August 13th, 2018 was officially my first day ever bear hunting. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never prepared for a hunt more than this one – I was excited and ready.
We got out of town at a decent time, and proceeded northward towards the mountainous regions of Arizona. I E-scouted the region thoroughly, and knew where I wanted to hunt, but finding a place to camp was another story. This region has limited access, and is comprised of multiple wilderness areas that restrict motor vehicles. I should also mention that the unit is comprised of biotic communities that range from Sonoran desert to conifer forest, and temperature ranges can be from the 100s during the day, all the way to the 60s at night.
Blackberries that lined our camp. Most of the berries were not yet ripe.
We proceeded by trying to find a campsite within the pines, so as to find some sort of shaded comfort during non-hunting hours. We drove a decent amount of time until we found a designated campsite, and it was perfect. We had to cross a small creek that was surrounded by black berries, and into a densely vegetated area lay multiple campgrounds, complete with fire pits, tables, and grills. Best of all, there was only one other person there, of who seemingly wasn’t there the entire time.
We continued by setting up camp as quickly as possible, so as to begin our bear hunting excursion. But wait – behind our camp was a pile of apples. People trying to feed bears? Possibly, but the apples didn’t appear store bought to me, as they were much too small and unripe. The apples were mostly untouched other than some nibbles by squirrels and birds. We searched the camp further for bear sign, and came up empty handed. We proceeded with our camp setup.
After camp assembly was finished, we drove off to our first hunting point. This area, in particular, was the southeastern-most border of a wilderness area, consisting of myriad of vegetation, including various chaparral species, oak trees, bear grass, and more. We hiked into the area a good distance, but not too far because we were losing sunlight. Our goal was to find a glassing sight, but the vegetation was too thick for us to find any sort of high glassing point.
A Coues deer doe that we came across while driving.
We decided to go lower into a canyon and use a predator call in attempt to call in a bear. My plan was to make 1 hour long stands – 40 minutes using a deer fawn call, and 20 minutes using a cottontail call. We setup the stand with a solid backdrop, facing the opposite canyon wall. Our sight distance was short, and shots would be about 60 yards or less, but we would make it work.
We began the deer fawn call, and within about 2 minutes, there was crashing through vegetation from our right side. I immediately pulled up my rifle, as I couldn’t see what was happening because of the thick foliage; it could have been a bear running into the call for all I know. Then, a Coues doe comes out of the bushes. We called in a Coues whitetail deer with an electronic deer fawn call, and I can say that I’ve never seen or heard of something similar happening. The doe was angry, and continued by blowing at the call, along with flicking her tail. She did this a few times, and then turned around, flagged her white tail, and ran off.
A few minutes later, she returned, but this time she was fixated on our location. She stared directly at us as she continued to blow and tail flick, seemingly upset about the situation. Until once again, she turned and ran off. The video below is the video I took of the instance.
We ran the stand for an hour with nothing else to come in. The sun was setting, and we decided to get back to the vehicle so as to find the next hunting spot for the following day. I wanted an area with less oak trees, as the acorn crop seemed extremely low, though it is still a little bit early in the season. I wanted to find some good prickly pear patches with mature and/or maturing fruit, and we found a decent area with exactly that.
We returned to camp, cooked up some ribeye steaks, and concluded night with some sound sleep, so as to fulfill the following day with a bear on the ground.
To be continued…