Big Predator

tt35

New member
We just got back from a backpack hunt for spring bear in [beeep]'s Canyon above the Snake River. Well, I was hoping for a spot, stalk and called bear but settled for a spot and stalk.

We took a 12' row boat across the Snake at flood stage but that won't happen again with me in the boat!
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We backpacked into the Wilderness four miles gaining 3000 vertical feet for a five day hunt. Verminator2 and I tried screaming a mountain lion in after finding fresh tracks on our boot tracks from the evening before but he must have already left the area. Ben later spotted a bear under a rim at almost three miles with the spotting scope. After a five mile hike and stalk on a bear, we couldn't get him located again and tried to bring him to the call but all we stirred up were two sows with cubs on the far side of the canyon.

On day four my oldest son spotted a bear about one and a half miles away and about 2000' feet below us. After a rapid descent down the ridge we were on we were able to intercept him from the point of a bluff. He was just 200 yards below us in a creek bottom. He stopped and raised up on his hind legs and I thought he had spotted my brother and nephew who were coming in from another side drainage but just a second later a mule deer doe burst out of the brush in front of him and his ten yard dash wasn't quite quick enough to catch her.

When he gave up the chase and stopped facing away from me, I put the crosshairs on the middle of his back (we were about 200' above him) and squeezed. One 150 gr TTSX from my 300 WSM did the trick.

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It was ten o'clock at night by the time we made it back to camp with the bear and meat.

My nephew tagged his bear the day before so that was about all the hides and meat we could get out in one trip with our camp so we headed back for the river to wait on the jet boat to get us back across. Jet boats, preferably large ones, are the way to traverse the Snake River. No doubt about it.
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Great story. Got anymore pics of that area? He-double-toothpicks Canyon on the Snake is one of the greatest places on the planet.
 
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Tim: It was the first bear either of us have taken. Actually, the first dedicated bear hunt we've been on as well. Pretty fun hunt, though. Bear are incredibly hard to judge especially if you haven't shot 15 of them like you and your family. I don't know if I'll ever figure it out but, then again, if we get good at it, it will probably make the pack out unbearable so to speak.

Sendit: Here are some more scenery photos for ya'. Yeah, it's some big, beautiful country but "No country for old men".

Taken from camp.

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Some of the country.

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Verminator2 doing his thing.

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Looking up from the bear to where I shot my bear from. (The trail is beyond it.)

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Congrats to you and yours on a successful hunt, Tim. Thanks for sharing your photos and story. That truly looks like some of God's country there.

Raptor
 
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