The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
Bear Hunting Part 3 with Heather Aldrich
The secret to successful bear hunting isn't just understanding where bears live—it's knowing how they move through their habitat as seasons change. In this revealing conversation with experienced bear hunter Heather Aldrich, we dive deep into how black bears shift their patterns throughout the year and how savvy hunters can capitalize on these predictable changes.
Aldrich shares her hard-earned knowledge about spring versus fall bear behavior, explaining how boars transition from ridgeline-running during breeding season to creek-bottom feeding during hyperphagia. "Hyperphagia is the gift to the bear hunter," she explains, detailing how bears consume 20,000+ calories daily while active for up to 22 hours during their pre-hibernation feeding frenzy. This biological imperative creates predictable patterns hunters can exploit.
The discussion takes fascinating turns through bear bedding habits, revealing unexpected locations where bears choose to rest—sometimes surprisingly close to human activity in areas consistently overlooked by people. "An old boar is really smart," Aldrich notes. "He has made his living by avoiding people and outfoxing them on his own turf."
We explore how bears use topography differently throughout the year, from spring ridgelines to fall creek bottoms, and how weather conditions impact movement patterns. While conventional wisdom suggests bears avoid rain and extreme heat, Aldrich shares stories of harvesting bears during downpours and spotting feeding bears on scorching days, reminding us that individual bears often break established patterns.
Whether you're planning your first bear hunt or looking to improve your success on mature boars, this episode provides actionable insights into bear behavior that will transform your approach. Ready to see more bears on your next hunt? Subscribe now and let us know your biggest bear hunting challenge in the comments.
Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. This week part three of bear hunting with Heather Aldrich. Okay, so now let's talk about the habitat for bears. Sure, so primarily do they change habitat for seasons and how topography affects where they'll be. So spring bear, fall bear hunts Okay, so you've said food drives them. Yeah, so they're changing, they're moving around.
Speaker 2:Yes, they are.
Speaker 1:Is there anything as far as the change in habitat from season to season in, I would say, in the context of hunting, yes, Okay.
Speaker 2:So let's put a box on it. Let's say we're hunting a specific boar and we know that this guy can be upwards of 50 square miles, right? So I'm going to start marking where I'm picking him up on camera or sign, and let's say so. When we measure a bear, we look at their front pad and we can get a general idea of the size. So we measure across the front pad, only not the back. If it's like a four inch pad, you know the rule of thumb it's about a five foot bear. So generally the bears I'm looking at, I'm looking for that five, five and a half inch front pad to get me into the size of bear I would prefer to take. So I can monitor him through that as well as my, my game cameras. So I'm looking for that specific track in the area. I'm going to start to use those markers using my GPS, placing markers on it to get an idea of where he's operating at that time in his habitat and try to get the boundaries as best I can. So again, I'm going to go on the large side a lot of times and put them in a pretty big box and you may think you're in like the best part of his habitat. Right, you've got all this sign, all this stuff. You might be more in a pretty big box and you may think you're in like the best part of his habitat. Right, you've got all this sign, all this stuff. You might be more on the more marginal stuff. So this goes back to scouting and the boots on the ground of make sure that you've covered enough ground, don't just settle.
Speaker 2:And and this is where some of the mistakes were that I made early on hunting was I would come across something and I'd be getting consistent bears on camera. There's poop there and all the things, but I did not study the whole habitat, so I only had a portion of the chessboard. Well, that's not good. We need to have all of the information that we can get. There is no perfect world. Okay, we're not going to have everything, but we can certainly eliminate stupid things. So when I run a camera set, I like to have my control group where I expect there to be no bear. If there's no bear, then I've established his habitat, his range, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's one of my playing pieces Now. Within that specific habitat that he's roaming in his topography, there's going to be areas that he prefers over others, and it'll be based on food. It could be based on the time of year, meaning if it's spring and there's sows in season, he might be moving more in different areas, like we discussed earlier, and then in the fall, how he moves through there is going to be a little bit different. So a lot of times at that point right, all the south-facing slopes that were so good in the spring are now done. They're burnt because that's where all the sun's hitting. So there's no food there for him, or if it is, it's, you know, shriveled up raisin stuff. It's no good. So he's going to move into some areas that provide that food for him but also provide him cover, because remember, now he's no longer brains falling out following the sow, now he's fully back online.
