Justbryan
AH fanatic
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2019
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- 615
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- Location
- Dallas Metro Area, Texas
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- Hunted
- South Africa, New Zealand, USA, Canada,
I just got back from Northern Idaho bear hunt in the middle of farm land. There are some giant black bear in the deep canyons in the middle of Idaho farm land. The first hour of the hunt we had two bears come in at 300 and 400+ yards. An average sized cinnamon bear for the area came to bait about 30 minutes before sunset at 300+ yards which we had already dialed the scope into for the range. The bear had been observed the prior day running up to the bait and leaving quickly with a mouth full of bait. The bear was only going to be in the shooting lane for a minute.
I decided to shoot the cinnamon bear instead of waiting on a larger black bear even though it was on the small side. Bear are extremely hard for me to judge and it was even smaller than I first thought. But the color of the bear was what caused me to make the shot and not the body size. The bear's color was a dark reddish brown cinnamon on the legs with a lighter cinnamon back. I shot through the front legs instead of making a middle of the middle shot with a 28 Nosler, "Best of the West" Rifle. I was wanting the bear to go down on the spot and that worked perfectly. The shot flipped the bear end over end and it was down with no tracking. The fear was that we would lose the bear down the canyon off the cliff.
The only sad part for me was my hunt was over too quickly because my guide put weeks of hard work into baiting and scouting. He was 100% sure a few bears would show up. I was skeptical but did exactly what he told me. He went against much of the advice that I had read in researching black bear hunting but I did not question his tactics or advise. I was was very skeptical about shot placement but he was confident and everything worked out.
Bear pic
I decided to shoot the cinnamon bear instead of waiting on a larger black bear even though it was on the small side. Bear are extremely hard for me to judge and it was even smaller than I first thought. But the color of the bear was what caused me to make the shot and not the body size. The bear's color was a dark reddish brown cinnamon on the legs with a lighter cinnamon back. I shot through the front legs instead of making a middle of the middle shot with a 28 Nosler, "Best of the West" Rifle. I was wanting the bear to go down on the spot and that worked perfectly. The shot flipped the bear end over end and it was down with no tracking. The fear was that we would lose the bear down the canyon off the cliff.
The only sad part for me was my hunt was over too quickly because my guide put weeks of hard work into baiting and scouting. He was 100% sure a few bears would show up. I was skeptical but did exactly what he told me. He went against much of the advice that I had read in researching black bear hunting but I did not question his tactics or advise. I was was very skeptical about shot placement but he was confident and everything worked out.
Bear pic
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