Bear Bums - Bear Hunting

A black bear hunt offers us so many trophies. By keeping your camera handy you can get great photos of a live animal, many times.

Black bears are so abundant that even as a silent, shy animal the odds of catching a bear by a stream or in a grassy spot are good. I have a not too professional photo I took from a tree stand several years ago that has six average sized bears in the picture.

On different hunts I’ve seen black bears walk down a trail right to me, climb the tree my son and I were in and this spring I shot a fair sized British Columbia black bear at less than 10 yards.

I just had these photos emailed to me. This is a great black bear trophy for someone. Enjoy….

This is a really nice bear.

We’ve recently added Bear Hunting Resources on the left-hand side of the site. Please take a look and let us know if there are any other resources you would like. We’ll continue to add. Right now they include:

Shot Placement and Bear Vitals

Bear Skull Cleaning - European Mount

Judging a Bear - Selecting a Large Male Bear

This week a friend of mine brought out his new rifle and we sighted it in together. He just purchased a .375 H&H magnum in a Browning stainless model. What a gun! He explained to me it was my fault he had purchased this caliber.

Well, I like bear hunting and as I thought of a caliber that would leave no one doubting I felt comfortable with his purchase.

Shooting a big bear is a feat! You have to find the beast, get close enough and place that shot. Then with bears you have to find them after the shot.

Several years ago my daughter shot a big black bear at approx. 150yds with a .280 Remington. This big boar received another 280 slug and 2 shots from my .300 Ultra mag before the bear was stopped as it closed the distance to us. More of a worry to me than the ones that attack or come closer are the ones that may get away wounded or lost. Read the rest of this entry »

On a self-guided black bear hunt, depending on how much research is done you improve your time from cooking, cleaning, skinning and even scouting toward hunting so I think your odds of getting bears are good, for sure over 60% and perhaps approaching 80%. It is hunting so who knows for sure. In my opinion 80% is as good as 100% on a do-it-yourself bear hunt as long as the group you’re with is a fun and unselfish. I’m not saying you’ll get up to 100% on the self guided bear hunt but I’m trying to stress the fun of the process involved in a self guided black bear hunt.

Don’t underestimate how much fun you can have pre and post bear hunt and enjoying others in your group having success.

Our bear hunting group in Petersburg, Alaska. Petersburg is a very cool little town.

Today we sighted in the rifles for our black bear hunt in four weeks. Our gun selection was determined by availability, caliber, cost, environment and mostly by the species we’re hunting. Our selection for the four of us includes two .338 win mags, a .300 WSM and a .300 Ultra mag.

I think we’re pretty well gunned but the sighting in part is always important. We got permission from a farmer, neighbor who has a perfect pond bank as a back stop and 500 yards or more of a straight shot leading up to it.

We made a straight up and down target holder and invented a solid bench for shooting.
With my acceptance of mortality I’ve accepted the use of a lead sled for sighting in. The lead sled was anchored on our bench and at the selected distances, 50 yds, 100 yds, and 300 yds, we lined up on the targets.

These target are the best I’ve used. Sticky back and they highlight the spot you just shot so you can see well from quite a distance. The little sticky circles in the corners were also helpful because I could use them to cover up spots that I’d ruined with a shot without have to use an entire new target.

We remembered, this time, to take some binoculars and a range finder and this saved us a lot of walking and time. Our target selection was the self-adhesive Shoot-N-C® Targets. They show up well, highlight the Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a few photos of our bear hunting experience on the coast of Alaska.  The first week of May in 2006 we spent on the coast of Kupreanof Island.  We’ve decided we took too few pictures but truthfully the weather restricted our photo taking.  On September 5th (one month from now) we take off for our next self guided, do-it-yourself bear hunt.  This time we’re off to Prince of Wales Island, Alaska landing on Salmon Lake and doing this fall hunt along a great salmon stream called Karta River.

This is Nathan’s black bear that was shot about 30 yards from Frank’s bear.  21″ Plus skull.

Frank’s Alaskan Black Bear.  19″ Plus skull. Read the rest of this entry »