Berries

[TheSurveyor]

So I didn't find and bears and worse no fresh bear sign. Can anyone help me with preferred bear food and maybe level of preference? So I hunted from 7k to 11k foot and found the following.
Huge acorn spreads. Tons. But still green. I glassed for 2 days over different areas no bear. Poked around in a few areas one day and didnt see any scat.
Moved higher. Found a hill side with acorns and at the bottom was a nice spring feed creek. Along the creek it had some open grass patches with aspens all around. Sat and glassed all morning, nothing. Went down and looked around and fill up my water bottles and no fresh sign. A little higher I found a drainage chalk full of wild rose hip, and pin cheeries. To think to hunt and to thick to get into but walking around the edges no scat.
Last day hike up high to a excellent glassing ridge. Up there was plenty of juniper berries and kinnikinnik berries. No bear or bear sign.
Only found a few raspberries and they were mostly dried up. I ate what was left.
So in all I found:
Acorns
Pin cherries
Kinnikinnik berries
Juniper berries
Raspberries
Wild rose hips
But no bear sign. Outside of the raspberries and acorns do bears feed on the others? I was surprised to find large stands of berries and no scat.
As far as acorns do they wait until they brown up? How long does that take? They are green and soft righ now, still tasted good to me.
Talked to a few road hunter that said they haven't seen any bears either. Back where I was at I never saw another sole. Totally unpressured. One asked if I had seen any elk or deer, I told him about the one muley and he said that was a good sign. Said if there is a lot of bears in there area it will push out other game, wany weight in that theory?

Anyway I'll give it another go next weekend. If you know bear diets chime in. Maybe narrow my search.

 

[TheSurveyor]

Oh yeah and the pic is an example of some of the many markings I fould from last spring at best from what I can guess.

 

[Muley_Stalker]

Bear hunting in Colorado is not easy unless you're in one of the units with high bear numbers. That sure isn't my area. I still hunted all of my life, but it doesn't work for bears. Trying to catch one feeding in the fall is like winning the lottery. They feed 20 hours a day in the fall, but they may have a 20 mile radius that they do it in. Sometimes farther. Being in the right spot that they are there with you is pretty tough. So, I pretty much gave up on that kind of hunting for bears.

I've never had to call in elk to be successful, but it's my preferred method for bears. It's the only method i've used with success for bear. I mix up the calls. The typical predator call works ok, but the most success i've had is with fawn in distress and lost calf elk calls. Sometimes i'll use a lost calf call for 15-20min and then add a coyote howling. I'm trying to make the bear think a coyote has beat it to the meal. a boar will usually come charging in throwing caution to the wind. I mean that too. Normally, a bear coming to a call will circle behing to catch my scent. It doesn't do that if it thinks a coyote is stealing it's meal. Just be ready if you try this. They come in hard and drooling. I use a muzzleloader with a 460gr conical. I normally have to take a frontal shot and I want a load that will bust through the shoulder.

Good luck.

 

[SteveE]

Do you have chokecherry bushes?

In Montana the bears are all over chokecherries right now. Watched 4 of them tackle 8 foot bushes all weekend. Makes for an easy stalk. Sorry about crappy phone pics but here is some proof

 

[TheSurveyor]

Man SteveE you're killing me��. Yes we have choke cherries but I didn't find any just the ones I listed. I'm hoping the acorns are ripening up. I'm going to give calling a shot too. Got a company trap shoot Friday then I'm heading to the woods for the weekend.

 

[walking buffalo]

Rose hips will become of more interest as food after the first frost. But with roses after being so widespread and common, it is tough to source a location that the bears will choose to use.

Regarding the picture, that looks more like ungulate toothmarks than anything else.

Any mountain ash trees in the area? This is one of the last berries of the year to ripen and be used by bears.

 

[Hannibal]

You're right on track about finding them in the fall. And spot and stalk isn't practical or productive either. I prefer spring bear hunts immediately after they emerge from hibernation when their claws are long and unworn and their pelts unrubbed and in prime condition. At that time I focus on swamps, beaver ponds and their adjacent areas. These areas are bear magnets that seldom fail to produce sightings for me.

 

[GlockZ]

Just finished my first bear hunt in Maine. The bear I harvested had a stomach full of choke cherries and blueberries. Hope this helps.