2016 Hunt Talk Bear Hunt

That's dedication!

Way to stick it out Jeff. Beautiful bear.
 
Congrats Jeff and good work Travis. Way to keep the hunt going and putting another on the score board for us!
 
Gorgeous Bear! Congrats! Similar color to the one I hit and didn't recover :(
 
No kidding Ed. First thought was that it might have been yours. Checked for any damage almost immediately.

Crazy....maybe twins. Anyway, super happy for you. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Can't wait to see the taxidermy. Any thoughts on what you will do?
 
Much appreciated guys! Ed, thanks for the kind words. No big plans for her. Going to tan the hide and clean up the skull. Hide will go over the couch, I suspect.
 
The 2017 trip is probably booked up, but if you want a kiwi in camp I know one that would like to join the crew.
 
I was in Casper this morning and two wardens had a young bear in a trap that they were relocating. They had darted it in a back yard in town. I guess if you have to work on the weekend that is the type of job to have.
 
Might have killed it a day before the Hunttalker officially started but here is a wilderness bear from my time up there in Montana.
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Spotted the bear on Tuesday night after I hiked in. Figured it was the first day of hunting so I let it be. Went back to glass in the am and it was still there.
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Two hours of climbing later I was in position for the shot. Bear stepped out at 385yds.
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Didn't want to clutter up this epic trophy pic with my ugly mug.
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The bear and camp. Pack out was a doozy.

Thanks to the hunttalkers for letting me join your camp and thanks to Travis and Gerald for dragging me along on hunts. Till next time Montana...

I somehow missed these... wow. What an incredible hunt you had, and some amazing pictures.
 
Bump back up to the top for a final recap of the 2016 excitement. Immediately after the bear hunt I dove head first back into work and didn't have time to add my pics or stories. Now that I have a bit of time to breathe, I wanted to throw in my $.02.

First of all I'd like to say that I had a great time spending time with all of the veterans of '14 and '15 and meeting the new guys. One of the drawbacks of the success we've had the past two years is trying to determine how big of a group we can handle without putting undue pressure on the local's hunting spots, or being too big to fit into appropriate campsites. This years group included @ 16 participants with about 10-12 of those actively trying to notch a tag. I know there are a lot more who mentioned interest in coming and I hope that everyone who would have liked to participate but weren't included, realize that logistics are the reason we didn't include everyone, not because we wouldn't have liked to have you in camp.


J.R Young mentioned on another thread that this years hunt had a bit of a twist to it.


During late winter as planning for this year's hunt began in earnest, someone came up with the idea of trying to incorporate making a public lands access video into the hunt. With all of the talk of federal lands being transferred to state ownership and the threat that poses for our future hunting access, each one of us wanted to do our part to show how much we value our public lands. Initially, we were batting around the idea of making a short Youtube video and trying to share it on this sight and through social media.

Big Fin was included in this conversation as we had invited him to join us this year. He countered our Youtube self-production idea with a proposal that he would be willing to consider trying to make a Fresh Tracks episode out of this year's hunt. Only problem was, he was locked into his Alaska hunt dates and we were already committed to the Hunttalk hunt dates and they happened to overlap. So... What Randy was essentially proposing was that he was willing to let the Apple Dumpling Gang take over his platform and risk his reputation to let us self-produce and episode of Fresh Tracks for him without him even being there..... Sure, no pressure. How hard can it be? Couple of guys with cameras, bunch of guys in camp, kill a couple of bears...

I'm still not sure whether Randy is a genius, naive, stupid or foolish for offering this opportunity to feature amateur week, public access advocacy on his show, but I figured if he was crazy enough to offer we were crazy enough to try. I suspect that Randy knew that after it was all said and done, all the footage still had to make it past the editor before his credibility could be completely ruined, so he was willing to risk it. He ante'd up for the filming permits and several of us rounded up cameras to try and make this a sho' nuff real episode.

Without going into exact hunt locale, let it suffice to say that our hunt took place in a part of Montana that could be considered the epicenter of the Pro-transfer movement. We had participants from several states including, Ohio, California, Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota, and Montana all armed to the teeth and converging on a public facility, united in a common cause. You might say we had our own little Occupy Bear Camp rally going strong.

All of us saw this as a great opportunity to express just how that public lands and hunting serves to draw and unite a very diverse group of people from different locations. Of course not only did we want to make a compelling video. We also wanted to shoot some bears and share some great camp life.C0103T01.jpg
 
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This might take me a few days to add all I have, so bear with me... :)


Our game plan for the hunt and the video was to try and follow a couple people with cameras to provide the hunting content and then get interviews from everyone and catch camp life as we could. J.R. Young, Ty Stubblefield, Travis Heater and myself were the designated camera guys and we decided to try and focus on following Ethan and Julie and Jeff Quigley as the main stars of the show.

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