Bear Hunt

We had a little excitement last night. 

A bear was on shore behind the scow grazing on some grass and JR popped him with the 30-06. JR and Zach headed into the thick of the woods (it is really thick back there too) with shot gun and a flashlight after the wounded bear. Now that is an adrenaline  rush chasing a wounded bear in the night on his turf. It looked like the shot hit him in the rump so he was wounded but not fatally.

It wasn't long after they hit shore that they picked up blood on the trail of the bear and had him cornered.  

I stayed with the boat, the tide was going out fast and we would have had a high and dry boat when we got back and know one wanted to spend the night on shore, besides I would have just slowed everyone down on the chase though the thick woods. 

When Zach and JR finally caught up with the bear he was hurt and biting back fighting for his life.  As they got closer the bear started to come at Zach and JR. JR pulled up and popped him with a 12 gauge slug and that when the real rush was going on cause with the flash of the shot, smoke of the shot, being dark, foggy breath of the bear..... Zach and JR were blinded and couldn't see......was the bear still coming? 

When the smoke cleared the bear was going down, the shot hit it's mark and a 12 gauge slug at 8 ft has a lot of knock down power.  It was 1:30am when we got back in last night, bear is gutted and hanging in the woods. Still have to drag him out today...in the daylight.  

Morning.....

This morning we are looking up recipes for bear meat. 

Skinned and packed out the meat and hide. It was too heavy to drag out of all the down trees and through the thick brush.

Time to butcher the meat ...tenderloins for supper tonight.

Evening.....

The meat is cut and in the freezer. Saved the tenderloin for later, Linn made a mean pot of bear stew. Surprisingly to all of us it tasted a lot like beef stew! We chowed down on it. The cheesy garlic drop biscuits soaked up with home made bear stew is hard to beat at the end of a long rainy day.


JR and Zach fleshed the hide with the power sprayer... we learned this trick from the natives who came out this spring to hunt seal and sea otter.  It does an amazing job on the skin and it saves a lot of time. We still have to do a lot of hand fleshing around the paws, ears, eyes, nose and mouth. 


We have to take the hide and skull into the dnr and get it sealed (they put a seal on it and record the data about the harvest). Then the hide will go to a tanner and the skull will be cleaned be our friends the crabs.


Needless to say it is a lot of work to harvest a bear. But the spring bears are the best and this one will provide us with a lot of red meat over the summer besides venison, fish, shrimp and crab.