Great friendships,great bear hunt,great time

JASON LEE

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Dec 13, 2000
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430
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Around the corner ,Indiana
well, guess I will try to start typing this ....

Friday the 19th we left Indiana for Montana

Everything was going great until we got just north of larimie when the rain turned to sleet and the people didnt slow down, after watching 3 cargo vans that were caravaning slide off the road and go thru the fences we slowed way down.

Then about 5 minutes later the ford exploer infront of us started sliding sideways into the median and fliped twice in the air and landed on the wheels.

Stuff was scarted every-where. we pulled into the median to see if we could help, beings we were the first on the scene. I was hoping that in all the luggage that was thrown around that there were not any bodies that got thrown out and rolled over....creaping up too the truck I saw that there was just the driver and she was still in the drivers seat...but she didnt have her seat belt on and had eaten alot of dirt...littlerly...she was dazed and confused but looked to be all right other than that. we got on the cell phone and tried to figure what mile marker we were all and keep her warm until the medics got there.


Moving on down the road it finaly turned into just rain when we got into montanny.

We got into Hamilton Montany about 12 am saturday night.

Sunday we were up by 7 am and getting dessed to go meet the piolet. 11 am we were on our way into the selway.

sunday after noon had us getting camp set up and we went off to the closest grassy hill side to see if there were any bear close.

After about 2 hours sitting on the hill we decided that we were not going to see any bears and wanted to shoot our guns to see if they were still sighted in...at abot 350 yards we found a rock...I shot and was a couple of inches high...alittle adjustments and I am on....Robert takes one shot with his 7mm and nails it first shot..he figures that is good enough:D Eric(ky23) shoots his 45-70 for fun and is about 2 feet high:D

Monday had us walking up a mountian trail, that we were trying to make about a 8 mile loop on....the top was too snowed in so we turned back and dove off the side of a mountian to make our own trail and find some sheds on the way down. we did find 1 real nice 4X4 muley shed with heavy mass and some other smaller mass sheds but no elk.

Tuesday we decided that all the bears were down at the river level so we hiked down the selway river. after leaving camp for about an hour we spotted our first bear..a cinnamon that was about 350 yards on the other side of the river feeding in the open. we all get so we were straight across the river from the bear and I set up video camera while Robert finds a good rest. It was too far for eric to shoot at with the 45-70 so he mans the video camera and I get ready to back up Robert with my 300 RUM if the bear doesnt drop on the spot.

Robert shoots and the bear scrambles up hill...so I fire a shot off then robert fires another shot off, the bear comes back down hill and gets one 7mm between the shoulder blades and it drops like a rock. The bear ended up with 3 holes in it...it just didnt want to die.

After we highfived and took pictures we then knew we were fugged because there are no trails on the other side of the river. We hiked the hour back and emtied out packs and put our rifles in camp and got out pistolas and off we went to walk down the rivers edge...it took us 2.5 hours to get to the bear and 3 hours to get it back.

About half way back I was attacked by a beaver that wanted to chew on my wood:D we will have to save that story for later though.

wednesday we hiked to a hidden grass bowel that is on the river. we got there at noon and I saw my first bear at about 12:15 pm...getting as close as possable I had about a 300 yard shot, easily makable with the 300 rum....er I thought it was...clean miss, bear scrambled into the woods, never to be seen again, found my first elk shed there a 4X.

Thursday we went back to the area that we were at sunday night, except we walked all the way up to the snow line and dropped off the ridge that didnt have a trail on it, we were looking for sheds and also on our way to an area that didnt have any trails too it.

we were bumping elk and mule deer all the way down the ridge, finding just one match set of 4X4 whitetail sheds.

After walking for about 6 hours Robert and I sat on each side of the hill looking in different direstions for bears, I took a nap for about an hour and then went over to robert to see if he had saw anything. while he was saying no I spoted a huge black bear about 500 yards away.

We looked thru the binos and saw that it had a nice fat belly so we side hilled across the ridge until we were level...the range finder said 287 yards. I got a good rest on some rocks and let the 140 grain barnes fly out of the 280 aclkey barrle.
It struck the bear about an Inche behind the eye coming out the outher side dropping it like a sack of potatoes. The bear was inbetween two huge woods and I didnt want it to run in there and hide.

So we high five each other and make the 45 minute climb down the vally thru the creek and up the other hill until we find the bear.

Took some pics...allright a bunch of pics, skinned it out and took some meat and put it in my frame pack and we started the hike out.

instead of going back up the hill on the other side we decided it would be better to go down the creek to the trail that goes along the selway back to camp.

In that creek bottom we found a few dead elk and one huge bull elk that we carried out(8X7 see story and pics in elk section)

Getting back to camp at about 12:30 we drank a few beers and relaxed.

Friday eric went out and saw a ton of mule deer and no bears.

So we went 2 bears for 3 hunters...

Robert's bear may of been 5 feet if two big people pulled from each end them measured, it was a cinamon and his first bear though and is a trophy to him!

Mine went 5 1/2 feet easily and weighed about 300 lbs, the check in person in salmon IDaho said it looked to be about mid teens in age, its grazing teeth were just about gone as well as the teeth behind the k-nines were gone.

We used a piolet that was a great flyer and very cheap if anyone needs his name or number contact me..

We also found out that in wisconson dont spit on someones car while going down the highway......the state police were very understanding and let me go with a warning...did I mention that Robert is a Police Officer:D....but thats another story Try to post some bear pics in a little bit
 
HELL I don't have time to read all that crap, is that a cut and paste ?~?~ ;) (CONGRATS BRO !!!!!)
 
WTG on the bear jason.... sounds Like I missed a great trip...oh well maybe next year...


Delw
 
Once again Jason CONGRATS, sounds like you guys have not only some good Bear meat but some wild (trip there), and some Good memories. Can't wait to see the pic's..


Dennis
 
Nice story, congratulations to you all! Can't wait to see pictures now. It sounds like there was lots of snow and it didn't stop you or slow you down much. I imagine you can't say enough about a great place to hunt like that. It sounds awesome.
 

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