Spring Bear

Coach Potter · Apr 12, 2023

I'm headed into the Frank Church with a buddy tomorrow. We're only going to spend a few nights. The snow conditions aren't favorable but we're going to give it a shot anyway. We were originally planning on a week but in light of the conditions we're postponing the big trip until May. I'm at that point in the week where I can't think about anything but tomorrow's adventure

JS · Apr 12, 2023

Hell yeah, dude! Get some!!

This is the first year I’m taking spring bear seriously, so pumped!

Coach Potter · Apr 12, 2023

JS said:
Hell yeah, dude! Get some!!

This is the first year I’m taking spring bear seriously, so pumped!

This will be my first ever spring bear hunt. Also my first time in the Church...it’s a pretty ominous landscape. We are completely reliant on our e-scouting. My only expectation is that this is going to challenge me in every way and I can’t wait!

Canuck from Kansas · Apr 13, 2023

Coach Potter said:
This will be my first ever spring bear hunt. Also my first time in the Church...it’s a pretty ominous landscape. We are completely reliant on our e-scouting. My only expectation is that this is going to challenge me in every way and I can’t wait!

Be safe!!

Cheers

Coach Potter · Apr 16, 2023

All I can say is wow…it‘s pretty rare that a place exceeds expectations when you build it up in your mind the way I had if this place. I have never seen anything like it and can’t explain just how in awe I was the entire trip. I can’t wait to get back there in a couple weeks when everything has greened up.

Coach Potter · Apr 16, 2023

Coach Potter · Apr 16, 2023

Coach Potter · May 1, 2023

Tomorrow can't get here fast enough! We're headed back into the Church tomorrow afternoon. If all goes well (which it probably won't) we should be able to make our first camp by dark. The warm weather should have made everything green up, but the creek crossings are now going to be a real challenge. There is one big one that we have to cross just to get into the wilderness. It has come up a foot since we were there a couple weeks ago. We are entering the unit from a different spot than last time and I'm pretty worried about what that crossing looks like

.

I'll be scouting a plan B in the event that it's not doable, but I REALLY want to get into the drainage we are hoping to get to...keeping my fingers crossed.

Peyton00 · May 2, 2023

I have used a cheap inflatable raft for crossing water. I leave it tied to a tree so it doesn't blow away, a use it on the way out.

Just a thought

Good luck!

Coach Potter · May 9, 2023

My motivation behind this trip was always to have an adventure. I definitely wanted to bring home a bear, but I have brought home lots of bears over the years and that was not the number one priority for this trip. There are WAY more efficient/easier ways to harvest bear meat and I might end up going that route before it's all said and done but for now, the measure of success will be adventure. We learned a lot from our first trip in April and that new knowledge had us feeling pretty confident in our plan going back.

We knew we needed some warm weather to kickoff "green-up" and the forecast was looking good for that but sometimes too much of a good thing creates new challenges. The weather quickly turned from favorable to disastrous in fairly short order. I was watching the creek gages all week and by the time we left town we knew we would be moving to plan C or D....little did we know we would end up making and executing on plan X, Y and Z.

We did everything we could to find a way to stay in the wilderness that we set out to hunt but after a day and a half of getting shout out of every option we tried we decided we were going to abort that entire area and find something new. It was hard to give up on. I have been planning and scouting this trip since December of last year. Pulling the plug was disappointing but we had 5 more days to salvage the trip. We were able to drive up to 6,000 feet on night two and make camp where we could have a great sunset and make a new plan. WE both agreed that we were committed to hunt a wilderness even if it wasn't the one we were currently in, so we got on the maps and found a new area in the Selway-Bitterroot about 100 miles for where we started.

We mapped a route that looked good but we both knew we were going to be trading runoff issues for snow level issues as we moved north into a different climate. We left ID, headed back to MT, over Lolo pass and back into ID again. It didn't take us more than 30 minutes off the blacktop to be stonewalled by more snow than we could handle, and we handled a lot in the Jeep Rubicon. Back to the maps and a new trail head that we knew came off blacktop and another hour of driving.

We get to the trail head and there is already a rig there. WE have no idea what the person is doing but we have to assume he's doing the same as us. We decide we're headed in there anyway. It wasn't a very long trail (4 miles) but we were only going to use it to access another drainage anyway. We start packing up when another rig pulls in. Immediately four dudes with packs and guns pile out and scramble up the trail as fast as they can without making eye contact with us. That set my partner off and he was back in the Jeep before I could even call those guys d-bags....back to the map and down the road we go.

At this point I'm concerned my partner might want to pull the plug and go home. He's not talking...he's driving and I'm looking at my maps for another spot. At this point I'm making up stuff about how many great looking areas I'm looking at just to salvage moral. I don't care if we ever get to hunt...I'm going to try until the final hour.

The upside of it was we were both seeing tons of country that neither one of us had seen. We got to watch kayakers navigate the Lochsaw, which was absolutely gnarly with all the run-off. We ended up turning up the Selway and seeing some incredibly beautiful area that we WILL go back to later. As more and more silent driving went by I finally gathered the courage to ask the question, "are you thinking about heading home?". Thankfully, his response was a resounding "HELL NO"!

We drove another hour and found a restaurant where we could re-fuel and come up with a new plan. At this point we have 3 days left to make it happen. After an hour at the restaurant, we come up with yet another plan to get into a third wilderness that neither of us has seen nor scouted.

The next morning, we arise with great optimism. All of the access that we had attempted to this point was bottom up and I found a top-down access into this new Wilderness. My hope was that we could avoid run-off issues with this new approach. This new access is about a two-hour drive from where we started Friday morning. As we got closer and closer to our destination it all started to look REALLY good and we were starting to get pretty excited. Just about that time we round a corner and run right into a quarter mile long drift that was five feet deep...I think we both yelled the F word simultaneously.

My brain goes right to salvage mode and I pull out the map. Despite needing to go another 20 miles down the road to get to out trail head, we had just driven through some pretty good looking country and there was, what looked to be, a pretty good canyon within a half mile from where we got stopped. At this point, all I want is to spend one day behind glass looking at something other than a map or windshield even if it's not in the backcountry. We lighten our packs since we're going to camp next to the Jeep anyway and head toward the canyon rim. When we get to the rim and look down we instantly had smiles...it looked exactly like the kind of area we wanted to be in!

Coach Potter · May 9, 2023

It's about 11:00 am and we start looking for a good glassing point to set up on and settle in.

The weather had gone form 85 degrees on Tuesday to 45 and raining by Friday. I didn't give two craps about the weather. We were prepared for everything and more importantly, we were finally behind our glass in country that looked amazing. It didn't take more than 5-10 minutes before we were turning up elk herds, deer and small groups of big horns. It was like Wild Kingdom only live.

mcswny · May 9, 2023

I’m not a hunter but I want more!

Coach Potter · May 9, 2023

I don't yet have a device to allow me to get good digiscope type pics. I was using 20x56 glass and putting my phone (zoomed) up to reticle free-hand. Needless to say, my animal pics form 2,000+ yards aren't very good, and my video was even worse

. We spent a few hours enjoying all the wildlife we were seeing when I spotted the first bear and everything got real, really fast!

This bear is over a mile away, 1,500 feet of elevation drop in cliffy ass ground and across a creek that we later find out isn't passable. After realizing that bear is a project for the next day we settle down and get back to finding closer quarry. My buddy baby sits the bear and I set of to find another one. About 2 hours go by when I find another one. This bear is much closer but still on the wrong side of the creek. Eventually he feeds down hill to where we can't see him. In the meantime we are getting pounded off and on by rain but still finding cool stuff to look at.

About an hour before dark I get up to change perspective and find the second bear on our side of the creek and it's on! He's still 1000' of elevation below us but we have time and a route to cut that down. It takes us about 30 minutes to get to less 500 yards of this bear and he's coming to us. Eventually he ends up at 440 and my sniper buddy is on the gun. Unfortunately, the angle is really steep and we are extremely limited in movement as we are on the edge of a cliff. The next 20 minutes is a frantic struggle to find a decent rest and eventually it gets dark with no shots fired. He flipped the saftery off several time and even prepared me for the shot but it never happened...he just didn't feel good about it.

