Been doing some bear baiting here. My oldest step daughter (she's 40 so I'm an old dog) is wanting to hunt so I had her take the hunter safety course and we've been after bears. Blacks, not allowed to hunt grizzly here. We had a rather large male coming in but the day we sat the wind swirled and he caught wind of us. He was only 15 yards away but couldn't make him out for some spruce boughs in the way. A friend that used to guide saw the pictures of him and is excited to see him on the ground, figures he is over seven feet. We moved the stand after that, he came back but always in the dark. No night hunting allowed here. He has been coming in intermittently but a couple of 5 footers started coming in, the first come in about 40 minutes after we got in the stand, it took a little over a half hour for him to present a good shot. One and done from the trusty old 30:06 with a 165 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip, he went about 40 yards on no lungs. His buddy came in about ten minutes later - had to have just about walked over his buddy but I guess more for him right. Not quite as long to present a good shot and again one and done but he only went 10 yards. Daughter declined to shoot, wants more practice but was happy to be there and jumped right in for the work - dragging, skinning and so on.

Had an opportunity to do some predator control for a local rancher as well. She doesn't shoot and had bears coming in. They trashed her hives twice and the lady was concerned about her lambs as they are to go out onto the pasture right away. Set up a bait and a camera to pattern them only to discover a family of four. Sow and three yearlings. Daughter couldn't make it so called a friend and asked if he was interested in helping out. He was all over that like white on rice! They came in a little less than an hour after we got in the stand and I had buddy take the sow, I took a cub and he got another cub right away. The fourth only went 50 - 60 yards then slowly came back. Four shots, four bears and not one of them took a step after the shot. Buddy was pumped. I hadn't known before hand that he hadn't shot a bear before. We drug them out, took them home to skin and debone. Long day. There is close to 125 lbs of bear meat in the fridge, maybe more, to be packaged and or turned into sausage. Those little ones will be like veal so not likely much sausage from them. Even the sow was tender. If I can remember how to post pics I will later. The group on the ranch was predator control so no tags needed. Coyotes, wolf, bear and cat can be hunted but not trapped year round by the landowner or agent of (me) without licence. Last year there was a cougar hanging in the area. Might not be done just yet!

Black bear makes decent eating. I don't do sausage typically. Mainly slow braise it in the oven in a red wine based broth.

I’ve heard tell that bear meat is very strong and “gamey”. Never tried it (we don’t have them big buggers out here in Australia) but I believe it is an acquired taste.

look forward to photos....plenty bear skin rugs(wonder if you can onsell hides to the poms for the ???bushby??? hats....seem to recall they were struggling to source them a while back.

Dimitri - we'll take the back straps, a few roast or steaks the rest into sausage. We will make little pepperoni snack sticks, going to try smokies this year too.

Vince - I don't find it strong or real gamey at all. I would say I find mule deer a stronger game taste than bear. As Dimitri said a slow braise works best.

Elvis - haven't had time to to figure it out. What is a pom? same for bushby hat?

The landowner wants the sow's hide to tan and my daughter want to try her hand at tanning on one of the smaller ones as well as a co worker of hers. Here, because bear is classed as a furbearing animal you are not allowed to spoil the hide or let it go to waste, you are not obligated to take the meat. I don't need nor want a ton of rugs but am happy to take the meat. I know of a few people that use the hides. One fellow tans them to make mitts and gloves (uses any hide - moose, bear, deer...) and a native lady that teaches people to tan in traditional methods. They are always happy for donations

Pom= English person
hat= think of the guards outside Buckingham palace

When I was a lot younger a Czech friend offered me to hunt a bear in Slovakia. And he adviced me to go in Spring: the skin was as big as before the Winter but you had to pay for less kilos weight...

Aloysius wrote:

When I was a lot younger a Czech friend offered me to hunt a bear in Slovakia. And he adviced me to go in Spring: the skin was as big as before the Winter but you had to pay for less kilos weight...

You pay by weight? We buy a tag ... $25 I think and go shoot one

Slovakia charges by weight class for hunting licenses.

A 100-120kg bear is a €4,800 tag.

Dimitri wrote:

Slovakia charges by weight class for hunting licenses. A 100-120kg bear is a €4,800 tag.

Holy crap! I just looked it up, a black bear (resident) tag is $20.65 CA and you can purchase two tags each season. A tag bought in the spring is valid for the fall season if you did not fill it in the spring. Maybe that was worded funny. You can buy two tags for each calendar year - each one is valid for either the spring or fall season. We are not allowed to shoot a sow with the current year's cubs. A sow with yearling cubs and the yearlings themselves are legal game. In Alberta (where I live) we are allowed to bait bears, next door in British Columbia they are not allowed but I believe they can use dogs whereas we can not. Funny how the rules vary

Nunavut allows polar bear hunting for $1,000 a tag.

That's a steal compared to Slovakia's pricing.

As long as people are paying these high prices...

funny things happened with the countries on the other side of the iron curtain: they once had money but couldn't buy anything because there was nothing available. When the curtain disappeared, they could buy everything, but they didn't have money... (but they all had a mobile phone and its use was very cheap.)

Now they are in Europe and they adapted...

I once told my Czech friend that the beer was so cheap... 5 CZK for 0,5 l, that's less than 50 cent (€ or $). And he just smiled and said that before the curtain went down, it was 0,50 CZK for 0,5 l beer...

And at the end I'm not sure that we or they realy became happier...

I had to check. In NC the black bear stamp is $11, in addition to the regular license.

I uploaded three pics of current target bears. Two of a tank of a bear the other has a big white V on his chest. Just can't seem to figure out how to get them in this thread. I also got stalled out using Imgur as a place to put them - I used it several years ago to post pics but can't get it to work either. Ah... technologically challenged for sure. The other challenge I have (to be honest there are several but I mean in relation to this post lol) is most of the pics with my daughter and the bears we shot this year are on my phone, the ones from the trail cams are on the desktop computer which is mostly where I need to work from cause the screen on the phone is too damned small!

For context if you can find the pics in the photo album here - the crates suspended in the air are 6 1/2 - 7' to the bottom so we can determine approximate size by how high up the bear can reach. This crate has a pig head in it (we had just slaughtered some pigs so why let it go to waste?), we usually use beaver carcasses purchased from a local trapper.

Add them as attachments just below where you edit text. Its fairly simple.

-DallanC