Speaker 2:An old boar is really smart. They're incredibly smart, which is why I take so much immense satisfaction when I fill the tag on that particular animal. He has made his living by avoiding people and outfoxing them on his own turf. So some of the things that I'm looking for in the fall specifically now are going to be any kind of creeks, rivers, swamps, anything that's wet, any kind of dampness. So as the bear moves on through the year, he goes into what's called hyperphagia, and hyperphagia is right before they go into denning and they're the walking stomach that people know so much about. So he is going to be stuffing his face nonstop and the studies have been done, documented proof where that bear is up 20 hours to 22 hours out of a 24-hour day and you're talking about 20,000 calories plus or minus that he's ingesting. Oh wow, I wish I could get away with that. If I could, I would be stuffing Twinkies all day long, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going into hyperphagia, that's my excuse. So he needs a lot more water. Okay, so hyperphagia is the gift to the bear hunter. He needs a lot more water. Okay, so hyperphagia is the gift to the bear hunter.
Speaker 1:We know he's going to be up.
Speaker 2:Okay, we know he's going to be up and he's going to be moving because he is hungry and we know he's going to need a lot more water to process that food. They're not, like you know, deer or goats, you know goats they just don't need much water to get their food through.
Speaker 2:The bears need a lot more food through. The bears need a lot more. And I have questions because there's been studies done on the output of urine for bears and hyperphagia and somebody measured it and I'm like I'm not sure how they collected that. There are questions involved. So they are going to need those water sources. Not only do they need the water, but if you've ever noticed, in the fall when everything else is burnt, there'll be a lot of food along those creeks.
Speaker 2:The grass is still green right. Lot of food along those creeks. Oh yeah, the grass is still green right. There's shadowed areas and there's hot spots in it and and then you'll see lots of berries of different kinds in that, in that habitat. So I kind of look at it as bear roads. The bears will travel in the cricks feeding, turning rocks over, and I've set up where I expected the crick to be his travel route, if that makes sense, because I know he's going to come cruising through there feeding his face and he's heading to another spot, so it was just a good area to pick the bear up.
Speaker 2:Now I'm not saying like they're, you know, walking down the Columbia, we're talking cricks here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah Right.
Speaker 2:So that's good topography to be looking at. In the fall they just change a little bit about how they're going. I again I'm hunting really thick stands and so I kind of reverse engineer it. Maybe I cannot hunt where he's feeding because it's just too darn thick. There's no shot opportunity there. So I will try to figure out where he's coming from. If I can establish where he's coming from, usually there'll be somewhere along that means of travel that I can set up a place to try to get that particular bear.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of how that works in the fall. Okay, so, and when they're moving, as they're looking for more food, are they trying to conserve energy while they're moving, not necessarily moving fast, or because them moving would burn calories? So, thinking of topography?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not interesting.
Speaker 1:And, granted, if they're following a creek, maybe downstream that's going to use, would they? And maybe you know, maybe not, but are they more likely to walk upstream to downstream, because it's downhill and useless?
Speaker 2:See, this is the things that I ask myself and drop my husband crazy with and he goes back to the crazy bear hunter thing. But to me it's like, why do they do it this way? Wouldn't they do it that way? It makes more sense, but it goes back to them being just very individualistic. So they will expend crazy amounts of energy to get a specific food item because they like it.
Speaker 2:To get a specific food item, okay, because they like it. It just is amazing to me, because it doesn't make sense, that you would, you know, dig up a mountain to go get this particular food item, but they will because they like that food item. Having said that, there's going to be things that are higher, more dense in calories, yeah Right, and those will be preferred food sources. So if you have an area with a bunch of nuts of some kind, right, those are going to be a preferred food source because they're high in calories, but not necessarily on a math scale. It's like the math doesn't square. They did all this to get that little morsel, so no, Okay, and that goes back.
Speaker 2:no anthropomorphism it doesn't have to make human sense, to make animal sense, I know, and it doesn't to make animal sense. Yes, yes okay.
Speaker 1:So thinking about through different seasons. Now topography let's talk about the topography, because I know with black tail there's, you know they'll behave differently at different elevations. Or we talk about how they like being on benches because of like wind tunnels and being able to smell everything. Is there? What are the bears doing in light of topography? And you've mentioned hanging around swamps or creeks or things like that, but you know we're not in flat country here, no At all. No, and so, and they're in there, are they avoiding any type of topography? Or let's let's talk about that big picture, because there's probably a lot here there's.
