2021 - Issue 5 - September/October

Bear Charcuterie

Bear Scapula Belt Buckle

Helicopters & bears

LED Skull

Clay Newcomb’s

New Podcast

Glassing

Arizona

Sept/Oct 2021 US $5.95 CA $7.95

Sep

The bear hunting authority for 21 years

t/O ct

202 1

What makes a good hound?

Sept/Oct 2021 Volume 22 - Issue 5

Magazine

Cover photo by Josh Kirchner

by Josh Kirchner & Eric Voris

Glassing Arizona

by Brooke Smith

10

Helicopters and Bears

18

By Jake Horton

Western Bears 101

24

Use of Leashed Tracking Dogs

By Clay Newcomb

The 10-Day Bear Bait

By Douglas Boze

28

by Tim Fowler

Whole Bear Charcuterie

The Death of a Bear

32

Bear Scapula Belt Buckler

42

George Duncan’s Henry

by Kolby Morehead

38

Bear Skull LED

By Dave Coleman

By Clay Newcomb

36

46

Columns

Cuddeback Trail Camera Contest Winner Win a Cuddeback Camera!

58 Bowhunting Bears

by Bernie Barringer - Bear Guru

60 Western Bear Hunting

“Gutsy Move” Eric Haupt Wisconsin

To enter, submit a unique Cuddeback photo to editor@bear-hunting.com or post to our Facebook page Bear Hunting Magazine

by Brian Strickland - Western Hunter

62

Bruin Desinations -

64

Fleshing it Out -

by Al Raychard - Bear Hunting Veteran

by Timothy Fowler - Renaissance Man

66 In Hot Pursuit - Guest

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Bear Hunting

5

T hree years ago, I got an email from a curious new hunter named Eric Voris. And not just any new

hunter, but an adult-onset hunter. Something I feel that is becoming more and more prevalent these days. Eric explained to me his fascination with bear hunting in Arizona and about his quest to learn more about these desert bears. He’d been out quite a bit on his own, but had no success. In fact, at that point, he never even laid eyes on a bear. All the while, he was stricken with an amount of roadblocks that would resemble a sea of deadfall. Broken down vehicles, forgetting essential gear at home, too many hunters, bad weather, and of course, no bears. Eric called it his “bear curse.” We met up for coffee shortly after that first email and quickly realized we were cut from the same cloth. Eric and I have been good friends ever since. Fast forward three years, to the spring of 2021, and we were headed to a favorite spot of mine for bears. One that I had high hopes would break the curse that plagued Eric.

Spring Bear in Arizona Spring bear hunting in Arizona is an OTC (over the counter) hunt for the most part. There are a few draw tags out there, but they are just that. Because of this, it really gives a hunter the ability to better learn areas year after year. And one of the most deadly tools in a hunter’s toolkit is knowledge. The only caveat with these Arizona bear hunts is the need to pay attention to the sow quota limits. Each hunt unit has a certain sow limit and once that limit is reached, the unit will shut down to bear hunting the following Wednesday at sundown. Hunters can pay mind to these numbers either online or via our bear hotline. Know what’s open before heading out. Lucky for Eric and I, the unit we were headed to was still open in late May. This was something that hadn’t happened in years. My eagerness to be reunited with this special place was potent, to say the least.

My First Few Days I arrived in camp a few days before Eric in hopes of getting the lay of the land and possibly a look at some bears. I too had a tag in my pocket, of course. The weather looked good, grass was green, and this country was screaming spring bears to me. Everything felt right. After getting camp set, I made the hour long trek out to my glassing spot for the evening. Three bears walked through my glass, but it was a sow and two cubs. A bittersweet find, but it felt good to lay eyes on bears right off the rip.

On the second day, after sweltering heat and no bears all day, I

10 Bear Hunting

Sept/Oct 2021

A veteran hunter takes a new bear into the backcountry & breaks the curse.

Glassing

Arizona

By Josh Kirchner & Eric Voris

@dialedinhunter & @latetothegameoutdoors

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting 11

The author, left, and Heather on their backcountry Idaho bear hunt.

