2019 Spring Black Bear Hunt: Nootka Sound

I have this same picture up on instagram, and they didn’t blur it out, but they did blur a picture of a squirrel that I have, which is weird.

With the fall hunting season fast approaching, I thought I’d take the time to post about my latest trip to Nootka Sound now, before I have a bunch of other things to write about. I drove up there the first week of May, and it was nice to check out the area again. I hadn’t been up that way for two years; not a lot has changed, except that there are a lot more grouse than I remember there ever being before. Like, so many that I might be tempted to make a trip up there this fall just to hunt birds. It’s a five-and-a-half hour drive to my preferred spot; about four hours on paved road, and then an hour-and-a-half on progressively worse logging roads. That small barrier is enough to turn most people off, and ensure I have a pleasant, solitary hunting experience. I drove up in the afternoon, with the intention of getting there in time for an evening hunt. When I arrived in the area, I pulled right up to the base of an old, overgrown spur road that I’ve had success with before. It winds its way up a steep slope for a few kilometres, and is normally covered in grass in the springtime, with salmonberry bushes overhanging on both sides. Perfect conditions for still-hunting bears. I got out of the car, loaded my rifle, and was creeping up the spur within minutes of arriving. Making camp can wait when there’s bears out there to be hunted. I was somewhat dismayed to find that the grasses and berries were way behind schedule. The salmonberries were barely green nubs on the bushes, and the grass was only a couple inches long. After half an hour of climbing up the old spur, I hadn’t seen any fresh bear crap. As I muttered to myself about the less than ideal conditions, I encountered a downed tree across the path that had two large branches blocking the way. As I stepped over one branch, and ducked under the other, I tripped, and reached out quickly to grab hold of the tree and stop my fall. The whole thing shook as I stumbled out onto the other side of it. Sure enough, standing there on the other side of the tree, twenty yards down the middle of the path, was a nice big bear. The tree had obscured him from my sight, and I became aware of him kind of mid-stumble as I erupted from inside the thickly-leafed branches. He, of course, ran away immediately, never to be seen again. If you’ve read any of my other hunting posts, you may be familiar with my habit of throwing away the first good opportunity of most hunts. This was no exception. That was a great-looking bear, and he was only a half-hour hike from the car. Slightly rattled, I trudged the rest of the way up the spur to its end, turned around and walked back down, then walked along the main part of the logging road until it got too dark to see, turned around once more, and returned to the car. I set up camp, opened the first Mountain House meal of the trip, which I believe was pasta primavera, enjoyed it thoroughly, then went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning half an hour before first light, enjoyed the second Mountain House meal of the trip, then set about hiking back up the same spur as the night before. This time, I encountered no bears. I then walked down the main logging road, away from camp and the direction I had come, with the intention of hiking up every old, overgrown spur I came across, until I found a good bear or ran out of daylight. Two hours later, I found myself on the second spur of the morning, looking down the trail at a bear’s rear end sticking out of a bush. I tried laying down prone, and found that there was too much brush in the way. I rose up to a seated position, with my elbows resting on my knees, as I glassed the bear to determine its size and see if there was a possible shooting lane. It was definitely an adult bear, but I couldn’t tell much more about it. There was no opening through which to shoot and hit a vital area. I decided to just sit and wait. Surely the bear would move at some point. Twenty minutes later, with my ass starting to go numb, I found that the only moving the bear was doing was slowly inching further into the bush as the sunlight crept up behind it. I got impatient and decided to slink up the path toward it, and see if I could get a better angle for a shot, or maybe try a fawn distress call and see if the bear would sit up. As I got to within forty yards, I could see that a shooting lane was not going to materialize. I could see only a big bear rump. As I was pondering what to do next, the bear suddenly sat bolt upright, then charged directly toward me. I raised my rifle as quickly as I could, and found the bear’s chest filling up the entirety of the sight picture in my scope. Before I could pull the trigger, the bear veered to my left, crashed into the brush, and ran for what sounded like a kilometre off into the distance. In the space of that two seconds, he had winded me, startled, ran in precisely the wrong direction, then we both got a bit lucky for different reasons, and then he was gone. And I was back to hiking.

At about the ten hour mark, I began to have some concerns. The berries were not even close to ripe. The grass was patchy, and barely even lawn-length. The bear sign was sporadic at best, and mostly very old. The grouse were abundant and annoyingly out-of-season. I had seen only that single bear all day. I tried hiking down to the ocean at several points, thinking the bears would turn to seafood while they waited for the vegetation to grow sufficiently to move up in elevation. That was problematic, because there weren’t really any beaches in the area; the land just steeply fell away into the water at all the spots I inspected. The few places where you could actually walk down to the shoreline, the bush was thick all the way to the water. And when the tide went out, instead of revealing eelgrass and kelp and mussel beds like I hoped, it just uncovered more steep, barren rocks. I hiked back to camp to have a Mountain House dinner and recover for a bit. While eating, I decided I would once again go up the first spur and check it out for a third time. I had an hour to go before sunset, just enough time to quickly go up, and get back down without walking in the dark for too long. At this point, I was just counting on the gods of the hunt rewarding me for the dozens of kilometres I put in, hiking up and down hills and through thick, crappy bush in the heat. And you know what, more often than not, that’s exactly what happens. If you keep stubbornly going ahead, adjusting the plan, trying everything you can think of, and putting in the work to hunt from sunrise to sunset, eventually you make your own luck. Twenty minutes after leaving camp to hike up the same spur for the third time in 24 hours, I spotted what looked like a good bear. Not quite as big as the one from the evening prior, but still a very nice, mature boar. I saw it as I was walking up the path; it seemed at first to be a shadow, then as I crept closer, it seemed to become a bear. That’s the opposite of what usually happens; normally I immediately think something is a bear, then I come to the realization it’s a shadow, or a stump. As I was slowly raising my binoculars, and making a final determination of whether to shoot or not, the bear suddenly bolted. This is the danger when you’re still-hunting an animal with the kind of sense of smell a bear has in this kind of terrain. By the time you see it, you’re almost always inside fifty yards already. And you have no control over your direction of approach. This time, though, I got lucky. I continued slowly coming up the path, and as I peered around the next corner, I saw that the bear had decided to stop and take a look to see if whatever it had sensed was still pursuing it. I took full advantage of this lapse in his judgement, raised my rifle and shot for the lungs. He died within five yards of the spot where he was hit. I was very relieved and grateful at my good fortune, not only for finding and shooting a bear just before the end of the day, but for not having to trail it through that nasty brush to recover it.

I skinned the bear with head and paws on, rug-style, and had its meat hung in a tree shortly after sunset. One other bear did come sniffing around through the bush looking for it while I was working, but a couple angry shouts had it running off down a ravine. I packed the meat, skull and hide the short distance back to camp, and decided to pack everything up, and drive the five-plus hours home that same night. I wanted to wake up at home, and be able to immediately begin processing the meat in the kitchen and have it in the big freezer as quickly as possible. With a quick stop in Campbell River for gas and a caffeinated beverage, I was able get home by about 3am. I slept for six hours, then got back to business. The processing went quick and smooth, and I vacuum sealed all the meat for future enjoyment. A lot of that meat is already gone at this point, but the hide is still in the freezer, waiting for a time when I’ve got a good long stretch to devote to tanning and rugging it out. I don’t know if I’ll go back up to Nootka Sound this year, but I’m sure I’ll be back up there at some point in the next year or two. It’s an awesome place, remote enough that you don’t have to worry about running into people, but accessible enough that you can make something happen even if you only have a couple days. That, and I can’t stop wondering about all those grouse.