Speaker 2:There's a lot, so I will give you some of this is we'll call it science and some of the just observation based on on what I've seen over the years. So one of my favorite places to deploy cameras in the spring is ridgelines.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because you'll see the big boars running the ridgelines trying to catch the thermals right, and he's trying to find a sow in heat. That's what he's trying to do, so he's trying to pick up the scent of anything blowing up to him. So those might be great. Now you come back there in August and there won't be a bear on there, he's just. There's no food for him, there's no lure of a sow right, there's no reason for him to be there Year round.
Speaker 2:I've noticed them using the creeks and the rivers like little roads, spring and fall, so they'll use that and it's not perfect. They might be within a hundred yards as they follow a spring, and it might be, you know, a couple hundred yards. But basically you can. You can look at the topography and say, yeah, this area is being used by bears, and more than one, and it's just a travel route that they're they're using and and again that spring and fall and then avalanche shoots. Those are great places. I've seen a lot of sows in the avalanche shoots, so they'll have their cubs up in there. And I'm wondering again, this is just conjecture, but I often wonder if it's because they feel it's a more defensible type spot for them to keep their cubs in, or it could be because of the time of year which is factoring in of maybe they're just now getting out of the den and so they're coming down the avalanche shoots to go get into other areas.
Speaker 2:So these are all considerations. You know swamps are interesting places. Bears have no problem getting soaking wet. Like I don't like my wet feet at all, like if my boots are leaking I am whining okay, and I'm probably going to mutiny. So my husband's always bought me good boots because he's like nope, she's out and I am out, I'm done going to mutiny. So my husband's always bought me good boots because he's like nope, she's out and I am out, I'm done. So big bad bear hunter, right, Feet are wet Done.
Speaker 1:That's most people, because I've had this conversation wet feet, cold feet, don't bother me at all. It's so funny and I've realized I am the outlier in that. Yeah, yeah, feet are wet or cold, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2:I can do cold feet, but wet one, that's just gross. They squelch in your boots, it's gross. So, anyways, they don't have a problem with that, and we should talk for just a few minutes about trails. So trails are really interesting for our bears. There are places where there are bear specific trails, meaning it's bears that use it all the time. No-transcript. What I like about trails and I mark them when I'm scouting or once I learn an area is I use those to access the places I want to go hunt. You're like, well, duh, yeah, but it's for a different reason. So one it could be based on the wind, like we talked about. I know at a certain time of day the wind's blowing such and such a way, so I'm going to travel such and such a way to avoid my stank going to the bear that I'm trying to get to. The other thing that is really good about our trails, as we're going through the topography, is this understanding If you've ever walked through the woods just brush busting?
Speaker 2:and you listen? The woods are silent.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's no squirrels, there's no birds, right? Everything's. Just because it's obviously an abnormal sound, you're brushing through it and crushing things and making all the noises and cracking, and when animals do that, a lot of times they're running from a predator, right? So you've just sent out these shockwave sounds going throughout the forest saying predator, predator. So I like to get on the trails and travel in them, because the animals expect movement on them and it's more accepted the sound of movement on them.
Speaker 1:Do you try to mimic the sound of how animals move?
Speaker 2:Not necessarily. I try to limit sounds that are abnormal. Any kind of a plastic scratchy noise, kind of a plastic scratchy noise. Any of my calls I've made fleece covers for if they have any kind of plasticky to them or if the lanyard is, you know, got that plastic sound. Anything that's weird sounding. I avoid, you know, brushing my backpack on a brush or a limb or something. I try to. You know my stock is synthetic so I make sure that I'm not brushing it on anything because it makes a very loud, very loud, plasticky, abnormal sound. So all of those are no-nos. Another one that is a big no-no is and it doesn't matter whether you're scouting or you're going into your place, you're going to go hunt hands off the brush man. I don't know why people got to do that. Like their hands are down with their side and they're grabbing brushes. They're going. A lot of them don't realize they're doing it till. I'm like, hey, not with me today.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No touchy Because you're leaving your stank everywhere, right at the height of animals to smell. So I'm very careful about things like that. So the trails I'm using them in the topography to access areas that I to that are probably pretty dense. Another thing that is really good is we're going through topography and it goes back to the roads and the bears is major hiking trails. So there's lots of trails in Washington state, lots of trails you can hike on and you can go in the national forest you can walk off of to go hunt. I will use those to go access a habitat. So the bear's used to people going by and this has worked really well for me. He's used to the hikers and all the moms and dads and the dogs and the horses and the whatnots you know the pack goats going by him on this trail. He accepts that movement so I know I can get closer to him because he's already accepting of that going by. I just got to make sure he doesn't realize that I just took a left.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So these are ways we're going to use topography to our advantage to access places for him.
