HOME       BUY VIDEO SALE OFFER    BUSH PIGS      PET-LOADS      EQUIPMENT      SPONSORS       

 

       454 SLIDESHOW      FIREBALL WALLPAPER  PHOTO      LINKS   CONTACT US

 

BIG BEAR, BIGGER GUN 

Story of hunting black bears in Pacific NW

Pistol Hunting article by Mark Swalley (c)  2000

 

I t was the second year I had been hunting the bear.  The first year ended with only a glimpse of the large black beast and I ended up taking a sow in desperation.  My partner, Dan, on the other hand, got a little better view of him just before the season started. 

The snarling open jaw of my monster black bear. A spine-tingling tale of baiting, crawling through the bush at night, and the power of the 454 Casull hand gun. Pistol-Whip Video , makers of the action film Hnad-Gunning Africa, invites you to send in your own hunting articles. Reserve your own copy of Hand-Gunning Africa, the African big game safari video, and enter our CONTEST, Win a FREE video of Hand-Gunning Africa. If you like 454 Casull firepower, you won't believe our slideshow of the 454 Casull Fireball. Take a look!

After dumping the bait, Dan heard his dog making a racket in the heavy undergrowth behind him.  He was just about to call for her, when he noticed his lab cowering at his side.  Slowly looking over his shoulder, Dan saw a monster of a bruin not 10 feet behind him.  The bear on his one side and 15 gallons of wonder bread piled at his feet on the other. (Throw in a little gravy and Yogi would have a mighty tasty sandwich!) To make matters worse, we had not considered it necessary to carry a side arm when tending the bait during the middle of the day.  Dan and his dog slowly sidestepped away from the bait in hopes the bear would not think they were challenging his food supply.  It worked and they nervously started to pick up their pace through the chest high brush.

 

By a couple of weeks into the next season, I had heard an animal nearly every evening.  One day I saw what I thought was a bear’s back about fifty yards away.  After studying it, I noticed the large black object had ears!  Never had I seen a head that massive, and I wondered how big it must have looked at less than ten feet!  As usual, the day ended with me climbing out of the stand in blackness and making my way back to the road through the giant salal. 

 

Leaving the stand at night is the second most nerve-racking part about bear hunting.  This is often the case when hunting black bear in the Pacific Northwest; they stay hidden in the thick undergrowth waiting until the sun goes down to start feeding.  Bears are primarily nocturnal and spend most of their time eating the berries of the three to six feet tall salal and huckleberry plants that grow so thickly under the second growth timber.  The bears actually make well-worn tunnels through the stuff and travel about without making a sound and invisible to anything looking across the brush.  What is the number one most nerve-racking part about hunting bears—it is following a blood spoor on your hands and knees through one of these tunnels AT NIGHT!  So thick is the tangle of branches around you, there is no way to stand or swing a shotgun.  It is strictly pistol/flashlight work and you had better have a pistol with some authority and a cool head to use it.          CONTINUED......