Here goes..
This guy walked out onto that hillside, and literally looked like he glowed. I've never seen a color like that on a bear. Just really cool to watch. I was literally freezing my nards off. I put on every piece of clothing I brought with me and still couldn't feel my finger tips.
Critter and I and another friend were trying to size this guy up. Between the three of us, we have seen a lot of bears, and quite a few on the ground. The consensus was, that it was a boar..solid, stocky, but not a huge bear. I went back and forth with my opinion..I initially thought sow, but after getting a better look at his front end and head, I was fairly convinced it was a stocky boar. I was shivering hard enough, it made it tough to sit still behind the spotter. Bottom line is we all thought he was a solid bear, a boar, extremelly pretty, great coat, and decided he was worth a better look.
Critter and I bailed off the hillside and up the other side in record time. The wind was howling..had to be gusting 30+ mph. I don't know that I would have been comfortable shooting 200 yards in those conditions. To give you an idea of how hard it was howling..I kicked a pretty good sized rock down the hill within 75 yards of the bear, and he never heard it. We knew we were going to pop out very close. With a few hand signals from the opposite ridge we were within 50 yards of where we thought he would be. Critter spotted him down below us within 50 yards, feeding behind some trees. It took 5-10 minutes for him to feed out into an opening. When he finally did, he still had his head down mowing down the grass. Critter barked at him, and he picked his head up and looked right us. I made the decision and touched one off. He didn't go far and piled up.
Luckily Matt had his camera with him, because we had dropped our packs down below in the creek bottom. Gorgeous hide and color on this bear...thicker than I have ever seen.
We made it off the rock slides and back to the truck by 11. Only one fall, but luckily Critter's tripod took the brunt of it..and not his noggin.
Very fun night, lots of laughs and great company. We will definitely be doing it again in the near future.
Critter sent the pics to my work email, so I can get a few hero shots posted tomorrow.
