, right! These two boys are from Arkansas -- hey ok, ok, I don't want to get into it with anyone from Arkansas either, I'm not picking on you, but you do have a rep to live down eace: -- anyhow these two Arkies throw the bear in the back seat of the car and proceed on down the road to where ever they were going. Except they didn't get very far when the bear wanted to drive. Our heros unloaded with the car doing about 30 miles an hour. I never laughed so hard in my life as when they were telling that story.
The bear I killed was small. Didn't weigh him but I think it was in the 125 to 135 pound range, and fatter than butter. Made lots of really good bear oil. Maybe I'm getting old enough to be a coward, but I'd not like to go up against a 600 pound bear with a .50 caliber. Guys that know more about bears than I do tell me if you see a bear with a little bitty looking head then it's a really big critter. I guess their heads don't grow like the rest of the body, and a small bear has to grow into his, hence one with a large head in proportion with it's body is a small one. I have mine's head mounted, and he looks like a much larger bear on the wall than he really was. But when he was walking towards me in the woods, I thought he looked pretty darn big. Hey I've written way more than I started out to do, I'm outta here.

 

[musketman]

I don't want to sound too dumb, but could you enlighten me a bit and tell me where u.p. is? :hmm:

The U.P. is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan...

 

[bob1961]

the past 10 years or so i've seen bout a dozon bears in the woods....i even have video of a mama and 5 cubs in my back yard that was only maybe 30 yds from me....once while deer hunting i had a sow and her cub come by me the cub was maybe 2.5 years old cause it was bigger then a yearlying....well i saw mama and was going to just sit there and let her just go on by....my thought of doing that changed when i saw the cub come up over the hill behind her....i didn't want her to get spooked by me being there and startling her so i made a coughing noise and waved my arms....well she just looked at me like no big deal well the cub saw me and thoght what was that and came walking toward me then mama followed it and i started to grab my things and pack up my bowhunting my water bottle and the such and moved away bout 30 yards or so....they came over to the rock i was sitting on and the little one climbed up on it while mama sat on the ground next to it for bout 20 minutes just looking at me and then just walked away....took me bout 20 more minutes to get my heart rate back to normal.........................bob

 

[Deadeye]

Where I lived in Northern Calif. they were thick as fleas on a dog. Sometime when deer hunting you'd see more bears than deer. They'd come walking thru camp in the middle of the afternoon while we'd be resting up for the evening hunt.
they'd allways be there at night. The most I ever counted in one day, that I knew were different bears, was 12. This was in the Yolla Bolly wilderness area. All while out hunting. I've killed several, liked the meat. Tags used to be $1.00. You'd meet them on the trails, you'd see them in trees, every log was ripped to shreads, bear manure everywhere. I hunted here in Utah for many years and never saw any bear sign but the last several yrs. they're making a comeback. 3 friends got big bears with their bows this yr.

 

[Lancer]

Only time so far that I ever saw a bear was also in the U.P. . I was camping in the northern most part of Mi. with my wife and then two daughters. That night we came back to camp and someone said there was a bear down at the garbage bin. Sure enough, it looked to be a sow of about 200 lbs. I had the oldest(5)on my shoulders and we watched it for a while before she sauntered off into the woods. She didn't seem excited at all about all the people around her. Thinking back, it was a pretty dumb thing but it was exciting as well as funny since the wife wouldn't sleep at all that night. Haven't seen any since but hope to go hunting for one soon.

 

A .50 caliber isn't a lean mean killing machine and you could have your hands full of ticked off bear while you are trying to reload.

Reminds me of several years ago when I told my dad I was going to shoot a bear with my .45 flint. He said that would be fine but that I should take a file with me. I pondered that for a bit then asked, "so what do I need a file for?". He said "well, when you shoot that bear with the .45, he's going to get pretty really upset, when the bear starts to chase you, you take out the file and start fileing down the front sight, cause when that bear catches you, he's going to stuff that thing up your a$$ and if you file the sight off, it won't hurt so bad". I took that to mean that perhaps a .45 RB wasn't the best choice.

Cody

 

[the skrat]

thanks for the map musketman you never cease to amaze me every time someone has a question you have an illistration or website or picture for them.
the u.p. is short for upper puninsula of michigan we do not touch lower michigan because of the great lakes but we are connected by the mackinaw bridge the longest suspension bridge in the world.
i was hunting bear from a tree blind over bait and would have been very selective of my shot. i know it was a little light but do not own a larger ml i practiced a lotand felt confident with my shooting. hey thanks for the advice now i have an excuse to buy another gun.

curly maple.