Well, just finished up the bear hunt. It was an awesome week. Saw 40-50 bears, was within easy bow range of most of them. My goal was to take a nice cinnamon/chocolate bear as 30% of the area bears are colour phases other than black. In my usual bear haunts, the bears are 100% black, so anything else is unusual and desirable to me. I stalked plenty of bears feeding along greened-up swamp edges and in oat fields with broken bales. Early in the week I passed up shots on half a dozen mature black coloured bears, trying for a brown"ish" one. I gave it the old college try up until the last evening. Over the week, I had a few smallish cinnamon bears and sows with cubs in easy range, but never had a real non-black shooter. One 250 pound cinnamon sow had an entirely white chest, shoulder to shoulder and chin to sternum, she was a beautiful bear. I decided on the last morning to stalk up a ridge that topped out at the back of an oat field with broken bales that the bears had been feeding on. I had seen a large black several times feeding on two bales at the rear corner. It was a good position, he was unapproachable because the prevailing wind blew right to him and he had a good field of view, the one blind spot was if some fool crawled up the ridge through the thorn brush. I took my time from first light and eased up the ridge and when I slowly poked my head up over the top, I was looking right at him, facing me at a range of 20 yards. I slowly lowered back down, removed my pack and flipped off the safety, and then raised back up with the rifle mounted and put a 200 grain SP from the Ruger M77 Frontier .358 through the center of his chest. At the shot he humped up and dropped straight down without so much as a flinch. A great bear hunt done, terrific weather and good company. Will try for a cinnamon bear next year. This boar weighed in a 425 pounds, and had a thick perfect hide... it will be a while before I know the skull dimensions, but he has a good pumpkin head on him.
