Spot & Stalk
By Jana Waller
Have you ever been hunting and witnessed something in Mother Nature that simply blew your mind? An occurrence that you couldn’t believe you were blessed to see or knew you would never top? Or maybe you had a hunting season that made you feel you were the luckiest person on the planet and all the stars were aligned? I had such a season and it had everything to do with BEARS. My spring bear hunting season of 2018 will never be topped in terms of what my friend Paul Servey and I witnessed. It will go down in my little book of history as the best bear season of my life and notching the tag on my biggest bear to date was only a small part of the story.
I feel extremely fortunate to get the opportunity to hunt a plethora of big game every year, and one of the most frequently asked questions I get is, “What’s your favorite species to hunt?” The question is a tough one to honestly answer since there are so many unique and exciting things about each species, but IF I had to choose only one I would proudly declare “bear”. I spend more time each and every year hunting black bear, over any other big game animal.
From running my own baits in Idaho with my business partner Heath, to spot-and-stalking Montana every spring, there are multiple opportunities to get out and enjoy the mountains and notch a bear tag. I have had my TV show Skull Bound and Skull Bound Chronicles now for 15 seasons and I spend a lot of time in the mountains capturing the hunts on video. It’s rare that there’s not a camera rolling at all times which can be both exhausting and intrusive as well as incredibly lucky, as in the case of the craziest bear season of 2018.
My good friend Paul Servey drove up from his home state of Utah to spend the week bear hunting with me in Montana. I met Pauly and his wife DeeAnn years before at the Western Hunting And Conservation Expo in Salt Lake City. They quickly became two of my best hunting friends after discovering our mutual passion for hunting and what we feel is a spiritual connection to the planet and our food. Pauly is a bear fanatic like myself and has had a lot of experience with do-it-yourself spot and stalk style hunting. That being said, neither one of us were prepared for the week that was about to unfold both before our eyes and on camera!
The first morning of the hunt we hiked in a few miles to one of my favorite spots where we often see bears. It’s an area that has multiple drainages leading in one large river bottom and there’s a lot of great canyons to glass. We decided to sit on the logging road where we could all cover di?erent areas, glassing for those black tree stumps that move. I took a little walkabout down the logging road to look at another ridge but quickly ran back to Pauly and my cameraman. “I’ve got a bear! He was about 800 yards above me on the opposite ridge. He’s on the move though walking like he’s on a mission! Let’s go!” Throwing our packs back on, we scrambled down the logging road in hopes of getting another look. The beautiful jet black bear had made his way across the top of the ridge and quickly disappeared over the mountain just as we got within range. Time and daylight was dwindling but it was a great first day to see a nice bear and enjoy the beauty of bear country.
The next couple of days weren’t the best weather for bear hunting but we went out regardless. Although I’ve always had poor luck finding bears in rainy weather, that wasn’t the case during this week. Shortly after we hiked in I spotted a sow with cubs over a mile away using the Vortex spotting scope. The three bears crawled around the rocky ridge, flipping logs and looking for grubs and fresh green grass. We donned our heavy rain gear as the sprinkle turned into a downpour for an hour or so. As the rain was starting to let up I glassed up a beautiful cinnamon colored bear walking quickly on the ridge above us. Gathering our packs and camera gear we hustled over the hill we were perched on. The bear moved quickly among the thick pines, never to be seen again from our position. We considered it a very lucky day to see bears in the rain and little did we know the following day would be one of the most incredible days I’ve ever had in the mountains.
We hiked back into the same spot in hopes of finding the cinnamon bruin. Almost to our same glassing knob we froze in our tracks as the sound of bears fighting echoed from across the canyon! I’ve heard the familiar sound of bears fighting before but only when I’ve been sitting on a bait. Wide eyed, we all looked at one another in disbelief. It was hard to tell where the sound was coming from as it bounced between the canyons so we cautiously continued on up the logging road to our glassing hill. It wasn’t but a few minutes after dropping our packs
and glassing around that my cameraman suddenly said, “I’ve got a huge cinnamon up there! He just stepped out onto that logging road!” He said continuing to glass at the bear who was approximately 500 yards away. “Wait! That’s a GRIZZLY! And there’s TWO!” Pauly and I l quickly threw up our binoculars to confirm. With jaws dropped we watched two huge grizzly bears drop o? the very same logging road corner that we walked on the day before. The couple slowly made their way down the ridge, their enormous bodies rolling with every slow, deliberate step. “This is insane! This is the craziest thing we’ve ever seen! We’re watching a mating pair of grizzles at 400 yards!” I proclaimed to the Go Pro as my cameraman switched to his long lens for the big camera. Keep in mind, we were in an area that was not known for grizzlies and not far from the city limits of Missoula. This was one of our favorite black bear hunting spots where we never even considered running into grizzlies. It’s di?cult to describe how incredible it was to watch a pair of grizzlies mate, fight, sleep, repeat from a mere 166 yards at the closest point. There was a steep raven between ourselves and the bears and, although our blood was pumping from the incredible encounter, we felt we were safely keeping our distance. Pauly used his Phone Skope adapter with the spotting scope and filmed the pair on his cell phone while we proceeded to burn through every battery on our cameras, capturing the most incredible footage in the course of 7 hours! It was a once in a lifetime experience that none of us will ever forgot! In fact, you can watch the footage on Skull Bound Chronicles on CarbonTV in Season 1, Episode 6 titled “Montana Griz Encounter”.
