My second youngest son Cary got the heaviest bear weighed in at the Unicoi weigh station this season last Tuesday. The bruin weighed 376 pounds, Measured 6 feet 1 inche from snout to tail. The bugger was impressive. He took off with my good friend Shannon from Shannon's home in Bueladean, NC at 5:00 am and went to get his licenses for the hunt at the Unicoi Wal Mart. It was 9 degrees with a 10-15 mph wind and 9 inches of snow on my buddies yard at 2600 feet. They were heading up to 3500 and higher, so I was a bit anxious knowing they would be seeing negative wind chills most of the morning but knew he would be in very good hands.
After a 2 hour ordeal to get the license They headed to a track Shannon and his bear hunting buddies had run late Saturday but it got dark. They went to the last known address of Yogi and there were only day old tracks but Shannon, the solid bear hunter he is lit out after him anyway with 2 dogs of his new Plot hounds in tow. He had my son wait with the other fellas until he jumped the bear out. After finding some fresh tracks it wasn't long before he jumped Bo Bo from his bed then it was time to let those Plots earn their Alpo. They lit out after the beast with the zeal of a young man working on a prom dress zipper. It was only a short time later that they released the rest of the lot of the Walkers and Plots and the deadly chase was on in earnest. After a couple hour of tracking the dogs the GPS tracker went stable and it was the money round.
He plodded through the foot deep snow for a good morning stretch of the legs to get to where the choir of dogs were singing to find a right fine trophy waiting fo him in a huge pine . Mr bear had taken up his final residence in a very large pine about 50 feet off the ground. He was not pleased with all those bothersome K9's at the base singing the happy hound blues. Cary had a 50 yard shot at the bears melon with my 1894 Marlin 44 mag stoked with 220 gr Horndy Leverevolutions. He shouldered the rifle, had a momentary sad thought for the bear, gave him a wink and then it was lights out for the picnic basket thief. He had the bead on his ear but a last second turn by him and the Horndy hit just to the right of his nose and it was as clean of a harvest as could be done with any rifle. The beast took out every branch of the tree on the way down and we're talking branches that could support a nearly 400 pound critter.
Ole Yogi took 4 plus hours to clean and every bit, stave the innards are being used or eaten. Now my son is going to have a really nice rug to cuddle with his honey on those speical nights thanks to Shannon, all his bear hunting pals and their fantastic dogs. This is a hunt I will remember for the rest of my days.
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We got a few does for the freezer too.
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No more picnic baskets for him. :D Nice looking bear by the way. Congrats. Looks like it was a blast. :thumb: