While I have to admit I am still somewhat of a beginner black bear hunter. This year was my first bear harvest ever. I did put over 140 hours hunting for my black bear this year. If anything other then the great mature boar that I harvested I gained some valuable experience and some advice given to me previously was definitely understood now!

So if you’re heading out for spring bear on Vancouver Island you may find a tip or two in here useful.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #1 - Don’t sell yourself short by only hunting the later part of the day. If you have the time spend it in the field. You never what can happen and it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I saw and stalked several bears this year at all hours of hunting light.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #2 - When looking for spots to glass I have found more bears on recontoured roads than anything else. The recontoured roads have grass and clover planted on them and they are like a mini-oasis for black bears in the middle of clear cuts and surrounding areas. Look for green grassy hillsides in and around the clearcuts and you’re sure to spot a few bears.

Black Bear Hunting Tip#3 - Bears are not easy to judge in the field. Especially for beginners. And I was no exception. I glassed dozens of bears and got as close as I could to as many of them as possible only to find they were not nearly as big as I originally had thought. After studying so many bears and their behavior it’s going to be very obvious when you are onto a mature male trophy black bear.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #4 - Unless you’re a dummy you’ll already know this one… Work the wind. I know and have seen many a stinky, sweaty grubby guide who has never worn camo or anything of the sort to give them an advantage over game and they remain highly succesful hunters because they “work the wind” and use the terrain to their advantage.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #5 - Don’t believe the hype that bears have poor eyesight… Sure it’s not the greatest but between their hearing and sense of smell a bear can put two and two together pretty quickly without even having to see you. Always make your final approach on a bear from the downwind side if possible. You’ll see them try and wind you with their nose in the air and when they do they bugger off pretty quick usually.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #6 - Don’t ever rush your shot on a Black Bear. These big game animals are abundant and you’ll pretty much always have another chance on another bear. There is no need to make a rushed shot which may miss and spook the bear or even worse wound the bear and you may not recover him without the help of tracking dogs. If the decision has to be rushed and you have not a good chance to analyze the animal a shot should not be taken.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #7 - Don’t try and see how far of a shot you can make on a Black Bear. If you can use the wind and terrain in your favor there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to get within 100 yards of a black bear. I stalked and have on video over 5 different bears I stalked to within 100 yards of. The black bear I harvested was only a 70 yard shot. When I hear of guys taking 250 or 300 yard shots on a black bear it makes me shudder. Yeah you may very well be capable of hitting something at that range it’s not demonstrating any skills as a hunter in my own opinion.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #8 - You’ve probably heard this one before too and I know I did as well but it really didn’t mean anything to me until it happened. Try and find a bear that is going to be UPHILL from where you’re shooting and is a spot that is going to be easy to access. These are big, heavy animals and moving them around in a clearcut is next to impossible if you have to go anywhere uphill or even on flat ground for that matter. It took two of us two hours to move my bear from where he was shot to the decommissioned road and into my truck less than 100 yards away this includes skinning and quartering!

Black Bear Hunting Tip #9 - TAKE MEASUREMENTS! - My taxidermist wants to kick my ass everytime I come in there with something because I forget to measure the animal. In order to do the best job possible your taxidermist may need to have some measurements of your animal. For a bear my taxidermist wanted Nose to tail (Hide On), Circumference of neck (Hide On), Circumference of chest (Hide On). These measurements help the taxidermist when ordering your forms so that your bear can look exactly as he did before.

Black Bear Hunting Tip #10 - Try to cool the meat as quickly as possible. Black bears are a very dense muscular animal. The meat actually takes longer to cool then smaller species such as deer or calf moose and elk. We cooled my meat down in the river for about an hour before hanging it. It makes a difference in how the meat turns out. Bear meat isn’t known for it’s great taste so every little thing you can do to maintain or enhance the quality of meat will be beneficial.

Hopefully this small selection of tips will help one or two of the BC Bear Hunters out there!

Happy Hunting!
Carl

My Vancouver Island Black Bear hunt started with a trip to the taxidermist…

I was dropping off a nice whitetail that I harvest for a shoulder mount and happened to see a husky 3/4 mount black bear hanging out of the wall. The sheer size and shape of the bear was so impressive, I found myself forgetting all about the whitetail I had just dropped off and all I could think about was getting a nice big bear! Just like the one on the wall at my taxidermists. A trophy sized mature male black bear and I wouldn’t settle for anything less.

