[bigbrother]

Thanks guys. As far as some stories, with a hunt like we had there are lots of them for every day. I can't really express how nice of a hunt and how great of an outfitter that Dale Adams is. While I did not shoot one (my choice), I saw more than my share. I passed on a 6 1/2 footer on my 4th night that I could have easily taken with the bow. It would have been a great bear pretty much anywhere else but where we were.

On the first night, John and I were guided by Alex, Spark went alone with Dale. About 2 hours into the hunt, we spotted what looked like a good bear about 2 miles down the shore line. We hopped into the boat to close the distance but before we could gain ground on it, it disappeared into the rain forest. After that, we motored out around another inlet and spotted another bear, again from about 2 miles. We closed to within about 3/4 mile and beached the boat. We glassed the bear for about 10 minutes and determined it looked good enough to get closer. In order to get the wind right we had to run around the bottom end of a bay and close in from the south on the same shore that he was feeding on. With the tide out, it was quiet but trying to run in the mud with hip boots on was quite the chore.

Soon we were within about 300 yards of where we thought the bear should be but we couldn't find it. We went from the high of the excitement from the stalk to the low everyone feels when you think you blew it. We were standing there discussing what to do next when he popped back out onto the beach and was feeding toward us. We were on the wide open beach with nothing to do but lay down and take a rest of off Alex's pack. The bear was a little over 300 yards but was working toward us....slowly. We layed in the mud and waited. And waited. For about 1/2 and hour for the bear to finally close to within 200 yards. Alex did not want us to shoot further than that. When the bear reached 209 we said close enough and John sqeezed the trigger. The bear ran to the woods and came a little closer at which time John shot again and the bear disappeared. At this point, darkness was coming and we couldn't find any blood as we had expected. John felt that both of the shots were good but we decided we would wait until morning to follow up.

The next morning found all 5 of us back at the scene and it wasn't long before Dale found blood....lots of it. We followed it for about 50 yards to where the bear had bedded. Unfortunately, there was no bear. We started through the brush trying to find out where it went when Dale found more blood, but the freshness showed that we were in the thick stuff with a very much alive bear. After about 30 yards Dale and John came upon the bear at mere feet and when it got up to leave John put a final finishing shot into it from behind. We were all a little perplexed as to why the bear was still alive but upon skinning we found that John's first bullet was slightly high and did not take out the lungs, his second shot went through the shoulder but was too far forward and again did not hit anything vital. The bear had lost a lot of blood but the final shot was the one that did it. Needless to say, we had lots of excitement and John got to shoot for 2 days! John got the pleasure of carrying out 6'+ of bear hide.