Speaker 1:Will they also? Does that cause them to accept a certain level of human scent?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they're used to it, okay.
Speaker 1:That's true for bucks. Yeah, in fact, when we go in before season, we actually do try to leave a little bit of extra scent in there so that, okay, this thing has come in, it hasn't attacked me, so I don't need to be as worried about it. Right, potentially? Yeah, that's our thought, for that.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's legit. So you know the bears, they get used to it. That's why you have bears in campgrounds, right? They're not afraid of the human scent. They've accepted it and they've learned it's a food source, which is a really bad thing. Habituated bears not a good thing, but I'm using those things that he accepts right to get access to him.
Speaker 1:Okay, do they when they're traveling? Will they thinking again about topography? Are they more likely to travel at the bottom, like in the bottom of the valley, or top of the ridgeline, or maybe parallel along the ridgeline? Or they'll start out in the bottom, the valley portion, we'll say, and then they'll move up to the top of the ridgeline. Or they'll start out in the bottom, the valley portion, we'll say, and then they'll move up to the top of the ridgeline, then they'll move back down. Are they following food in those?
Speaker 2:situations. They're following food, they're following wind, they're following temperatures. What's happening? At that time of year we had a bear. So this spring we had a bear. He's in the bottom of a creek and it was, I mean, just lush grass, beautiful floodplain, so lots and lots of grass for him to eat, and he started out there. And then he, off of that creek, was another one that was coming down the mountain feeding it, and so he took a right and he went up the hill and we saw that bear in the afternoon up on an old spur road that is you know, a couple thousand feet probably elevation change there between where the bottom was and where he ended up and he was still going up the mountain.
Speaker 2:He was going to cross that logging road and keep going up. And he was still going up the mountain. He was going to cross that logging road and keep going up. So it's based on their food. It could be, too, sometimes based on pressure. So back to that chess game. And you're not just trying to locate the bear and pick him up. The environment.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you have others that you're playing with, so there might be other hunters out there. If you're during a logging season you could have them rolling up and down the roads and pushing bears out of places that they would traditionally be. But now they're logging right. So you got to adapt and move on. So that bear might be. You know, he woke up in the spring. He's like oh crap, half the forest is missing, so he's got to move and it could be one of those deals.
Speaker 1:So he's got to move and it could be one of those deals. So, and another thing so for habitat that I was just thinking about is okay. So you said five square miles up or 50. Five to 50. Yeah, big range.
Speaker 2:Big yeah.
Speaker 1:They're not always coming back to sleep in the same spot. They definitely are not. So what are they looking for when they're for if they're going to bed down?
Speaker 2:So that's really interesting. I have seen bear's bed in some of the strangest places. One of the places I took pictures of a bear bed and it was obviously well used. I mean rounded, smooth as glass. The whole rim was covered with poop, I mean all over Well used bed. This darn bed was probably 15 yards off a road, okay, I was like what?
Speaker 2:I did not expect that. That was such a strange thing to me. I guess I always pictured them, you know, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, as far away from humans as they could get, uh-huh. But this guy had learned a place where literally no one ever looked, and it was consistent. Had learned a place where literally no one ever looked, and it was consistent. And it goes back to that thing you were talking about earlier of being close to gates and people bypassing it.
