Oregon bear

[newhouse114]

Not really much of a story on this one. Sitting in a tree stand waiting for a buck or an elk to meander by. Glanced up and the bear was "just there". Had about 15 minutes of legal shooting light left, just raised the bow, drew, and released. In the western Oregon pucker brush i like to use a string tracker when it is late evening or raining and this was no exception. Line peeled out for about 20 seconds, jerked a couple of times and stopped. I didn't really feel happy about tracking a bear at night with no firearm so I called my son that lived just a few miles away and asked him to come out and help. We followed the string and started finding good blood after about 50 yards, found the back half of my arrow and then after another 50 yards found where the string broke. Good blood up to a dead end. The trail just stopped. My son finally found where the bear had circled onto his back trail. After an hour or two of searching we decided to bag it until morning. We started following the string back towards my stand searching off to the sides to see if we could spot where it might have left the back trail. My don shined his light off to the side and there was the bear, quite expired. We had walked within six feet of the bear going in but our attention had been straight down following the blood. He ended up dying about 20 feet from where the string broke. A quick skin and quarter and we were on our way out!

[Cool Springer]

Nice bear!  Congratulations!!

[Phillip Fields]

Congrats on a nice bear.

[GCook]

Good bear!

[shick]

A fine looking bear.  Congratulations.
Shick

[hessian]

Nice bear sir!

[trad_bowhunter1965]

Nice Bear 

[Car54]

Big ol paw there! Congrats Sir!

[rastaman]

Very nice!

[countryboy2441]

Nice bear.

[Friend]

A mighty fine harvest...

[rastaman]

Very nice bear sir!

[BigErn]

   Congratulations!

[Sam McMichael]

Congratulations on a successful outing!

[Gordon Jabben]

Very good.  Congratulations.  Hope to hunt bears sometime.   

[Bisch]

Congrats!

Bisch