First bear & first kill with my own handload.
All things considered it was pretty easy. I been trying up there for about 9 years but this year I set out some bait & it worked much better than still hunting or sitting over natural food.
Theres been pretty heavy activity around my camp all summer, one actually clumb my porch & ripped a bird feeder off a rafter tail. Cant say its the same bear because I found track in the dirt road that were bigger than the one I killed.
Anyhoo I hunted with a guy in Maine last year & he was generous enough to offer me a barrel of bait & a barrel with a hole to place the bait in & chain to a tree. I set that out on the first & came home. Went back to camp about lunch time on Friday & found it had been getting hit so I dumped in 2 more buckets of donuts & went back to the cabin, laid around & read for a few hours.
About 4:00 I went & sat in a chair behind a screen of saplings about 50 yards away from the barrel. Was an enjoyable sit, I kinda like setting quiet in the woods, but no sign of any bears. Legal shooting hours ended at 7:47 & at 7:43 a bear came in from the left of the barrel. I shouldered my Marlin, thumbed back the hammer & put the 150 grain Rem into the base of its neck, it dropped on the spot.
Heres the view from where I sat,
I leaned forward to clear the saplings & shoot, this was my view, minus the bear.
Where she fell,
In my driveway a long short drag of 70 or so yards, they are not built for easy transport I found. Theres a 4 foot drop from my driveway into the area leading to the bait site & it took some doing to get her up it.
Emptied & on my truck,
And hanging from my porch,
I'm uncertain what she weighed but think she had me beat by a few pounds.
I'm taking a break from butchering right now as I type this. I found no exit hole but the offside front leg was shattered at the ball joint connecting the upper leg to the shoulder blade. Thought I'd find a bullet in the mess but no such luck. I imagine its in the fat under the hide which is frozen solid in my freezer right now.
Tenderloins are marinating & I gotta go back to work cutting it up.