Speaker 2:It's one of those. They will find areas like that that people consistently bypass because it's too close to this or maybe it's too far from that kind of a thing, and they'll use them. So that particular bear, that's where he was at. Other ones I've seen they're usually not I don't want to give an exact distance, but a little bit down from the ridge top right. Okay, just like a deer would Benches.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So they're going to come down a little bit and they'll bed in places like that. Some other places that have been pretty consistent are where there's a tremendous amount of blowdown and it's cool. So there's some standing trees with very little brush, we'll call it, but a lot of blowdown, and it's just one of those areas you walk in and you can instantly feel the temperature change and you'll find bare beds in that and because they have no problem like what would take me hours to get through that darn blowdown, they just walk the tops of it right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Real easy for them. I wish I could do that, but I would fall and die. You know I can't walk into bubblegum, so I'm not going to, it's just terrible. So places like that, real consistent. And you know, sometimes they like to just cool their jets. It's a hot day, so not it's a hot day, so not necessarily a bed, but they'll hang out in ponds and swim and just kind of sit back there in just like a hot tub, Like just hanging out getting cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So those are very interesting. Now, when we talk about beds, it's important to remember they're always moving through the environment so they might come back to a particular bed, but maybe it's once a week or once a month. It's not necessarily every night they're going to be in that bed. And then when we remember our fall hunting, I don't put as much stock on the beds because I know he's up 20 hours plus foraging, so the likelihood of catching him in the bed when it's already like once a week, we'll call it right For that short period of time that he's going to use it.
Speaker 2:Your probability is not as high. It just doesn't logistically make sense to me to spend as much time there. And then you know the sows and boars will bed together too during the, the mating season, during the rut. It's just I. I like the springtime beds more because he is more likely to spend more time in that bed, and so then it makes sense to camp out on it and and wait for him. A lot of things I have seen is that most of the time where they're bedding it's not a place you can necessarily sit on and do well because of your winds or the topography, meaning it's so dense a habitat. It's just you can't. But sometimes it's in a place, like I said, below the ridgeline, that maybe you're on another ridge and you can look into it and hope to catch him traveling on his travel route out of it. So that's how I would use the beds.
Speaker 1:And a lot of that just makes sense as far as they're going to sleep or they're going to feel safe to sleep. Either nothing can get into me, or I'm going to hear it trying to get into me, or I'm going to smell it before it gets to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that makes sense for just any type of.
Speaker 2:I think, if you remember the wind always they live primarily off their nose, so they do care about hearing other things coming in, but I guarantee you they probably smelled you long before they heard you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly so thinking about wind and this was me kind of thinking about this, as I'm questions to ask or curiosities as far as them as an animal. So thinking about how do bears move in relation to the wind and how do they adjust their behavior according to the wind or the wind speed, but so deer in a lot of what you're explaining. Well, the black tail are the exact same behaviors, but they're prey.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And whereas a bear can be predator, and so wondering if that is, if it's the same instincts driving that it's interesting to think of, okay, a prey and predator acting the same because of wind or scent or To a degree they do, but the reason they use it is different. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So the mentality of a prey species is different than that of a predator species. The predator is using the wind to try to smell an animal to eat, whereas the prey species is trying to smell to see if there's a predator coming so he doesn't get ate. A little bit different thinking in how they use the topography. So a bear might feel safer in some areas that our undulates don't, not just because he has a greater sense of smell, but because he's armed right.
Speaker 2:He's got claws and teeth to do the deal. How they interact with each other can determine some of how they will go through. So if you have a really young bear right, he's going to be way more cautious because he doesn't want to get ate or have his butt handed to him. So he's got to really be careful because the older bears will kill and predate on the younger bears and I'm not talking just cubs here, I'm saying you know a maturing three-year-old, four-year-old bear. He's got to watch himself, as opposed to the old daddy of the mountain. He owns it and he knows he owns it. So he might be more careful about how he uses the topography to avoid what he sees as danger, which would be hunters right.
Speaker 2:He's lived that long so he knows people are no good for him. But he's not worried about the other bears. So when he walks out onto a food source he owns the food source and the other bears are smelling and watching for him to come so that they can beat feet before he gets there. So they can get, because they will. In the fall They'll congregate. So let's say huckleberries again, you know it's people, it's a standard. They picture the huckleberry bear for fall. So there'll be a whole bunch of bears on that one food source. But you'll notice there's a hierarchy to it and so the older sows and whatnot that have established their dominance. They're going to get first choice, but you'll have sows come in and they might have cubs get first choice, but you'll have sows come in and and they might have cubs.
Speaker 2:So they're going to move off if they see any kind of a threat, smell a threat coming towards their kids, but they're. They're teaching them how to be a bear and where to find the food sources and this is on their, their list of food sources. But yeah, that borough, walk out and he owns it, it's, it's his. So everybody kind of moves tiptoes around dad, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, and we talked a little bit off air about this, about adjusting their behavior for wind speed. So, like black-tailed deer, if there's no wind they don't necessarily want to move, because they don't. That's not providing an advantage to them. There's no wind to carry the scent. That's not providing an advantage to them. There's no wind to carry the scent. But then there's a certain 5 to 15 miles an hour. That's kind of the sweet spot as far as that'll get them really active because they can smell threats coming in. But then there's a point where they just don't want to be out in it anymore because it's too much wind and you know, it's basically eliminating not only their sense of smell, because they might, might catch a whiff of something, but it's swirling going all over the place, and then it eliminates their sense of hearing as well, because it's just a bunch of noise.
