Bear situation...

BIGREDD said:
Too bad about the loss of the bear, I am sure the hunter that lost it feels bad enough without being berated by arm chair experts.
I agree with Bartell, sounds like a shot close to the spine, a commom mistake with bears is shooting too high or too far back. But a paunch shot would not likely have caused the reaction described. If the bullet passes close enough to the spinal column the shock/energy can cause the animal to go down temporarily.
I can visualize a scapula shot... this would disrupt the spine and drop it and a damaged shouder could cause the stumbling/tripping after the bear got up.
I am not a bear expert...JBRO.
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While I also would not consider myself a "expert" - whatever that means, I live in bear country and have shot one or two!

I will not speculate on where the shot went , too high, too low forward, back, I do not know! What I do know is, when you shoot a animal, any animal, you must always be ready to shoot again! From the description there was plenty of time, between 10-20 seconds for a second shot. and now we know that a second shot was taken and missed.

Always take the second shot, a cartridge is nothing compared to the loss of a wonded animal.
 
1899

If you do go back there for another look see, please be vigilant. If your buddies bear expired near the scene, another bear may have claimed the carcass.

So if you do go back, bring an armed buddy that you can rely on and make sure that both of you have enough rifle.
 
A few weeks ago I saw something similar. Shoulder shot then into the lungs.....dropped like a rock, then while we waited to make sure it started to get up and try to move. One more shot took care of it. We never left the rest from the first shot so the second was good to go.

I say go back as well. I agree with others that said it crawled into a hole or under a log or something.
 
They searched for quite some time. When I first talked to him he had just got back to the truck after 45 minutes of looking. I am not sure of how long they looked after.
 
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It sounds like it was hit high, probably above the spine grazing the back. A bears lungs are fairly high and a hit below the spine should have nicked the lungs filling them with blood and as such not much of a bellow would have been possible. (Or if there was a bit of blood in the lungs the bellow would have sprayed pink "froth" around.) A hit too far back should have resulted in gut contents being visible.

I also have noticed over the years that a LOT of novice hunters seem to hit high when shooting at game.
 
A friend of mine hit a doe in the sholder with the bow and had the same thing happend. It fell over, he walked up to it and it took off.


Usualy if you hit a bear in the lungs is does the spin around and bite at the entrance wound thing. However one time we shot a problem bear in a field. It dropped, layed there for a minute as if dead, then squirmed around and took off for the hills. We found it later with a perfect lung shot, there was some trama to the heart and one main bood vessle was cut. My speculation at the time was that a pressure wave of blood in the arteries reached the brain, knocking it out cold.

But who the fcuk knows?
 
Hard to guess exactly where he hit the bear but here is my 2 cents. Living in north central AB we have shot and seen a lot of black bears killed. I'm surprised no one mentioned the fact that bears many times when hit will drop like they were hit over the head with a sledge. Lots of times they aren't hit near the CNS and they still react this way. The local bear hunters joke about rolling a bear over after hitting them in the paw. There is some truth to this. They are very hard to follow because they bleed very little due to the fat and skin sliding over the wound and the long hair that soaks up the blood. I would also guess that he is most likely dead under a blowdown or in the nearest stand of swamp spruce. They can go an awful long way on a one lung or clipped liver shot. The shooter would have the best idea about where he/she hit the bear by where the crosshairs were when the gun went off. Good luck finding it. We lost a big boar last week that got off the cutline before a second shot could anchor him. Had a relative out that is a rookie hunter and gets a little excited. Pretty sure he hit the bear a bit low and a little too far back. Spun him around but he took off pretty quick. A person always hates to lose an animal.
 
It really does not matter where you hit the bear. I have seen lots off shot animals react this way when hit and later recovered and it was not a under spine or gut shot. I do not know your area or the condition to track the bear. You have two choices, walk away and learn by it or get lots of friends and give it another good hard look to see if you can find the bear. It is easy in hind sight to say what you should of done, but when you take your shot it is when your experience tells you it is the right time and thats what you did.
 
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