The Jaeger "Bears" Fruit.

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Ugly Sauce

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The AirLite was not the only one making meat this weekend. The Jeager made meat and fur. ! It's a long story, but this bear was coming into the camp down the road from me, getting in their kitchen, (they were tent camping with an outside kitchen) and just being really bold. They could hardly scare it off yelling and banging a shovel on the rocks. Anyhow, they told me all this in the afternoon as I passed their camp, heading back for mine. I told them that, yeah, I was looking for a bear. It was actually the first day of muzzle loading deer season.

So, I get back to camp, and soon there's a knock on the door, and the Lady says: "the bear is back". I throw on my pistol belt and grab the Jeager, and head down there thinking the bear is in the vicinity, but there it is coming up this steep little slope that goes down to the crick from their camp. Bear just stands there staring at us, I get in a sitting position to shoot but then there's bush in my way. Move to a better spot and bear turns around and very slowly goes back down the slope.

One of the guys has his 12 gauge pump gun so I'm like, let's go down there and either shoot it or chase it off. We go down and the bear let's us walk almost right up to it, but there's a big rock in the way. At this point it's like "this is a nuisance bear we NEED to shoot it". (I was hoping to get a much larger bear) It starts to slowly walk off, the guy says "hey bear", and it turns enough to give me a quartering shot, and I took it.

However, like a fool I set my set-trigger and she went off a little early, and my shot went a bit far back, or in other words I gut-shot it. It dropped like a "rock". Started bawling, and then crawled a bit and rolled into the brush. It then got up and went across the crick, and into the really heavy brush.

Anyhow, so we tracked the blood trail for a bit until it stopped, often on our hands and knees, yes, into the brush looking for a wounded bear. The blood trail stopped so while the shotgun guy and his dad were looking for blood I headed for where I thought it might have gone. This is getting long! Well I found it up a little slope going back up the other side of the crick, and had to shoot it two more times to kill it. The brush was so heavy that it was hard to get a good shot even at close range. That bear just didn't want to die. The last killing shot was at about six yards, and it still crawled about six of seven yards before it croaked. !!! Wow. Super Bear. We are talking .600" ball over 110 grains of Swiss here.

Crawling through brush, looking for wounded bears, it don't get better than that!

The Jeager performed like a champ, and says: "Thanks for listening". !!! ;)
 
Congrats on the brown black bear.

I wish the bears around my place were legal to hunt. They mess everything up and one scared a doe off that was heading my way last week. Then it sauntered under my stand at 30 yards. Grrrr! :fire:

Thanks! When I first told my wife I got one, her first question was: "you didn't shoot that brown one did you?" !! They should be legal if there's a good population of them. ? Sounds like there must be. When bears don't get hunted, that's when they usually become pests. Maybe with some urging of your game dept. they might open up a season on them?

Very unusual, unheard of for a bear to be casual or pests or bold around humans where I hunt, or come near a camp. I wonder if some camper this summer left some food laying around, and got this bear thinking that camps were a source of food, and humans not to be scared of. People, both campers, berry pickers, wood cutters and hunters in this area are really good about leaving the camping spots clean, and as they found them. Very unusual for anyone to trash a camp, and when that rarely happens, the next person cleans it up. I always pick up any trash I find.

Since they stopped allowing hunting bears with dogs here quite a few (many) years ago, I've noticed the bear population increasing quite a bit. But if this one had so much fat on it, that I don't think it was in competition for food, with other bears. Kind of a mystery, but could have been a bad day for any children playing near camp. There was a little girl, six or seven at this camp where the bear first appeared and got into their kitchen. Maybe sometimes a bear just gets an attitude or something for no reason. ? Whatever the reason, very unusual.
 
Never have eaten the cracklins. I was hoping for a 350# or larger bear, but figured I'd better shoot this one, being a nuisance bear with kids around. The people there were deer hunting and didn't want a bear. We camp there in the spring and summer with the grand kids too, so it had to go down! But, won't be a bad hide (working on it right now) and the bear is at the butcher right now turning into pepperoni sticks. And, it has really nice claws on it, going to make a nice necklace. And of course, and good supply of bear grease for my rifles! No regrets.

Working on the hide now, and after finishing on the "corpse", I see that I missed it once, which would explain why it was so hard to kill. I was shooting through really heavy brush, and a little up-hill on that second shot. It seemed to drop at the shot, but I think my ball got deflected, or I just plain missed. Thought I had a good hold, but I was looking at it's outline through the brush, could not see it that well. I may have shot into a small rise in the ground. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Probably a good lesson to not assume that even a .600" ball and 110 grains of Swiss is going to be a "brush buster".