Speaker 1:Now for bear black bear.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are they playing the wind the same way in that regards, or is there something where they just don't like wind?
Speaker 2:So I have noticed that when the winds start picking up because we get some whompers, you know, when the winds start really roaring, you just don't see as many bears, right, I think they don't like that.
Speaker 2:On steadiness, again, it goes back to they can't smell, they can't hear, and you know trees are falling kind of thing, and they might be laying low until that kind of blows over. I have not noticed a specific wind speed where, okay, they're out at this particular wind speed or nothing like that. I have noticed the high winds that they disappear, and on steady winds, so that time of day sometimes where it just starts, you just don't know which way it's going to be right, it can't make up its mind, they don't necessarily like that. And so I have seen where the bare numbers or sightings, we'll call it, drop down a little bit with those kinds of things. And the same is true of weather changes. So your barometer's changing, temperature's changing, etc. How does that affect them in the sense of are they going to still move, are they not? There's a lot of argument out there that if it's raining you're not going to see a bear.
Speaker 1:Okay, raining, you're not going to see a bear.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I always giggle a little bit because I've shot many bears in the rain.
Speaker 1:I've shot many bears in the rain.
Speaker 2:So it's back to that food or rut cycle and they might do things that are out of the ordinary for their normal behavior, because of the rut or because they're in hyperphagia and they just got to stuff their face.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And if you look at like a coastal bear, if he waited for a dry day he'd starve to death. Yes, you know what I mean. Yeah, so all those things play an effect on them. But again, that's observable. It's not a scientific. I can narrow it down and say, at this time, at this wind speed, whatever you can consistently get this result. I can narrow it down and say, at this time, at this wind speed, whatever you can consistently get this result, I can't do that.
Speaker 1:And we don't have so thinking about rain. There are times where it can be raining really hard here, but usually it's that steady, pretty steady rain Is there, like when it's just a downpour. Will that cause them to just hunker down for a while, or will they just come out?
Speaker 2:I think that's back to your topography question. Okay, I have noticed that east side bears in this state, if it starts to get really wet they're a little more reticent to come out right. But then you get to a coastal range bear and he's like I said, he'd starve to death if he waited for a dry day. Yeah, so he's less reticent, it's his norm, it's normal life to him, and so he's going to be out and feeding. I had a situation let's see, not this year, last year, last spring and this is how some hunts go it just was monsoon rain, it was horrendous, like just horrendous downpours and high winds, and then we had a day where it was going to be a little bit lighter rain. I went okay, I'm going for it, I'm going out. I mean, am I going to sit in the tent all the time? No, I'm going to go hunt. So I went and sat on stand and that's when I discovered my rain gear was leaking.
Speaker 2:So, it's a whole nother story in and of itself. So I was a little bit annoyed. And I'm sitting on stand and it's starting to drizzle a little bit less, a little bit less still raining, and it's that liquid sunshine. So the sun's kind of starting to come out a little bit and the rain's coming down and I hear a noise and I can't quite quantify what it is. It almost sounded like a little rock slide. I thought, oh no, part of the hillside's getting loose because of the rain and I'm trying to pay attention to what it is. So I pull the hood off my rain gear and try to listen. You know what is coming in. And, my goodness, it's no rock slide, it is a cow elk and she is hauling the mail. I mean, ears slicked back, eyes bugged out, and she goes roaring right by me. She's slamming into trees and I'm like that's not right. And there's not a predator hunter on the planet who doesn't know what that means. There's something behind her right.
