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Bear Hunting: No Nonsense Lures and Attractants
September kicks off fall bear season in Minnesota. Some of the highest concentrations of bears are way up in the Superior National Forest and into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In Wisconsin the Chequamegon and Nicolet national forests produce a lot of bears. Bears are concentrated in the north and central part of the…
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Spring Bear
If you sit in one place long enough, your chances of seeing bear increase. Seldom do you get a look at Ursus Americanus when you are on the move. The predator is so in tune with its surroundings that it is alerted to any sound and scent that seems out of place. No one knew…
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Dry Side Calling – Not for the Faint of Heart
Tod Lum thumbed cartridges into the magazine and closed the bolt. We left the truck parked on the road and climbed uphill on a bare slope. Twenty minutes later we worked onto the shoulder of a finger ridge and looked down into a canyon choked with hawthorn bushes. We set the caller below us on…
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Black Bear on the Pacific Coast – Oregon
Oregon’s bear population numbers between 25,000 and 35,000 animals, spread over approximately 40,000 square miles of habitat. In 1994, voters banned the use of hounds or hunting with bait. Hunter success plummeted in the years after the ban, but as bear numbers increased and more hunters adapted to spot-and-stalk and calling tactics, hunter success has…
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High Altitude August Bears in the Berry Patch
General season black bear hunting opens August 1 and runs through November 30 in eastern Oregon and December 31 in western Oregon. To find a bear early in the season, hunt the food sources that are available. In August and September, that means hiking the high mountain meadows and the old burns where huckleberries grow.…
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Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad
“I’m not cutting my hair or shaving a whisker until I get a bear,” my cousin Neil told me over the phone. “I’m serious about this.” That was in November of 2005 with the fall bear season all but over and little chance of seeing a bruin until spring. “Well you’re going to look pretty…
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Blackpowder Black Bear – Are You Ready for the Challenge?
“There’s a bear.” “There are two of them.” When we first spotted the bears we were close, less than 200 yards away. But we were in a skiff. “Put me ashore beneath that rock,” I whispered. At the shore, I couldn’t see the bears anymore, concealed by alders and willows. I clambered out of the…
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Out on a Limb for Black Bear
Out of work for the winter, Donnie Wygle decided to spring for a spring bear tag and a change in his luck. A bear might be hard to find, but it couldn’t be any harder than locating a job in a tough economy. In April, the 55-year-old hunter headed south along the Oregon coast in…
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A Bear Hunter’s Guide to Geo-Caching
I stayed out late the night before, eating fish fry and too much blackberry cobbler, so Little Sassy got to the morning paper before I did. This time, instead of flipping straight to the funny pages, an item in the Sports section caught her eye. “Pops,” she said, “what is geo-caching?” Now I know that…
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Face-to-Face with a Black Bear
Sometimes a boy wants to do his own laundry. There is probably a good explanation for coming home with bear excrement all over one’s clothes. But it probably wouldn’t explain the presence of certain other kinds of – ahem – evidence inside of one’s garments.
Field Guide
Bear
Read about Gary’s Oregon hunting tips and trips in his book, Hunting Oregon (pictured to the right), or read one of his many articles on bear hunting in Oregon, which we share below.
Oregon bear hunting is a fun and exciting experience, but you’ll need all the bear hunting tips you can get in order to have a successful bear hunting trip.