Today my brother and I went to the property where I plan to bear hunt. My buddy that owns the land walked down to a bluff and pointed out the place where he has heard bears fighting over paw-paws (southern wild fruit that smells like a tangy banana). The bluff is about 16 foot high and has a crevice between 2 big bolders of the bluff. My brother and I started to drop down through the crevice to check out the bench below. At the top of the crevice a large dead tree had blown down, partially blocking the crevice, making it more difficult to enter. I looked to my left to see a large, dark purple pile of bear scat filled with either poke berries or elderberries. The scat was about an 8" wide "pie". I looked to my right and saw a smaller pile of the same purple, seedy scat. I looked further out on the fallen tree and found another pile of purple scat. Hmmm, lookin' good. We dropped down on the bench and took a look around. The lower bench was well traveled by game of some sort. We ended up pouring a gallon of molasses over a rotted stump and setting up a game camera about 12 yards back. The trail at the edge of the bench is easily within 20 yards of the camera, so hopefully I'll have some pictures when I go back in a couple of weeks to put out bait.
Across the road we rode down into the woods onto my friends other piece of land. We rode to the bottom of the hollow that had a mostly dry creek with a couple of potholes of water about 3' across. As we looked for tracks, my buddy was a few feet behind me. We had been off of our 4 wheelers for maybe 5 minutes, and were only about 30 yards from them. I hear my buddy say "come on, there's a bear" as he ducked down and headed for the 4 wheelers. I wasn't looking the direction he had been, so I was scaning desperately as we headed back to the 4 wheelers. He was visibly shaken as he stood holding onto one grip of the 4 wheeler, peering back towards where he had seen the bear. He told me it looked dirty, kind of a brown color. As we thought about it, he agreed it was probably a cinamon phase bear. I was still kind of doubting him, as he had said his eyes aren't what they used to be. He went towards where he said the bear was standing, facing us about 20 yards away with its head wagging kinda side to side. He squatted down and said "come here". I got to where he was crouching as he pointed and said "I think we scared the crap out of him". On the ground was a bright purple liquid scat about 8" across... 20 yards from where we had been standing. He estimated the bear would have come to about mid thigh high on him and said he looked very thick.
Well, we know there are definitely bears in the area. It's going to be a long 2 weeks waiting to see if we have pics on the camera!!!
