It was the first day of July, and the family and I were at a quaint cabin overlooking Bull Shoals Lake in Southern Missouri, our usual location for the July 4th celebration. It was promising to be another hot and humid day, perfect for playing on the lake. I was checking my emails while enjoying a cup of coffee as the family finished breakfast.  

Among the regular advertisements for holiday deals, I found an email from the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) saying that the Missouri elk and bear draw results had been posted. In May, I applied for both elk and bear. I knew the draw odds were slim, so I assumed the $10 application fees were mere donations to the conservation efforts of MDC. Eager to confirm my assumption, I entered the MDC website. When I read the word “Success” next to “Bear” under my permits, my thoughts shifted. The idea of watersports and fishing was overtaken by a yearning to enter the Ozark hills and start searching for bruins. 

As a native southwest Missouri boy, I grew up in a family that hunted about everything that flew, crawled, or walked. The idea of hunting an apex predator in my home state was an exciting new endeavor. Fortunately, I had a private land connection with a longtime family friend Peanut. Peanut was a Mississippi native that had moved to Missouri in the early 1990s after buying a 500-acre slice of heaven amongst the steep hills of Douglas County. He was one of the first landowners in Douglas County to report and document regular bear sightings to the MDC in the early 2000s. The confirmed sightings evolved into regular live trappings performed by the MDC for data collection, ear tagging, and collaring.    

 Peanut answered with a warm congrats and his approval for hunting access. He informed me that the MDC had a live trap planned for July 12th, and he invited me and my family to take part in the experience. So during this event, we watched a young male bear ear tagged, measured, weighed, and get its blood drawn for DNA analysis. My family loved it, and it only fueled my growing obsession with bears.  

I started diving into all I could find about black bear hunting and its history in the United States via podcasts, magazine articles, and YouTube videos. I even hunted down prior Missouri bear tag holders to learn of their successes or failures. 

In 32 years of roaming the hills of Southern Missouri, I had seen two bears in the wild; both had dashed across the highway before vanishing in the surrounding vegetation. The hunter success rates since the start of bear hunting in Missouri were abysmal: twelve bears harvested in 2021, eight bears in 2022.  

The Missouri bear season is highly regulated, and bear baiting is illegal during the season. The regulation does allow baiting up to 10 days prior to the season. My plan was to provide an attractive bait site, accustom the bears to visiting, pull the bait per regulation, then hunt over scent after season opened.  

My friend and manager of a local grocery store gained me access to a large supply of outdated bread, cereal, donuts, and pastries. Beginning the first week of September, I had 4-5 different bears hitting the bait on a regular basis and rarely had a day without multiple bear visits. I watched the site using a cellular game camera and restocked the bait every few days. As the season drew near, I started to feel my confidence swelling. I knew I was far from a “bear hunter,” but I recognized a pattern from these bears that I just could not mess up.  

A family vacation took me out of state the first week of October, and the bait pile ran out prior to the cutoff date of October 6th. I had not received any pictures since the fifth, so I assumed the batteries on my camera had died. I visited the bait site to replace the batteries on the ninth and to ensure there was no remaining bait. The batteries were fine. The bear activity had simply ceased with the consumption of the bear bait. The first hints of doubt entered my mind about my “well-planned strategy”, but I shook it off, assuring myself the bears were in the area and would show up during the season. 

Missouri bear season opened on Monday, October 16th. The night before, the faith in my plan was deteriorating fast, not a single bear was on camera visiting the site in the past 10 days. Worse, deer hunters in the area said that the mast drop started the first week of October. It was clear that my regular visitors had left the baited area for a more readily and abundant food source, acorns.  

I still wanted to stick with my original plan. That plan involved a buddy stand in a clearing approximately 80 yards from the bait site with two mop heads. One mop head soaked in bacon grease, the other in Northwoods-Gold Rush for scent attractors. Additionally, 50 yards past was a large red oak with a mast that could draw a bear into range.  

Before the sun was even up that morning, my dad and I settled into the buddy stand full of anticipation for the hunt. As day broke, the reality of this endeavor started to take hold. Although the MDC was gracious enough to create a bear season, through regulations and timing, they picked the hardest time of year to see a bear. These bears were not looking for love, like a rutting whitetail. The bears do not gobble and give up their location like a wild turkey in Spring. The bears were not even searching heavily for food. They could camp on a single oak tree and feed for days. Bear movement was minimal. Without the aid of bait, coaxing an acorn feeding bear out of the vast oak timber seemed hopeless. The all day effort yielded a couple of deer sightings, a bobcat, and a box turtle (you heard correctly). Darkness crept in, and with it the deflating feeling of impossibility.  

