Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Spring Bears and Cabela's Seminar

Wednesday, May 1st @ 6:00 p.m. I'll be giving a free seminar at the Springfield Cabela's store on Spring Chinook tactics and techniques.  The seminar will last about an hour and I'll cover everything you need to know to be successful on your next spring chinook outing.  Hope to see you there!

The recent nice weather has really got the bears out and moving.  I spend the bulk of my time hunting spring black bears in the Tioga and Siuslaw Units in southwest Oregon.  I took this image the other morning from a favorite area.  The fog in the bottom of the canyon is from the warmer water on the Umpqua River (the fog is hovering above the river as it winds towards the pacific ocean a few miles away)  The full moon is just setting on the horizon as the sun comes up behind me.  A few minutes after this photo was taken, a 200 plus pound boar tore off the clear cut it was feeding in when we came around a corner and startled it. 

Fresh tracks in the mud along a logging road show the recent travels of a sow and her cub.

The bears are feeding primarily on fresh, green grass tips.  Their scat will be greenish is color when fresh and appear like smaller sized piles of horse manure.  As the sun dries it out, the color will change from green to black.  The salmon berries are starting to bloom with a few berries beginning to form up.  Once these berries ripen in a few weeks, the bears will start feeding on them as well as wild onions.  The skid road where this pile was found had approximately nine other similar piles and alot of the grass blades had their tips chewed off.

We located this bull elk rub (created late last summer) along the same skid road.  This Alder was rubbed heavily on both sides and scars in the bark from the antler tips were visible more then seven feet above the ground.  I'll be standing in this exact spot come early September with my bow in one hand and my elk bugle in the other.  I wanna see if I can have a little chat with this bull!

No comments:

Post a Comment