I've just begun reading this forum and figure I'd best tell my bear story even though it does not paint my marksmanship in the best picture.A cowboy action shooting buddy of mine rents some bait sites up on the paper company land north of Moosehead Lake. This was my second year hunting with him and my third trip after bear. I had been unlucky so far and had see only one large bear come in that turned out to be a sow with a cub. It was great fun watching them but wouldn't have been right to shoot.
Anyway, here in Maine, it has been legal to hunt bear over bait and I had helped my buddy run bait prior to the season. Prior to going out to our stands, we agreed that if either of us got one, we would stay on stand as a signal and the other would come out and help. The stands are about 6 miles apart by dirt road.
I got into my stand at about 3PM and hauled my Shiloh Business Rifle up into the tree after me. I was situated about 16 feet up a tree in the bottom of a small bowl where I was about at eye level just below the ridge line. At about that time in the afternoon/evening when the sun is just at that level where it hits your eyes in a way that makes you want to nod off, a bear appeared off to my right and above me on the trail leading down to the bottom of the bowl and the bait. Clearly, with him above me, the whole treestand concept ceased to work as a form of camoflage -he'd look me right in the eye if I gave him any reason to look my way. As you might imagine, I experienced a pretty good jump in adrenaline.
I was able to track him all the way down to the bait over my sights all the while worrying that the sound of my breathing would alert him to my presence. I was convinced that my breathing was so loud that he had to hear me. I had also been told long before that the way to judge the size of a bear was by the ears and if his belly was close to the ground. If the ears looked big, he was small. Well, this fella looked like he had pretty big ears to me and his belly wans't anyway near the ground so I figured he wasn't a real big one. He started to eat and I had to wait until he presented a good side view and when he finally did, I touched off the shot - 405 gr 20-1 RNFP over 67grains of FFg. The shot knocked him butt over tea kettle literally sumersaulting him over the bait bucket (a plastic 55 gallon drum) so I figured he was hit hard. That's when I made my second mistake of not shooting again as he was writhing around on his back under me.
Eventually, he crawled off up the streambed that flowed down to the bait area and I could hear him sort of kicking up stream rocks as he draggfed himself along. I was still pumped and expected to hear the death bawl I had always been told about any moment and after a while I did hear him make a noise that had to be it! I was excited - my first bear! A ojne shot kill! Can't get any better. I lowered my rifle to the ground and had just started climbing out of the stand when I heard those rocks clicking together again with little splashes accompanying the sound. I am convinced to this day, that bear was trying to lure me out of the tree.
I hauled my rifle back up and waited. About two and a half hours later, it is now full dark, my buddy shows up. He had gone back to camp - not found me and figured I had a bear. By the way, he was hunting with a .454 Casull scoped handgun. He shows up all excited, I climb down and tell him that I shot a small bear. We then decide to go looking for the bear to finish it - its the only right thing to do after all - can't leave a wounded critter in the woods.
So, here we are thrashing around the woods in the pitch dark following the noise trail of a critter known locally as a black ghost cause of their ability to be virtually invisible when they want and one of us has a single shot rifle and the other a scoped handgun. After an hour and a half or so, it occurred to us that we weren't the smartest two people in the world searching for a very ticked off bear at night with a scoped pistol and a single shot rifle (most guides will want a pump 12 GA with slugs or a .45-70 lever gun or .44 Mag revolver (no scopes) for this kind of work) so we called it a night and vowed to go out in the morning to find my bear.
We went out the next morning and after 3 or 4 hours of tracking blood and bone trail through some very thick underbrush and new growth woods, we found the bear very much alive and not real happy to see us. We finished him off with a handgun and it was then that I discovered my first mistake. It must have been the combination of shooting down at a significant angle and the effects of a clean bore but the bullet struck the bear high. It entered behind the left shoulder and exited through the right shoulder taking the entire joint with it. Turned out not to be a small bear either. It dressed out at 195 and the skull made the Maine Skull and Antler book for the year.