The problem… This was November and I wanted to take a spring bear. I was in for a bit of a wait. It wasn’t a bad thing though as I was missing one of the most important parts of getting a Black Bear on the Island. Wheels! I had no vehicle other then my 1975 Jeep CJ-5 and well let’s face it… It’s not something you want to be 250km back in the bush with . It would rattle itself to pieces on the gravel roads. So the first thing I had to do was get myself a truck. I didn’t want to depend on ANYBODY but myself for my outdoor pursuits.

So this year thanks to my online ventures I was finally able to purchase myself a truck. I bought a 2003 Ford F150 Lariat 4×4. The perfect truck for all my hunting exploits. And the perfect truck to get me out there in search of a big bruin. Opening day for spring bear was just around the corner after buying my truck and I had rounded up a good friend and his younger brother to go out and see if we could find an early rising bear.

The opening weekend of April 1st found us barreling down the Island Highway on our way into the area south of Bamfield. Klanawa to be exact. I had been there on several fishing trips with my friends and had the opportunity to do a little scouting and had decided this would be the area we would pound hard. This would be the area that would produce my trophy Island Black Bear.

The first weekend it rained really hard, we did manage to see two bears though and we also got plenty of prelimary scouting in discovering where all the spur roads went and where we thought held the most potential based on the habitat and sign. We went home empty handed that weekend but still had a great time and learned plenty about the area we had just started to hunt.

Actually… I went home empty handed 4 weekends in a row. We saw nearly 30 bears over the course and I even had several very good opportunities to harvest some average Island Bears in the 5 ft class many of which I have on video. I was holding out for a 6 foot mature male and although we had seen a few, they were just glimpses and we didn’t have time to setup let alone shoot on any of them.

As a first time bear hunter I found it extremely difficult to judge the size of the black bears. I insisted on getting as close as possible to every bear we spotted so I could examine them and watch how they behaved and see their mass and everything about them. I wanted to know black bears inside and out so there would be no mistake when that I spotted the big bruin.

It was getting through mid-may and I had to go to a wedding in Creston. I came home on the Thursday and over a beer at a BBQ friday night I had recruited another friend to go out on the Sunday morning and come back monday of may long weekend. I was excited. It was getting late in the spring bear season and I really wanted that 6ft bear!

Sunday morning came and off we went again into the Klanawa river area. On the way through cowichan we saw 4 or 5 deer out on the road and it looked like the game was moving around. We hoped anyways. We spent most of the day glassing, and driving, and glassing, and driving… You know the drill. It seemed like we had been at it for hours without even the slightest look at a bear.

The sign was everywhere but no bears! that is until the clock stuck about 4pm and look out… The bears were coming out of the woodworks. It seemed like every corner we rounded there was another bear running off the road. We had spotted a potential shooter and were racing to get under the bear on a clearcut and as we’re going down the spur another bear runs right across the road in front of us and gone. It was crazy…

In the next 2 hours I would spot and stalk 3 different bears within shooting distance only to have the bears get into to deep of brush or get themselves into positions where I couldn’t make a good shot. I was starting to feel that the end of the day was coming near and I would again be going home without a bear.

As we were leaving the last clearcut we decided to make a left hand turn and check out some new area we had only glanced at before. It was only 2 minutes away and since it was about 7:45pm it was going to be our last play of the day. So what the hell… away we went.

We pulled into this massive clearcut with a few forked roads and clearcut brush patches in between the roads. We started and glassing and I hear my buddy Ben yell, “Holy Shit” there goes a big bear across the road headed left… Now my buddy Ben isn’t a hunter and I sort of doubted the fact he’d seen a “Big” bear so I laughed and said “sure Ben” “NO REALLY, He was BIG” and I could tell the way he said it he was serious. I noted where the bear went into the timber and it was only 400 or 500 yards through and he would be into a clearcut patch again right adjacent to the road, so I sped up and around to where we thought he might come out.

Low and behold there was a bear already there! And it’s eyes and ears were glued to the bushes where the big bruin was coming through. I said to Ben “This is it…!” “That bear is going to come out right here any minute, we need to get into position” The wind was in our favor and not even 10 yards away from us was a pile of logs, so I scrambled up the pile and used the top log for a rest and to cover us from the bears view. Ben got the camera setup and no sooner that bear came right out where I thought he would.

That bear came out and swaggered down a little and you could just see that he was packing some weight in the front shoulders, and his ears were small and he just looked like he was a bear who’d been around the block. In fact this was HIS block.

