My 16 yr old son Cody has a Ches. bear tag. We left last Thursday after school for northeast Oregon and came home late Tuesday. No bear was taken, but we had a great hunt!
Friday afternoon we glassed up a nice reddish brown bear and made a stalk on him. When we peeked over a rock point the bear was no where in sight. We decided to cross a timbered draw and see if the bear had moved to the next open ridge. Before we went 50 feet into the timber we spotted the boar slowly climbing the ridge about 75yds away, but the shooting lane was clogged with buckbrush and low tree limbs. We moved down the hill to an opening but the bear had already went over the ridge and out of sight. We sat on the hillside until late evening hoping he'd show himself again, but as the wind started moving down the ridge we started climbing up the ridge.
The next morning as everyone slept in, I snuck out to try and locate some turkeys. After calling into half a dozen locations I had a tom answer lustily! I set up in some trees and had him answering every call :smile:, but didn't like my setup and decided to move, even though he was close. BIG mistake!
The tom shut up and never showed himself.
Later Saturday afternoon we drove out to glass a canyon. I made my son's some sandwiches and they headed out to a rock point where we were going to glass from. My brother Joe and I were eating sandwiches and drinking a pop when Luke(my 12 yr old)came running back and said they saw a bear down near the creek. We quickly grabbed our packs and hustled out to where Cody was just in time to see a BIG brown boar cross the creek and enter a small patch of trees. Cody and I went down a ridge and got within 200yds of where the bear was, but he never came out. I even tried wailing on a predator call to coax him out before dark. In the pic the bear was in the small trees to the right of the big yellow pine above Cody. The bear was laying down in the green grass on the left side of the pic when the boys spotted it.
After we climbed out of the canyon, we were heading back up the road and stopped to glass some small grassy openings in the timber across the creek and immediately spotted another bear. But the range was over 400yds, too far for Cody and his .06 We moved up the ridge and got straight across from the bear, but couldn't see him good enough for a shot. Besides, he was still over 300yds.
We saw one more bear Sunday, but it was on the move and entered a timbered draw before we could make a stalk. We also saw several bears across big canyons that we didn't attempt to stalk.
Sunday morning my brother went out turkey hunting with me and I called in a tom that he shot at and missed at 40 yds.
I think we might have been a little early for good bear hunting. The bottom of the canyons were getting green, but the ridges were still pretty brown. We talked with several other groups of hunters and they hadn't seen a single bear. So I think we did pretty good for a bunch of rookie bear hunters.
We saw lots of wildlife on the trip! There were LOTS of elk where we were hunting(found 2 elk sheds), one a small 4pt the other a giant forked horn with a base like a 5 or 6pt.
The boys had fun digging wild onions. They dug up a whole Snickers bag full Monday afternoon and we cooked them up with fried spuds to go with a big pan of elk backstrap.
That's Deadhorse Ridge and Cook Creek in the background.
Besides elk and bear, we saw mule deer, whitetails, Rocky Mtn Bighorns, Calif. Bighorns, wild turkeys, coyotes, grouse, golden eagles, chukars, and buffalo(on a ranch near Enterprise).
Here's a few other pics from our trip. Cody glassing into Joseph Canyon.
Luke, Joe, & Cody with Cottonwood Creek in the background.
The Wallowas appear to have a pretty good snowpack?
The last ridge on the left is where we nearly got the first bear.
We might try and go back over on Memorial Day weekend. We had alot of fun and with a little luck Cody could have got his bear. But that's hunting!
sliverpicker
Chesnimnus bear hunt
fishinpox
of garlic. 
We camp at the creek but hunt where you are standing each day. Start early and bring lots of water. 
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