J

une of 2019 my dear friend Heather, her husband John and I set out for what was my first bear hunt. Heather is very knowledgeable about

bears and has a lot of experience hunting bears. I didn’t have any experience with bears but was curious and wanted to learn. In 2018 I reached out to Heather and asked her if I could tag along on a bear hunt with her. She went above and beyond and asked me if I wanted to plan a spring bear hunt in Idaho for 2019. My answer was YES! The hunt was set and I began to count down the days. I took ten days off of work and we set off for this amazing adventure. As we sat down and ate supper the first night at camp, we discussed the plan for the next morning.

The next morning, we planned to hike in on a closed road that proved to be a popular area for the bears. We switched to the other side of the drainage for the evening hunt. It was thick with brush and not the best place to hike into, but it was worth it. We spotted our first black bear, but too far away and on the side of the drainage where we had been that morning. We backed out for the night with high hopes of finding him in the morning.

At 3:00 a.m. the night silence was broken by the sound of cell phone alarms. We were eager to get into the

18 Bear Hunting

Sept/Oct 2021

Helicopters &

Bears

by Brooke Smith

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting 19

The

10-day Bear Bait

In some situations, less may be more when it comes to baiting bears.

There is a lot of debate over the most

effective time frame to bait bears before the season. In some regions, laws regulate baiting time frames, but in other places you can bait bear yearround.

The variable that ties them all together is that you can’t hunt until the first day of the season. What you’ve done up until that point is irrelevant compared to the answer of this question: Do you have bears visiting your bait site on opening day?

Is it better to bait for three months before the opener or is it more effective to bait much closer to the season? Everyone has an answer and there isn’t a wrong one. However, challenging your own ideology on baiting bears in your region may be just what you need to do to increase your odds for success.

The concept of the 10-day bear bait has many advantages and has been proven effective. This can be a great method to harvest those wily, hunter-shy mature boars. It’s financially friendly and it’s easier. Sound like the cure all for your bear baiting woes?

Maybe it is.

The Rational Mind Frame When you are new to bear baiting it makes rational sense that the longer you bait the better, or as long as the law allows. You would think that bears would never get tired of the endless supply of sweets and goodies, however, that’s just not the

case. They do get tired of unnatural food. Every bear is different but it has been my observation that a bear, especially in the fall, will hit a bait hard for 10 to 14 days, and then begin to lose interest.

Why they quit is up for debate as well. Much of it has to do with the availability of natural foods.

In spring bears respond to bait until the grass is green.

In the South, Upper Midwest and East, fall bears respond well until the acorns and hickory nuts hit the ground. It could be vice versa in the northern bear woods which are dominated by late summer berries.

Bears may respond to bait better later in the year, just before they enter their winter dens.

Aside from attractive natural food sources pulling them away, we can assume that a bear’s body would eventually respond to massive amounts of sugar and processed carbohydrates the same way a human would – they become lethargic and want to eat something different. I’m convinced that a bear’s taste buds aren’t like ours and definitely they don’t think like we do. A bear doesn’t receive conscious enjoyment from indulging himself the way humans do; he is simply in the business of gathering calories.

Whether he gets them in the form of white oak acorns or donuts, it does not matter. Hunger and instinct are the drivers of his actions and both push him to gain massive amounts of weight any way that he can.

Eventually, his body tells him that he’s had enough of the unnatural food and he begins to ignore man-made baits. Some bears stick with the donuts longer than others, but they all follow this pattern.

Will and Adam Beason’s Success Will and Adam Beason of western Arkansas started doing a 10-day bear bait several years ago with great success. Basically, they put out 500 to 1,000 pounds of bait two times before the season starts. There are a several positives to this type of hunting and they are convinced that it has helped them in killing five 20-inch-plus bears in the last 10 years. Also, they are doing this in a region that isn’t known for consistently producing giant bears. The key to their success with this method rests on one fact about their area – the bears are already there. This is the key to this type of baiting. If it takes a week for bears to find the bait, you’ve probably messed up by baiting so late. However, if they find your bait quickly every year, you might try waiting until closer to the season.

Over time the Beason’s have developed a system of baiting that works for them. Here are five reasons why you should consider a short bear-baiting session:

28 Bear Hunting

Sept/Oct 2021

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting 29

Many claim bear hunting is different, but why?

by Douglas Boze

@bozemandbears

The death

of a bear

32 Bear Hunting

Sept/Oct 2021

I’ve been pondering a question. What is it

about bear hunting that makes it different for me personally as a hunter, compared to that of deer or elk hunting? As hunters, I think,

collectively we can all agree that there is an indescribable excitement, respect and remorse cocktail that wells up within our souls when we take an animal’s life. This cocktail overflows for me when it comes to bear. I have a great and wonderous admiration for bear and their life force.

They are masters of survival living in wild and rugged places, vicious, tender, smart, savvy, stealthy, playful, sentient beings. I feel connected to them in a way. Not in a Timothy Treadwell type of way, I do not associate them as people, I do not think of them as my friends. But, rather in a mystical, ancient, almost spiritual sense. Judging from ancient mans history, I know I am not alone in this. They have been revered for a millennium.

So, the question remains, why is that? Why do I feel this primal connection like so many throughout human history? What is it about bears that makes us feel this way? I am not sure I can answer that completely in this article, but I can explore it. For myself, watching bear is a pastime of great enjoyment, as voyeuristic as it may sound. From the way they peel trees in the spring for the cambium layer, to how they gorge themselves in the fall on berries, to anxiously tearing into a long ago, rotted tree that once stood mightily above the bear offering shade but is now reduced to offering feed in the way of ants and termites, the view is always a joy.

But there is one thing, and one thing particularly that I have noticed with bear, which strikes my being in a way no other animal has done. That is, the bears final moan, also known as a “death moan” or “death bawl”. It does not happen every time a bear dies, but on occasion, as a last act of a bear’s existence it will let out a roar or a bawl just before death, that, if you have heard, you know just what I am talking about.

If you have not heard it however, let me explain it slightly. If a bear is wounded mortally but doesn’t instantly pass, perhaps a few seconds linger before death takes hold, the bear will bellow out this sound that strikes the hunter to their core being. The first time I heard this was when I shot my first bear, an amazing color phase cinnamon bear. When I heard this I felt as if an ancient warrior had let out his final act of defiance to the world before heading into the next realm. I do not hear this from deer who die quietly. Nor have I heard it from the normally very vocal elk or any other creature I have happened to hunt. Only the bear, and that is yet another unique quality of this fantastic animal. In general, it signifies that the bear has passed away once the roaring stop.

I know, this seems like dark subject matter, and in truth it is a little bit. But, hunting itself contains tough subject matter. It is no easy thing to take another animals life for the sake of continuing yours, nor should it be.

It’s a violent act, but not an act of malevolence or hatred.

Just as much as it is violent, it is ancient and engrained in our history, our bones, our DNA. We are hunters, bear are hunters, we share this common trait. A bear hunts a

www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting 33

Make Your

Own LED

Bear Skull

by Kolby Morehead

It’s fun to find new ways to display, remember, and honor the animals we’ve harvested. This LED light bear will make a conversation piece in your house wherever you put it. This is the same bear skull from the July/August 2021 issue of the magazine that I cleaned using the maceration process. I then whitened it in a peroxide bath. I was amazed at how well the web of complex nasal turbinal bones were preserved and I knew it would look cool with some LED lights behind them. This is a fun, cheap, and easy craft that may take ten minutes to do and you will have a cool skull light that turns different colors adding ambience to any room using a TV backlight kit with AC plug. I found this one on Amazon for $25.

The author ordered the TV backlighting LED kit off Amazon for $25.

42 Bear Hunting

Sept/Oct 2021

If you’ve got ten minutes and $25 you can make something that’s sure to get some attention

Just like putting lights on a Chrismas tree, make sure that all sections are working.

Connect the LED sections together making sure that the arrows on the strips and the connectors line up as shown.

Fold the strip in half again and insert into the brain cavity from the base of the skull.

Remove the backing from the first three LED sections and fold them in half joining the adhesive strip together. www.bear-hunting.com

Bear Hunting 43