We stayed quite and watched the bear go about his business while I field judged him. It was when he stood up on his hind legs to scratch that I realized he was a really good sized bear and that I was going to take him. I loaded a shell in the chamber and he heard me! “Shit” I thought to myself, he’s going to bugger off on me, so I stayed absolutely still, just staring at his face through the scope… Waiting… Waiting for him to turn broadside so I could take the shot.

He turned, and started to head back to the tree, I thought he was going to scratch again but he didn’t he went right broadside and as he started to turn again towards me I touched off a Federal 175grn softpoint with my 7MM Rem Mag and it struck the bear right behind the front shoulder cleanly and quickly tipping that bear over and we got the whole thing on video… I had done it! I had my Island Bear. And a good one too!

We waited a few minutes and then went to go and recover the bruin. He was right there not 5ft from where I had hit him. We thought we could be heros and drag him out of there for pictures well it took more then 15 minutes just to position him for the pictures. He was HEAVY. Probably around the 400 pound mark. The bear measured out at 6′ 3″ from nose to tail.

It took us a while to skin him out and quarter him up being my first bear and I wanted to do an excellent job for my taxidermist. We didn’t make it back to camp until about 10:30pm and we ate a quick campfire dinner of lobster and corn and then hopped in the truck and went to sleep.

First thing in the morning we headed for home… And my bear hunting had come to an end just as fast as it all started.

An awesome experience! I’ll never forget my first bear!

Happy Hunting!
Carl

I have just gone down to Island Outfitters here in Victoria and picked up my LEH cards and synopsis today.

Here is what I purchased.

5 Special Sheep Permits.

5 Special Elk Permits.

10 Regular LEH cards.

Total Cost - $227.00

If all goes as I have planned it I’ll get drawn for the special sheep and Island Elk and will have some awesome content to add to the website after my succesfull hunt

Happy Hunting!
Carl

For 2006 I have a variety of hunting trips that I’ll be documenting and providing to my website visitors. These hunts include.

Vancouver Island Spring Black Bear Hunt - I have already been out on 4 different trips for the BCHuntingBlog and have taken plenty of photos, videos, and articles to add to the site very shortly.

Region 7 Stone Sheep Hunt - Will be leaving towards the end of July and returning sometime in August. This will be a great hunt and one I am looking forward to sharing with my readers.

Region 7 Mule/Whitetail Deer Hunt - This annual hunt is one of my favorites and will be occuring November of 2006. I’ll be chasing after a monster muley this year and if I stumble into a big whitey I just might have to ake it too. For sure these will be exciting stories to read on the BCHuntingBlog.Com

In addition to the above trips I will be going on several scouting trips throughout the province. They will also be documented and shared with my readers.

Happy Hunting!
Carl

One of the features of the BC hunting blog is that I’ll actually be taking several hunting trips a year and will be documenting the hunts to share with the visitors to this site. Each trip provides me the opportunity to take pictures, video and write articles and stories based on the hunt. All of this equates to unique and ever0-changing content related to hunting in BC.

Obviously when there is fresh content constantly being loaded onto the site it will receive more and more repeat visits by hunters in BC or anyone looking to hunt here. The increased visitors and site hits gives my advertisers and sponsors much more incentive to have their advertisements on my site. Thus supporting the BCHuntingBlog.Com

This is a for profit site. It was designed and implemented to earn money so that I can afford to hunt & fish! It’s absolutely FREE for members to use and enjoy as the revenue is generated entirely by providing advertising space to companies and individuals who have hunting and outdoor products or services.

Come back often as there will always be fresh information available.

Happy Hunting!
Carl

This section is where I will be sharing my own personal BC hunting stories and trip information. If you have any stories you would like to submit to the BCHuntingBlog then please send them to me and I would be more then happy to post your story and pictures of your succesful and even not so-successful hunting trips.

This is a resource for BC Resident hunters or anyone looking to come and hunt in BC and yet one more site out there created by an avid BC hunter to help promote and preserve the sport of hunting in Beautiful BC.

Happy Hunting!
Carl

Thank you for visiting the BCHuntingBlog.Com

This websites mission is to provide up-to-date information about hunting in the beautiful province of BC.

You’ll find information about the various BC Big Game species, BC Hunting Trip reports and even some Hunting Gear Reviews to help you get properly equiped to hunt in BC.

The BCHuntingBlog.Com website also offers it’s visitors a BC Hunting Discussion Forum and even a BC Hunting Photo Gallery where you can share all of your Hunting pictures and videos with other BC Hunters if you like and for free.

Please bookmark this site and return often as the site will be frequently updated.

If you think you have something to add or an article you have written that you would me to publish please let me know!

Happy Hunting!
Carl