Spring Bear Pursuit

zachvu 4/14/11 1:04pm

So tomorrow I'll be going out on my first bear hunt...ever! We're taking our 15 week old hound pup and my in-laws 12 or so hounds. I'm starting this thread in hopes that I get some good photos the next few weekends and have somewhere to post them. I'm not really sure what to expect but plan to give some great writeups if anything noteworthy happens. I'm also hoping to find some sheds, as we'll be laying down a decent amount of leather. If all ends well, it will be a weekend filled with firsts: sheds, hounds, and bears!!!

5,144

zachvu

4/19/11 11:14pm

So the weekend went better than I expected it to! We started out driving from St. George, to Payson, then down to Moab, which kind of sucked. We got to camp late and hit the sack to be ready for the next day. We hit the roads at about 6:00 with my girlfriend, her parents, 11 hounds, and a border collie. We drove around on dirt roads and a few highway sections until about 3:00. Nothing really eventful happened, other than seeing an older track that they had found the day before. After eating lunch, we (the people, no dogs) loaded up and headed out to the area that we are going to elk hunt this year. We went to an area where there was once a high Indian population, and the evidence was everywhere! There were pot shards and flint pieces all over the place. Near where we were there was also coyote tracks and scat all over, so I may go hunt that the weekend after Easter. That night we returned to camp and called it a night. The next morning we all hit the road again, this time to a different area. As we were driving, the dogs rigged a few times, but never on anything very hot. On our drive we saw some tracks in the road and got out to take a closer look. The dogs didn't sound off so we figured they were at least a day old, but sill looked relatively fresh. We followed the tracks and realized that they were from 2 or 3 different bears, that had returned to that area multiple times in the last few days. While following the tracks, I got a nice surprise....MY FIRST SHED! It was an older (3-4 year old) 4 point elk shed stuck halfway under a log, with the top two point broken off. It wasn't pretty by any means but it was my first shed, so it's hanging on the wall in the trophy/saddle room downstairs. Back to the hunt. We got one of the dogs and tried following the cold track, just to see if anything would turn up. The wind started blowing and must have moved some scent over the ridgeline because the dogs went nuts! We started shipping dogs, but they had to drop off of a 10 foot ridge before continuing on the track, so that made it a little more difficult. Once the dogs were all sent, we took off down the road to try to get to an area closer to where they were headed. On the drive, the GPS delivered the exciting message - "Mater has treed quarry." We were excited, but skeptical. Mater has a broken hip from being run over by a truck. A few seconds later another message appeared - "Rebel has treed quarry." Now things were getting exciting. Right about this time we had gotten to a point straight across from the dogs. We started hiking in and thought they were in a drainage a few miles away. We reached the dogs, and saw a HUGE 15-20 year old boar scurrying up the tree. This was the first bear I had ever seen, other than at bear world or the zoo - so it was amazing to say the least. By the time we got there, there were 8 dogs at the tree, keeping our little furry pal up there. The other 3 dogs (which we thought were in the lead on the chase) were nowhere to be found. After pulling the dogs from the tree and hiking back to the truck, we started looking for the missing dogs. At first it was frustrating because we thought they had run the track backwards or were just too excited to do what they know how to do. Remember the multiple bear tracks from earlier? That's where they went! They remaining dogs had run a bear that we had likely scared out while following the tracks further down the road. They ran that bear, but we're not sure where it or they ended up. We drove around for a while with the gps glitching and calling dogs. Two of the three dogs showed up, and the search was on for the last one. We finally found her lying under a tree, tired as could be. We were frustrated with her until we realized that she had been with the other dogs, running a different bear. After that we headed back to camp, packed up, and made the long drive back to St. George. It was Sunday, the week before Easter Jeep Safari, so there were some pretty impressive rigs driving through Moab. I have pics of much of the action, but the camera was left in the trailer, so I won't be able to post those until next week. And as far as our little pup goes, he ran a total of about 7 miles and we had to stop him from jumping big ledges, and being part of the chase with the experienced dogs. I think he has the attitude to be a great bear dog, and he definitely has the blood line! Hope you enjoyed guys, this is my first trip report so give me some feedback for the next report in a couple weeks!!

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Copper's pretty tired after the tough weekend.

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My first shed! Along with some arrowheads and the axe piece we found while hiking

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Closeups of the arrowheads and broken axe piece

MuleyMadness

4/19/11 11:23pm

So you passed on the boar I assume? Not big enough, cool report I enjoyed it. :thumb

zachvu

4/20/11 9:30am

"MuleyMadness" wrote:So you passed on the boar I assume? Not big enough, cool report I enjoyed it. :thumb

We just have a pursuit tag, not a harvest. It was DEFINITELY big enough to take if we had the tag! One of our friend's has a tag for the spring season but wasn't there this weekend because his dad is in North Dakota working, and wanted to wait for him to be there.