Slightly dejected we started our climb back out of that hell hole. I was upbeat because considering all that had happened, we had no right or expectation to be in a position where we were setting up for a shot. My buddy was very disappointed, but we still had one more day and we knew where 2 bears were living.

WE got back out to another point Saturday morning and it only took an hour to re-locate the first bear. We watched him all day as he worked closer and closer to the bottom of the canyon. Eventually he got to a place where we decided it was time to make our play. WE got where we needed to be and got set up. WE had plenty of time so we decided to make sure we could find a route to recover him as it was going to be a chip shot. After much debate and some really stupid ideas, we concluded that we didn't have a reasonably safe route to recovery and passed up a 250 yard shot.

WE relocated the other bear right before dark that day but there was nothing we could do about it. WE decided that night that we were headed howe in the morning as there was no way to make a kill and get home by that night.

Sorry if you read all of this and expected to see a glory shot at the end. I would have loved to provide that but it wasn't in the cards. However, there last 3 weeks of navigating and being a part of that landscape had a profound impact on my life. That country will knock the rust off your soul if you still have one. I'm scheming a way to get back but this month but it's not likely to be in the cards. For now I will just dream and plan for my next opportunity.

jact55 · May 9, 2023

Coach Potter said:
I don't yet have a device to allow me to get good digiscope type pics. I was using 20x56 glass and putting my phone (zoomed) up to reticle free-hand. Needless to say, my animal pics form 2,000+ yards aren't very good, and my video was even worse . We spent a few hours enjoying all the wildlife we were seeing when I spotted the first bear and everything got real, really fast!View attachment 64700

View attachment 64701

This bear is over a mile away, 1,500 feet of elevation drop in cliffy ass ground and across a creek that we later find out isn't passable. After realizing that bear is a project for the next day we settle down and get back to finding closer quarry. My buddy baby sits the bear and I set of to find another one. About 2 hours go by when I find another one. This bear is much closer but still on the wrong side of the creek. Eventually he feeds down hill to where we can't see him. In the meantime we are getting pounded off and on by rain but still finding cool stuff to look at.

View attachment 64702

About an hour before dark I get up to change perspective and find the second bear on our side of the creek and it's on! He's still 1000' of elevation below us but we have time and a route to cut that down. It takes us about 30 minutes to get to less 500 yards of this bear and he's coming to us. Eventually he ends up at 440 and my sniper buddy is on the gun. Unfortunately, the angle is really steep and we are extremely limited in movement as we are on the edge of a cliff. The next 20 minutes is a frantic struggle to find a decent rest and eventually it gets dark with no shots fired. He flipped the saftery off several time and even prepared me for the shot but it never happened...he just didn't feel good about it.

Slightly dejected we started our climb back out of that hell hole. I was upbeat because considering all that had happened, we had no right or expectation to be in a position where we were setting up for a shot. My buddy was very disappointed, but we still had one more day and we knew where 2 bears were living.

WE got back out to another point Saturday morning and it only took an hour to re-locate the first bear. We watched him all day as he worked closer and closer to the bottom of the canyon. Eventually he got to a place where we decided it was time to make our play. WE got where we needed to be and got set up. WE had plenty of time so we decided to make sure we could find a route to recover him as it was going to be a chip shot. After much debate and some really stupid ideas, we concluded that we didn't have a reasonably safe route to recovery and passed up a 250 yard shot.

WE relocated the other bear right before dark that day but there was nothing we could do about it. WE decided that night that we were headed howe in the morning as there was no way to make a kill and get home by that night.

Sorry if you read all of this and expected to see a glory shot at the end. I would have loved to provide that but it wasn't in the cards. However, there last 3 weeks of navigating and being a part of that landscape had a profound impact on my life. That country will knock the rust off your soul if you still have one. I'm scheming a way to get back but this month but it's not likely to be in the cards. For now I will just dream and plan for my next opportunity.