So, I now think that until I walked right up to it and shot in the chest, it was just slowly dying from my first great gut-shot. :( At any rate, there's only four holes in the hide, one entry in the chest, and exit out the back, and one entry in the side, and one exit out the other side. Same with the body.
 
I hope to hunt with my 15ga hopkins and Allen underhammer this year, couldn't get out last season with it. I'm shooting .662 balls, a bit tight to patch with pillow ticking maybe some .010 patch may work. But seemed to shoot fine with a 1/8" hard card a lubed 1 /2 cushion wad ball and 1/2" over top. Wish I had more balls to test more I've only got about 15 left, I'd like to find a mood some day. I was making a group with most balls touching at 30ish yards.

No idea on the speed but that ball should kill anything I see in are woods, think I was using 80gr of pyrodex rs. Was surprised the recoil was not bad the gun is like 5 pounds.
 
Thought I had a good hold, but I was looking at it's outline through the brush, could not see it that well. I may have shot into a small rise in the ground. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Yep, the 1st bear I ever shot was feeding on blueberries which I thought were high-bush blueberries, however, they were low-bush and I aimed low. Turned out that I shot him in the foot. He ran into a thicket and started bawling. I had to crawl into the thicket to finish him. Scary situation. :eek:
 
Yep, the 1st bear I ever shot was feeding on blueberries which I thought were high-bush blueberries, however, they were low-bush and I aimed low. Turned out that I shot him in the foot. He ran into a thicket and started bawling. I had to crawl into the thicket to finish him. Scary situation. :eek:

Scary but what an emotional high, and "high adventure" for sure. Besides...who wants to live forever? ;)
 
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I hope to hunt with my 15ga hopkins and Allen underhammer this year, couldn't get out last season with it. I'm shooting .662 balls, a bit tight to patch with pillow ticking maybe some .010 patch may work. But seemed to shoot fine with a 1/8" hard card a lubed 1 /2 cushion wad ball and 1/2" over top. Wish I had more balls to test more I've only got about 15 left, I'd like to find a mood some day. I was making a group with most balls touching at 30ish yards.

No idea on the speed but that ball should kill anything I see in are woods, think I was using 80gr of pyrodex rs. Was surprised the recoil was not bad the gun is like 5 pounds.

Wow that sounds like a really cool piece. .66" is a cool bore size/caliber. Smooth bore I'm assuming since referred to it as a gauge rather than a caliber? In both the Jeager (rifled) and my Brown Bess, I like to put a felt wad that's been dipped in pure melted bee's wax over the powder, then a lightly lubed wad over that.

I thought LEE made round ball molds in small increments. ? My best luck in the Bess is to use a small ball, (.690") and then a thick denim patch. But it sounds like your H&A should be good out to 50 yards judging by your good accuracy at 30-ish. ! I've also found that my Bess/smoothbore shoots more accurately with a heavy load. Small ball, thick patch, heavy powder charge seems to be the ticket for me. But, sounds like your accuracy is good.
 
Ya it's smoothbore, it measures at .677 barrel is almost 30" it's round so it keeps the weight down to. It will take a heavy load hot the stock is so think and has a bolt on the middle I'm scared to break it. Tho making a stock is easy on these.

I got it from a friend that used to work at numrich gun parts they make these back in the 60s-80s. There very simple only a few moving parts, trigger are Excellent about 3 pounds on this one. Great to carry and there are nice for right or left handed shooters. Some think there ugly but there Ingenious and I like them. I've wanted to get a 32-36 for small game and either a 45 or a 54 for deer/bear some day.


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Them bears is a lot of work! Got my bear back from the butcher, turned it into half hot pepperoni, half regular. Really came out good, no gamey taste, slightest bear-taste that I don't think a regular non-hunter person would recognize, or suspect that it wasn't a combination of beef and pork. It's really good. Anyhow, putting in a few hours vacuum packing it all. And munching on it at the same time. !!! Going to have some good trail food for the next upcoming hunt.
 
Don't know the recipe, place called "Eggers" in Spokane Wa. made it. But it sure is good. Should last the winter, but have to give some to the kids and grandkids, and one of my hunting partners gave me a bunch of Elk not too long ago, so some payback there. Going to be great high-energy trail food for hunting and hiking, really looking forward to that.
 
Tracking a wounded bear into the bush is an experience like no other! Back in my young, dumb, and guiding days I did it for a client. I wasn't guiding bear hunts per-se, but I was foolish enough to answer the phone on Sunday afternoon. I applaud you for doing it with a frontloader. I had a short barreled Ithaca M37 stoked with foster slugs. In my case I was able to maneuver the client to make the final kill shot, but I was putting some pressure on the trigger at 10 yards staring a 400+ lb boar in the eyes at the time! The guy tipped well, but not well enough for that!
 
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