Needless to say we didn’t go back into that area the next day. I can only imagine what a grizzly boar would do to a person who he felt was threatening his good time with a sow in heat. The next fews days we would spend in a di?erent area, leaving alone the love birds… I mean love bears. One day after filming mating grizzlies, a scenario many National Geographic cameramen would dream for, we had another encounter that would end up going viral on social media.
We were walking up the old logging road when Pauly spotted a moose paddle a mere ten yards o? the road! Luck was noticeably on our side that week! Being a avid shed hunter I was extremely jealous but also excited for Pauly’s find. Continuing up the road, we were about three miles from the truck when we spotted a beautiful blond colored sow with a cub across from us on the opposing ridge at about 500 yards. Minutes later we saw a large jet black bear walking approximately 150 yards below the sow and cub. Cameras were rolling as I said, “Wait until she smells that boar! She’s not going to like that!” The sow must have let out a warning bark to her cub because it suddenly ran in the opposite direction and the blond sow took o? like a freight train down the hill towards the boar. In an attempt to escape her wrath, he quickly climbed the tall lodge pole pine at speeds I didn’t think possible! Often times when a bear charges, it’s a blu? charge and they’ll stop short of their perceived threat. Not this time! The blond sow jumped onto that tree and proceeded to climb up after the boar, almost jumping long strides versus climbing, until both bears were near the top. She swiped at his rear, snarling and growing, putting on a fierce display of protective mama bear. She started to crawl back down the lodge pole pine, aggressively biting o? multiple branches to show the boar she meant business! When she finally crawled back down to the base of the tree we thought the fight was over until she leapt back up with as much intensity as the first time. The two bears clung to the top, swaying on the tall pine as we watched in amazement! That Mama bear was intent on getting her point across as she proceeded to crawl up and down the entire length of the tree a total of five times! Finally she climbed back down and before walking away in the direction of her cub, she gave one last message to the boar and stood on her hind legs rubbing her back along the base of the tree for a few minutes.
We continued hunting deeper into the canyon but couldn’t stop talking about what we had just witnessed! The odds of coming across that bear fight, much less capturing it all on video, was another once in a lifetime encounter! We walked another mile before perching above a creek below in the dark pines. It wasn’t long before a nice black colored bear started feeding up from the creek. Pauly got into the prone position and fired a perfect 300 yard shot. The bear ran less than 50 yards and piled up in a rock outcropping about 100 yards straight down o? the logging road. Luckily we had extra batteries to film Pauly notch his tag and explain the incredible week we had experienced. After quartering up the boar and trudging with our heavy packs back to the truck, we celebrated the amazing week with a delicious bear steak dinner! Pauly hit the road back to Utah a day later knowing that we had just experienced a week that will never be topped. From mating grizzlies to watching the precise definition of a “Mama Bear in action” not to mention finding a moose paddle and notching his bear tag, it was week in the mountains that will never be repeated.
In a bizarre and amazing twist of fate, my cameraman and I were back in that same canyon just days later and actually witnessed that exact sow kicking o? her cub! In only a few short days she went from a near death encounter, protecting her cub to kicking o? that cub she so fiercely defended! We filmed her chasing the two year old cub, clawing at it and biting it in the rear until it went scrambling up a tree. The scared cub hung at the very top of the lodge pole much like the boar a week before, and the sow eventually simply walked away in the opposite direction, up over the mountain top. Witnessing both of those examples of bear behavior was a gift from God. And our luck just continued on throughout the spring season. A few weeks later I was able to notch my tag on my biggest Montana bear to date! We had spotted a large jet-black bear crossing one the last patches of snow left high on the mountain. We were over a mile away but decided to climb the steep ridge in hopes of seeing the bear before the sun dipped behind the ridge. Rounding the avalanche shoot we stopped to glass the opposing canyon. The jet black bear appeared 400 yards away but behind her was a giant chocolate colored boar! I got into the prone position and watched until I had a perfect broad side shot at 375 yards. The 30 Nosler rifle barked and the boar tumbled downhill behind some brush. We made it across the steep raven in time to have enough light to film this bear of a lifetime. As I walked up and knelt down to put my hands onto his beautiful hide, tears were flowing. They were tears of gratitude for the most incredible bear season I know I will ever have. You can also watch this Montana bear hunt on Season 1, Episode 7 of Skull Bound Chronicles on the always-free CarbonTV.