My work kept me in the office all day Tuesday and through midday Wednesday. The bitter north wind from Monday had shifted and was now coming directly out of the south, which completely voided my stand location. The plan for Wednesday afternoon was to scout along the northeastern corner of the property, then settle in for the last hours of daylight on the north end of the clearing I had previously hunted. I crept through the thick brush and heavily timbered ridges for a mile, with no sign nor sightings of bears. 

On the way home, I called Peanut—who was out of town that week—and asked for help with finding the bears that seemed to have vanished from the area. He was surprised nothing was frequenting the travel corridor surrounding the old bait site but knew the bears could/would disperse into the surrounding acres of oak dominated timber. He recalled seeing bear scat in a clearing on the west side of the property two weeks prior to the season, which was his only lead.  

On Thursday, my primary aim was to find fresh bear signs. The wind had shifted back out of the north by that afternoon. I planned to begin in the southwest corner of the property and hike out the entire west side. 

 I crested the first ridge and began still-hunting towards the north, winding along steep hollows, thickets, and small openings. I would stop to glass ravines and check any potential food source for traces of bears. After several hours, I came to a clearing atop the spine of a ridge. The opening ran 200 yards long and 75 yards wide, and amid the clearing was a solitary red oak. The tree was unimpressive, but something caught my attention, limbs with green leaves littered the ground beneath. Upon further investigation, it was obvious something had broken the limbs off to eat the acorns. The identity of the bear culprit was confirmed from a deep claw mark on the base of the tree and large piles of scat surrounding the area. 

It was a little before 5:00 p.m. My hope rekindled, and I put the wind in my face and tucked in along a bluff for the evening hunt. The oak was 80 yards in front of me and the field bottlenecked another 70 yards beyond that. After an hour of sitting, I tried preoccupying my thoughts with how to capitalize on the fresh sign when something broke my concentration. From my right, out of the tip of the bottleneck, I caught movement. It took me a couple seconds to register the reality of the situation as a large black bear slumped into the opening.  

The bear was heading east to west directly across the opening. It did not appear to be in a hurry, but was certainly moving with intention. I steadied my rifle atop the shooting sticks and quickly brought the bear within my scope, but the bear was steadily moving onward. My instinctive whitetail hunter mode kicked in, and I gave the standard “mehhh”, to which the bear paid no attention. ‘Silly,” I thought, but I recovered with a sharp dog bark I use to stop coyotes. The bear continued steadily onward. Panicking, I thought to whistle, but in the excitement could not form my mouth in the right shape. As the bear was nearing the crest of the ridge, I defaulted to, “Hey, bear!” 

 The bear stopped and casually looked in my direction, unaware of my intentions. I collected myself, settled the crosshairs behind the bear’s shoulder, and pressed the trigger. The Hornady ELD-X 7mm Remington Mag bullet smacked into the bear. The bear doubled over, but quickly recovered, starting its retreat towards the woods. I chambered a fresh round and the follow up shot connected just as the bear entered the timber. I sat, left alone on the now quiet ridge top listening. Then, I heard the bear moan as it expired.  

I spent a good five minutes just soaking it all in. Before approaching the bear, I called Peanut, who called the local conservation agent. He was in the area and came to help retrieve the bear. It was a dry sow the MDC had tagged years prior. While we did not have scales, the agent estimated her at 300 lbs and complimented the bear’s fine black coat.  

Walking up on the expired bear was surreal. I had spent an immeasurable amount of my time working to make this moment happen. A part of me had doubted it would ever materialize. I called my wife, dad, and my brothers. They later greeted me at Peanut’s house, eager to see the trophy and hear of my adventure.  

Through the efforts of MDC, I had the opportunity to hunt bears in my home state. My bear was one of twelve taken in the 2023 Missouri bear season, the 25th bear killed in the modern hunting seasons. The bear fat made 27 pints of bear grease, the bear’s hide has been sent to a tanner, and I look forward to trying new table fare with my family. I now have a deeper appreciation for black bears and take joy in knowing they are thriving in their native habitat.