Speaker 2:So I take my scope covers off, and I was in Idaho, so I fully expected it to be wolves. You know, I'm like whatever it is, they're not eating me. Today. I'm not a happy meal and what stepped out was not what I expected. So drenching, soaking, wet. This massive bear steps out and my first thought is he has no neck. Aren't they supposed to have necks? My second thought was oh crap, that's a grizzly bear. So in this monsoon rain, this grizzly bear had come down the mountain and he was chasing this fully grown cow elk with ill intent. So she went roaring by me and now I've got a grizzly bear in my lap at very close range and it's not a good thing and I'm like doggone it. This is wrong bear, which made me mad.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, but. And then he was trying to pick on an elk, which made me mad, and so I stood up and he looks at me and I thought here we go. This is either going to be really good or really bad. And he had that look on his face. If you've studied bears long enough, they make different faces for different things, right? And his was the. What the heck is that? Yeah, you know it wasn't predatory. It was the. What the heck is that. You know it wasn't predatory. It was the. I had lunch. Lunch is gone and now there's some weird thing in my way and he looked at me and I looked at him and I thought, golly. And his ears kind of came up a little bit and I recognized okay, he's going to turn. And so in order to do that, because they are so wide, he has to kind of take a step forward to be, able to turn his masks around.
Speaker 2:So he did that and you know he left. It was a very grudging, very grudging turn, but he did it Now. If that had been a young grizzly bear then we'd have been in trouble. That would have been bad, but he had nothing to prove. He's established everything. He wasn't worried about it. Everything he wasn't worried about it, he'd go find something else to eat. But those situations are very dangerous. But my point of all of that was this is.
Speaker 2:it was monsoon rain, right, and yes, it's a grizzly bear, but I've had the same things with black bears, where they come out in the rain. It's not necessarily the norm, right, you're not going to see a hundred bears that day, but you might find the bear that you wanted the bear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, something. Oh I was thinking about you're talking about blow down, how they just kind of walk over the top. I had a set and I went in and pulled my stuff from the set. I decided I wasn't going to hunt that. And I came back in to your point of they just walk over it, where it would take us forever, and I realized I left something screwed into the tree, my ozonics mount screwed into the tree. Okay, I'll go back out there. And it took me a couple of weeks before I finally was able to get back out there and we'd had a big windstorm and there were five trees that had blown down around my particular set. Like if I'd been sitting there during that windstorm, I would have been crushed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it took me to go 30, 40 yards to get in and out to look for that piece I'd left in the tree. It took me an hour to climb over and under and through all these trees just to get that one part that I completely forgot. But yeah, it gets to the point where, yeah, we give up, but you know animals completely.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's easy for them. They're very strong and they can use the topography in ways that we are not designed to do. Yeah, I can't do what they do.
Speaker 1:So thinking about weather. So there's rain, yep. What about the other extreme, where it gets really hot?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, because you know we have both here in Washington, where we can have 100-degree days and we can have monsoons, Yep.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the same day no.
Speaker 1:But in what part of the state?
Speaker 2:Yes, so, yes, heat does affect them. They. They are going to be going into the areas that are cooler, so, especially in the fall, and they start to fatten up. Right, they're in hyperphagia. That's their whole point is to get the fat on board and and so you have a bear that's got fur, that's getting longer, his underwool should start to grow and he's putting on the pounds. He's going to want to be in those cooler places. So, and specifically cooler places that also have food sources. So that's the places that I'm going to. You know, kind of look at for my fall because he's hot.
Speaker 2:Now, having said that, again, this goes back to the bears that are outside the norm. I have seen in September, on probably an 80-degree day, this bear. I was on a ridgetop and I'm looking across glassing a big canyon and there was a kind of an old spur road with a dead end at it and it was all full of grasses, tall grasses, and I'm looking at it like, is that a black blob on that landing? No, it's too hot. He couldn't no, and so I told my husband. I said I need the spotting scope. I it's a crazy thing, but I think, and so I put the spotting scope on it and, oh yeah, there's a black bear laying there in the hot sun just chilling, no reason whatsoever. That made sense to me and I've had more than one, so there's that one.
Speaker 2:And then there was a bear on a spring hunt. It was a really hot day. I mean miserable hot. You're just sweating and whining and you're looking for a shade tree yourself and it's just terrible. And I look over in a clear cut and there's a stinking big boar just stuffing his face in the heat and and it made zero sense to me, but there he was. So they will do things out of the norm, but when it gets real hot like that, I'm going to start looking for for cooler areas cooler areas now.
Speaker 1:Would they use, like those cool thermals, to hang out in as well?
Speaker 2:yeah, sure, sure, they're all about the nose yeah, because, yeah, that would be.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm gonna stay cool and exactly, I can smell everything coming from below, or exactly one particular area. Thank you for joining us for part three of bear hunting with heather aldrich.
